Exploring the topic selection tendencies of university students in L2 writing
Topic selection tendencies of university students
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore the topic selection tendencies of university students among a given topic list and to reveal what reasons students had in deciding on the topic to write about. The study was designed as a case study. 37 students studying at a state university in Konya Province, Turkey were determined as a study group. The findings obtained from the interviews were analyzed by content analysis method. The students were given six different essay topics each week, three of which were about their field while the rest was related to general writing topics. The obtained findings showed that some of the students preferred writing about general topics while some others preferred to write about a topic that was related to their field. Students stated that prior knowledge, difficulty of the topic, lack of sufficient knowledge on the topic were among the reasons affecting topic selection process. Students stated that writing about self-selected topics were effective in terms of improving English vocabulary knowledge, grammar knowledge, writing skill, developing English thinking skill, affective development, and field knowledge development.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 International Journal of Curriculum and Instruction
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher. The Editors reserve the right to edit or otherwise alter all contributions, but authors will receive proofs for approval before publication.
Copyrights for articles published in International Journal of Curriculum and Instruction are retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. The journal/publisher is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. It is the author's responsibility to bring an infringement action if so desired by the author.
