An investigation of required academic writing skills used in English medium departments of Hacettepe University

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This study investigated the academic writing needs of students through the perspectives of content teachers in the two 100% English medium departments of Hacettepe University. To what extent the English writing requirements of the students differ in accordance with the disciplines was also examined. Out of 70 content teachers in the departments of medicine and economics, 54 participated in this study. The data were collected by means of a questionnaire and analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPPS 9.0) Although the content teachers in the two disciplines declared that writing well is essential for students' overall academic success in their disciplines, the findings revealed that being proficient writers is less important in the medicine faculty, than in the economics department. In general, the teachers in both disciplines find their students’ current success in writing to be inadequate, though the economics faculty are more critical of their students' writing abilities than are the medical teachers. In terms of writing genres, there are some differences between disciplines, though not necessarily sufficient ones to warrant implementing discipline-specific writing courses at Hacettepe University. With respect to general academic English writing skills, however, all the content teachers agree that they are important for students. Based on this finding it is concluded that these skills should continue to constitute the framework for the writing courses at Hacettepe University. Other possible recommendations are for the establishment of extra elective or adjunct courses for the economics students.Yazıcıoğlu, FüsunM.S