This study examines the issue of student essay writing in higher education. The main focus of this research is on the lecturers and writing tutors who wish to help undergraduates in learning foreign languages as well as to enable them to bring improvement in their essay writing skills. Essay writing is critical to academic success; usually, an essay is a piece of writing that systematically analyzes and evaluates a topic or issue. Mind mapping is one of the versatile tools that help to break down the topics into manageable chunks, fire up the brain, and boost creativity. This study focuses on how mind mapping was effectively used as a strategy to support and develop students’ writing skills. The data required for this study was collected through a questionnaire and analyzed with the primary purpose to evaluate the use of mind maps as a pre-writing brainstorming strategy. The statistical techniques used to determine the role of mind mapping in the enhancement of writing skills include one-way ANOVA, Chi-Square test, and Correlation Analysis. The findings of the statistical analysis confirmed that planning an essay before writing with the use of the mind mapping technique helped in writing essays more effectively in their coursework, thereby making essay writing more enjoyable and fun.

Towards Academic Writing in Italian as a Foreign Language with the Help of Punctuation Marks Starting from the Uses and Interpretations of Slavic- Speaking Students

This article focuses on the results of a survey on writing experiences during secondary school and the first two years of high school and on the use of punctuation marks in L1 and Italian L2 by Czech and Slovak learners. Students’ past experiences with punctuation marks in L1 and references in Czech/Slovak schoolbooks reveal a strictly syntactic approach; students practise the use of the comma only, which is assumed to have purely separating values. In order to help students develop language skills for academic writing in Italian L2 and to avoid choppy writing and lack of cohesion, the research findings suggest that the teacher should highlight the cohesive/linking values of punctuation marks. The contrastive approach can be useful to a certain degree: up to the point where the punctuation principles of the two languages are equivalent or where they seem to be equivalent.

General educational institutions have always prioritized the development of the writing skills of students as a significant concern. From the first grade to the eleventh, students use written language (essay, dictation, etc.) every day. Despite the fact that the development and formation of oral and written speech proceeds in parallel, the proficiency of schoolchildren in this area is weakening every day. Teachers attribute the decline in students’ writing skills to several reasons. This, in particular, is facilitated by the widespread use of computers and mobile phones.