Examining International Postgraduate Students in Academic Research Writing Competencies

摘要

This paper is an examining international postgraduate students in academic research writing competencies at Five Malaysian research universities. Recent research studies have taken a few perspectives of academic research writing competencies by theorizing and considering academic researchwriting as a social practice. In contrary, this paper adopts four theories to support the claim of using four competencies along with conceptual framework for examining international postgraduate students’ level, and problems to enhance their writing performance for publishing academicworks in ISI or Scopus journals. The paper used quantitative method for data collection and analysis. The main purpose of the quantitative data was collected through a written survey questionnaire with 370 participants at five Malaysian research universities. The results suggested that internationalpostgraduate students are influenced by several items of academic research writing competencies and problems, which improved their writing performance. These items are; the appropriate use of punctuations, demonstrating the clarity of meaning, writing in an academic style, and organizing theideas in the written text to produce a well-reasoned argument. Each of these items demonstrate the level of students’ writing and the multitude of elements that shape their performance in academic research writing at their disciplines.