The Rhetorical Structure of Students' Academic Presentation: Setting the Right Tone

Abstract

Academic writing skills are crucial to the enterprise of higher education. Written academic communication is closely related to the English language. As a rule, foreign language learners face different problems with vocabulary misuse, grammatical errors, spelling, capitalization, punctuation and some others when write academic texts. The present study researches the influence of digital support on students’ knowledge of academic writing punctuation in English. Due to the modern time challenges and the demand for distance and e-learning, traditional types of academic writing instruction in the classroom need to be supported by digital resources. The research combines two issues of teaching academic writing in English: punctuation learning as an element of writing skills and digital support in training process. The paper summarizes the results of an empirical study: training of punctuation in academic writing in two groups. The third-year students who studied the same subject, Academic English, with the same teacher at the same time in Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia took part in the experiment. The control group (consisting of 12 people) was applied a face-to-face and a textbook based methodology. The experimental group (consisting of 12 people) was trained not only with a basic text-book but also with digital support. The punctuation training course lasted 10 weeks. The level of knowledge and abilities in punctuation and personal perception of the course were measured with three final tests and students’ questionnaires. The results obtained indicate that digital support has considerable didactic potential as it influenced positively on experimental group students. Thus, digital practice should be applied permanently in university training process.