Perceptions About “Good Writing” and “Writing Competences” in Romanian Academic Writing Practices: A Questionnaire Study

Abstract

Recently, the status of academic writing and writing practices in Romanian academia has been the subject of ongoing debates. This increased attention to academic writing is largely due to attempts made to internationalize Romanian education and research. However, little has been done when it comes to empirically analyzing the specificity and dynamics of writing practices. In other words, a close examination of the main features of what defines good academic writing still needs to be carried out. Investigating common views about writing could offer not only an image of the cultural specificities of Romanian academic writing, but also a basis for re-thinking and re-organizing the teaching of academic writing. This presentation will report on the results of a questionnaire survey conducted in 2012 at the Faculty of Letters, History, and Theology of the West University of Timișoara as part of the LIDHUM project. The purpose of this analysis is twofold. First, we will analyze the responses to what “good writing” means to the students and teachers of the Faculty of Letters. Second, we will look into the teachers’ responses regarding the required competences in academic writing and the students’ self-evaluation of their own competences. Even though an examination of the general assumptions about what “good writing” means shows no significant differences between students and teachers, when it comes to the analysis of the students’ self-evaluating answers and the required competences assumed by the teachers, some important discrepancies occur. In this chapter we will try to explain those differences, which are most likely the result of a lack of explicit instruction in the teaching of academic writing.