Difficulties in mastering psychology writing: a student perspective

Abstract

The curriculum reform in Hong Kong resulted in a change in the direction of academic English enhancement courses in the University of Hong Kong. The change involved the replacement of generic English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses by English-in-the-discipline (ED) courses, one of which is 'Writing Psychology: Text and Context ' . It was offered in the 2013-14 academic year in hopes of helping students master various writing genres of psychology. A genre analysis approach (Bhatia, 1993; Swales, 1990) was adopted in course design with an aim of enhancing students’ awareness of the language forms of disciplinary-specific writing through exploring the linguistic and rhetorical features of various texts in psychology. After its first launch it was felt by course developers that the pedagogical benefits of the course could be maximized by a scrutiny of students’ competence in genre-based writing. This study therefore sets out to investigate the perceptions of psychology students’ major difficulties in writing, and to analyze their actual writing problems.