Two surveys were conducted at the University of Canberra
in 1992 to seek the views of faculty on issues regarding
academic writing. The first survey sought to ascertain what
criteria faculty employ when marking student writing. It
asked faculty to indicate the importance of certain key features
in the writing of university students. These key features were:
Content, Argument, Style, Organisation, Communicative Ability,
Vocabulary, Use of Literature and Punctuation. Faculty were
requested to rank the importance of aspects of each of the nine
key features.
The second survey asked faculty to assess an actual
assignment written by an overseas student, using the structure
of the nine key features of writing as above. Faculty were
invited to indicate the strengths and weaknesses of the
assignment which they were assessing.
The aim of the surveys was to better inform teachers of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes, who prepare
overseas students for study at university. EAP teachers need
to know the expectations of faculty, in order to give overseas
students a realistic view of what faculty expect from their
assignments and the kinds of. weaknesses which faculty find in
overseas students' writing.
The survey found that content-related features such as
Content, Argument, Organisation and Communicative Ability
were considered more important than form features such as
Punctuation, Grammar, Style and Vocabulary. Use of Literature
was found to be a very important feature in some faculties but
not in all. Surprisingly, Style was the feature which evoked the
greatest variety of responses from faculty; however, in general
faculty agreed that Style had to be appropriate to the topic or
task, rather than there being a set format for academic writing.
From a factor analysis of data, four underlying principles
for academic writing were derived. These principles were:
relevance, appropriacy, accuracy and clarity. Thus, academic
writing, according to the faculty surveyed, should be:
1) relevant to the topic and to the internal argument of the
assigment;
2) appropriate in the style, tone and use of literature;
3) accurate in its vocabulary, grammar and referencing system.
4) clear in its argument and organisation of ideas.
For the most part, faculty responded favourably to the
overseas student assignments, which were assessed in the
second questionnaire. Faculty indicated that the main
weakness in overseas student writing was in their argument.
The surveys also found differences between different
Faculties in the importance they place on these key features.
It was postulated that the Science Faculties (Applied Science,
Environmental Design and Information Science and
Engineering) would be fairly similar in their views on writing,
as would the Humanities Faculties (Communication, Education
and Management). This was found to be only partly true. The
views of Information Science and Engineering faculty were
found to be more similar in many of their attitudes to the
views of the Humanities faculty. However, in some ways, their
views were unique and unlike any other Faculty. In particular.
Information Science and Engineering faculty place little
emphasis on writing as a method of assessment and, perhaps
as a consequence, even less on the use of literature in writing
From the survey, it also appeared that, in general, faculty
make some allowances for the fact that overseas students are
L2 speakers. They tend to overlook mechanical errors so long
as the content is acceptable.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218812 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Bush, Denise, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Denise Bush |
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