CHALLENGES IN ENGLISH ACADEMIC WRITING: ON-LINE COURSE

Abstract

English is now the overwhelmingly dominant language in academia since academic communities use English as the default language, and there is a consequent development towards an increase in English medium teaching in Turkey in general. Turkish universities today are becoming increasingly bilingual. The number of programs offered in English has tripled in the last five years in Turkey. Turkey has chosen to participate in the Bologna process, which has led to increased academic mobility and a number of student exchange programs. With visiting scholars and exchange students, Turkish universities are becoming increasingly diverse linguistically (Björkman, 2008). This is no exception to Piri Reis University, a leading maritime university and a major provider of Turkey’s maritime research and education. English is the language of instruction in the later years of many programs at Piri Reis University, and it is the only language of instruction in Master’s programs and higher levels. In view of the recent changes due to COVID 19 pandemic Pire Reis University has initiated a large scale on-line studies project into all programms including the area of teaching academic writing for professional purposes to future maritime engineers. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some issues associated with the new trends of teaching English when it comes to professional engineers’ education in a maritime university. The paper also reveals the problem of teaching academic writing on-line for professional purposes to future maritime engineers in Turkey. A theoretical analysis of the problem is given. The article also presents a preliminary investigation on the challenges in English academic writing in on-line context faced by engineering students at the Faculty of Engineering, Piri Reis University, Turkey