DEVELOPING ACADEMIC LITERACY SKILLS OF FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Good academic literacy skills lead to good written communication skills. Both are important in the engineering profession and engineering students need to develop these skills during their studies in higher education. In the current case study the written work and classroom behaviors of 20 male undergraduate students on a first year academic literacy skills course were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Subsequently the written work and behaviors of successful and unsuccessful students were compared. The main findings showed that there were significant differences in the way that each group of students approached the assigned written tasks and in the quality of their work. Understanding how successful students improve their academic literacy skills can serve as a guideline for successful skills development in undergraduate studies.