Name:

Mushaikwa Ngonidzashe

Writing at University is challenging. One pager

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 different universities 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 language usage. 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 should start 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 happens because 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

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 foundation courses 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.