Abstract:
The present research is conducted to point out that teaching academic writing should focus on
the salient features that make this type of writing different from the other kinds of writings. It
also attempts to investigate to what extent second year students at the University of
Constantine 1 aware of academic writing features, as well as if they use these features mainly
objectivity, formality, and cautious writing in their academic written productions. In the light
of this, the hypothesis is that if second year students receive explicit instructions about
academic writing conventions, they would be aware of academic writing features and their
writing quality would improve in writing academic papers. To test this hypothesis, two
research tools are used; teachers’ and students’ questionnaires and an experiment (pre-test,
post-test) which were taken by a random sample of students. The results of the present study
show that students lack knowledge about academic writing conventions; as the questionnaires
have revealed. On the other hand, the results of the experiment revealed that the experimental
group showed an improvement in using academic writing features after the treatment
compared to the control group which does not receive any explicit instructions.
