Academic Writing as Professional Communication: A Quantitative Study of Workplace Communication Training and Writing Competence among Research Scholars in Chennai.

Abstract

Research scholars need to have academic writing skills, but most of the doctoral students in India are unable to achieve international publication standards especially in English medium academic environments. Whereas workplace communication training (WCT) has been highly established in the promotion of professional-level communication skills in work-related context, its applicability in the context of the academic writing has been underreported. By framing the thinking of academic writing as a kind of professional communication, the paper will explore the correlation between employee training in workplace communication and academic writing skill among research fellows at Chennai, Tamil Nadu. With a quantitative cross-sectional survey design, the data were collected on 384 research scholars of the university and research institutions in Chennai through a form of structured questionnaire that assessed the exposure to communication training at the workplace, academic writing performance, language proficiency, readiness to training, social support, and self-motivation. The analysis of data was conducted through descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, Pearson correlation, t-tests, ANOVA, and multiple regression and hierarchical regression in SPSS (Version 28). The findings indicated that the positive relationship between workplace communication training and academic writing performance was statistically significant (r = 0.304, p < 0.001). The readiness to train was found to be the best predictor of academic writing performance (b = 0.715, p < 0.001) then workplace communication training exposure (b = 0.252, p < 0.001), and finally, language proficiency, social support, and self-motivation also showed significant but relatively weak effects. Hierarchical regression also supported that workplace communication training prepared special explanatory force not shared by demographic, lingo, and psychosocial factors (DR2 = 0.061, p < 0.001). The results are empirical evidence that professional communication skills are applicable to scholarly writing settings and emphasize on the role of the learner preparedness and the role of communication training. A combination of workplace communication training principles with doctoral education can provide a flexible and efficient approach to enhancing academic writing competency, publication success, and the overall productive research in multilingual higher education institutions.