The Department of Arabic Language organized a training workshop entitled, "Academic Writing Skills", at the College Council Hall. The workshop included two seminars, which were chaired by the Head of the Department of Arabic Language, Dr. Ali Al-Shihri.
The first seminar dealt with the techniques of literary and linguistic articles, and was supervised by Prof. Lutfi Dabaish, Professor of Postgraduate Studies at the department. He presented the most striking mistakes that students make during the midterm and final exams. These are multi-level errors, including linguistic structural errors, knowledge-related errors, and methodological errors related to interpretation, analysis, and reasoning. The instructor drew on different samples of students' examination papers at various levels, and provided ways of correcting and improving the quality of the writing.
The second seminar addressed the applied dimensions in academic writing skills, and was supervised by Prof. Sami Sulaiman, Professor of Postgraduate Studies at the department. The instructor drew on a direct evaluation of previous assignments given to students (male and female), reviewed the positive and negative aspects of the work submitted, and sought to correct the different linguistic, methodological and cognitive errors, and to overcome the problems encountered by the students.
The students interacted well by reading the exercises and providing answers to the applied questions. They expressed interest in their studies in the area of techniques, which focus on excellent academic writing.
Prof. Ali Al-Shihri, Head of the Department of Arabic Language, explained that the aim of this workshop was to correct the most common errors among students, to raise the level of writing among postgraduate students to a level that honors the university's scientific research and the Arabic language, and to qualify students to reach the quality levels that Umm Al-Qura University seeks to achieve, cognitively and methodologically.
To conclude, the Head of the Department thanked the instructors, Prof. Lutfi Dabaish and Prof. Sami Sulaiman, and noted their practical and theoretical efforts in organizing this training workshop, hoping that their work will positively affect the research of the students.
