Beyond PBT TOEFL: The Effectiveness of an Academic Skills writing course

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a five-week academic writing skills course on students’ writing ability. Two hundred incoming students participated in a pre instruction and post instruction test design research framework. The findings of the study revealed several interesting outcomes: PBT TOEFL cannot serve as a valid indicator of the students’ academic writing skills. The analysis of the data revealed that although the AUA incoming students did not have adequate academic writing skills that could be transferred into English, they made a significant progress in the types of writing skills that were covered in the writing course and showed some improvement in the skills for which they did not receive instructions. However, there is more into academic skills writing that needs to be researched. It is hoped that the findings of this study will foster further comprehensive investigation.