Writing process conceptions: A comparative study on disciplinary-socialized and disciplinary-naïve graduate students in two academic disciplines

The current study aims to explore the differences in disciplinary-socialized (DS) and disciplinary-naïve (DN) students’ writing process conceptions in the two distinct disciplines of humanities and natural sciences. A mixed-method research design was adopted. A writing process questionnaire and a verbal report were used for data collection. 80 graduate and postgraduate students from human sciences and natural sciences were sampled and asked to fill out the questionnaire. 20 of them were also interviewed to obtain their verbal reports. ANCOVA and VPA were conducted to analyze the quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Findings revealed a significant difference in writing process conceptions between students of humanities and natural sciences. It is concluded that DS and DN students differ greatly in terms of their writing conceptions.