Title
APA Writing Project
Document Type
Student Presentation
Presentation Date
4-15-2013
Faculty Sponsor
Eric Landrum
Abstract
Teaching college students the writing skills that APA format requires remains a difficult task for instructors. Developing engaging APA style activities is a task instructors struggle to help their students master (Smith & Eggleston, 2001). One approach in a study conducted by Stewart, Myers, & Culley facilitated active learning with the use of short in-class writing assignments, microthemes, to improve students’ learning and writing skills. Through the use of microthemes nonhonor students were comparable to honor microtheme students’ ability to improve their writing skills and application of material acquired 10 weeks earlier. Therefore, engaging in short writing assignments helped these students to focus on the components that are required to help improve their APA writing skills. Courses that are psychology specific writing courses that concentrate on APA writing skills help improve college students’ confidence and improve their ability to understand and effectively use APA format (Goddard, 2003). College students may improve their writing skills through a psychology writing specific course however; they lack awareness of their technical errors such as grammar making it difficult for the student to achieve technical competence (Goddard, 2003). The purpose of this study is to examine the use of APA writing with the use of a training module to teach better APA writing skills by focusing on improving students’ ability to recognize and correctly identify the use of passive voice. We propose that the use of the training model will improve college students’ APA writing abilities and improve their understanding of passive voice in APA writing.