Undergraduate Students’ Attitude towards English Department Writing Corner Services: A Quantitative Study

Writing centers can potentially strengthen the writing practices of English as a Foreign Language or Second Language (EFL/ESL) students. In many Western countries, writing centers have been extensively used to support the development of EFL/ESL students’ academic writing skills. However, there is limited research on Bangladeshi tertiary level students’ perceptions towards writing corner services. This study, recognizing this gap, investigates Bangladeshi undergraduate students’ attitude towards the usefulness of writing corner services. Additionally, this study examines significant barriers students face while accessing the services. Therefore, undergraduate students from the Department of English at the University of Dhaka were selected as participants in this study to accommodate the diverse academic needs of the learners. Quantitative data were collected from 75 undergraduate students through an online survey administered using Google Forms. A descriptive analysis suggests that most participants avail writing corner services for developing academic writing among other genres of writing. The results also reveal that most of the students struggle to become autonomous writers. Based on the findings, the researcher discovered that effective integration of both personalized feedback and non-judgemental attitude of writing peer tutors towards the students boost students’ self-efficacy in accessing services of writing corner. The study recommends providing writing peer tutors with professional development and psychological well-being training to improve student learning outcomes. Spectrum, Volume 19, June 2024: 49-58