Abstract

GIRALDO-GIRALDO, Camilo. Writing Difficulties and Waste of its Epistemic Potential in Graduate Students. Rev. colomb. educ. [online]. 2020, n.80, pp.173-192.  Epub Sep 24, 2021. ISSN 0120-3916.  https://doi.org/10.17227/rce.num80-9633.

The purpose of this research article is to identify and interpret postgraduate students' perceptions about the difficulties in their textual production and verify if both institutions and students are wasting the epistemic potential of writing (Carlino, 2004, 2013; Cassany y Morales, 2009; Cruz, 2015; Giraldo, 2015; Hernández, 2009; Narvaja, 2009; Ochoa y Cueva, 2017; Ong, 1994; Scardamalia y Bereiter, 1992; Zárate, 2017). The work was carried out in four universities in Manizales, Colombia. t is an exploratory descriptive study. The authors administered a 5-question survey to 80 master and doctorate students, and to 20 postgraduate directors plus semi-structured interview. The results show that 90 % of the respondents admit that they have difficulties in writing and these are repetitive compared toother studies Although 84 % of them said they knew the rules of academic writing, it does not contradict the previous result, but suggests that being aware of the criteria of scientific writing is not a guarantee of its application. Thus, students and institutions should seek, above all, the directed exercise of scientific writing. Another centra finding of this study is that 97 % of the students said that they do not know the practice of writing to take advantage of its epistemic potential. It is concluded that students and institutions generally do not make the most out of writing as a tool to strengthen and generate knowledge.

Keywords : writing; skills; difficulties; learning experience; postgraduate students; postgraduate programs.

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