Source: 7 teaching tips to strengthen international students’ writing skills – Bloomsbury
International students often enter university with diverse levels of English proficiency and varying understandings of academic writing conventions. However, with appropriate scaffolding, explicit instruction, and practical strategies, they can successfully adapt to university writing expectations.
1. Clarify University Writing Expectations
Students often focus on grammar and vocabulary, but academic writing also requires relevance, clarity, organisation, and appropriate style. Provide clear guidelines and checklists to highlight what tutors expect.
2. Use Marking Schedules to Improve
Feedback on assignments can be unclear to international students. Reviewing rubrics and common comments helps students understand how to improve their writing.
3. Encourage Strategic Writing
Teach students to think, plan, and organise before writing:
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Use group tasks to explore assignment questions.
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Apply mapping techniques to structure ideas.
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Develop rough outlines to plan essay structure.
4. Use Simple Visual Models
Visual aids like trapezoids can help students understand essay structure:
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An inverted trapezoid for introductions (general to specific).
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A regular trapezoid for conclusions (specific to general).
5. Give Explicit Writing Guidance
Model the writing process clearly. For example:
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Introductions: start broad, narrow down to a thesis and discussion points.
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Conclusions: summarise key points, restate opinion, end with a general comment.
6. Use Acronyms for Paragraph Structure
Acronyms like TEE, TEX, or SEE can help students remember how to build strong paragraphs.
7. Analyse Exemplars Together
Use real examples of student writing (high and low quality) to help students identify strengths and weaknesses, understand grading criteria, and evaluate their own work more critically.
The level of support provided should be tailored to students’ language proficiency and available teaching time.
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