5th International Symposium on Humanistic Studies 2019

·         Statement of the Problem: Academic Writing is an obligatory course at the RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) Croatia. Both Croatian students and native speakers struggle with writing as it is the least favorite skill.

·         Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the errors in the essays of fifty RIT Croatia students and to see whether the students have attained an adequate understanding of how to reduce errors in writing.

·         Methodology: Fifty students participated in this research – forty-five Croatian and five native English speakers. The essay was a part of their obligatory assignment. It had to have seven pages or about 2,500 words. Students could write on any topic of their interest. After they had submitted the draft version, their errors were indicated, and students had to submit the improved version. Both versions were compared to see whether students understood their mistakes and if they corrected them properly. Also, mistakes were classified to determine what type of mistakes occurs most frequently.

·         Results and discussion: It was determined that Croatian students struggle with grammatical mistakes like articles, transition words, subject-verb agreement, verb tenses, prepositions, then with syntactic mistakes like sentence fragments or run-on sentences while the native speakers have problems with grammar – mostly verb tenses. They also lack metalanguage and do not understand tips given by the professor; thus, were not able to correct mistakes properly.

·         Conclusion: The results should help in redesigning a syllabus which would be more student friendly and target the areas students mostly struggle with.