Academic writing
Academic writing is a highly specialized genre of written communication. As a discipline, it involves at least the following three integral aspects:
- good linguistic knowledge and good communicative competence;
- an awareness of the requirements of an academic 'discourse community' (typically a university department or professional body);
- a specialized knowledge of lexis and jargon involved in a subject area.
The 'discourse community' to which academic writing belongs is governed by particular rules and conventions (Swales, 1990) that are in themselves specialized, and may indeed seem impenetrable to outsiders. Once these elements are known, the student must continue to write in a manner that is appropriate to that community, in order to maintain 'acceptance' within the group.
In FL settings, academic writing may involve some of the following tasks:
- a subject-specific assignment written in the TL (target language);
- a summary of an article;
- a written project based on research;
- a laboratory report;
- a conference paper.
Academic writing has become something of a 'buzz word' within departments in HE nowadays, and there seems to be a huge demand for it. However, it is important to recognize that academic writing instruction (whether in L1 or a FL) is a relatively small, specialized branch of university teaching as a whole, and particularly of FL departments. Set within an average lifetime, the period in which students are engaged in academic writing is relatively short, and it seems important to situate academic writing realistically within the context of the students' writing needs as a whole. Consider for a moment the status of academic writing in your own department:
Reflection activity 7
| In my department.... | YES | NO |
| 1. good academic writing is the main goal of my students. | ||
| 2. good academic writing is a strong expectation within my department. | ||
| 3. academic writing is neither desired nor required by my students. | ||
| 4. students are given specific instruction in how to produce academic writing. | ||
| 5. students are expected to 'know' what academic writing is and to produce it without help. | ||
| 6. students seem to progress 'naturally' to academic writing over a period of time. | ||
| 7. academic writing is seen as unnecessarily 'elitist'. | ||
| 8. academic writing is never discussed or debated. |
In doing this task you will have noticed that either:
- academic writing is discussed
at great length;
OR - it is not discussed at all;
OR - it comes up as a topic from time to time.
If academic writing is not very important for you, you may wish to skip the rest of this section and the next one, and move to 9.3 practical suggestions for developing FL writing skills.
When teaching academic writing, one generally seeks a balance between an awareness of the rhetorical functions of the language (stating a point of view, describing, exemplifying, summarizing) and fluency activities based on use of source materials. The ability to self-evaluate is also important. You will find below five sample tasks that form part of academic writing programmes for postgraduate students in various disciplines. You can adapt the exercise types to suit various contexts and languages. Together, they demonstrate the range of activity types that can be set, with tasks ranging from the reflective to the more model-based.
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Sample task 1 Students are asked to look at the following academic text that is reasonably accurate, but in which there are problems with the flow and the reference system. They have to make changes to the passage to improve the flow. Beckett's play Waiting for Godot was first performed in Theatre Babylone on 5 January 1953. It attracted considerable attention. In time it was considered to be one of the most important plays in British theatre. Two tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, are waiting for a man called Godot in a barren landscape. Everything such as the identity of Godot, the reason they are waiting for his coming and its setting remains unclear. They expect that all incomprehensible riddles will be settled, but this does not lead to satisfaction. He never comes and his absence does not bring any solutions. Nobody felt catharsis after the first performance. It is certain that some of them felt something significant in Godot. Martin Esslin categorized this sort of new style drama as the Theatre of the Absurd. It is a new style drama. |
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Sample task 2 This is a self-study exercise. Students are asked to go through a text they have written and to edit it, asking themselves the following questions:
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Sample task 3 In essays, it is often best if students avoid unnecessarily jargonistic expressions, to ensure clarity of thought. It is important, particularly, to avoid 'lifting' expressions directly from research papers or out of text books with little thought about the implications of the terms and expressions that they are quoting. Students are asked to consider a number of phrases and sentences. They should identify the jargon, and try to improve the clarity of the style, as if they were incorporating the ideas into their own assignment, eg: The ideal reader, or 'super-reader' posited by structuralism was in effect a transcendental subject, absolved from all limiting social determinants (Eagleton, 1983: 121). Rewritten version/paraphrase: _______________________________________________________
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Sample activity 4
Below is a short extract from Melan (1993). Complete the text with the missing words (you should use each word only once): from essentially Process Elements
A process is ……… 'a method for doing things'. The ….. purpose of a productive process is to create from a set of inputs one or more outputs of greater value than the inputs. There are three key elements common to any productive process: transformation, feedback control and repeatability. Output is ……….. the result of a transformation or set of transformations. In the model shown in Figure 2-1, inputs, ….. they are material, equipment, other tangible objects, or various kinds of information, are converted by a series of activities into an output …….. is provided to a recipient. These transformations can be classified as physical, locational, transactional and informational. |
each
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Sample activity 5
Students are asked to think of an assignment that they are working on at the moment, or for which they have a title. Below are some typical assignment structures. Which would be most suitable for your own assignment?
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