Abstract:
Despite its sociopolitical basis, Academic Literacy (AL) is recently referred to as a set of complex skills such as writing, which lays undeniable foundations for success in academic communities (Hyland & Lyons, 2002). This study is aimed at improving students' AL in general and their writing skill in particular at Khaje Nasiredin Toosi (KNT) University of Science and Technology. Based on the domain of EAP (Flowerdew & Peacock, 2001; Jordan, 1997), and among various academic assignments (Braine, 1995; Canseco & Byrd, 1989), students' summary writings at KNT University were selected to be investigated. Besides the summaries, 20 students were interviewed to delve more into the problematic areas. Data analysis of 1270 written errors indicated that sequence of tense, article use, and appropriate selection of words are the most prevalent error types. Further analysis of the data revealed that students had failed to develop their ideas properly in unified paragraphs. Moreover, students were unsuccessful to put their ideas in the simple format of introduction, body, and conclusion. The paragraphs also lacked cohesive ties. The article, accordingly, ends with some practical recommendations addressing the present issues.
Machine summary:
Braine (1995) reported that professors teaching courses in science and technology assigned five types of homework: summary, experimental report (lab), case study, and research paper.
To investigate the most common types of errors among their summaries, the students were asked to read a short story and put it into a written summary.
Based on various academic assignments (Braine, 1995; Canseco Byrd, 1989), students' summary writings were selected to be investigated.
Students’ errors were counted based on the combination of the lists introduced by Tomiyama (1980), Vann and Meyer (1984), Sheorey and Ward (1984), Ferris (1999), Ashwell (2000), Ferris and Roberts (2001), and Chandler (2003).
These problematic areas, manifesting themselves in the form of the most common types of errors in the summaries of students, could be an indicative of the areas needed to be touched upon and reconsidered in the course syllabus design.
The errors fell into three groups: Grammatical errors(tense, articles, connectors, prepositions, pronouns, clauses, possessives, parallel structure, subject/verb agreement, and singular/plural), Mechanical errors (punctuation, capitalization, and spelling), and lexical choice errors (content words, appropriate choice of words, word order, and parts of speech).
The grammatical errors further fall into tense, articles, connectors, prepositions, pronouns, clauses, possessives, parallel structure, subject/verb agreement, and singular/plurals.
23%) was the most frequent error type in lexical choice, and most of the students had problem with addition and omission of content words.
Needs analysis in EAP course and materials design (Flowerdew Peacock, 2001; Hyland Hamp-Lyons, 2002) seems to be central to academic contexts.