The strategies of academic writing in writing researches and theses of Postgraduates at Duhok Polytechnic University

Abstract

Learning writing kill is the most difficult task for the second language students in Duhok Polytechnic university in particular and Iraqi universities in general. However, academic writing is considered one of the most difficult types of writing. (Torrance & Thomas, 1994: 379) stated “Academic writing is difficult. It requires a complex combination of generating ideas, selecting the ideas that are appropriateto the writing task, translatingthese into text andpolishing the text to producea presentabledocument”.

This paper reveals a study conducted as a qualitative research to analyze the writing strategies  The aim of this study was to determine the types of writing strategies used by English language teachers and postgraduatetudents, and the purpose for choosing postgraduate student was considered suitable because it was believed that texts written by them would be more academic in expressing their ideas and would consist of correct writing conventions as well as dissonance in order to accommodate their readers compared with that of less proficient writers (Best, 1995).

This study addressed the following research main questions: What are the writing strategies used by DPU postgraduate students when they compose their papers in English? And what are the strategies used by the English language teachers. To answer these questions, writing strategies questionnaire was employed and distributed among 50 DPU postgraduate students, of these, 40 were retuned. Analyses of the findings revealed that both English language teachers and postgraduate students at DPU shared common writing strategies. Moreover, the teachers used certain effective writing strategy, however, the students employed a wide variety of strategies. Finally, the study came across a range of recommendations, in which the most important was: