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A Case Study of The 4Cs Approach to Academic Writing
among Second Year Business Students
Isai Amutan Krishnan1
Selva Jothi Ramalingam
Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University Malaya, Malaysia
1
amuthanisai@gmail.com
Academic writing has long been taught to have the structure of introduction, body and
conclusion. The current study focuses on academic writing in relation to 4 C’s approach which
are Clarity, Conciseness, Completeness and Correctness (Truman, 2011). The objective of this
study is to investigate the current level of writing strategy and skills of the students along with
their perception of writing approaches, and also to find out the effectiveness of applying 4Cs
approach in developing the writing skills in academic writing.The students show minimal
knowledge on how to write academic writing. Crank (2014) notes that lecturers, bound by
formats and rules, are clearly more engaged in product-oriented writing instruction and lack of
idea on how to write for specific readers and purposes. A descriptive analysis (Yin 2001,
Creswell, 2006, 2008 & 2014, & Jackson, 2012) was used in this study. Fifty students
participated in this study. The students’ pre and post-test academic writing were analysed to
observe their reflections in relation to 4Cs writing approach. The students’ academic writing was
assessed based on the 4Cs descriptions to evaluate their ability in writing academic writing
(Truman, 2011). A semi-structure self administered questionnaire was given to the students to
evaluate their perception towards the 4Cs approach in academic writing (Creswell, 2008 &
Jackson, 2012). The results show that the students discovered their strengths and weaknesses in
academic writing by adapting the 4Cs approach. The students enhanced their ability and vast
improvement was shown in their academic writing. The students also had positive perceptions
towards process-oriented academic writing in the classroom context by 4Cs approach. The
lecturers who teach academic writing skills also benefitted via 4Cs approach to ease their
teaching method or techniques.
Keywords: 4Cs approach, Academic Writing
Introduction
Academic work involves different types of writing, and many higher education cultures assess
academics’ writing in terms of publications and research grants. These assessments can
destabilise writing and create anxiety: an important part of the game involves an intensive
process of augury, divination and guess work (Reidpath & Allotey 2010). In this context,
academic writing even for established, eminent writers may involve choosing between doing
writing that will have an impact on practice, on the professions, on others’ work, etc., and doing
writing that will have an impact factor on academic writing (Carnell et al. 2008). In the global
context, the development of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in the past 45 years has
“reshaped the ways that English language teaching and research are conducted in higher
education” (Cooper & Bikowski, 2007). Different from writing in the everyday sense, academic
English writing “replete with complex syntactic constructions” and “failure to grasp the

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structural complexities at the sentence level” will bring forth problems in reading and writing an
approach to solving the problems, therefore academic writing approaches should be introduced
ease the writing (Berman & Cheng (2001), p. 401) . The current study has given addition to the
structure and the application of the 4 C’s approach in academic writing. The subjects were all
students with lower language proficiency. The preliminary diagnoses of their writing showed a
lot of errors. To ensure the success of writing the four 4Cs of writing, which were introduced by
Truman, should be utilised (2011). These consist of Clarity, Conciseness, Completeness and
Correctness. As we know, after our studies, anyone, whether a professional writer or not needs to
learn and apply these methods. The aim of this topic is to show anyone that using the 4 C’s
method can improve the quality of written work. Clarity is to present information so that
everyone can read it and understand it easily because clear writing is the foundation of good
writing. The presentation of a document or any essay should be as careful as its content. To write
clearly, avoid jargon and technical terms that might be confusing to the reader. Conciseness is to
express a great deal in just a few words whether it is in writing or speaking by taking into
account spelling, punctuation and grammar. It allows limited repetition. Completeness is to
complete or finish sentences and provide examples, create case studies to make the content
realistic or to illustrate a point. Correctness is to write fair, accurate, and free spelling and
grammar errors, as it should be or to do something exactly, precisely without fault or deviation.
Students show little knowledge about how to write a contextually appropriate paper and how to
develop their process of writing in order to get a better product. As Crank (2012) notices,
teachers are clearly more engaged in process-oriented writing instruction, but students still do not
write enough and they do not have an idea of writing for specific audiences and purposes, and
are bound by formulas and rules. As a result, the writing as a product is not good enough and up
to the standard. Unfortunately, the pressures of formative tests and summative examinations
force English teachers to focus their attention on grammatical rules, accuracy and students’ final
“piece of work” instead of functional language skills to produce better written work. Due to
students’ low level proficiency and low motivation writing still remains neglected. Poor
knowledge (grammar, spelling and punctuation, wrong choice of words, not completing the
sentences and writing sentences that are too long all cause a lot of mistakes and fail to meet the
marking criteria. Students write essays for the sake of submission and not with the intention of
learning how to produce a good piece of academic writing. The overarching questions addressed
by this study were what is the perception of the students about writing strategy, have the students
been introduced to any of the writing development approaches, and what progress is there of the
writing skill with the application of the 4Cs. The questions were formulated based on objectives
to find out whether the process-oriented approach in the teaching and learning of writing in
English is more effective than the product-oriented approach on university students’ quality of
academic writing. The research also aims to investigate the participants’ perception towards the
use of process-oriented writing in comparison to the 4Cs approach. The 4Cs approach has its
novelty in helping students academically and they will be very careful when they face any
assignment topic, and that can also help them to be advanced students in preparing for other
subjects as most of their assignments are writing. The correct application of this approach is
more beneficial to develop writing skills. It helps them to enhance their writing skills (Yang,
2014).

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Literature Review
A large number of views on writing shows that there has not yet been any consensus of what
writing is, although its importance has been recognised in its own right. Traditionally, writing
was considered as transcribed speech. It was often assumed that the acquisition of spoken
proficiency had to take precedence over the learning of written language, and that students would
be able to write once they ‘mastered’ spoken language and orthographic conventions (Al-Hairy,
2013). Another view of writing is that it is ‘decontextualised’ (Ellis, 2011) because it assumes
that written communication never takes place in the presence of the writer and the reader.
According to Grami (2010) writing is “far from decontextualized because every writing task is
situated in a rhetorical context, involving complex interrelationships among various elements of
writing: the writer, the reader, the text and reality”. As for Canale and Swain (1980), they
defined writing as “a manifestation of, as well as the process of manifesting, sociolinguistic,
strategic and grammatical competences mediated by the use of orthographic systems” (cited in
Silva & Matsuda, 2002, pp. 252). Moreover, academic writing is also defined as a social process
by Khalil, F. M. (2010). Khalik notes that writing is therefore an engagement in a social process,
where the production of texts reflects methodologies, arguments and rhetorical strategies
constructed to engage colleagues and persuade them of the claims that are made. However,
academic writing, in language teachers’ opinions, is “a language skill which is difficult to
acquire” (Hoang, 1996, pp. 3). It “normally requires some form of instruction” and “is not a skill
that is readily picked up by exposure” (Hoang, 1996, pp. 11). Besides, writing is also “a process
that occurs over a period of time, particularly if we take into account the sometimes extended
periods of thinking that precede creating an initial draft” (Hoang, 1996, pp. 10). As for Murray
(2013), one of the several authors on academic writing skills, makes the important point that
academic writing is the process of encoding (putting your message into your words) carried out
with a reader in mind. Nevertheless, it is likely that, in the great majority of situations, our
students still write primarily for their teachers, or perhaps for an examiner, both acting in the role
of evaluator. (Reidpath & Allotey 2010) make the very useful point that, “although transferring
real-life writing directly to the classroom is problematic, what we should be aiming at is at least
the creation of ‘plausible contexts’” (cited in McDonough & Shaw, 1993, pp. 183). As we have
noted several times, the classroom has its own purpose and structure, and is not simply a
reflection of the outside world. In this sense, we can think of writing activities both from the
‘instrumental’ perspective of what is useful for external purposes, but also in terms of their
educational function and the reality of the classroom itself. Therefore, we have looked at the
“what” of writing, particularly at the nature of the text and the importance of writing with a
readership in mind. Obviously, writing continues to serve as a vehicle for language practice, and
necessarily so, but this function is integrated into a broader and more diversified perspective.
Reid path and Allotey (2010) s’ supported when they say that teachers have to ensure students
know that any piece of writing tries to convey something that has a goal and a purpose. The
writer needs to engage his reader and keep the connection with him.; that he has to organize his
material and that he does this through the use of certain logical and grammatical devices”
(McDonough & Shaw, 1993, pp. 184). A few scholars introduced a few approaches in academic
writing such as traditional approach, controlled composition and the paragraph pattern approach.
Traditional approaches to teach academic writing
In the recent history of second language writing, a number of different approaches to the practice
of writing skills have vied for the attention of second language writing professionals. Among

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these approaches, controlled composition and the paragraph pattern approaches are the most
prominent and widely used in a series of new English textbooks for Vietnamese university
teachers to teach academic writing to students (Heaton, 1989) and (Hoang, 2007).
Controlled composition to teach academic writing
Controlled composition can be seen as an offshoot of the audio-lingual approach to second
language teaching, because it sees language learning as a process of habit formation. Thus, it is
not surprising to see, within this tradition, that speaking was its primary concern whereas writing
was regarded as a secondary one and specially served as reinforcement for oral habits. In the
controlled composition classroom, the primary focus is on formal accuracy. The role of the
teacher is to provide accurate and carefully selected language samples that students can repeat
and memorise (MacLeod, Steckley, & Murray, 2012).Besides, the teacher can give structural
frames within which students can do controlled substitutions. So, for example, they may be
asked to change all the present tense verbs to past tense; in such a case, students may need to
alter other time references in the paragraph. Within this tradition, students can write a lot without
being afraid of making many errors, and the teacher can deal with these pieces of writing more
easily (Mayrath, (2008).Overall, controlled composition sees writing as a secondary activity; as a
means of practicing structures and vocabulary learned in the classroom. Therefore, the context
for writing is the classroom and the audience is the teacher. This approach focuses on form and
accuracy rather than the fluency of the language, and academic writing is simply a means of
assessing students’ ability to manipulate the structures practiced and the course subject in the
university.
The paragraph pattern approach
Increasing awareness of second language writers’ needs to produce extended written texts led to
the realization that there was more to writing than constructing grammatical sentences. The result
of this realization was what Raimes (1983b:7, cited in Silva & Matsuda, 2002, pp. 259) has
called the ‘paragraph pattern approach’, which emphasises the importance of organisation at the
above-sentence level. This approach owes much to Kaplan’s (2005) notion of ‘contrastive
rhetoric’ -the notion that writers’ different cultural and linguistic backgrounds will be reflected in
their ‘rhetoric’, with rhetoric typically seen as primarily a matter of textual structure (Kim,
2005).Within this tradition, the primary concern was the logical construction and arrangement of
discourse forms. In the early years, the paragraph was of primary interest. Its focus was on its
elements as well as options for its development such as a topic sentence, supporting ideas, and a
concluding sentence. Another important concern was ‘essay’ development, which grew from
paragraph principles to complex texts. This involved larger structural components, namely
introduction, body and conclusion (Kirkpatrick, 1997).
Classroom procedures associated with this tradition have tended to focus students’ attention
primarily on ‘form’. Students are asked to read and analyze a model text and then write another
piece of writing that has the same organization as the original one. Besides, some common
writing activities, within this tradition, require students to group provided relevant facts,
rearrange them in a logical order to form an outline, and then write a complete text based on that
outline. Or, sometimes, students may be asked to complete a paragraph or a story by adding an
ending or a beginning or a middle section and so on (Kroll, 1990a).In short, this tradition sees
writing as basically a matter of arranging sentences and paragraphs into particular patterns.
Typical organizational principles for materials include paragraph structuring, particularly related

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to functional categories, and the use of a range of linking devices. Sentence-level and grammar
practice is not omitted but is set in the context of a longer and purposeful belief of language. To
sum up, these traditional approaches to the teaching of writing focus on the product (Lang, &
Albertini, 2001). In other words, this brief and generalized summary indicates several trends in
the ‘traditional’ teaching of writing such as there is an emphasis on accuracy, the focus of
attention is the finished product, whether a sentence or a whole composition, the teacher’s role is
to be the judge of the finished product and writing often has a consolidating function. However,
imitating models inhibits writers rather than liberating them. There is little or no opportunity for
the students to express their own ideas. It is inevitable that little attention is paid to the ideas and
meaning of students’ pieces of writing. Also, over-emphasis over accuracy and form can lead to
serious “writing block” (Lankamp, 2008).
Working process-oriented writing framework
Writing, like reading, is in many ways an individual, solitary activity: the writing triangle of
‘communicating’, ‘composing’ and ‘crafting’ is usually carried out for an absent readership
(Braine, 1996).However, it should be remembered that our students are language learners rather
than writers, and it would not be particularly helpful to have them spend all their time writing
alone. Although process research points to a need to give learner-writers space and time to
operate their own preferred individual strategies, the classroom can be structured in such a way
as to provide positive intervention and support in the development of writing skills (Canagarajah,
1996).Placed in the Vietnamese upper-secondary school context, one of the disadvantages of
getting students to concentrate on the process of writing is that it takes time: time to brainstorm
ideas or collect them in some other way; time to draft a piece of writing and then, with the
teacher’s help perhaps, review it and edit it in various ways before changing the focus,
generating more ideas, redrafting, re-editing and so on. This cannot be done in forty-five
minutes. However, the various stages could be adapted so that when process writing is handled
appropriately, it stretches across the whole curriculum. From the above reasons, 4Cs approach
can be used as a framework for the lesson plans in this study. The classroom can provide the
following stages adapted from Seow’s process model (2002): Stage 1: Pre-writing: helping
students to generate ideas and building awareness of discourse organisation. One of the hardest
tasks in writing is getting started. Therefore, the teacher needs to stimulate students’ creativity, to
get them thinking how to approach a writing topic. In this stage, the most important thing is the
flow of ideas, so the teacher should divide students into groups and ask them to produce words or
ideas about the writing. Sometimes, they can be asked to read the model text to explore ideas.
This raises students’ awareness of the features of different genres of writing in English. Each
member can make a plan of the writing and then share and discuss their ideas in groups. Next,
each group can present their best ideas to the class; a lot of questions can be generated about the
topic. This helps the students focus on the audience as they consider what the reader needs to
know. The answers to these questions will form the basis of their writing. During their
discussion, the teacher helps students develop their ideas in a positive and encouraging way.
Stage 2: Drafting: letting students write freely. This stage involves thinking about which of the
many ideas generated are the most important or relevant, and perhaps taking a particular point of
view. During this stage, students write without much attention to the accuracy of their work or to
itsorganization. The most important feature is meaning. Here, both the teacher and students
should concentrate on the content of the writing: Let students write as quickly as possible; if they
cannot think of a word in English, they leave some space or write it in Vietnamese. Then in
groups, they work together and compare what they have written. Students can actually

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collaborate to help one another to improve their vocabulary by using this way of writing. Most
importantly, this cooperative writing helps boost the confidence of students before sharing their
work. It is also a tool that empowers teachers to help students to effectively produce a well
written paper. Stage 3: Peer evaluation: enabling students to appreciate the criteria for an
effective text. During this stage, the products are interchanged and the evaluation is done by
other students. They can move around, check the texts for spelling, look for errors, compare their
ideas or find the differences or the best ideas, and so on. The teacher gives students some criteria
for judging their peers’ written texts in the form of an editing checklist, asking them to reduce or
to edit the texts concentrating on the most important information. The teacher may also respond
at this stage by commenting on the content and the organization of ideas. Stage 4: Revising:
helping students to develop crafting skills. When writing a final draft, students should be
encouraged to check the details of grammar and spelling, which may have been ignored in the
previous stages. And once again, instead of correcting all the writing, the teacher may guide
students to deal with their own mistakes. The teacher only needs to choose the most common or
serious errors for correction in front of the class. This will raise students’ awareness of their
mistakes because it is a good idea that it would be better for students to learn from their errors.
Finally, a period of writing may end with the presentation or display of some students’ written
products. From the above discussions it can be seen that there have been a few approaches or
techniques have been introduced for writing essays or even for academic writing nevertheless,
4Cs approach was not attempted in the academic writing.
Conceptual Framework
The main point of this research is revealing factors that influence the enhancement of academic
writing skills in students using 4Capproaches. The 4Cs approach consists of Clarity,
Conciseness, Completeness and Correctness. This 4Cs approach was used to test at pre-input and
post-input levels to see effective academic writing.
ACADEMIC
WRITING
PRE-TEST
4Cs Approach
CLARITY
CONCISENESS
COMPLETENESS
CORRECTNESS
(Truman, 2011)
ACADEMIC
WRITING
POST-TEST
EFFECTIVE
ACADEMIC
WRITING

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Figure: 1.Conceptual Framework
Methodology
Descriptive and exploratory analyses were used in this study as justified by Jackson (2012)
Creswell (2005; 2006, 2008 & 2014), Maxwell & Miller (2008), Yin (2009), and Miles,
Huberman & Saldana (2014). A written permission was obtained to conduct this study (Creswell,
2005; 2006, 2008 &2014).50 students participated in this study. They were purposively selected
based on interest and convenience (Patton, 1990 & Creswell, 2014). They were second semester
students of business administration in one of the local universities. Pre-test and post-test were
used to analyse the students’ assignment (Bland & Altman, 1994), (Bonate, 2000) and (Dimitrov
& Rumrill, 2003). The students were assigned to write an assignment with the basic instruction,
which was pre-test. Then, the 4Cs lesson was conducted. With the vast knowledge of 4Cs the
students were required to re-write the same assignment, which was post-test. The pre-test
assignment was assessed based on the university standard marking criteria, whereas the post-test
was assessed based on Truman's (2011) descriptions by two senior lecturers who are involved in
teaching academic writing. (See, Appendix-Academic Marking Criteria as per 4Cs Approach). A
semi-structure self administered questionnaire was given to the students to evaluate their
perception towards the 4Cs approach in academic writing (Converse &Presser, 1986; Belson,
1981, Creswell, 2008 & Jackson, 2012), (See, Appendix B-Questionnaire.). The questionnaire
has been validated by five experts who are involved in academic writing (Maurer &Andrews,
2000), (Rovai, 2002), (Jackson, 2012).
Findings and discussions
The study conducted has got two stages of findings, the first being one before giving them the
ideas about 4Cs and the other after giving the detailed ideas about the 4Cs in writing. Thus it
shows difference in their reflections towards writing approaches. The results of the questionnaire
were tallied and it was found that there was a significant difference in improving the quality of
work of the students. At the pre-test level the students' work was criticized with heavy
consideration towards clarity, in which students’ intended message was comprehended by the
reader; correctness, where the proper use of context and grammar was employed; conciseness,
whereby every relevant piece of information was presented succinctly; and completeness,
whereby the topic was written with a broad spectrum of aspects in mind as per requested and
also the requirements for the assignment. At the post-test level, it was found that the outcomes of
writing work produced by students in a class of 50students receiving lessons on the 4C’s of
writing were criticized. It was found that the students were more receptive to mistakes in their
work and had an easier time identifying them. Spelling errors were reduced, and comprehensions
of the 4Cs approach among students were fortified with questions better suited to tackling the
assignment questions at hand. More students were observed to have written notes before starting
writing which led to less stalling. Stalling refers to the period of intermission during writing in

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which a student seeks to find words or points to write down (Elliott-Nelson, 2011), (Sinclair,
2015). This also led to better performance during exams as assignment writing could be finished
within the allocated span of time, and less incomplete essays were handed in. The students also
produced better opening and closing paragraphs which did not include new points. Students also
had better use of transitional words which in turn led to more long sentences incorporated in their
essays. This helped tremendously in the completeness of their assignment writing. Based on the
surveys, students found that shortening long paragraphs also helped them in producing concise
work, especially when fulfilling the assignment’s content requirements. This helped in limiting
the number of words used by a student when writing, and helped them expand on all points while
still remaining within the word limit. Furthermore, students also dispersed their points more
evenly in their assignment as their writing discipline had much improved leading to less dragging
on of points which then reduced the amount of words afforded for the next point. Students also
developed a habit of proofreading their work which led to improvements in correctness of work
as mistakes were altered and sentences were reformed to make for easier reading which also
improved completeness. Lastly, students were also found to use their thesauruses more often,
employ more elaborate words which helped make for more varied assignments. The written work
was traded with classmates for the purpose of checking and all students were reported as being
more critical in their evaluation of written work.
Implications
According to the findings of this study, students could understand the 4Cc approach as the
skeleton of students’ proficient academic writing. In this respect, it can be suggested that, when
designing course material for academic writing courses, curriculum designers should integrate
the 4Cs approach and the current standard requirement of assignment. In so doing, students’ may
gain in-depth knowledge of the use and 4Cs with academic phrases in particular fields
(Bielinska-Kwapisz, 2015). After all, proficient writers are expected to both abide by the
linguistic rules of language and comply with the intended readers' expectations by implementing
the expressive potential academic writing (Hyland, 2008). In addition to curriculum design,
language instructors, being the medium and a trustworthy source of information for almost all
students, have the strongest contribution to the development of students’ academic writing skills
(Armendaris, (2009). Introducing 4Cs approach which serves various functions and raising
students' awareness of the importance of 4Cs in academic contexts can be highly beneficial for
students performance because mastering the expressions that are typical of different academic
fields is an obstacle they need to overcome in order to perform at an acceptable level in academic
contexts (Biber, 2006; Coxhead & Byrd, 2007; Martinez &Schmitt, 2012).The lecturers who
teach academic writing skills also benefitted via 4Cs approach to ease their teaching method or
techniques. The lecturer may use this approach to train other lecturers in other subjects as the
4Cs approach can be applied to any subject. The lecturers may attempt to develop a course
material pertaining to 4Cs approach and this can be delivered as a short course for undergraduate
students in the first semester. Thus, the students may not face any difficulties in writing
assignments. Whilst academic phrases also can be included in the course content, so students
would learn the 4Cs approach and the use of appropriate academic phrases in academic writing.

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Conclusion
This descriptive study is novel in that it has explored the role of 4Cs approach in academic
writing of focused instruction in upgrading students' academic writing skills. The goal of
remedial education is to help learners attain scholarly skills required to continue and to succeed
in higher education (Alvarez, 2008). Thus, the conducted study implies the students do not have
clear knowledge about any writing approaches, let alone this 4Cs approach. The universities
should investigate if success in academic writing approaches can predict academic performance
in English writing (Payne, 2004). The present research contributes major findings for educational
institutions, particularly for universities. After introducing the 4Cs approach lesson, the students
could write better assignments and show vast improvements in their academic writing. The
students became very enthusiastic about their writing ability after being familiar with the
method. They felt more confident in academic writing and they improved in the literal sense of
the term in writing the assignment. Therefore, 4Cs approach could be applied in developing
writing skills among other students of other higher learning institutions. Adapting the 4Cs
approach, the students would enhance their ability to write better assignments and also would
improve their writing performance. The students would have more positive perceptions towards
process-oriented writing activities in the classroom context by using 4Cs approach. Further study
can be conducted to investigate if age, gender, ethnicity and whether or not students complete the
required academic writing course have an influence on English Composition and also examine
the cumulative GPAs and attrition rates on academic writing of students to have a more
comprehensive evaluation of the overall effectiveness of academic writing (Causarano, 2011).
Without this 4Cs approach at the academic level of the English language, students may never
attain English language mastery, thereby significantly delaying or thwarting their achievement in
academic writing.
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Appendix A-Academic Marking Criteria as Per 4Cs Approach
STUDENT’S NAME: ____________________
TOTAL MARKS:
Overall Comments :
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
MARKING CRITERIA MARKS FIRST SECOND
MARKER MARKER
CLARITY
-word choice and unity
-coherence in paragraphing
-effective use of varied sentence structures
25
CONCISENESS
-limit repetición
-elimínate excess words
-emphasise verbs, and use active verbs
-good vocabulary, used expressively/precisely
25
COMPLETENESS
-assignment is very interesting and shows
originality
-well-organised points
-relevant point
-complete message in sentences/ good
finishing
25
CORRECTNESS
-hardly any mistakes in Spelling, Grammar &
Punctuation
25
100

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Appendix B- Questionnaire
Answer each question with a YES () or a NO ().
No QUESTIONS YES NO
1. When writing, do you first gather points regarding the topic
based on the questions who, what, where, why and how to meet
a question’s requirement?
2. Do you observe your word limit when writing an assignment,
3. Does 4Cs help to finish the assignment within the deadline?
4. Do you encounter moments of stalling when writing
assignment?
5. Do you disperse points evenly throughout your assignment
based on 4Cs approach?
6. Do you proofread your assignment after writing?
7. Do you repeat the same point over again in different forms?
8. Do you use elaborate language when describing?
9. Do you often use academic phrases or transitional words such as
these listed: again, also, as well as, similarly, coupled with, and
moreover?
10. Do you find overall 4Cs Approach contributes in your academic
writing?