Approaches to teaching writing

About the book: Student academic writing is at the heart of teaching and learning in higher education. Students are assessed largely by what they write, and need to learn both general academic conventions as well as disciplinary writing requirements in order to be successful in higher education. Teaching Academic Writing is a 'toolkit' designed to help higher education lecturers and tutors teach writing to their students. Containing a range of diverse teaching strategies, the book offers both practical activities to help students develop their writing abilities and guidelines to help lecturers and tutors think in more depth about the assessment tasks they set and the feedback they give to students. The authors explore a wide variety of text types, from essays and reflective diaries to research projects and laboratory reports. The book draws on recent research in the fields of academic literacy, second language learning, and linguistics. It is grounded in recent developments such as the increasing diversity of the student body, the use of the Internet, electronic tuition, and issues related to distance learning in an era of increasing globalisation. Written by experienced teachers of writing, language, and linguistics, Teaching Academic Writing will be of interest to anyone involved in teaching academic writing in higher education

Learning from lecturers: What disciplinary practice can teach us about ‘good’ student writing

This study brings together the methodology of corpus linguistics and the framing of academic literacies in an exploration of Chinese and British students’ undergraduate assignments in UK universities. I consider how student writing, particularly that of non-native speakers (NNSs),1 is traditionally framed as deficient writing within corpus linguistics, and discuss how an academic literacies approach challenges this assumption. One finding revealed through the analysis is the Chinese students’ significantly higher use of tables, figures, images (collectively termed “visuals”), formulae and writing in lists, in comparison with the British students’ writing, and the chapter provides data on this from Economics, Biology, and Engineering. Detailed exploration of individual assignments in Engineering together with interview data from lecturers in the three disciplines suggests that high use of visuals, formulae, and lists rather than writing mainly in connected prose is a different, yet equally acceptable, means of producing successful assignments. This is in marked contrast to the usual focus within English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes on traditional essays written in continuous prose. In this paper I argue that writing teachers could usefully draw on an academic literacies approach as a way to expand their ideas of what constitutes “good” student writing and to transform their pedagogical practice in a way that recognizes student diversity rather than deficit

Writing Center as Contact Zone: Resources for Mediation

When ESL writers write, they are attempting to be heard in an academic community. One of the academy’s shortcomings is its disinclination to hear from writers who struggle with academic discourse. In a contact zone, such as a university that includes accomplished and novice academics, communication becomes a casualty (particularly with novices whose first language is not English). If writing centers and their staffs are the cultural mediators of this contact zone, then we must first be afforded the tools to do our work: a good text, skilled teachers, sufficient funding, and an un-marginalized place on the campus. Irrespective of these resources, however, writing consultants can provide ESL writers with knowledge of contrastive rhetorics and how a failure to acculturate to demands for standard American academic writing may limit their success at the university level.University Writing Cente

Raising students' awareness of cross-cultural contrastive rhetoric in English writing via an e-learning course

This study investigated the potential impact of e-learning on raising overseas students' cultural awareness and explored the possibility of creating an interactive learning environment for them to improve their English academic writing. The study was based on a comparison of Chinese and English rhetoric in academic writing, including a comparison of Chinese students' writings in Chinese with native English speakers' writings in English and Chinese students' writings in English with the help of an e-course and Chinese students' writings in English without the help of an e-course. Five features of contrastive rhetoric were used as criteria for the comparison. The experimental results show that the group using the e-course was successful in learning about defined aspects of English rhetoric in academic writing, reaching a level of performance that equalled that of native English speakers. Data analysis also revealed that e-learning resources helped students to compare rhetorical styles across cultures and that the interactive learning environment was effective in improving overseas students' English academic writing

Review of Multiliteracy Centers: Writing Center Work, New Media, and Multimodal Rhetoric, Edited by David M. Sheridan and James A. Inman

While writing center directors will certainly want to read Multiliteracy Centers: Writing Center Work, New Media, and Multimodal Rhetoric, a new collection edited by David M. Sheridan and James Inman, this book is equally important for writing program administrators, WAC (writing the curriculum) directors, and other academic professionals charged with composition pedagogy.University Writing Cente

English-language writing instruction in Poland: Adapting to the local EFL context

This paper is intended to foster reflection about the development of a locally-suitable approach to English-language writing instruction in Poland. In order to provide background information to contextualize a subsequent discussion of English-language writing, the paper starts with a brief overview of the history of L2 writing instruction, including an overview of the four most influential approaches to teaching ESL composition in the U.S. from 1945–1990: Controlled Composition, Current-Traditional Rhetoric, the Process Approach, and English for Academic Purposes. This is followed by a discussion of the concept of a „needs analysis,” where it is noted that needs analysis is complex in foreign language contexts such as Poland, where students may not have obvious, immediate needs for writing in English after graduation. The notion of needs analysis is illustrated with an example drawn from the English Institute at the University of Łódź. The needs analysis indicated that some students of English had negative attitudes and/or anxiety towards writing in English, but some had positive attitudes based on previous experiences with creative and expressive writing. Additionally, it was determined that students needed to learn many skills for writing academic papers that they had not learned in secondary school and that require extensive instruction and practice. Based on the needs analysis, it was determined that the purposes of a new writing course for first-year English majors should be to foster and develop positive attitudes toward writing and to support students’ academic work. The assignments and activities for the course are described. Additionally, a description is provided of the possible purposes that Polish students in general might have for writing in English, the goals that instructors might pursue in assigning writing, and the types of writing teachers might assign. Recommendations are provided for responding to student writing