Science lecturers'perceptions about writing errors in students' essays

Abstract

Many students in the sciences believe, and often claim, that writing accuracy is not important for them; that only the subject content of their answers is. To query this misconception, a paragraph containing errors typically found in an average student’s essay was given to lecturers of agricultural science subjects at the Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BUAN), with the aim of finding out if the lecturers shared the same view. Following the error analysis theory, this paper analyses the lecturers’ reactions to the quality of writing in the text, and reveals what kinds of writing errors concern them in a student’s submission. It appears that grammatical, orthographical typographical as well as referencing errors do concern them. The findings of this investigation will be valuable to lecturers as well as students in the Communication and Academic Literacy course at BUAN and elsewhere, and may influence both perception and pedagogy.