Writing for Academic Genres: Research Report Writing: Problems, Issues and Discussion

Abstract

Good writing skills are a key to academic and professional success. Students in higher education need these skills for academic survival and excellence. Despite this fact, there is evidence that such skills are lacking amongst our students. This paper explores students’ writing problems in the genre of report writing. The paper is based on a survey of research reports of undergraduates at the Institute of Development Management Mzumbe. Sample extracts from Third Year students are examined to find out the problems which make these reports deviate from what might be considered acceptable in research reporting. The survey shows that students’ writing problems are not only at the macro (i.e. discourse) level but also at the micro (i.e. basic sentence) level. Also frequent are problems of general non-conformity to writing for academic genres.