Improving the quality of students' academic writing: an intervention study

An intervention aimed at improving academic writing - in particular, synthesis writing - was conducted with 52 undergraduate students of psychology of the University of Padua ( Italy). Before and after the intervention, which lasted 12 weeks, participants were administered a questionnaire on beliefs about writing and a synthesis writing task. During the intervention, participants practised academic writing by composing texts which were revised by the teacher, and analysing and discussing examples of good and poor academic texts. The results showed an improvement in students' ability to write a synthesis, whereas their beliefs about writing were only partially affected by the intervention.