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This study explores the perceptions of newly graduated nurses regarding the baccalaureate thesis (BT) writing process. A qualitative approach with content analysis was adopted. Thirteen newly graduated nurses participated in the study. The inclusion criterion was having completed the BT during their university education as nurses within 3 years of the study. Information was obtained through semistructured interviews. Data collection began in June 2018 and ended in March 2019, once saturation of information was reached. Three major categories were identified: the beginning of the process, the advantages of Baccalaureate thesis writing, and the teacher's role. The participants expressed that their training focused on a synthetic and particular type of writing that is necessary for clinical scenarios but not suitable for scientific academic texts. Additionally, reflective diaries were described as a powerful writing practice during their studies. Participants conceive the realization of the baccalaureate thesis as a difficult process, especially as regards selecting, synthesizing, and writing about the available information, processes that they indicated generate anxiety. Academic writing skills should be specifically included in the nursing curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing an argumentation about a controversial issue from contradictory sources is a challenging task. It involves understanding, managing, and generating arguments and counterarguments from different sources to support a final position, conveyed in a formal structure. Despite its difficulty, argumentative writing is not often taught in higher education in Spain. Furthermore, online interventions regarding this type of task are scarce. For this reason, we designed and evaluated virtual training aimed at writing integrative and wellstructured arguments in a distance learning university. Sixty-eight undergraduates participated in this pre-post with a control group design. The training included explicit instruction through video lectures and practice exercises with immediate feedback using open online resources (e.g., Moodle). The results show that after the instruction the participants' written products improved both in their structure, the number of arguments for the against-position, and the degree of integration of the two perspectives. However, those products that presented medium or maximum integration were still limited. These results illustrate how online instruction of argumentative writing can be implemented in higher education with positive results. However, students still need more support to expand their skills for generating integrative synthesis. Considering these results, we propose further improvements in the designed training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the various training initiatives available in some Spanish universities which aim to promote academic writing. It focuses mainly on three existing writing initiatives developed at the Ramon Llull University, the Faculty of Education of the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Deusto. These initiatives aim to meet the needs of students who would like to improve the quality of their academic writing and are addressed to students in any degree programme, including undergraduate degrees, Master’s and doctorates. Feedback on students’ written work is essential in all three programmes. In addition, student support throughout the writing process is available, as are sessions where students can enlist the guidance of a tutor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory article of the special issue has a threefold aim. First, it presents the objectives and background of the Research Network on Academic Writing in Teaching and Learning Processes (Red para la Investigación de la Escritura Académica en los procesos de Enseñanza y Aprendizaje; RIEA-EA); secondly, it points out the more urgent challenges that research on academic writing is currently facing at Spanish universities. These challenges are the underpinning of the studies presented in this special issue, which focus on faculty and student representations about the characteristics and role of writing within teaching and learning processes. Finally, it explains the organisation and characteristics of the articles included in this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended as an exploration of university faculty and students’ perceptions of a number of dimensions involved in the written composition of academic texts. We analysed the responses to scale 3 in the European Writing Survey (EUWRIT) (in its Spanish version: Encuesta Europea sobre la Escritura Académica, EEEA) by a group of social science and humanities students (n = 1,030) and faculty (n = 230) from nine Spanish universities. We then examined the similarities and differences in their perceptions and established a factorial structure of the different dimensions underlying the writing process. The data indicate that both groups concur in the value assigned to both changing ideas in the course of the composition process (although this process seems to be understood differently by each group) and the revision and feedback processes. The students, however, claim to be involved in more planning and previous reading activities than the teachers perceive them to be. The significance of these results for a process-oriented perspective in academic writing is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to analyse the characteristics and functions that students and faculty attribute to written genres in Spanish universities, to what extent these representations are shared by both groups, and how they contribute to the construction of disciplinary knowledge in Spanish higher education. Accordingly, we classified students’ and teachers’ responses into 12 genre families grouped into five functions:Disciplinary Knowledge(DK),Critical Analysis(AC),Personal Reflection(PR),Research(R) andProfessionalPractice(PP). In terms of functions, demonstration of disciplinary knowledge appeared as the most frequently mentioned goal for both groups, whereas the genres targeted at research were the least frequent ones, along with the genres used for personal reflection. The most common genre family for both groups was Explanation, which was linked to demonstration of knowledge acquired in the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses Spanish undergraduates’ perceptions of their competency in academic writing, as well as their perception of the criteria that define its quality. We identified student profiles and examined their relationship with (1) certain sample characteristics, such as years of university experience, area of study and students’ gender, and (2) variables related to the process of writing, namely the students’ perception of the writing process and the importance they attribute to its characteristics. The data obtained came from the European Writing Survey (EUWRIT) which was administered to 1,044 students from nine Spanish universities. Profiles were identified by means ofk-means cluster analysis. The relationship between these profiles and the variables studied was examined by means of chi-squared analyses and univariate ANOVAs. Two profiles were identified: students who are confident about their writing skills and who acknowledge the importance of writing in their field of knowledge; and students who are relatively confident about their writing ability and who consider writing to be relatively important in their subject area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on academic writing has been the focus of several international publications, seminars and conferences during the last decades. However, knowledge of the practices and conceptions, along with the status of writing in higher education, is quite disparate depending on the contexts and traditions. In this paper, we survey the research on representations of academic writing internationally as well as the background of the European Writing Survey (EUWRIT), which has two versions, one targeted at students and the other at faculty, both of which were used in our research project. This paper explains the rationale of the scales and describes the items and the international underpinnings which endorse their development. Then, the characteristics of the sample, which were shared by all the studies included in this special issue, are outlined. Participants were 1,044 students and 280 faculty in different disciplines at nine Spanish universities. The theoretical structure and reliability of each of the scales are analysed. The paper ends with the descriptive general results regarding faculty and students and the differences observed based on some characteristics of participants from different disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes a framework for studying researchers' motivations in publishing their work either in English as an additional language (EAL) or their first language (L1) based on the Self-Determination Theory (SDT). Topics include the psychological, sociological, and rational-economic perspectives behind academic motivation, how motivations are shaped by gender, seniority and publication experience, and the results of an application of the framework on Spanish researchers' motivations.

In the last decades, publishing research in the international arena has become an imperative among scholars in Spain. However, many researchers experience difficulties in publishing their work in English-medium international journals. The present paper is part of a wider research project which aims at identifying, analysing and catering for the needs of Spanish researchers in English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP). The first stage of our project involved a large-scale online survey administered to researchers at five universities and research institutions in Spain. This paper reports on the responses provided by informants from the social fields of Education, Psychology and Sociology. Taking a Spanish–English intercultural perspective, our objective is twofold: firstly, to explore the difficulties experienced by Spanish scholars in these disciplines, along with the strategies they use when publishing in English; and secondly, to identify their ERPP needs, with the prospect of developing materials and courses which will help them produce effective academic writing and publish their research internationally. The results point at a generalised need for training in specific areas of academic writing, such as the rhetorical sections of the RA and the most common problems and difficulties encountered by Spanish authors when writing their papers in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s written academic genres have received considerable attention in discourse and rhetorical studies, especially texts written in English. Although few studies describe PhD theses as a genre, some work has been carried out on their macrostructure and the rhetorical moves of certain sections. In the Spanish literature, genre studies on academic writing are scarce relative to those in English, especially in the case of doctoral theses. We analyse the introductions of 21 doctoral theses in computing written in Spanish using Bunton’s model (2002) for thesis introductions in English. The results indicate that most of the steps in this model are applicable to our corpus, but several new steps and sub-steps have been distinguished to account for the observed moves of Spanish PhD thesis introductions. The complexity of the thesis introduction is related to the scope and depth of the research carried out for a doctoral thesis, the need to display extensive knowledge of the field and to justify the relevance of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]