A Cross-Sectional Study of Assessing Academic Writing Skills of BS Students At University Level
Keywords:
Academic Writing Skills, Undergraduate Students, Higher Education, English for Academic Purposes (EAP), Components of Academic Writing, Writing Proficiency.Abstract
The purpose of the study was to assess the academic writing skills of BS students at the university level. The population comprised all undergraduate students enrolled in various departments at the University of Sargodha, main campus. Using a multistage random sampling technique, three faculties—Sciences, Social Sciences, and Arts & Humanities—were selected. From these, six departments (Education, Psychology, English, Mass Communication, Physics, and Zoology) were randomly chosen. Students from the 1st–2nd and 7th–8th semesters participated, with 20% providing writing samples. To assess academic writing skills, previous studies by Elizabeth J. Erling (2010), Włodarczyk-Czubak (2021), and Muhammad Sajid (2015) utilized open-ended questions and developed scoring rubrics for evaluation. Similarly, this study used an open-ended question format to assess the academic writing skills of university students. A cross-sectional, quantitative survey design was employed. Data were collected through personal visits and analyzed using SPSS version 22. Descriptive statistics (frequencies, means, percentages, standard deviations) and inferential statistics (T-test and ANOVA) were applied. The findings highlighted a statistically significant difference in academic writing progress between the 1st–2nd and 7th–8th semester students.
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