Dr. Somayeh Biparva Haghighi, Dr. Zohreh. G. Shooshtari & Dr. Alireza Jalilifar
Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran
Currently, more and more postgraduate students need to master academic writing skills to obtain the indispensable means for internationalization of their research and innovations. Thus, programs in higher education should provide opportunities for these students to receive relevant English instruction and develop practical experience. However, students’ low language proficiency evolves as an impediment toward the design and implementation of courses in English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Therefore, this study aimed to explore how a collaborative approach in teaching for disciplinary academic writing would influence the transfer of learning in postgraduate students with varied writing proficiency levels. For this purpose, a sample population of 58 medical students majoring in four different medical sciences participated in this research. Throughout a whole semester, the trace of variance in students’ writing practices was recorded and finally correlated with the students’ initial proficiency scores. The obtained results indicated that owing to the collaborative design of the disciplinary writing program, the participants could attain significant levels of writing skills and finally transfer their received instruction to authentic practices. On investigating the issue, it was found that age factor, university admission criteria, and level of professional involvement could have a determining interplay with students’ varied writing proficiency levels.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Second International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2018, Ahwaz.
