Abstract
Writing has always been regarded as playing a prominent role in learning a second language. Research within this discipline has mainly focused on the development of writing skill, but in recent years, some researchers have examined students’ perceptions of writing. The purpose of this study was to investigate students’ perceptions about an academic writing course and writing in general. A total of 64 female students from an ESP program participated in the study. The general design of the study was quantitative and qualitative in nature as a questionnaire and a focus-group interview were implemented for data collection. A combination of quantitative and qualitative procedures was employed to analyze the data collected via the questionnaire and the focus group interview respectively. The overall results demonstrated the students’ positive views towards the Academic Writing Course (AWC) in particular and ESL writing in general. The major findings demonstrated students’ awareness of their needs and ESL writing requirements. The study concluded with recommendations for future research.
Highlights
Writing has always been seen as an important skill in ESL classes
The overall mean indicated that students had high perceptions about the importance of ESL writing skill for their academic study and their future career
In their study about the benefit of corpus-use in second language writing, Yoon and Hirvela (2004) found that students were positive about the use of corpus in L2 writing
Summary
Writing has always been seen as an important skill in ESL classes. Writing is certainly an important element of learning English as a second language. This importance is eventually derived from the fact that it reinforces grammatical structures, vocabulary and idioms that we have been teaching to our students. Writing skills can be developed when the learners' interests are recognized and when they are exposed to situations where they can produce authentic piece of writing. One of the goals of ESL students is to learn to produce a well-structured piece of writing which is recognized and accepted in their academic departments.
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