English proses in his early doctoral years: “Our class assignments were rarely English but math containing no more than two sentences. I didn’t have many chances to write long texts until recently [when writing his dissertation]” (interview, June, 2016). The nature of statistics courses emphasized more on solving mathematical questions through outlining formula and axioms rather than prosaic explanations so he did not need to apply much of his English knowledge and writing skills to answer math questions. He started to notice his various weaknesses in English academic writing when writing his dissertation:
“My writing difficulty is caused by insufficient vocabulary while writing my dissertation. I always repeatedly use the same words. Although
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He was probably drawing from his Chinese through direct translation or some ineffective linguistic navigation. Fortunately, his advisors always encouraged him by pointing out difference between the points he made and language errors that obscured these points as seen in “what you wrote is right but no one would write in that way…”. In addition to the writing challenges mentioned above, Zhi-Kai also confronted difficulties in appropriately applying grammar to writing, paraphrasing scholarly works to support own arguments , recognizing and internalizing disciplinary writing conventions (e.g., structures of conference proposals and academic articles), employing discipline-specific terminology and language, and so on. In an effort to surmount the writing difficulties he faced, he took an ESL writing course in his first doctoral year. Unfortunately, it ineffectively met his …show more content…
Some of his learning backgrounds, such as experience in writing his Master’s thesis, locating essential scholarly sources, and organizing his arguments in writing, might help him deal with writing tasks during his doctoral study. Nonetheless, some of his learning backgrounds might result in writing difficulties he confronted during his academic acculturation processes. These contain the absence of exposure to English when he studied in Taiwan and the lack of opportunities to write long English proses and effective training in English academic writing in the doctoral program. Moreover, the doctoral statistics department and institution except for his advisors seemed to not provide necessary academic support to assist him in transiting to the Western academic culture. The ESL writing courses apparently were to enhance his English academic writing competence. However, those courses’ primary goal was to teach students to not plagiarize others’ writing. Although the concept of plagiarism is significant for international graduate students to understand, skills that could increase his overall English academic writing competence are also vital for him, as an international student, to acquire in order to meet requirements and expectations of his doctoral program and the wider statistics communities. Luckily, he
Over my career of schooling my writing has changed dramatically at times and very little at others. Through my years of schooling people have determined my main weaknesses and strengths that I should work on with my writing. My biggest weakness is writing introductions and conclusions they must be so complicated and require so much thought to be defined as good. I excel at writing body paragraphs and explaining all the facts that back up your main ideas though.
The journey through language and literature has always been an intriguing one for me. It is for this reason that I chose English as my major. It seems that every teacher or professor that I have had, has always been able to pinpoint one specific element in my writing that I need to work on. This has not been a negative thing by any stretch, because with each passing semester there is an element of my literature that will be perfected for the next. This is the wonder that is English, and the reason for my passion in this subject area.
"can shift attention away from teaching students how to avoid plagiarism in the first place. In “Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices,” the Council of Writing Program Administrators urges teachers to “use plagiarism detection services cautiously,” for they should “never be used to justify the avoidance of responsible teaching methods.”
Thomas, C. (2011). Is the American Dream Over? They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (2nd ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Without delay, I begin my in-depth look into the requirements of this study and what was expected of me, as an English 111 student. To successively complete these assignments, I would need to be focused on the process of such writing assignments. Along with the instructor’s ideas that our writing would be done in such different ways it will eventually consume every waking moment of my time and become top priority for the next four months.
Estow, Sarah, Eva K. Lawrence, and Kathrynn A. Adams. "Practice Makes Perfect: Improving Students' Skills in Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism with a Themed Methods Course." ERIK, 2012: 4.
It would be foolish to claim that I have never overanalysed and disregarded conveying ideas and theories properly, in the interest of impressing my reader. Nevertheless, this aspiration indicates there is more to academic writing than simply passing information.
As a second language learner I have never expected myself to be a perfect writer throughout the semester. Even If English was my first language still, I would not be a perfect writer. It is not about first or second language, it is about how well I understand the learning objectives. Then organizing and writing with my own ideas and putting them in my paper. I am going to be honest, I am not good at English subject and English subject is my strongest weakness than the other subjects. In this paper I will discuss and analyze my own writing, reflecting on the ways that my writing has improved throughout the semester.
Grabe, W. & Kaplan, R.B. (1996) Theory and practice of writing Addison Wesley Longman Limited, Harlow, Essex, England. Martlew, M. (1983) The Psychology of Written Language, Developmental and Educational Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, U.K. Protherough, R. (1983)
Qualitative and quantitative instruments were used in obtaining data for this instructional problem. The first instrument used was quantitative, the instructor gave students a writing assignment, and when it was graded, it was clear that there was a problem with effective topic and thesis statements, as well as general organization of the paper. To be sure that this wasn’t an isolated problem, the second instrument was developed; a quantitative instrument that surveyed the teachers, asking for information on their students comprehensive writing skills.
Plagiarism is seen as a severe contravention of normal scholarly conduct, necessitating colleges and universities in the US and UK to establish eit...
However, their purposes for writing are sometimes not the kind valued by Western academic communities. The nature of academic literacy often confuses and disorients students, “particularly those who bring with them a set of conventions that are at odds with those of the academic world they are entering” (Kutz, Groden & Zamel, 1993, p. 30). In addition, the culture-specific nature of schemata–abstract mental structures representing our knowledge of things, events, and situations–can lead to difficulties when students write texts in L2. Knowing how to write a “summary” or “analysis” in Mandarin or Spanish does not necessarily mean that students will be able to do these things in English (Kern, 2000). As a result, any appropriate instruction must take into consideration the influence from various educational, social, and cultural experiences that students have in their native language. These include textual issues, such as rhetorical and cultural preferences for organizing information and structuring arguments, commonly referred to as contrastive rhetoric (Cai, 1999; Connor, 1997; Kaplan, 1987; Kobayashi & Rinnert, 1996; Leki, 1993; 1997; Matalene, 1985), knowledge of appropriate genres (Johns, 1995; Swales, 1990), familiarity with writing topics (Shen, 1989), and distinct cultural and instructional socialization (Coleman, 1996; Holliday, 1997; Valdes, 1995). In addition to instructional and cultural
Works Cited Crank, V. (2012). The 'Standard'. From high school to college: Developing writing skills in the disciplines. WAC Journal, 2349-63, pp. 63-63.
Academic writing skill is very essential for the college students. Through academic writing, the students can express their thoughts, feelings and point of view on a certain issue or topic. In presenting ideas about variety of issues, students need to follow certain rules in writing academic essays. Academic writing is a specific type of writing that is needed in writing formal essays in a certain course. To create a well-constructed essay, it is very important for the students to use academic writing style. It has specific features which include academic tone in the essays. To achieve formality of tone, students must maintain the objectivity of their written texts. Unfortunately, some of the students tend to use personal pronouns
And Learning of Report Writing Skills in a University Statistics Course." Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 25.3 (2009): 382-398. Education Research Complete. Web. 22 Nov. 2013.