Writing: a profitable but negated skill in English classes in undergraduate programs
Abstract
The present study describes a small scale project consisting in several workshops to improve the students’ writing in English as a oreing languages. The targeted population consisted of first level students in undergraduate programs at a public university in Colombia. The low development of writing skills in the students’ foreign language has been constantly observed in the English teaching process.
According to the diagnostic data, One of the main cause of students low performance in writng, was the lack of writing activities that serve as training for them to produce writing text. Students showed the low opportunities they had concerning this kind of activities. The diagnostic data (questionnaires and interviews) also revealed both the lack of clear instructions for the students and of guided and controlled activities which help them to improve the process of writing, and the low motivation as the main result of this lack of activities. Last but not least, after the implementation of this research students were more confident, they wrote high-quality texts and writing became an interesting activity.
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