Use of a wiki tool as a space for collaborative writing may be an effective way to expand the practice of academic writing, where working in groups to produce a collective text is a common occurrence in higher education. Evidence suggests wikis to be flexible tools which may improve collaboration and provide students with new skills. However, some research has shown that collaboration in wikis may be superficial and that their use may lead to increased workload for students and instructors. Because a great deal of academic writing is accomplished in groups, helping students build their collaborative writing skills is an important academic writing endeavor. This article provides evidence revealing both the potential of wikis to foster collaborative writing and important factors to consider before incorporating a wiki into an academic writing course. Scaffolding tasks to build up to cooperative group writing and introducing new ideas regarding text ownership can make wikis an effective space to practice academic writing. Weighing the evidence provided in this article may help instructors determine whether incorporating a wiki in their own context could constitute an additional space for students to develop their academic writing skills.

Despite their long history and wide-spread use, the private writing techniques of journaling and freewriting remain largely underexploited in the field of academic writing instruction. They are seen only as forms of pre-writing, and are criticised by some for being under-theorised, vague and asocial. Contextualizing them within a writing-as-social-practice approach, and drawing on a conceptual framework including a notion of looking-away developed by Derrida, Vygotsky’s conception of learning development, and Ivanic’s notion of writer identity, this paper aims to throw new light on these private writing techniques and argues they can be transformational in developing students’ learning and identity, as well as written and non-written outputs. In this paper we theorise these practices through reflection on two instances of teaching in which they played an important part. The teaching interventions were in different disciplinary contexts (Architectural Design and Natural Sciences), with writers of different levels of expertise/competence (undergraduate and PhD), in both L1 and multilingual settings. In both interventions, we found that these private writing techniques were transformational due to the space they allowed writers to self-reflect, and to look away from their public-facing outputs. The techniques provided significant developmental benefits and moved the students along a continuum towards a more expert-like identity.

Writing assignments can be seen as an important component of learning processes. Especially in the fields of engineering and sciences, writing assignments have the potential to consolidate subject-specific skills and to enhance motivation for solving technical problems. This paper introduces readers to a revised course structure that aims to strengthen motivation and mathematical understanding through written peer feedback based on mathematical exercises with written elements. The assignment was developed for the course Computational Fluid Dynamics in Process Engineering, a mathematically-oriented course for Master students of theoretical mechanical engineering and process engineering. Since the learning content was perceived as complex, students seemed to lack motivation in preparing for the course with the provided exercises. This paper suggests – based on the collected data, consisting of answers to mathematical problems, feedback texts, evaluation results, teachers’ observation, and examination results – that the introduced assignment enhances students’ understanding and has a positive impact on students’ motivation to solve the mathematical exercises.

Academic writing courses and subject-matter courses have been taught independently to a large extent at many European universities following a ‘study skills model’ (Lea and Street 1998). An integrated approach, however, both in students’ L1 (or their language of instruction) and in English (if this is not their L1), in accordance with Lea and Street’s ‘academic literacies model’ has a number of advantages. Introducing an academic literacies model, however, is difficult to implement since it requires the joint effort of both subject-domain teachers and language teachers and involves deviating from familiar teaching methods. To implement the changes required, a three-level approach has been developed at Justus Liebig University (JLU), Giessen/Germany, as one of several measures in a university-wide project. In this approach, the university’s writing centre and teaching centre take over the role of ‘motors’ of literacy development in all disciplines. The macro-level of this three-level approach encompasses central services provided by these centres as well as university-wide literacy development policies. The meso-level addresses programme development, and the micro-level, curriculum and syllabus adaptations for individual courses. The article provides insight into the measures to be taken at each of these levels based on a review of prior research on Integrating Content and Language in Higher Education (ICLHE) (Gustafsson 2011, Gustafsson and Jacobs 2013 and Wilkinson and Walsh 2015) and the central role that writing centres and teaching centres can play in this process.

This article provides insight into the role of students’ writing motivation in a writing centre setting. Based on my personal experiences as a peer tutor at a writing centre, the article highlights the importance of the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) for the evaluation of students’ motivational levels. It thus shows that the distinction between the motivational concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as well as between ‘amotivation’ vs. ‘demotivation’ provides a basis for tutors and instructors who endeavour to foster students’ motivation. Furthermore, the evaluation of different motivational strategies indicates that both peer tutors and instructors can make a valuable contribution to the development of students’ writing motivation by giving informative feedback, setting clear goals, creating relaxed atmosphere and enhancing students’ positive image as writers.

Case-based assignments represent a common form of assessment on academic business programmes (Easton 1982 and Mauffette-Leenders, Erskine and Leenders 1997), with students required to generate amongst other responses, business case reports, case critiques and case analyses (Nathan 2013). Only limited research is available to support academic writing tutors in understanding such case response texts with published studies focusing solely on business case reports (Freedman and Adam 1994, Forman and Rymer 1999a, 1999b and Nathan 2013). In order to aid writing tutors in supporting academic business students, this paper presents a small corpus study of 36 case response non-report texts (ca. 40000 words), generated on a UK MBA programme. These texts represent categories designated case critique, case advisory and case comparison texts, and were written in three business specialisms, Marketing, Human Resource Management, and Finance, respectively. Rhetorical analysis identified variable rhetorical structure dependent on text category, although orientation, analytical and conclusion components were present at high frequency in all text categories. Substantial variability in citation frequencies, modal verb, business lexis, and first person pronoun deployment was also identified between text categories. Awareness of both similarities and differences in case-based writing responses should serve as a useful aid in informing academic writing pedagogy.

Based on Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura 1986) research in academic writing and self-efficacy has shown that there is a relationship between students’ performance and their belief in their writing abilities (Matoti and Shumba 2011, Shah et al. 2011, Prat-Sala and Redford 2012). Using questionnaires, interviews and an assessed written task, this study seeks to contribute to this research by exploring the relationship between writing proficiency and self-efficacy beliefs of undergraduate students taking an Advanced Writing Skills course. The aims of the study were to find out a) what the writing proficiency self-ratings of students doing the Advanced Writing Skills course are like b) their writing self-efficacy beliefs c) what they perceive to be problems related to their writing skills and d) whether there is any relationship between performance level of the students and their self-efficacy beliefs. An analysis of the results reveals that although students’ self-rating was high, their efficacy beliefs were moderate. The results of the present study also reveal that there was no relationship between students’ essay writing performance and their self-efficacy beliefs in the context of this study. This article argues that although self-efficacy beliefs need not be high for students to be motivated to perform better, boosting these beliefs can add to students’ tools for developing their writing competence.

that the ability to evaluate research papers critically 'is an important vehicle for promoting acculturation into a scientific discipline'.The article describes the authors' process of designing-and the key features of-an online resource for scaffolding undergraduate science students in critical evaluation.According to the authors, this resource encourages and enables students 'to be purposeful, inquisitive and critical in their reading of scientific papers' in order to inform their own writing and learning throughout the different stages of their degree study.

The Writing Centre in Maynooth University, Ireland, is proud of its learner-centred approach (Biggs 1999, Lea et al. 2003). In the Centre we begin where students are, by asking them about their writing concerns. We also appreciate the need to recognise and build on their approaches to writing, their effective writing processes and their writing achievements. We see this under the broader heading of ‘writing transfer’. In this article, we outline our strategies to promote transfer and thinking about transfer with students before and after one-to-one appointments. In a small-scale research project we conducted, our research questions accentuated two potential principles of transfer, as noted in the Elon Statement on Writing Transfer, that ‘[s]uccessful writing transfer occurs when a writer can transform rhetorical knowledge and rhetorical awareness into performance … [when they] draw on previous knowledge and strategies … [and] … transform or repurpose that prior knowledge, if only slightly’, and that University programs can ‘teach for transfer’ (Perkins and Salomon 1988) through the use of enabling practices (Elon 2013: 4). Our work suggests that highlighting transfer in the writing centre context reinforces our learner-centred approach while also acknowledging the literacy archives with which our students present.

This article seeks to characterize the discourse community represented by the biennial conferences of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW). Drawing on information from EATAW's conference programs, the authors define the topical emphases of the 565 standard presentation abstracts (SPAs) accepted for the first six conferences, identify some of the community's dominant research practices and common methods of presentation, and track the changing international distribution of presenters over time. We conclude that the EATAW discourse community, true to its name, has remained focused primarily on pedagogy and on pragmatic research aimed at improving teaching practices. Working in a multilingual context, EATAW teachers/researchers tend towards an 'internationalist perspective' (Horner and Trimbur 2002: 624), one that is attentive to linguistic and cultural differences and favours empirical research as a means of identifying diverse student needs. This perspective, along with a tendency toward cross-institutional and international research partnerships, stands in contrast to the perspective of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) the conference which best represents the American composition tradition.

Novice writers and writing instructors in academic and professional settings often pine for guides that will deliver definitive rules which offer certitude. Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century does so – to a large extent. That The Sense of Style cannot find rules in reason for everything is perhaps its most important – though unintended – message. For as it demonstrates, style remains haunted by the residues of taste and authority. With considerable social and symbolic capital at his command, Pinker can draw on many sources that give him the standing to act as arbiter of style. As an Ivy League professor, he has been involved in writing instruction at MIT and Harvard for several decades. He also chairs the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD); is a recognised scholar in cognitive psychology with a focus on language; has edited considerable amounts of science writing; and is a prolific author whose books have a readership beyond the academy. For those who view style primarily as a matter of taste, such authority suffices. In an age, however, where blunt authority is challenged and calls for an evidence base are expanding across the disciplines, others require that style guides also disclose the principles that inform their advice. This Pinker does. In a companion piece on Edge.org he couches his fundamental commitments carefully though, in the interrogative: ‘The question I'm currently asking myself is how our scientific understanding of language can be put into practice to improve the way that we communicate anything, including science? In particular, can you use linguistics, cognitive science, and psycholinguistics to come up with a better style manual’ (Pinker 2014). The tentative form of the question is presumably overridden by the 359-page book, which is a yes of sorts. It is, however, a commitment to quite a different type of science of language than the descriptive quantitative corpus linguistics that has become increasingly influential in the training of academic writing over the last three decades. Alas, as writing instructors and novice writers either fear or hope, science has its limits, also when it comes to style. Which is why Pinker calls upon additional principles to reasoning rooted in theoretical and empirical cognitive linguistics. These include ‘the backing of data from the AHD Usage Panel’; ‘historical analyses from several dictionaries’; and those elusive characters that still haunt the pages of style guides – elegance and grace – and which operate behind the scenes of a suggestion that a specific formulation just ‘sounds better’ (224). With such an assortment of principles, clashes can be expected. At times a stylistic suggestion is justified with historical precedent from centuries ago, at other times the same fact makes it jaded, stuffy and outdated. When writers waver between the conflicting choices enshrined in style manuals, Pinker leads them out of the panic with ‘a pinch of my own judgment’ (263) or advice to respond to sticklers and mavens with quips such as, ‘tell them that Jane Austen and I think it’s fine’ (261).

Critically evaluating research papers is an important vehicle for promoting acculturation into a scientific discipline. As science students progress through their undergraduate studies, their critical abilities are expected to become heightened, and research papers are read and cited in order to support a variety of assignments, such as essays, critical reviews and presentations, progressing to shaping laboratory research projects and dissertation-writing. This article describes the process of designing a modular online resource. The resource is aimed at familiarising students with the structural conventions and argumentative devices used in research papers and supporting them in deep-reading a research paper in life sciences or chemistry. The modules employ audio- and video-recorded extracts from interviews with a key author to provide a context for the origins, motivations and processes behind the writing of a specific paper, plus scaffolded questions to encourage critical evaluation of the paper. Notable features of the project were the employment of a multi-disciplinary team of staff and research postgraduates coupled with the developmental testing of the resource by undergraduates. Lessons learnt from the project are considered, including the resource’s integration within the curriculum and the challenges of writing such interactive resources for different disciplines.

In her recent article 'Re-integrating Academic Development and Academic Language and Learning: a Call to Reason' (2014), Alisa Percy describes the historically separate trajectories in universities (in Australia but also more widely) of professional expertise in academic (educational) development and academic language and learning. She argues that this separation (in which, broadly, the former is staff-facing whilst the latter is student-facing) is unhelpful and calls for a reintegration of language and literacy expertise with academic development work in order to 'promote the development of students' language and learning simultaneously' (2014:1203). Percy's analysis and her conclusions are convincing to me. If I'm asked at a party what my job is (groan), I'm never quite sure which professional title to adopteducational developer, writing developer, learning developer, academic developerand, similarly, as its chronic institutional grumblings attest, the university in which I work is also never quite definitively cured of its anxieties about where the work I do should belong (historically over here, logically perhaps over there?). Conveniently sheltering under the nonpindownable, un-institutional, and non-generic name, 'Thinking Writing', the team in which I work has always taken the view that language and learningand knowing and being and doingare intimately connected, and that attention to language (writing specifically) isat least in principleas much the responsibility of disciplinary academics as is the teaching and learning of disciplinary content; the two, that is, can't really be separated.

Academic research is an increasingly competitive activity and scientific writers are under the constant pressure of getting published. Getting past the screening device of the scientific abstract is widely based on the ability to create a discourse that is perceived as coherent, considering the target discourse community and the communicative intention. This study focuses on the use of general ‘labeling’ nouns as a factor of coherence and rhetorical persuasion in scientific abstracts, with specific interest in terms that are determined by an anaphoric ‘this’. Based on the study of PhD abstracts written in English by English and French applicants in several disciplines, my research aims to identify the factors of success and failure in the handling of this device by native and non-native writers. Labeling nouns are identified and semantically classified for each discipline, according to linguistic origin. Case studies show that success requires adequate lexical choice of labeling nouns. It is also based on an appropriate semantic and syntactic connection between the selected labeling noun and the segment it refers to, which requires sufficient general and scientific language proficiency. Didactic applications are then offered in order to raise scientific writers’ awareness of the impact of this type of cohesive device on their credibility.

Achieving publication in Anglophone science journals is a goal of many multilingual scholars, and failure can have huge implications for individuals’ future careers and for the global dissemination of scientific knowledge. Despite the importance of the topic, there is still a lack of bottom-up research, which investigates the experience of writing for publication in English from the perspective of the novice scholar. This article presents the case of ‘Rolli’, a German-L1 novice scholar facing the challenge of writing his first article for publication as the lead author and writing it moreover in English. The study uses text history, interviews, and feedback comments to portray the socially-situated story of a novice multilingual writer on a trajectory to successful publication. The case shows how peer feedback was pivotal in achieving publication. Rolli’s ability to respond to this feedback was a key success factor in the writing for publication process. The case sheds light on the importance of peer feedback in disciplinary writing.

Widening participation in higher education (HE) in recent decades has brought new challenges for both teachers and students. One growing group of students are L2 students who often report a lack of confidence in expressing themselves verbally in academic settings. Systematically scaffolding students into developing not only written but also spoken academic discourse is therefore an increasingly important challenge. In Sweden, L2 students are offered a qualifying course in Swedish to enable them to meet HE entry requirements. This paper reports a study carried out on the academic writing module of this course. Course activities include writing a short paper and participating in a critical discussion of peer papers, from which our data was collected. The study has a socioculturally based framework which suggests that learning takes place through social interaction. The purpose is to identify scaffolding strategies by means of a qualitative, interactional analysis. The findings indicate that different types of strategies, such as open-ended, follow-up and multi-unit questions, can help students to deliver more substantial and elaborate answers. Other useful strategies are to create reflective spaces and to focus on students’ identities as academic writers to achieve inclusive and empowering learning situations.

In Portuguese higher education, teachers from different scientific areas recognize that their students have difficulties with writing. Nevertheless, preparing students for academic writing is not a priority and any intervention depends more on the interest of particular teachers than on any institutional policy. The development of a more institutional approach to academic writing in Portugal will imply a deeper knowledge of the multifaceted reality of the students’ situation, involving identification of their own perceptions of their writing processes and of the academic writing practices they are subject to. This is the aim of our study, based on 1150 students’ answers to a questionnaire about literacy practices in Portuguese higher education.Our results show that students seem to be conscious of the procedural nature of writing and of the role and importance of planning, composing and reviewing in the course of their writing processes. As for their perceptions about institutional interventions aimed at fostering writing abilities and teacher feedback on their written work, the answers to the questionnaire allow us to conclude that such support is not frequently offered. There are, however, some differences in the way these issues are considered across the various fields of study.

The Millennial Generation presents a unique set of challenges to the classroom, including the desire to multi-task and teamwork as well as a strong need for attention and validation. Frequently, this creates a conflict between the students’ current skills and the teacher’s expectations when it comes to drafting and revision efforts. Restructuring traditional peer response methods into a group conferencing method allows students to utilize their current strengths while building skills necessary for later writing assignments. By participating in a six-step activity that occurs during a seventy-five minute class period, students are asked to listen, read, write, respond, discuss, and apply writing techniques. Over the semester, the author finds that students are invited into the writing discourse by developing vocabulary representative of global writing issues (development, transitions, paragraph structure, etc.) as well as that of grammar and mechanics. In the process, students learn how to trust their instincts and listen to others while participating in a methodical approach to decision-making.

The intercultural study of genres provides an opportunity not only to gain an understanding of the differences in writing cultures but also to sharpen the view on what is particular for each learning context. As little previous research has undertaken systematic comparisons of genre systems at European universities, we collected data on educational genres used in writing from the Humanities departments of two universities in Eastern European countries (Romania and Ukraine) and one in a Southeastern European country (Republic of Macedonia). A questionnaire with listed genre names was distributed at the three universities to assess the importance and the perceptions of academic genres in the respective cultures. Open questions were used to validate the results and gather hypotheses on the meaning of the mentioned genres. Results show differences in the frequencies of genre use, which, however, do not allow typifying differences in the learning/writing cultures. Genres are labelled differently and emerge from different traditions but seem to resemble a similar pool of genres in each of the studied countries.

Peer tutoring non-native writers seems to pose particular challenges to tutors with regard to the overall goals and principles of peer tutoring that have been expressed in the literature. Principles such as non-directivity and long-term emphasis on the process quality of writing are often assumed to be in conflict with non-native writers’ desire to be actively and directly guided in their process of learning to write in a foreign language. Peer tutoring’s appropriateness therefore remains rather controversial within this particular context. In this article we outline the results of an empirical study focusing on the potential, as well as the limitations, of peer tutoring with regard to non-native writers in a German writing center. Using the method of qualitative content analysis designed to achieve a healthy balance between deductive and inductive aspects of empirical research, we ask the open question: ‘How do peer tutors deal with non-native writers?’ Results show that the limitations of rigid peer tutoring principles become obvious more quickly with non-native writers. However, peer tutoring with non-native writers reveals larger potential, too, and can offer recommendations for peer tutoring in general.

This research aims to analyse the situation of the multiliteracy of natural sciences students in their academic writing in the German university context and to identify students' awareness and applications of their multilingual writing competence as well as how they make use or not of it in their academic writing process. English has the status of lingua franca in this context and German is used in informal settings. Minutes, reports, reviews, Bachelor or Master theses have to be written either in English or German, depending on the study programme. As Canagarajah (2013) has pointed out, multilingual scholarship offers huge resources in terms of diversity of thinking because language carries with it a system of knowledge and thinking from which both their representatives and the writing scientific community can benefit. The empirical, qualitative study of this paper is based on interviews conducted with participants of the course 'Akademisches Schreiben fur Naturwissenschaftler/innen' (Academic Writing for Natural Sciences Students) offered by the International Writing Centre at Göttingen University. The qualitative content analysis is based on portfolio activities and interviews conducted with students. This paper presents the first results of our data analysis.

Research articles are clearly influenced by the discipline of the research being reported. Just as disciplinary conventions place constraints on, for example, the moves and language use of abstracts and introductions, they also provide a set of options for title design. This study attempts to identify the title conventions of eight disciplines by focusing on various features that play a part in title design: the use of multiple-unit titles (those with subtitles); the use of noun phrases to form the title; and ’a’ or ’the’ in initial position. The length of titles is investigated, as is the proportion of substantive words. Data is based on a 3,200-title corpus of titles from research articles published in prestigious journals in four disciplines in the hard sciences (botany, fluid engineering, geology, and medicine) and four in the soft sciences (economics, education, history, and sociology). The data is presented in a visual form that compares title features by discipline, to demonstrate title conventions and to help novice writers understand the features and options available.

One basic skill of academic writers is to be able to locate their claims within a disciplinary framework. However, undergraduate students find it difficult to integrate sources into their own writing successfully, which often results in inappropriate textual borrowing and poor referencing. The aim of the research reported here was to identify problematic or inappropriate use of sources in texts produced by undergraduate Spanish students and examine the reasons for these unacceptable citation practices. For this purpose, I analyzed a learner corpus consisting of 35 literature reviews written by students of an EAP subject in the third year of a Bachelor's Degree in English Studies. The results suggest that their inappropriate use of sources arises mainly from three factors: (i) an unawareness of the dialogic nature of academic texts and of the functions of citation in these texts; (ii) low linguistic level and low level of academic literacy regarding the procedures involved in paraphrasing and synthesizing; (iii) lack of familiarity with the language of citations.

The merits of reflective exercises in teacher training are well known. Reflection through journals, surveys/questionnaires, action research, or supervised teaching and classroom discussion creates opportunities for teachers in training to think critically of what they do in their classes, why they do it, and how they could improve. Sometimes, however, teacher training programs may not be ideally positioned to offer novice student teachers (NSTs) the most extensive and coordinated opportunities for teaching, observation, and reflection. The current study examines the usefulness of an intensive reflective exercise realized as a two-question questionnaire used in a Second Language Writing (SLW) course. The findings indicate that the questionnaire was useful in eliciting a fair amount of critical thinking and integration of prior knowledge, new content, and personal experience. For the teacher trainer, it worked as a tool for assessing student learning and planning lessons. The study reflects on the limitations of the intensive reflection exercise applied in it (such as brevity and isolation from other assignments), and makes pedagogical recommendations for future implementation.

The factual dominance of English as Lingua Franca of the international scientific community continues to increase in most disciplines. Univesrity students, lecturers and researchers are more and more commonly required to acquire English for academic purposes. Meanwhile, linguistic research into the similarities and differences between academic English and its German, Italian or other counterparts has been conducted. However, no comprehensive study has yet dealt with the specific problems faced by German-speaking academics and students acquiring English for academic purposes. It is in this context that this article presents an ongoing research project designed to address that gap. It concerns the lack or partial lack of equivalent linguistic means between the German and the English common language of academia. The common language of academia is, by definition, used across the disciplines and contains or realises fixed, language- and culture-specific conceptions of what actually constitutes 'science' or 'academia'. It is largely based on but differs from language use in everyday contexts, thus posing significant challenges for students even in their first language. In this article, we address the challenge of achieving not only a functional comparison of the common language of academia in English and German, but of complementing the underlying inventory and analysis of each. Following a discussion of previous work, we detail our research design and criteria for the comparative analysis of the common language of academia in English and German, as well as some prelimiary results of the project. The findings of our project will ultimately lead to a German-English dictionary for the common language of academia designed to support both students and academics with understanding and participating in international scientific communities with different linguistic backgrounds.

Research in academic writing is a growing field within Applied Linguistics, yielding a wide range of conferences, journal publications and books. However, comparatively little work has been conducted on students’ attitudes towards the production of writing for assessment. This article reports findings from a questionnaire study of Chinese and British students (n=202) across 37 UK universities. The study aims to uncover the extent to which students feel they were prepared for tertiary-level writing, how useful they find assignment-writing, and whether they enjoy this activity. The focus of the article is on the similarities and differences in attitudes towards assessed writing given by the two student groups. Chinese students were selected as a contrast to British students as the former are now the ‘largest single overseas student group’ in the UK with more than 60,000 Chinese people studying in 2008 (The British Council, 2010). Detailed, open-ended responses from the questionnaire were coded and followed up with email and face-to-face interview questions with a subset of students (n=55). The findings indicate that neither student group feel well-prepared for the challenges of tertiary-level writing, and reveal a depth of feeling regarding the enjoyment and perceived utility - or otherwise - of academic writing.

This article reports on a case study evaluating lecturers' experiences of their own affective writing process using a reflective critical incident analysis. While the cognitive-affective focus of academic writing has been explored previously from a collaborative perspective (Benton et al. 1984), this current study takes the individual writer as the unit of analysis. There are several reasons why lecturers need to write. Foremost among these should be that when they write, they are providing a positive model for students, and are helping to demystify the act of writing. Scholarly writing can be a struggle, and by doing so ourselves, we learn empathy for our students. In reality, many lecturers are facing the need for increasing their publications output. In terms of writing for publication, Murray (2013) has advised that busy academics must develop productive writing processes, and this may mean changing writing behaviours.Affective conditions such as sense of class community, self-efficacy and writing apprehension are known factors affecting writing behaviour and performance. A blended accredited professional development module entitled ‘Writing and Disseminating Research’ is discussed as a way to afford lecturers opportunities to develop writing skills that may also promote positive affective conditions. Data suggests that the pedagogic intervention resulted in greater confidence in terms of participants’ critical writing skills and provided a suitable environment for affective conditions to flourish. Four themes emerged from the analysis of the critical incidents on writing apprehension: self efficacy, the role of external sources on affective writing, peer feedback and class community. Future research would explore the sustainability of the process extending into the lecturers' own practice with their students.

Students often struggle with writing as they are unaware of the process of writing and of strategies and skills to help them write well. They often focus on the product of writing rather than engaging with the process of writing. However, it is in the process of writing, and in the discovery of that process, that learning happens (Murray 1973, Emig 1977, Berlin 1982). It is thought that the inductive, non-intrusive model of peer-tutoring practiced at the Regional Writing Centre at the University of Limerick, based on the model proposed by Ryan and Zimmerelli (2006), encourages students to engage with their own writing and learning in a non-threatening, approachable and positive manner. However, amidst the rising debate on what constitutes student engagement with learning, it is timely to investigate whether, and to what extent, the model used to train peer tutors in the Regional Writing Centre constitutes real and meaningful student engagement for those who peer tutor in the Centre and for the students they tutor.

Writing for publication can be a demanding and stressful experience, yet producing research outputs is a core part of academic life. This article aims to explore how 'neophyte' or novice academic writers can be supported in producing scholarly papers. It analyses a variety of causes for the difficulties faced by new writers, with a focus on the types of motivation that can be harnessed to improve success. The article acknowledges that promoting intrinsic motivation can enhance the writing experience, and investigates how this can be achieved using the familiar tool, Microsoft PowerPoint as a scaffold to develop an article. Although many academics exploit PowerPoint to teach, few of us turn this tool into a writing aid that can help to keep the writing process on track by providing a concise outline of the developing argument in an academic paper. The article concentrates on collaborative writing for publication, which is helpful for neophyte writers and busy academics because the burden of production can be shared. Possible reasons for high attrition rates in publication writing are considered, including a lack of schema development, cognitive overload, and reduced motivation to write. The article demonstrates how PowerPoint can be employed as a catalyst to initiate research writing and foster productivity.

The purpose of this study is to explore if academic writing workshops contribute to students’ learning and performance in assessment. Academic writing workshops provide an opportunity to discuss specific learning areas and promote student engagement. The results of an assessed essay for a group of 65 first-year Mathematics students at Aston University, UK show that academic writing workshops have an association with students’ academic performance. An Independent Samples T-test was conducted to compare the mean performance of the students based on their attendance of academic writing workshops. The analyses reveal that students who attended 2-5 academic writing workhops had a far much better performance (mean: 58.60%) in comparison to students who attended 0-1 workshop (mean: 46.37%). In addition, the analyses show a statistically significant difference in the mean performance of students who attended and of students who did not attend an academic workshop specifically relating to the assessment.

The pivotal role of writing centers in improving the quality of academic writing has been well documented by research. Although writing centers are commonplace in many countries, it appears that none existed prior to 2008 between South Africa and the Sahara. This article reports on the writer's assignment to start one in Namibia. The expectations of the challenges in this task, centering on training staff and tutors and acquiring resources, did not resemble the realities experienced, involving infrastructure, matrix management, hierarchy, and bureaucracy. Various paradigms for deconstructing these experiences, such as post-colonialism, culture clash, and ‘contact zone’ theory, all only partially explain the challenges encountered. These experiences in Namibia provide a case study of the politics of collaboration involved in implementing a writing center, and a microcosm of the challenges one might face anywhere. This account is thus 'glocal'; that is, locally derived but with global applications. Eleven specific guidelines can assist anyone contemplating a similar administrative assignment.

This contribution focuses on classroom discourse, and student evaluations thereof, in a specific tertiary EMT (English-medium teaching) setting. This is done by drawing on a rich, triangulated and longitudinal data base, comprising classroom interactional and ethnographic data that cover the whole duration of an international, four-semester English-medium hotel management programme (HMP) set in Vienna, Austria. On the basis of the discursive nature of learning it is argued that, in spite of the absence of any explicit language learning aims, the classroom discourse affords (language) learning spanning the functions of English as language for international hospitality purposes and of English as the lingua franca of the HMP community. Building on the recent discussions of EMT instructional types and of English used as a lingua franca in the international classroom, it is argued that the HMP represents a case of ‘implicit ICELF (integrating content and English as a lingua franca)'.

At the heart of the redesign of Higher Education qualifications in South Africa lies the issue of increasing evidence of student difficulties in integrating different forms of knowledge. This article proposes that in order to design curricula and pedagogy which better prepare our graduates for legitimate participation in the world of work, we need to understand what that participation might look like. Using a Bernsteinian (Bernstein 1996, 2000) conceptual framework, a research study was conducted which entailed mapping the knowledge integration practices of final year multidisciplinary engineering diploma students in a situated learning environment. The intention of the research was to illuminate the nature of and relationship between the different forms of knowledge evident in actual practice. The concurrent analysis of discursive practices representing complex knowledge integration reveals that in addition to forms of meaning-making associated with traditional engineering disciplines, successful practice is dependent on the ability to draw on a range of oral and written individual ‘repertoires’, as well as those of a collective ‘reservoir’ that stretches beyond the academy: the invisible community of users on the Internet. The complex praxis and concomitant discourses described in this article suggest we need to see integration of knowledge as more than that of language and content, or concept and context, rather as a system of ‘collaboration’ at multiple levels.

This article analyses two examples of embedded academic writing and language provision within Art and Design (A&D) degree programmes in Animation and Fashion Textiles. The provision took the form of interventions to develop the students’ writing as part of their studio practice, specifically to help them generate concepts and develop studio-based design work. As such, the writing in these interventions formed part of a repertoire of strategies or tools for the development of design, and so was not focused on traditional academic writing (in the form of essays). The interventions were the product of close collaboration with specialist lecturers from the degree courses and were co-taught with them. We drew on practices and priorities from the studio disciplines and were informed by broadly Academic Literacies and Critical Pedagogy approaches, as well as ideas from Bakhtin (1981) and Freire (1996) on dialogue, and Medway (1996) on writing in art and design. This article finds that in terms of engagement and confidence with studio-based writing, the interventions had a transformative impact on the students. It also finds that where the interventions were most successful, dialogue played a number of key roles. The paper highlights the value of working on a form of studio-writing that is relatively unexamined; the transformative potential of embedded work like this; and the benefits of dialogue and collaboration inherent in this kind of intervention.

Effective ways of teaching technical communication skills to engineering students have been much discussed. This article reflects on one setting, a first year course in Technical Communication at a university in Sweden, where electrical engineering teachers, language and communication teachers and student counsellors work in close, team-based cooperation using a project model which requires the students to analyse, implement and communicate technical problems. The paper discusses the change in this course - from an EAP course primarily prioritizing language training which ran parallel with a project course - to one unified ICL course. The progression is described through the changes in the organization of the course, and the article focuses on one learning activity: interdisciplinary tutorials on project reports. Through a pilot study where these sessions were video recorded and mapped, we conclude that the presence of different roles became an asset for the range of what the students see as relevant for their project report. In particular, the technical report genre was critically analysed, including problematic areas such as textual sequencing and display of technical problems; data visualisation and commentary; and referencing.

Comparatively little research has been done on students’ perceptions of communication and communication activities in integrated content and language (ICL) environments. In the present study, student statements about communication and communication activities have been collected via interviews and surveys from students attending a mechanical engineering programme in Sweden. These statements are compared with statements from content teachers at the same programme. Results suggest that students and teachers share a common perspective that communication activities should address a couple of apprenticeship genres that students will use in their future professions. Consequently, there seem to be good reasons for identifying and practising the use of apprenticeship genres. However, the focus on a few genres is problematised as some students show frustration when encountering unfamiliar genres. The article therefore also discusses the potential need for a role where communication teachers facilitate communication activities such that students enhance their perceptions of communication and communication activities in order to better prepare themselves for addressing various types of communicative situations.

This article uses activity theory to analyse two different portfolio approaches as tools for programmatic assessment of Integrated Content and Language (ICL) programs. The two approaches include a) a model in which students construct portfolios by selecting artifacts from a range of different contexts and provide reflective commentary, and b) a model in which the portfolio consists of major textual artifacts produced across a design project, with no reflective component. Activity theory provides a tool to explore what these models can offer in terms of an assessment of the integration of content and language in disciplinary contexts, where texts serve to mediate the ongoing work of a discipline. By highlighting the work that texts do in context as well as the access to student meta-knowledge afforded by each portfolio, activity theory provides a means to understand the strengths and limitations of both models. Perhaps most importantly, it points to the need for portfolios to include well-designed reflections that can support both student learning and effective programmatic assessment.

This article reports on an action research study designed to stimulate the metacognitive awareness of the writing of assignments in English of a group of students from diverse language and educational backgrounds, studying health science education at masters level. In the study, students were required to give and receive feedback on a marked written assignment to a peer, and receive feedback from a consultant working at the Writing Lab. They were then required to submit a reflective report, which constitutes the key data source for this study. An analysis of the reflective reports revealed that the students claimed that they learnt about their writing habits, about good academic writing, and about the experience of giving and receiving feedback. The study suggests that although an intervention making extensive use of a variety of sources of feedback appears to be able to stimulate students’ metacognitive functioning in relation to their writing of assignments, a number of issues require concerted attention. These issues include: power relations and emotion, perceptions of legitimate authority, and the central role of the lecturer as disciplinary expert and guide. The article concludes with a recommendation for enhanced attention to intersubjective relations of power, language and identity in relation to feedback on writing, especially when peer feedback is involved.

This paper discusses the results of a reflective case study involving academic writing within an undergraduate programme at a British university. Specifically, the study focuses on the positioning of the students’ central claims within their essays – and subsequent essay structure – and how this differs from a specific structure often taught within the US Freshman Composition class. Coming from this teaching background in the US, I made the assumption that such pedagogy would be transferable when I began teaching academic writing in a UK university in 2003; however, from my experience students have tended to resist placing their central claims within the introduction and this study might therefore illustrate a potential pedagogic issue that US trained writing professionals could face if teaching academic writing in Britain. The analysis of 535 essays from all three years of the programme, in addition to questionnaires completed by staff, students, and members of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW), help to shed light on the nature of the thesis statement in the British academic writing context.

On 29 June 2011, 280 delegates interested in the teaching, tutoring, research, administration and development of academic writing in higher education in Europe descended upon the University of Limerick to discuss the role of the student experience in shaping academic writing development in higher education. The EATAW 2011 conference invited all those interested in academic writing development in higher education to contribute to the discussion on enhancing the quality of the student experience through writing. Enhancing the student experience is central to the vision and mission of most higher education institutions in Europe and beyond. How students experience academic writing impacts upon their identities and on their participation in academic and disciplinary environments. Writing programmes and initiatives that actively engage students in the writing conventions and practices of their academic communities can enhance the quality of the student learning experience.

Writing in higher educational settings is regarded as problematic for all but the most dedicated people (Silva, 2007). Many of the problems come from psychological states (internal-censors, fears, perfectionism, procrastination) deeply rooted in writing experiences (Boice, 1990). However, the literature addressing this is generally missing. A survey of writing-books, manuals, and research studies indicate that most approach writing from linguistic, stylistic, and rhetorical perspectives (Silva, 2007). This study attempted to fill this gap by examining a group of graduate students attending a writing workshop which specifically addressed psychological barriers to productive writing (Boice, 1990). The eight-week workshop consisted of classroom sessions in the first week and then moved to an online course management platform. The primary aim of the study was to note the changes in the students using data from their weekly writing reflections and discussion board comments in several forums and 8-month follow-up interviews. Findings indicate that the workshop had immediate effects on the writers but as the time passed the effects faded. The study looked to Threshold Concepts Theory (Meyer & Land, 2005) as a possible theoretical explanation for the loss of the temporary positive workshop results.