Resumen de Exploring the best ways to support first year university students’ academic writing skills
This article presents the findings of an action research project carried out in 2012 with 12first-year university students taking ‘Education Studies’ in a university in England. The aim of theproject was to explore the best ways to support students’ academic writing skills. The literaturereview highlights the challenges students encounter when trying to learn the discourse of adiscipline; and in the light of this examination, a reflection on the strengths and weaknesses ofmy own practice provides the context for carrying out an action research project. The teachingintervention was assessed using the following methods of data collection: questionnaires andsemi-structured interviews with students, and content analysis of my own feedback on student’sfinal assignments. The outcomes of the research demonstrate that students’ difficulties with theiracademic writing are related to their struggle to understand specialized concepts, theories andmethods of the discipline.
