Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction
SYNTHESISING DILEMMAS IN ACADEMIC WRITING: A LEARNER SPECIFIC DISCIPLINE APPROACH.
Karen Nicholls¹, John Wrigglesworth²
¹Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK ²Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK
This presentation reviews contemporary approaches to teaching academic writing and argues for a synthesis based on authenticity of individual student experience. Using authenticity (Van Lier, 1996; Cruikshank, 2006) as a yardstick, we offer a Learning Specific Disciplinarity (LSD) approach which offers a principled way of managing the compromises necessary when applying interdisciplinary research in a real world setting. In developing our argument we will touch on debates surrounding EGAP / ESAP; academic genre; product, process and postprocess (Bruce, 2011), CLIL (Coyle, Hood and Marsh, 2012); and academic literacies (Lea and Street, 1998). For example, the apparent conflicts between EGAP and ESAP can be reconciled through a focus on authenticity of learning tasks rather than whole courses. Using data drawn from interviews with teachers and students on a presessional language course in the UK, the paper looks at student understandings of discourse communities they hope to join, the relationship between writing and content knowledge, and the process of writing about unfamiliar topics. As a case in point, the strategies that teachers and presessional students can employ to focus the scope and topic of an essay for an unfamiliar but specific discipline are discussed in the light of the interview data. We argue that enacting the recommendations of research about academic writing through the authentic experience of individual students is a fruitful way of approaching course development.
References
Bruce, I. (2011). Theory and concepts of English for Academic Purposes . London: Equinox.
Coyle, D., Hood, P., & Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL; content and language integrated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cruikshank, K. (2009). EAP in Secondary Schools in Belcher (Ed) English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice . Michigan: University of Michigan.
Lea, M. and Street, B. (1998). Student writing in Higher Education: an academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education 23 (2) p157.
Van Lier, L. (1996 ). Interaction in the Language Classroom: Awareness, Autonomy and Authenticity . Harlow: Longman.