What our students tell us: Perceptions of three multilingual students on their academic writing in first year

Abstract

Over the last couple of decades, there has been a growing recognition of the complexity of academic writing, including an interest in how learners negotiate the contexts within which they learn to write. As teachers in an EAP program, we approached this study with an interest in how our multilingual students negotiate the demands of their written assignments within particular disciplinary communities. The focus of the paper is thus on students' perceptions of what it means to "do" academic writing in their first year at university. A case study approach revealed the diversity of student perceptions of academic writing (as an issue of "skills" development, interpersonal relations, or the nego..