7/30/2019 Writing Challenges at Universities Assignment (3)
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Going to a university to study is every students dream after
completion of high school
but there are writing challenges which most students face. The
tutors and lecturers at
universities take it for granted that university students know
how to write academically,
yet the problem of writing academically is a real problem which
students in differentuniversities worldwide are faced with. The
writing challenges vary from student to
student and include among others plagiarism, inability to
understand the topic under
discussion, lack of time to research for the assignment,
language barriers and others.
Research done at different universities in the United Kingdom,
Australia and the USA
about Chinese students who are studying in these countries and
are second language
users of English highlighted that these students challenges
emanate from the lack of
linguistic skills to inabilities to use the language itself.
This problem is common to most
students who use a second language for academic purposes,
especially if they have not
acquired enough linguistic skills and mustered the rules that
govern the languageusage. In such instances, students are faced
with a multitude of problems before they
come to writing the essay itself. These are, inability to
understand the question because
of language barriers, research skills that are sloppy, not
writing references as they
research (most common with undergraduate students), so as to
avoid plagiarizing other
peoples ideas. If the linguistic skills are weak this means the
essay itself is going to be
weak.
Most of the writing challenges that I discussed above are faced
by many students
including me at this university. Though I have studied before
after high school, I always
struggle when I am introducing an essay topic because I do not
know whether I shouldstart with a quotation or my own words and
what to say and how to say it. I also I also
struggle with theories especially applying them to teaching and
learning. When we
have lectures these theories are taught in isolation so it
becomes really difficult to link
teaching and learning theories to the classroom.
Other challenges in writing that university students face is
leaving the writing up until it
is very late, sometimes as late as early hours of the due date
and even just before the
due date meaning that the assignment in question will not be the
best that one could
have done had it been given enough time. This type of assignment
will be likely to have
varied problems from the avoidable ones to complex ones.
Sometimes this happensbecause at universities lecturers do not sit
together to design workable due dates for
students so the students are faced with three assignments at the
same time and in such
cases some assignments end up suffering due to lake of time to
research for them.
In South Africa where academic writing is in either English or
Afrikaans which is only
spoken by a minority of population the writing challenges are
more pronounced
7/30/2019 Writing Challenges at Universities Assignment (3)
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especially for those whose linguistic skills are not well
developed. Academic writing is
more of a student justifying her or his assertions so if the
language itself is limited, then
the students challenges are worsened. In such instances the
lecturer will struggle when
marking the essay because the argument will be so weak.
The challenges that I have highlighted has seen most
universities setting up foundationcourses for undergraduate
students. These courses are geared at introducing students
to academic writing.
References:
1. Chanock, K. (p1-7; 09- 06; 2006) How can we handle the
specificity of writing
challenges facing our students?www.zeitschrift-schreiben.eu.
2. Howard, R. M. (p788; Vol57.7; 1995) Plagiarism, Authorships,
and the Academic D
Death Penalty.www.jstor.org/stable
3. Newton, J. (06, 1995), Plagiarism and challenges of essay
writing: Learning from our
students.
File:///f:/plagiarism%20challenges%20at2ouniversity.htm .
http://www.zeitschrift-schreiben.eu/http://www.zeitschrift-schreiben.eu/http://www.zeitschrift-schreiben.eu/http://www.jstor.org/stable%203http://www.jstor.org/stable%203http://www.jstor.org/stable%203http://www.jstor.org/stable%203http://f/plagiarism%20challenges%20at2ouniversity.htmhttp://f/plagiarism%20challenges%20at2ouniversity.htmhttp://f/plagiarism%20challenges%20at2ouniversity.htmhttp://www.jstor.org/stable%203http://www.jstor.org/stable%203http://www.zeitschrift-schreiben.eu/
