Developing Academic Writing Skills Through Reflection

Abstract

Today, there is a need to rationalize the organization of educational and cognitive activities aimed at the formation and development of the academic competence of students. This proves to be a challenging task as there is a contradiction between the need to master the knowledge and skills of academic writing and the insufficient development of modern programs for teaching academic writing in a foreign language in Russian linguodidactics. Therefore, there is a necessity of search for efficient ways of developing students’ argumentation skills through teaching them writing academic essays. It is compulsory from the early stages of higher education to develop the skills necessary for mastering academic competence, such as the ability to self-educate, orientation in the electronic educational environment of the university, and work with the resources of the electronic library. In this regard reflection as a means of taking a research position is considered to be a helpful method of developing academic communication skills. The present paper explains the role of reflection in the process of mastering the skills of writing an academic argumentative essay in a foreign language.