An Analysis of Doctorate Students of EconomicsAcademic Writing Needsthe Case of Research Articles‟ Abstracts

Abstract

The present study aimed at analyzing the academic writing needs of PhD students of economics with a specific focus on the problems and difficulties they encounter in writing abstracts. To achieve this aim, a questionnaire was self- designed and administered to a convenience-based sample of eighteen doctorate students of Economics at Skikda University. The analysis of doctorate students „responses has shown that although they have been taught English at the tertiary level , that writing has occupied the most important place in the English course, that they are aware out the need to develop their competence in writing abstracts and that writing abstracts in English is, to a large extent different from abstract writing in Arabic, the participants were largely not satisfied either by their level in academic English nor with quality of the instruction they have received, especially with regard to the issue of writing abstracts. This is due to the many weaknesses of the ESP instruction they have received. These weaknesses can be summarized as follows: the lack of sufficient teachers„ feedback, the biased focus on content, the over reliance on content-based teaching methodology, the neglect of the issue of writing abstracts as well as the use of discourse-based methodology in teaching it. These results showcase the importance of incorporating the discourse-oriented genre-based pedagogy in teaching writing, in general, and, writing abstracts, in particular, to meet these students‟ academic writing needs