Teaching Academic Writing

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 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. 

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