Developing students reading and writing proficiency to write for academic purposes and fight plagiarism

الملخص EN

The purpose of this article is to provide the university students of English with reading and writing strategies to elaborate their dissertations, and the teachers with methods and techniques to prepare beginner and young researchers to take their first steps in the world of academic research.

The strategies provided in this article are designed to help the students of master studies in language and culture specialty (2016-2017) at Tahri Mohamed University in Bechar, Algeria, to overcome their deficiencies because they have relatively no notion of conducting a research paper.

They are also unable to undertake an efficient text reading and analysis, which is reflected in their inability to write correctly.

As observed in the examined Master dissertations, students with reading and writing deficiencies inevitably resort to plagiarism when elaborating their graduation and post-graduation papers.

The results vary within the same promotion depending on the students’ ability to grasp and accept the strategies provided.

After one year and half of studying research methodology, reading comprehension, and written expression, 70% of the students display in their research assignments and exams a significant improvement as regards text study and text exploitation by either text summarising or expanding, and paraphrasing.