On academic writing

Academic writing and writing in general is extremely important in the educational process, especially in developing countries. Writing requires critical thinking and more importantly it requires providing evidence to substantiate propositions. Good writing interacts with the mind in such a way that a rigorous thinking starts to develop.

A culture of writing, and academic writing, reflects itself in the political, social, and economic lives of countries. I believe that good writing is extremely important to develop a culture of active and effective citizenship.

In this article published in 2005, there is a description of the problems and solutions that academic writing faces in Latin America:

Martins, Isabel. 2005. On academic writing in Latin America (The cases of Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. L1 – Educational Studies in Language and Literature 5: 251–263.

Problems in Academic Writing at the undergraduate level in Latin American Universities:

Excessive use of too large sentences, lack of connectors, overuse of punctuation marks, ignorance of the paragraph formal features and internal structure, problems with text coherence, indiscriminate capitalization, monotony in writing and amphibology.

University professors share the assumption that teaching reading and writing skills is not their responsibility [that it is the responsibility of high school professor, for example].

Solution:

Researchers have come to the conclusion that the communicative efficiency of students improves when they learn in a discursive-oriented context.