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ABSTRACT
The Approach of Mu'tah University Engineering
Students Toward English Writing
Yousef Ali Al Naimat
Mu'tah University, 2010
The Purpose of the study was to analyze the extent to which the engineering instructors consider/employ the main rhetorical principles when evaluating their students' writing. The study also measured the potentials of Mu'tah University engineering students in employing the important rhetorical principles of clarity, unity, coherence, reader-orientation, organization and concluding statement properly and effectively in their technical writing and the effect of training on the rhetorical principles on writings of the Mu'tah engineering students. In addition, it tried to provide some guidelines and recommendations for the improvement of writing performance.
The study pointed out the following findings:
1. Mu'tah University engineering students were unable to produce effective and communicative written assignments. None of the main rhetorical principles were accomplished in the participants' assignments properly.
2. Mu’tah engineering instructors often focused on the main rhetorical principles when they evaluated students' writing. The engineering instructors more often found it useful to give feedback on students' writings, following objective, systematic and clear scale of grading. In addition, the results of the study revealed that the Mu'tah engineering instructors focused on the clarity of information provided on the whole text level as the most important rhetorical principle when evaluating students' writings.
3. The students of the experimental group who had intensive training for four weeks on the use and implementation of the different rhetorical principles were more able to react to the text effectively.
Taking into account the findings mentioned above, the study recommended the urgent need to design and offer a special intensive writing course that could replace one of the English language courses 101, 102 or the Study Skills course in Mu'tah University engineering program.