Speaker
Description
English- major Students’ Perceptions of the Course of “Methods of Writing Research Papers”
Thị Xuyên, Nguyễn
Abstract
It is a truth that students of HCM University of Foreign Languages -Information Technology (HUFLIT) have recently received big encouragement to do scientific research from their lecturers and the board of leaders. Accordingly, the course “Methods of Writing research papers” has been a compulsory one for all students majoring in English Studies. A study was carried out to explore the students’ beliefs, opinions, and attitudes toward this subject as well as to identify their difficulties in writing research papers and some factors shaping their perceptions. Both quantitative and qualitative methodologies were employed to achieve these objectives. Specifically, the data were collected from a questionnaire, and a deeper understanding of students’ perceptions was obtained from a semi-structured interview. The findings showed that most students admitted that the course was truly important to their future jobs and academic development, so they had a positive attitude throughout the course. However, they also pointed out that using scientific style words and developing structure-based ideas were their big challenges. More importantly, their lecturers’ easy-to-understand teaching method and a fruitful source of referencing materials. Based on the findings, some recommendations were offered to improve the quality of learning and teaching activities for the course of writing research papers.
Key words: perceive, factors, attitudes, difficulties, researc
