The significant difficulties in writing effective academic for international students
Introduction:
With the development of the global economy and advanced technology, students going abroad for the further education become more normal and easier.
Academic writing accounts for the considerable proportion during the experience of foreign learning. So, the issue of what are the greatest difficulties is thought to be worthy of studying. In addition, the result from this study is helpful for inculcating English in pre-sessional classes at UK universities.
Linn has the attitude that the diverse conventions and cultures should be put at the top of difficulties (Linn, 2009:p1), while Harris regards both grammar and structure of the essay are equally important (Harris, 2010:p66). I will compare four aspects (linking words, metaphorical language, organization of text, and sentences structure level) in academic essays to obtain the result. These five factors are referred by Linn or Harris, because of the obvious distinction between the native speakers and non-native speakers.
Main body: 1. Linking words
The linking words are thought to organise sentences from the above to next, which could help papers to read more smoothly and enable the readers to flow from one point to the next without gaps or disruption.
There are two cultures to use signposts according the writings by Linn and Harris. Linn points out Englishmen prefer to use a number of explicit connectors to explain the relations among the sentences and paragraphs. However, according to the survey from Theart (2010, p.141), results show international students are like to use discourse marks and they have more interest in using formal connectors to introduce what they want to express. In addition, the conclusion from Harris’ passage (Harris, 2010:p69) indicates foreign students heavily rely the linking words to present their ideas, whilst native speakers have more methods to write contexts.