Academic writing reference handbook

Abstract

Writing academically in a foreign language (L2) involves grammatical and lexical expertise, and it definitely implies having a set of skills to create texts that are both accurate and substantial. In tertiary education contexts, students are compelled to use higher-order thinking skills in their compositions since expectations are more demanding and seek to meet the international quality standards of the 21st century. However, according to Yang (2016), professors do not obtain the expected results when teaching students to write, not even from the most studious learners. Moreover, he states that the lack of writing ability among second language university students is mainly caused by deficient teacher instruction, negative first language transfer, and scarce teaching materials and methods. Indeed, one of the reasons why there is a limited number of national scientific publications in international journals is language limitations as stated in a study conducted by Colombian Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (COLCIENCIAS, 2016). Despite this pervasive lack of academic writing competences, there are, ironically, very limited research-based resources for English Language Learners (ELL) to guide them in elaboration of their academic products.