Academic writing is a central component of higher education, both as a means of demonstrating knowledge and as a practice through which students develop disciplinary understanding, critical judgement, and participation in academic knowledge communities (Lea & Street, 1998; Wingate, 2006). Undergraduate thesis writing is commonly understood as a culmination of students’ academic literacy development, requiring competencies that are expected to be cultivated and progressively developed throughout programmes. It is well documented that students enter university with very diverse experiences of literate practices typically required for university studies and different levels of confidence in relation to complex writing tasks (Nallaya et al., 2022). This variation is particularly consequential in programmes where the thesis functions as the most comprehensive and demanding assignment, requiring students to formulate a research problem, engage critically with previous research, justify methodological choices, and present findings in a coherent academic text.

Despite the central role of the thesis in undergraduate education, limited attention has been paid to how students perceive their preparedness for these demands and how such readiness develops across the course of a programme. Moreover, relatively little is known about what forms of pedagogical support students themselves consider important in preparing for thesis work. Therefore, this study examines students’ perceived readiness for academic writing and thesis work, with particular attention to how such perceptions vary across stages of study and what forms of pedagogical support students identify as valuable.

Rather than treating thesis writing as a skill to be acquired in the final thesis course, this study approaches academic writing development as a longitudinal, programme-level pedagogical responsibility (Murray & Nallaya, 2016; Wingate, 2018). This perspective is consistent with research on academic writing in higher education, which has increasingly moved from viewing writing as an individual study skill towards understanding it as a situated academic literacy practice embedded in disciplinary, institutional, and feedback contexts (Bassett & Macnaught, 2025; Lea & Street, 1998; Lymer et al., 2024; Wingate, 2006). Studies also continue to show that students experience academic writing as challenging, particularly when they must develop argumentation, critical engagement with sources, genre awareness, and the capacity to use feedback productively (Fernsten & Reda, 2011; Little et al., 2024; Teng & Ma, 2024; Wei & Liu, 2024).

The following specific research questions were formulated:

1.     How do students perceive their readiness for academic writing and thesis work?

2.     Which aspects of academic writing and thesis preparation do students perceive as most challenging?

3.     How do perceptions of readiness differ between students at different stages of their programme?

4.     Which teaching activities, feedback practices, and learning resources do students identify as most helpful for developing academic writing and thesis-related competencies?

The study contributes to research on academic literacy and higher education pedagogy by focusing specifically on students’ perceived readiness for academic writing and thesis work. Perceived readiness is seen as a pedagogically relevant construct, since students’ self-assessments may influence motivation, help-seeking behaviour, engagement with feedback, and their capacity to make use of writing-related learning opportunities. Theoretically, the study connects academic literacy research with work on feedback, self-assessment, and student-centred learning, thereby framing perceived readiness as a diagnostic resource for curriculum design.

The study had an exploratory cross-sectional design conducted at a Swedish higher education institution. A digital survey was distributed to undergraduate students across several programmes and levels of study and the material consists of 76 responses from students in applied, profession-oriented programmes in education, health, and sport sciences, including home economics, health promotion, physical education teacher education, and sports coaching. The questionnaire included closed questions rated on a four-point Likert scale from low to very high concerning perceived ability in relation to central features of academic writing, such as objectivity, formal style, precision, concision, cautious phrasing, and impersonal academic tone. It also included questions concerning perceived preparedness for key components of thesis writing, including formulating aims and research questions, writing background sections, describing methods, presenting results, and discussing findings in relation to previous research. Four open-ended questions invited students to describe learning activities, feedback practices, and resources that had supported their development. Quantitative data were analyzed descriptively using frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations. Qualitative responses were analyzed through manifest content analysis to identify recurrent themes in students’ accounts. Ethical guidelines were followed throughout the study. Participation in the data collection was entirely voluntary, and all responses were collected anonymously to ensure participants’ confidentiality. Participants were informed about the purpose of the study and their right to withdraw at any time without any consequences, and this information was provided in the introductory text of the survey.

Results demonstrated that students generally report moderate-to-high capability concerning academic writing, yet first-term students tend to self-rate higher than students later in the programme - a pattern consistent with the notion that increased experience can bring greater awareness of one’s limitations (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). Across academic writing features, students rate objectivity, an impersonal style, and formal written language as comparatively easier, while concision, precision, and cautious phrasing are more challenging. In relation to thesis work, students express greater confidence in writing introductory or background sections than in formulating researchable aims and questions, justifying methodological choices, and developing analytical discussions that critically relate findings to previous research. In terms of educational supports, students identify specific courses and academic language resources as beneficial, but they also articulate a strong need for recurring opportunities to practise reading, analysing, and writing academic texts, complemented by concrete and detailed feedback, embedded throughout the programme, rather than concentrated in the thesis course alone. Qualitative themes highlight (i) the role of pre-university preparation, (ii) sustained training and practice, (iii) supervision and feedback with clear guidance, and (iv) access to concrete examples and criteria. The proposed conclusion highlights a programme-level perspective: the development of academic writing and thesis-related competencies should be regarded as a longitudinal process rather than the responsibility of an isolated thesis course (Wingate, 2006). Given staff workload constraints, structured peer-feedback activities offer a promising and scalable pedagogical approach, supporting student autonomy, deepening understanding of assessment criteria, and strengthening reflective and critical academic practices without substantially increasing teacher workload. In the era of AI, further exploration is needed regarding how these digital developments can be harnessed, and the associated pedagogical possibilities should be carefully elaborated.

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