Self-Efficacy: A Key Element in Writing Your Best Papers with Minimal Guidance

Excerpt

Writing is an important component of the life of graduate students and researchers as it contributes a great deal to their academic and professional growth. They encounter various writing tasks as they progress in their academic or professional careers. The further they go into their career, complexity and demand of the writing also progresses (Swales and Feak 1994). At some institutions, professionalism for graduate students is considered to be a central skill for high-stakes writing (McKeachie and Svinicki 2013). As graduate students, our usage of spoken and written language is crucial in leading us towards our success (Jalongo 2001). Our written language is vital to express our ideas. For example, communicating our ideas with peers for collaborative learning and with our instructors or professors for constructive feedback requires effective writing. Moreover, writing is not something which is an identical, repeated process for every given assignment; it is a stimulating skill that changes according to the purpose of writing, and it always has a scope for improvement (McKeachie and Svinicki 2013). …