Study methods and academic writing to include students in Higher Education: the experience of facilitating the workshops (from 2015 to 2018)

Abstract

The competences of reading and writing academic texts are fundamental for any person that attends University. However, at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature -as is the case of other faculties and most Universities-, there is no place for teaching and learning those specific abilities nor areas or departments dedicated to reflect on those matters specifically. Many courses at University consider academic writing a topic that the students ought to know from the moment they start Higher Education. By creating the Study Methods and Academic Writing Workshops, we tried to restore that absence, in order to improve the possibilities of the students being included, continuing their courses at University and being able to graduate. In this paper we analyse what we experienced during four years of Workshops and the theoretical path we drew to satisfy what we observed our students needed to succeed at University. We intend to set new objectives for the coming years and to encourage exchanges about the way we read and write in Higher Education.