Exploring writing in an academic context: the case of first-year university students

Abstract

This study attempted to give a clear picture of the teaching of writing to university students as these students show serious deficiencies in writing. It focused on first-year EFL students at the University of Tlemcen, Department of Foreign Languages, Section of English trying to investigate the teaching of the writing they receive. This work aimed first, at identifying first-year English students’ writing difficulties; second, discovering the causes behind these difficulties and finally finding out possible solutions that are hoped to alleviate the problem and help students to improve their writing proficiency level. Various research instruments were used in this case study: a production task, a teacher’s and a student’s questionnaire and a teacher’s interview which constitute a variety of sources for collecting data. It has been shown from the results achieved in this work that students’ low achievement in writing was affected by inadequate teaching approach used, lack of coordination between the writing course and the other language skills courses, lack of teaching materials, inadequate timing and lack of student’s practice. In sum, this project attempted to reveal the extent to which the above mentioned variables were involved in students’ failure in writing and tried to suggest remedies or alterations needed to improve students’ writing proficiency level.