Research writing skills are crucial to university students worldwide, especially when final-year research projects and capstone projects have become more prevalent as graduation requirements at the undergraduate level. However, it is difficult to master such skills because writing a research report or thesis is fundamentally different from writing a conventional essay, with challenging elements such as writing an analytical (instead of a descriptive) literature review, as well as presenting and discussing findings professionally. A common and sad phenomenon is that subject teachers in the discipline often place their focus on the content side and do not have the time and / or expertise to strengthen students’ writing ability, making many students feel unattended and helpless along the way.To provide necessary support to students, a research writing course is developed and offered by the English Language Teaching Unit of a university in Hong Kong for upper-year students in the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Social Science, which are two faculties with a highly diverse student population from a total of around 30 programs. Since this course is not a compulsory one, students enrolled in it are mostly motivated and aware of the significance of research writing training in their academic journey. This presentation aims at introducing the design rationale and pedagogical implementation of this course, highlighting the adoption of the “learning-from-your-student”, fluid and exploratory approaches. Students’ feedback on this course, which is collected from both formal and informal channels, will also be shared.

Authors:
Allen Ho, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Allen Ho is a Senior Lecturer at the English Language Teaching Unit of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He is currently a Co-supervisor in the English Across the Curriculum Project and the Peer Tutoring Scheme of CUHK.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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