Teaching Academic Writing

By -

 I was recently asked to outline my approach to teaching academic writing. I am sure that with more experience, both practical and theoretical, this current outline will grow and adapt. However, this is where I am now and this piece will serve as a record upon which future me could reflect.



Current approach

Keeping in mind that ‘EAP classes cannot produce fully developed academic writers,’ my main aim is to raise students’ awareness of what is involved in academic writing and help them see how they might continue to develop as academic writers beyond the EAP course (Alexander, Argent, & Spencer, 2018, p. 200). Generally, students might share certain concerns about academic writing, which can help us to plan a scheme of work. Some of these concerns relate to language structures, academic style, and collating, summarising and paraphrasing other writers’ ideas to build arguments. On the other hand, teachers might be concerned about subject-specific technical terms that might be unfamiliar to them, and how to stop plagiarism (Alexander et al., 2018).

Taking all this into account, I generally follow a genre-process approach when teaching academic writing. In practice, I help students to move away from the idea that they need to have ‘perfect grammar’ and use ‘rare vocabulary,’ and instead get them to focus on the content and purpose of academic writing. Alexander et al. (2018) state that academic writing must be as clear as possible, with the writer seeking to minimise ambiguity. This focus away from language structures, although of course not entirely, means that regardless of students’ level of competence, they can be taught to write with clarity and simplicity. Bruce (2008, p. 2) emphasises that teachers help students develop discourse competence in writing, which he defines as ‘an integration of aspects...of linguistic knowledge with pragmatic knowledge and conventionalized forms of communication.’

Students also need to learn how to present information in a text in a logical and effective way (Alexander et al., 2018). What this means is that often students do not know how to ‘channel’ the flow of information so that their arguments can be easily understood, and they need to be shown how to do this by deconstructing model texts. 

Apart from the need to set a clear communicative purpose for writing, teachers also need to make students aware that they are writing for an audience. Additionally, they need to find out how a particular type of writing is realised in their particular discipline. For example, an essay in Marketing might be different from one in Zoology. However, generally, an academic essay is ‘a written response to a focused question,’ and students need to collate information from various sources to realise this response (Jackson et al., as cited in Alexander et al., 2018). This means that it is crucial that students become familiar with the citation conventions particular to their discipline.

Writing is a cyclical process and students need to be made aware of this. They need to understand that their first output is not the final version. It is essential that they be given feedback on drafts, but should also be tasked with self- and peer-assessment. In order to fulfil this, they must become familiar with the writing task requirements and assessment criteria. 

One-to-one pedagogy

Regarding one-to-one teaching, it is important that teachers keep their student from becoming too dependent on them. Teachers are valuable resources, but should have the aim to help students take more and more responsibility for their own learning. In other words, teachers should be careful not to ‘do the writing for the student.’ This means that tasks must be designed with doable challenges and appropriate scaffolding. The role of scaffolding is not simply to make tasks easier, but to help students advance to challenges of increasing complexity (Bondi, 2016; Gibbons, 2015; Hyland, 2006; Stoller, 2016). While this is good practice overall, it is especially important in one-to-one contexts.

Synchronous and asynchronous online contexts

In synchronous online contexts, students need as much group practice/discussion as possible. Teachers can put students in breakout rooms to consolidate tasks worked on asynchronously. These might include choosing sources, paraphrasing, summarising, and synthesising information. Rather than lecture, the teacher acts as facilitator in these online lessons. Ideally, these online sessions should not be longer than sixty minutes. This is to keep student engagement as high as possible. To ensure engagement on asynchronous tasks, students need to work collaboratively as much as possible. For example, they might be instructed to upload a paragraph they are working on to the university VLE for students in their group to comment on. However, above all else, students need to be made aware of the relevance of these tasks to them and their target situation. This should help keep them engaged.

Conclusion

As a novice EAP practitioner (less than 5 years' experience), I realise that there might be many gaps in my knowledge, particularly when it comes to teaching academic writing. However, the fact that there is still so much room for growth and development is precisely what motivates me on this journey. 

References

Alexander, O., Argent, S., & Spencer, J. (2018). EAP essentials: A teacher’s guide to principles and practice (2nd ed.). Reading, England: Garnet.

Bondi, M. (2016). Textbooks. In K. Hyland & P. Shaw (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English for academic purposes (pp. 323-334). Abingdon, England: Routledge.

Bruce, I. (2008). Academic writing and genre: A systematic analysis. London, UK: Continuum.

Gibbons, P. (2015). Scaffolding language scaffolding learning: Teaching English language learners in the mainstream classroom (2nd Ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Hyland, K. (2006). English for academic purposes: An advanced resource book. Abingdon, England: Routledge.

Stoller, F. L. (2016). EAP Materials and Tasks. In K. Hyland & P. Shaw (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English for academic purposes (pp. 577-591). Abingdon, England: Routledge. 

Image

pixabay

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Incorporating information from sources

By -
Image
  This is my response to a task to create an academic skills lesson. Topic:  How to incorporate information from sources  Broad discipline area:  Social sciences Target audience: 1st Year Undergraduate students Lesson aims To introduce and practise: reading with a purpose. summarising, paraphrasing and synthesising. collaborative learning. critical thinking.   1.  Read the text about race assigned to your group and, as a group , write a short definition in the Table 1 : 2. Read the other two texts and check if you agree with the other groups' definitions. 3. With your original group, compare the definitions from the three texts as outlined in Table 2 : 4. Using the three definitions, write a cohesive response to the question: What is race? Do this individually. Remember to cite each author and year of publication. 5. Compare in your group. 6. Then compare your output with this model: Small (2006) writes that race as a concept or theory originate...
Read more

Moves Like Swales

By -
Image
  The CARS model In his seminal work on genre analysis published in 1990, John Swales introduced the revised version of his Create a Research Space (CARS) model. Adika (2014, p. 58) explains that this model  'describes the rhetorical moves that researchers utilize to claim research space in their disciplines in a highly competitive environment.' Specifically, the CARS model pertains to the introduction section of research articles (RA). Swales (1990) points out that introductions can be difficult to write. This is because RA authors have an array of options at their disposal for how they might approach the opening paragraphs.  The CARS model comprises 3 rhetorical moves, each with particular steps (See Table 1). Hyland (2006, p. 50) defines a rhetorical move as ‘a distinct communicative act designed to achieve a particular communicative function’. Put another way, a rhetorical move is a stretch of text anywhere from a phrase to a paragraph with a particular job (Rienecker...
Read more

Research Abstract Analysis

By -
Image
  The following is an analysis of a research abstract in terms of rhetorical moves and language features. It is a response to a task set on a course (2021) with the University of Glasgow. The source for this analysis is: Basturkmen, H., Loewen, S., & Ellis, R. (2004). Teachers' stated beliefs about incidental focus on form and their classroom practices. Applied Linguistics , 25 (2), 243-272. Rhetorical situation The authors are considered experts in Applied Linguistics and Language Studies. They have (individually) published articles, papers and books on topics in ESP, EAP, second language acquisition, and TBL, to outline just some of their output. Two work at universities in an Australian and New Zealand context (Curtin University, Perth, and the University of Auckland), and one in an American context (Michigan State University).  Applied Linguistics is a journal that aims to make connections between language research and real-world issues. It is aimed at the ‘wider Appl...
Read more