الفهرس 
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Abstract
This chapter attempts to offer interpretations to the results of the study on the effectiveness of a reflective based program on developing graduate students’ academic writing skills at the Faculties of Education. This chapter also provides explanation to the differences between the two sample groups in the efficiency of their overall academic writing as well as their mastery of each sub-skill. It also provides a discussion on the learners’ attitudes toward the treatment after it was finished as well as during the program through their reflective journal. The chapter concludes with pedagogical implications for institutions, teachers, and student. If also includes the limitations of the present study as well as the recommendations for future research.
5.1. Discussion and Interpretation of Findings
As revealed from the results, the program had a positive effect on the overall academic writing efficiency of graduate students in both groups. Hence, the first hypothesis was approved. The students seemed to benefit from the course and throughout they showed a dire need as well as a desire in improving their academic writing proficiency. Consequently, it can be concluded that the program was a successful one, and that reflective teaching, when used in a systematic course, does enhance the graduates’ academic writing. This is also an indicator that the sub-skills were in fact required for promoting the overall academic writing performance of graduate students.
Further, the statistical analyses also revealed a notable improvement in the academic writing sub-skills after the treatment. Despite the difference in the level of improvement for each sub- skill, in general students were able to acquire and master these skills in comparison to their prior knowledge and performance.
On the other hand, when the third hypothesis that the master’s candidates’ will outperform the Special Diploma students in the overall academic writing efficiency, considering that they are supposedly more motivated to learn as they are in the thesis process, the hypothesis was rejected. This might be due to the fact that most master’s students feel comfortable that they were already accepted for master candidacy and lack the motivation to learn new skills while they are involved in their thesis topics. Another possible reason is that MA students face some administrative delays at the beginning of the academic year; hence, they missed the first few objectives and had to independently study them. This finding might be also attributed to the fact that the master’s students are occupied with their core course and thesis which makes them overwhelmed to study an additional course in parallel to their area of focus.
Finally, it was hypothesized that the master’s students’ scores in each sub-skill will be significantly superior than the Special Diploma students’ scores. However, this assumption was partially refuted as some of the skills such as the outlining, the use of formal vocabulary and the sentence structure were statistically insignificant. This might be attributed to the aforementioned reason which stated that they were unable to attend the first few sessions in the program; hence, were deprived from the content of the first sessions, as well as the class exercises and activities. Additionally, another insignificant skill was their inability to abide by the APA documentation.style using correct in-text citation. This insignificance could be attributed to the lack of sufficient time for practice.
In comparing the findings of the present study with previous research findings, the results are discussed in terms of the following parameters. The research findings align with other research findings that was previously conducted on the same variable and aimed at improving students’ academic writing skills at various levels. For example, formative assessment and feedback given directly and indirectly through reflective journals and assignments seemed to have the same positive effect on students’ performance such as stated by Ferris and Roberts (2001) who tested an intervention on undergraduate students at an American university and found that a group receiving instructor feedback outperformed a no-feedback group. In the present study, students were given sufficient and timely feedback on their proposals where they reflected their acquired academic writing skills, they seemed to enhance their performance in the following drafts and assignments. Students showed constant improvement in their proposals and constantly expressed their appreciation to the provided constructive feedback at the beginning and throughout each session.
The direct reflective teaching utilized in this study seemed to be effective as revealed by the overall writing results of both groups. This result seemed to be in line with that of Boscolo, Arfé, and Quarisa (2007) who asserted that explicit teaching promotes students’ academic writing and tested an academic writing intervention involving undergraduate students and found improvement in students’ ability to write a synthesis drawing from several texts and sources.
Students’ responses in the follow-up questionnaire as well as their weekly reflections and informal conversations and feedback with the instructor affirmed that they would rather learn the academic writing skills explicitly as this gives them the chance to understand the objectives better than when they tend to study on their own. They also asserted that they enjoyed the instructional teaching using the reflective teaching method as this gave them the opportunity to interact and ask questions for clarification when needed.
Findings from the present study, additionally, confirm the dire need for a longer program to be able to master the specified academic writing skills. These findings are in agreement with those of Casanave (2002) and Phakiti and Li (2011) who argued that academic writing is, in fact, difficult specifically for L2 post-graduate students. Furthermore, students in the present study showed significant improvement in forming accurate sentence structures after undertaking the program. This finding aligns with Storch and Tapper’s (2009) findings which assessed L2 postgraduates’ writing and found improved structure, grammatical accuracy, and use of academic vocabulary over the course of a semester.
In the same vein, the findings from the current study are in agreement with those of Moseifer (2012) who asserted that academic writing represents a dilemma for several researchers who struggle to produce valid research that is eligible for international publications. He affirmed that the weakness in their writing is due to the lack of academic writing skills and the lack of sufficient practice which was confirmed by the participants’ responses in the present study. This is in line with Mostafa’s (2008a, p.206) findings which affirmed that most students at the Faculties of Education fail to meet the minimum required standard and competence of the
academic writing skills, which hinder them from demonstrating their ideas or publishing their work internationally.
The findings from this study are in accordance with those of Mostafa (2008a) who asserted that scholars suffer from an academic writing fright and the phenomenon of writing fright is quite common in academic contexts. She also recommended overcoming this problem through tailored training programs which are based on feedback and mentoring approaches to develop academic writing skills. It is worth mentioning that the positive impact of the reflective teaching approach is confirmed through the results and analyses of the current study. Similarly, the findings concur with Zaki’s (2017) results whose study aimed at identifying the effect of a proposed program based on web-based knowledge trips for developing the academic writing abilities of postgraduate students. She concluded that the proposed program had a positive impact on the development of students’ academic writing skills.
On the other hand, the present study affirmed that there are 8 main sub-skills which are needed for the development of the students’ academic writing competence and performance. This is dissimilar to Mustafa’s (2008b) study which aimed at preparing a list of the academic writing skills required for the students of the Faculty of Education who prepared a list of academic writing skills in their initial form and concluded that 42 sub-skills in seven prime academic writing skills are required for students of the Faculties of Education.
The findings from the present study also show that students were in a dire need to be instructed and guided in acquiring the academic writing skill. These findings are in the same vein
with Polio, Fleck, and Leder’s (1998); Li (2007) findings which showed that students had significant improvements in writing outcomes following a designed course, suggesting the effect of instructions on learners’ writing development. The findings of the current study also concur with Braxley’s (2005) who stated that the foremost difficulty international students faced is their lack of familiarity with the conventions of academic writing and consequently, the students were reported to seek help from friends, writing tutors and instructors to meet the writing demands of their degree programs. In the same vein, the current study confirmed that using peer assessments and reflective teaching method, students are more likely to master the academic writing skill.
Students’ reflections throughout the program as well as their responses in the follow-up questionnaire highlighted their interest in the course and how much they benefited from the program. In their responses (see Appendix J) feedback such as: The instructor was friendly, enthusiastic, perfect, professional, fluent, she spreads positivity and confidence, she was always encouraging, she used a variety of teaching techniques, what I like most is her communication skills, she is available all the time, I like her way of teaching and she can deliver the information well, I like her organization, simplification, facilitation and cooperation, all of these comments affirm that the students did indeed benefit and enjoyed instructional teaching and that the reflective teaching approach did help them in mastering the new academic writing skills. However, their responses did show that they needed more time and more practice for each skill. This was interpreted from their responses, for example: too many resources with lack of time, many information in a short period of time, more time is needed to check, more assignments to help practice.5.4. Limitations of the Study
The study has its own limitations. The first limitation is that the results of this study cannot be generalized due to the sample size; only 35 participants from two groups in one intact class were involved in this study. The research was also limited to test the students’ ability to use APA in-text citation due to the infeasibility of testing their ability to write full reference lists while already providing them with the articles during the pre-posttests. Another limitation was the time restriction as the master’s candidates are usually enrolled much later than the Special Diploma students which hindered them from attending the first couple of sessions and forced them to depend completely on themselves to understand the missed objectives. Time constraints also deprived students and the researcher to extend the time of practice or decrease the objectives which were previously planned and outlined despite the students’ constant request to reduce the objectives weekly.