Online writing instructional system
for international students

Economics and business faculties have been strong proponents of internationalisation of the student cohort. A consequence of this is that many students are learning in English and not their native tongue. Finding out that their level of proficiency is inadequate during their first semester of intensive study may be too late to undertake appropriate development. The aim is to provide a sustainable way of diagnosing and supporting students with academic writing difficulties prior to arrival at the university. We present the results of a trial of MyAccess, an online writing instructional system that provides both an immediate score on their submitted essay as a piece of writing as well as analytic feedback on their submission. MyAccess also allows for more individualised feedback and comments from a qualified expert. We trialled both methods of support to a pilot group of 200 students prior to arriving at the Faculty. One group of students could answer five essay questions with opportunity for unlimited revision and the other group had the same five questions and also up to 3 hours of online tutor support. We report student feedback on whether MyAccess helped them to prepare the appropriate level of academic writing skills and examine data on whether their writing improved during and after the program.