Causes of Tertiary Students’ Failure in Projecting Voice in Academic Writing and Possible Solutions: Instructor and Learner Perceptions

Abstract

"Voice" in academic writing acts like the author's authority by representing his thoughts produced by his intellect. Though it is a salient phenomenon in academia, the Bangladeshi education sector still remains ignorant regarding recognizing students' voices in their writing. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the root causes responsible for the failure to project "voice" in students' academic writing, along with its possible solutions. It, moreover, takes into account the educators' and the learners' outlook as to the plausible sources of this issue and, at the same time, what both parties thought could help improve the skill of voice projection in students' writing. To this end, the current empirical study has chosen to use the mixed method approach where 30 Bangladeshi tertiary level EFL teachers and 433 students participated through survey questionnaires. In addition, 11 interviews from teacher participants and 5 interviews from student participants were conducted following a semi-structured approach. The study has found some significant obstructions in voice projection in academic writing. Hence, this study recommended some suggestive solutions to overcome the challenges in students' voice projection in academic writing at the end.