Academic writing in an ODL context : perceptions and experiences of first-year university students

ODL12 Conference paperThe study reported on here sought to examine first-year students’ conceptions of writing and the extent to which these influence their academic writing; explore tutors’ expectations and understandings of student writing and how they respond to it; and suggest guidelines that can inform effective teaching and learning of writing in English second language (ESL) contexts. The study was underpinned by the academic literacies model. A qualitative research methodology was adopted and a case study approach was used as research design. Participants included ESL first-year students and their tutors. Questionnaires, focus group interviews and marked student writing samples were employed as data collection instruments. The findings showed that although students rated their writing skills as average, tutors had a different perspective. Tutors found that students still struggled with aspects of writing including grammar, spelling, the structuring of essays, coherence and cohesion in paragraphs, and arguing a point convincingly. Although it was shown that students valued feedback highly, in some instances tutors did not provide adequate, understandable and useful feedback

Praxis, Volume 05, No. 01: Diversity in the Writing Center

Subject: A Room of One's Own in the Academy: The Writing Center as a Feminized Space / by Lisa Leit, James Riddlesperger, Ashley Squires, Kanaka Sathasivan, and Justin Smith -- Beyond the Tutorial: Collective Cultures and Shared Grief in the Writing Center / by Emily Walker Heady -- ESL and LD students: Diverse Populations, Common Concerns / by Jane Hirschhorn -- Enhancing Diversity Initiatives through Technology: Writing Center Access from Dallas to Afghanistan / by Rusty Carpenter -- Genre, Diversity, and Disorder in the Writing Center / by Angela Woodward -- Neutral Zone: The Writing Center and the Classroom / by Marjorie Chadwick, Kyung-Hee Bae, Michelle Miley Doss, and Mary Gray -- Not Playing it Safe: Tutoring an Ethic of Diversity within a Non-Diverse Environment / by Andrew Rihn -- The Sense of We Within the I / by Sayantani Dasgupta -- The Writer's Block: Edutainment and Fieldwork Beyond the Walls of the Writing Center / by Diedre Dowling Price -- The Writing Center as Liaison: Retaining L2 Students in Nursing and Other Fields / by Janet M. Lucas -- Writing Centers: Promoting Access in Open Distance Learning / by Mirriam Lephalala and Cathy PienaarUniversity Writing Cente