Identifying the needs of postgraduate students: The first step of academic writing courses

Abstract

Academic writing practices constitute central processes through which students learn the conventions of their disciplines to meet the expectations of their academic communities. Therefore, academic writing courses should touch on the specific dimensions of it. One of the most prominent requirements of these courses is to identify the needs of students and implement a program based on the negotiation between the needs of students and the expectations of academic communities. The present study aimed to explore the academic writing needs of Turkish postgraduate students in the departments of English Language Teaching and English Language and Literature through an online questionnaire including Likert-type items and open-ended questions. The Likert-type items were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test statistics while the data gathered from open-ended questions was exposed to thematic analysis. We found that the participants (30 Turkish postgraduate students of English) obtained a clear idea of the disciplinary conventions and the importance of communication with readers in academic genres but they did not seem to develop awareness of building stance in academic genres. There was not a statistical difference between MA and PhD students' academic writing needs. Apparently, academic writing courses in post-graduate programs should place heavy demands on more specific needs-based curriculum to meet their students' target needs.