Needs Analysis: A study into academic writing needs of undergraduate students (original) (raw)
"This book focuses on the academic writing needs of first year undergraduate students in the Faculty of Agriculture at Egerton University, Kenya. The rationale for focusing on academic writing was: a) It is an important activity by which students' eventual success in university education is judged (see for example Horowitz 1986). b) It is an area in which a lot of research was being focused on all over the world ( see for example Robinson 1988, Leki 1991, Raimes 1991 and also section 2.2 below) c. Both CS and subject specialist lecturers in Kenyan universities had expressed the need for the teaching of writing (Oduol 1991) d. Research in second language writing (see for example Zamel 1983, Kroll 1990) has shown that second language learners have rather special problems with writing in an academic context. This was also borne out from my own personal experience as a CS teacher. This research is not only be a contribution to this practical endeavour, but a useful contribution to the research base of academic writing in the Kenyan context. The starting point was the identification of those writing activities that students were required to do and what requirements the writing involved. Judged against their initial writing competence it would be possible to see where communication problems arose for the students. Thus, with respect to writing needs, the previous questions (section 1.6) were re-framed to reflect the research-aims and objectives of this study as follows: a) What aspects of written language use, sub-skills, fields of interest and genres were demanded of the students by their lecturers in the course of their undergraduate programmes? b) How was the students' academic writing evaluated by their lecturers in their subject areas? c) What was the nature of the students' writing competence at the start of their academic careers and how was it related to the demands of the discourse community's judgment of appropriate writing competence? d) What communicative problems did students encounter in their writing when judged against what the university academic discourse community expected of them? e) What implications would the answers to these questions have for second language research, theory and teaching/learning of Communication Skills? f) What theory/theories of writing could best be used to identify all these aspects that need to be considered?"