Comuna de Concepción, Chile
This paper presents an exploratory cross-sectional quantitative study, whose main goal was to know the perceptions among two student groups from a Chilean university about academic writing. The first group was enrolled in a program in the field of human sciences (20 students in the translation program) and the second was enrolled in engineering sciences (32 engineering students). For this purpose, a Likert questionnaire, based on a scale to identify problems in academic writing and on approaches addressing the need to consider five dimensions covering the before, during and after writing stages. The results show that students of engineering sciences perceive greater difficulties in facing writing. In the dimensions of textualization and revision, statistically significant differences were observed between both groups. This demonstrates the need to teach to write in different specialized fields at the university.