Linguistic elements that hinder proper critical textual construction

Abstract

One of the main academic problems for both educational institutions and students throughout their academic process, it is the development of critical reading skills that allows to understand, interpret and evaluate a determined topic or situation, and at the same time, it affects the students’ written production. For this reason, the main objective of this article was to analyze the different linguistic obstacles faced by students of second semester of Journalism and Social Communication at Minuto de Dios University (UNIMINUTO), which greatly affects students’ critical writing. Thus, a qualitative methodology and quasi-experimental design was implemented to find out about the students’ academic needs, which must be reinforced since basic and middle education, before entering into tertiary education and then, working environments. It was concluded that even though the students had a good critical reading, they showed poor performance in their writings because their linguistics skills were not adequate enough to transmit a proper message. Therefore, the role of educational institutions is important at the moment of creating pedagogical strategies that ensure a proper training in reading and writing.