Turn the following into a structured informativeabstract.

Metalinguistic awareness contributes to effective writing atuniversity. Writing is a meaning-making process where linguistic,cognitive, social and creative factors are at play. Universitystudents need to master the skills of academic writing not only forgetting their degree but also for their future career. It is alsosignificant for lecturers to know who our students are, how theythink and how we can best assist them. This study examinesfirst-year undergraduate Australian and international engineeringstudents as writers of academic texts in a multicultural setting atthe University of Adelaide. A questionnaire and interviews wereused to collect data about students’ level of metalinguisticawareness, their attitudes toward, expectations for, assumptionsabout and motivation for writing. The preliminary results of theresearch show that students from different cultures initially havedifferent concepts about the academic genres and handle writingwith different learning and writing styles, but those with a moredeveloped metalanguage are more confident and motivated. Theconclusion can also be drawn that students’ level of motivation foracademic writing positively correlates with their opinion aboutthemselves as writers. Following an in-depth multi-dimensionalanalysis of preliminary research results, some recommendations forwriting instruction will also be presented.