This study applies Ivanic’s (2004) extension of Lea and Street’s (1998) model of approaches to the teaching of writing, to a body of student texts produced over a six-month period. Its purpose is to assess the impact of different kinds of feedback on iterative samples of academic writing. However, rather than analysing the texts of a number of different student writers, it examines different texts produced by the same writer. Using extracts from one early-career research student’s writing, supervisor notes and email messages, it argues that actual writers may continue to need and demand engagement in a variety of pedagogic practices on their way to developing their own voice. The possibility of inconsistent development with occasional lapses is accepted, with progress through Ivanic’s model being seen not in a developmental Piagetian way, but through a Vygotskian process of socialisation. In this sense, the position adopted is social constructionist. In particular, writers’ production of narrative around their research topic in the form of creative writing – one of Ivanic’s additions to the discourses in the Lea and Street model – may provide useful stimulus material (e.g. Clandinin and Connelly 2000: 41); and the application of Hatton and Smith’s (1995) framework of levels of reflection to the outcome may provide an indication of the timeliness of Ivanic’s other teaching approaches.

High-achieving students are not often the focus of studies in academic transition. In the UK, the driver has frequently been the widening participation and retention agendas, resulting in an emphasis on supporting the ‘non-traditional’ student. This exploratory case study based in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at the <University> took academic writing as one aspect of transition and compared two transition points for undergraduate students of Modern Foreign Languages (MFL): from school or college into the first year and then into the year abroad as students adapt to expectations for dissertation writing. In a context where weekly tutorials arguably offer the ultimate space for development of student writing, the study unpacks students’ interpretations of institutional, disciplinary, tutor and genre-based expectations. The study drew on theories of academic literacies (Lea & Street 1998, Lillis & Scott 2007 and Russell et al 2009) by viewing writing as socially constructed and ‘literacy’ as dependent on disciplinary context. Findings revealed the significance of the multi-disciplinary nature of the MFL course to students’ ability to adapt to writing at university. It is suggested that a focus on the end product rather than the writing process might hinder the students’ ability to adapt to new expectations and make the most of their tutorial time.

In the humanities and social sciences, the essay still presents the most common form of evaluating students’ learning and familiarity with course contents, readings and academic debates. Fiona English acknowledges the value of this ‘default genre’ (Womack 1993: 43) but problematizes its dominance as it privileges particular ways of knowing and expression to the detriment of others. At times, she argues, it might even deny students opportunities for learning and understanding.

This paper presents a comparison of genre use at three Swiss universities from different language regions. The methodology is one of contrastive genre mapping in which we connect two lines of re-search usually seen as distinct approaches. The aim of the study is to find ways of comparing the writing cultures of different languages by collecting and comparing the genres used for teaching. Data about genres were gathered through questionnaires in which students and faculty members were asked to describe writing assignments and student texts. From the answers to these questionnaires, genre inventories were constructed and then re-checked with insiders in faculty discussions or inter-views. As results, lists of genres from the individual universities are presented, as are the patterns of genre families into which the genres were classified. It turned out that genre use shows strong similar-ities across the three universities. The main genre families are presented and differences between universities are discussed.

This action research explored the potential of audio-visual screencasting for assignment feedback on a distance learning (DL) course. A screencast is a combination of voice recording and screen capture, which can be played in any browser, like a video. Here it is used to capture a tutor’s editing and highlighting activities in a document, whilst simultaneously recording spoken feedback. Research suggests that audio-visual feedback may resolve some of the current problems with written feedback. A pilot study is reported which trialled screencasting for essay feedback on a master's level DL module at Sheffield Hallam University. Fourteen students participated and were randomly divided between two groups to receive either written or screencast feedback first. After receiving the first feedback type, students completed a short questionnaire online. The second type of feedback was then distributed to the students, who completed the same questionnaire for the second type of feedback. The results suggest that feedback is received more positively in the richer media of audio-visual screencasting and that this may encourage emotions more conducive to receiving and processing feedback and help to socialise students within the learning context by giving them a sense of belonging to the community. Simultaneous visual cues and explanations appear to help with understanding, and it is quicker to capture screencasts than it is to write feedback. However, preferences for written feedback were related to the holistic overview of a document, which could be scanned and revisited, and which was not confined to a linear delivery, nor time-limited. Audio-visual screencasting will therefore only be adopted for formative feedback during modules, and will be structured with spoken overviews.

This article claims that working with peer tutors in a writing center can be very valuable for the center’s development, if the director and tutors work together according to crucial principles in writing center pedagogy. Based on the example of the writing center at European University Viadrina, this article shows how the ideas of autonomy and collaboration for both writing support and writing center leadership led to the writing center’s growth.

Writing initiatives across Europe and beyond have grown out of two traditions: writing in the mother tongue and writing in a second or other language, usually English.Writing pedagogies, research, practices and institutional policies are inevitably influenced and shaped by the interplay of the growth of English as the lingua franca of academe and the desire of other societies and cultures to preserve their own identity.Identifying and understanding the differences, similarities,

In this article we analyse Portuguese postgraduate students’ problems and difficulties when performing written tasks in the context of postgraduate programmes. The data presented are the result of a study based on two different data collection procedures: a) the analysis of students’ written work, organised in a portfolio; b) a questionnaire focussing on the difficulties encountered when performing different tasks involving writing: note-taking; planning a text; writing and editing a text (a literature review); and referencing and quoting according to a reference style (APA). The analysis of students' work revealed problems and difficulties in different areas, namely with selecting information, planning the text, and writing the literature review using academic writing conventions. When asked about the reasons for those problems, students often referred to the difference between the literacy tasks they were used to performing in their undergraduate studies and those that they are requested to develop at the postgraduate level. These differences seem particularly relevant when those tasks are related to assessment practices. At undergraduate level, assessment is often based on examinations while at postgraduate level, it is more dependent on the production of other genres such as literature reviews or essays.

First-year engineering students are disinclined to view writing skills, and communication skills at large, as a core element of the engineering curriculum. Instead of arguing away this student skepticism, we aimed to harness it by way of an action research project in the writing class: students were challenged to find out for themselves whether, and if so, which communication skills are important for professional engineers and to write out their recommendations for the curriculum in a brief research paper. The teaching staff supported the research project by providing an online questionnaire, which 443 engineers filled out on the students’ invitation, and by offering support sessions on academic writing, research and ict skills. What the students learned from the questionnaire, was that the respondents spend very a significant amount of their working time communicating, while many of them struggle with several aspects of both written and oral communication. Abandoning their initial beliefs, the students recommended in their papers that communication skills take a central place in the engineering curriculum. The action research approach, in other words, helped students develop not only their academic writing skills, but also their attitudes towards communication courses and more generally, their understanding of 21st century engineering.

In the creative disciplines of Art and Design, students need to develop the ability to critically assess and put into words what they feel, think and know about their working practices (and by extension their work). The careful development of the transition between knowing instinctively, thinking and writing is well established in the literature (e.g. Schön 1983 and 1987, and Biggs 2004), but only little has been done to integrate this into the Higher Education curriculum using writing as a tool for making the reflection explicit. In order to find out whether exploratory writing in the form of blog posts has the potential to allow Art and Design students to develop their academic practice, a small scale pilot project integrated blogging tasks into introductory modules of four first year undergraduate courses. Student feedback on their experience of blogging, and particularly their perceptions of the value of blogging as exploratory writing, gained through end of module questionnaires is analysed to investigate the potential to use writing to develop their academic practice. Findings indicate that it is the motivation of students that is crucial to allow students to see writing as a thinking process and developmental tool for their practical work, rather than as an unrelated academic outcome.

the University of Limerick, Ireland, and hosted by the Regional Writing Centre at the University of Limerick, took as its focus the role of the student experience in shaping academic writing development in higher education.The EATAW 2011 conference brought together 280 participants to contribute to discussion of how to enhance the student experience through writing development.Conference delegates included writing teachers and researchers, writing centre and writing programme administrators, staff developers, and professional and peer writing tutors.

This article reflects upon the experiences and perceptions of feedback practices that five students who spoke English as an additional language (EAL) engaged with as part of their one-year taught master's course at a major UK University. During writing processes and after the submission of assignments, participants received support in a wide range of modes: tutors’ oral, written, and electronic feedback and peer feedback. The paper outlines the key difficulties students encountered when engaging with and responding to feedback. Findings suggested that although students expressed satisfaction with feedback practices provided over the course of their master's degree, instances in which these events constrained their understanding of writing conventions have been documented. Such factors as appropriate timing, the nature of feedback, the type of language tutors employed when providing feedback, variation in tutors’ preferences for marking, as well as students’ individual and cultural differences, sometimes limited students’ understanding and use of feedback.

Joan Turner (2004) suggests that for some students language only becomes ‘visible’ as a problem. With the expansion of UK higher education, more students will be discriminated against as their written language becomes visible. Recent scholarship recognises different literacies that students bring to higher education (Lea and Street 2000) and advocates moving away from a skills approach towards one which centres on how writers make meaning. This article endorses this positive progression from the ‘student deficit’ model but argues for an honest assessment of how students who do not already produce Standard Written English (Elbow 2000) can make their writing invisible so that readers are not distracted by ‘surface’ elements of the writing. Using empirical evidence and Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘cultural capital’, it addresses a reluctance or inability to develop pedagogical solutions to a problem which is rooted in a persistently elitist and gate-keeping model of higher education.

Much recent discussion of ‘academic literacies’ has focussed upon the ways in which students are accultured into appropriate discourses and genres in the academy. This may be particularly true where a discipline has a very strong sense of lexicon and content. In awareness of this, semi-structured interviews were carried out in the spring of 2009 with three highly experienced academic writers in the department of Accounting and Finance at the Manchester Business School. The main focus of this paper is on academic literacy practices. The results of the interviews are discussed in this paper, which examines the relationship between experienced writers and their discourse community, the norms within which they work, the place for creativity, and the extent to which each of these may be negotiated. It will firstly consider the concepts of ‘discourse community’ and ‘Community of Practice’ (CoP), before discussing notions of creativity and ideas-generation as a means of informing the academic work that these writers develop.

Given the diversity of types of writing instructors in US and UK tertiary education and the range of their scholarly backgrounds, the likelihood is that most instructors have not participated in research in composition theory or pedagogy, rhetoric, academic literacies, or writing studies. The four projects reported here highlight the research opportunities and capacities of this diverse group, reflecting different types and levels of teacher or practitioner inquiry that involves teachers in studying significant questions arising from their own contexts. The article offers a brief history of practitioner inquiry research in its various forms and traditions; presents the projects themselves, including their aims and framing; and offers specific recommendations for the future of this invaluable form of inquiry. Definitions of action research vary greatly. The term in its broadest sense refers to research conducted in a field setting with those actually involved in that field, often along with an ‘outsider’, into the study of questions influenced by practitioners, rather than solely by ‘experts’ (Noffke 1996: 2). At the end of the day as teachers, we are often left wondering: Are we doing enough? How do we know? These are the essential questions that occupy the hearts and minds of so many of us as we walk into our classrooms (Goswami, Lewis and Rutherford 2009: 2).Teacher research just isn’t like other forms of research, in part because there is no blueprint for how to do it (Goswami, Lewis and Rutherford 2009: 1).

The difficulties students face when writing academically in an L2 have been widely acknowledged (Dudley-Evans 2002 et al., Paltridge 2001 and Swales 1990). While many higher education institutions in English-speaking countries have started to offer modules that support non-native (and native) students in their academic writing, very little is being done in this respect in developing countries, for example in Latin America (Carlino 2007 and Vargas 2007). In this paper, a project will be presented that aimed at fostering academic literacy in an M.A. course on research methods in a Mexican public university. Different pedagogic strategies, such as a needs analysis, explicit instruction on the target genre (the literature review), collaborative writing, a research journal, peer-reviews and group discussions were combined in order to achieve rapid improvement in this resource-poor environment. Through constant mutual feedback from, and communication with, peers, this transitional discourse community (Bruffee 1999) of twenty-four students moved towards the norms and conventions associated with the respective genre. The strategies employed might be of interest to instructors in academic writing who work under similar difficult conditions and/or time constraints.

The study reported here is based on an extensive questionnaire distributed to about 650 students at three French universities and one Belgian university in five disciplines. The main objective of the study was to describe the links between university writing and the disciplines by inventorying the kinds of university writing students do (academic and scientific/research-based writing) and identifying the thresholds they cross. The main result was that the pieces of writing considered as representative varied considerably according to the university discipline. We found both a pronounced disciplinary specificity with regard to the writing cited as being representative of their courses by the students, at degree level, and a clear dichotomy between the pieces of writing required at degree level and at master’s level. From these two main results, it can be verified that the disciplines are frameworks for the students’ perceptions of university writing practices. Our findings argue for the learning of writing at the university as an ongoing activity at liminal points, as students negotiate in between secondary/post-secondary, in between earlier and later years of the undergraduate cycle, in between that cycle and the master’s cycle, in between disciplines, and in between internalized personal norms and norms (perceived) of faculty.

This paper examines the issue of sustainability in Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) programmes, focusing on the role of ‘bottom up’ initiatives in their development and spread. It argues that, although this element is essential for the start up of WAC initiatives, sustainability can only be achieved through institutionalization, a process requiring ‘top down’ measures. Since both bottom up and top down approaches are essential to successful implementation, it is critical to find the right balance between both approaches. The experience of WAC implementation at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies, Jamaica is used as a context within which to examine these issues. This example demonstrates a mix of bottom up and top down implementation approaches, but with insufficient top down commitment to guarantee sustainability. It concludes by looking at lessons learned and areas of continued activism which have borne some fruit. It is suggested that the issue of sustainability in the case of grassroots advocates is perhaps better conceptualized as sustained efforts to establish programmes, rather than programme sustainability per se.

This article presents a qualitative case study of feedback practices in the first year of a two-year master's programme. Writing and feedback are viewed as contextualized cultural practices shaped by factors at macro, meso and micro level. The empirical data consists of a text corpus of students’ essays and teachers’ comments, supplemented by interviews. Initial findings showed a discrepancy between the considerable amount of comments given by the teachers and the students’ lack of use of the feedback they received. The text analysis, based primarily on Hattie and Timperley’s (2007) model of feedback revealed several features of the feedback that counteracted learning, but a major problem was unclear goals for the writing combined with a study design that did not include revision of student texts.

The study investigated Japanese and Taiwanese postgraduate students’ perceptions of summary writing. Eight Japanese and eight Taiwanese students who speak English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at a university in England participated in the summary writing task in English, questionnaires, and follow-up interviews. The questionnaire and interview data were analysed in terms of (a) students’ background knowledge on summarising and (b) educational background regarding experiences of summarisation and summary writing instruction taught in classes. The results revealed that the Japanese and Taiwanese students shared similar opinions on definitions of summary writing. The students in both groups tended to be self-taught in L1 summarisation due to little L1 summary writing instruction. ESL/EFL writing teachers should note that students from different countries may have culture-specific summary writing conventions and that students from the same country may have different summarisation experiences and perceptions of textual features.

This paper considers a focus on plagiarism built into the first month of a core, year one accountancy module at the University of Huddersfield in England. In designing the approach to plagiarism education a consideration of learning theories, particularly learning styles and social constructivism, helped in reaching the conclusion that some students may need to experience plagiarism in order to appreciate what it constitutes. As a result, students write an early formative essay on which they receive feedback, mainly but not exclusively, on referencing and plagiarism. As part of this process students learn about why we should not plagiarise and are encouraged to explain their own understanding of plagiarism. A survey completed by the students following the first month of study indicates that many did not share the institution’s understanding of plagiarism prior to entering university and that many had subsequently changed their understanding.

In the UK higher education context, central services such as writing centres are coming under management scrutiny and writing developers are being asked to demonstrate the impact of their work. This article discusses one way in which writing centres can evaluate their provision for evidence of effectiveness and to gauge their potential for expansion. Taking as a case study the development of the Coventry Online Writing Lab (COWL) at Coventry University, England, the article reports on the use of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) technique (Kaplan and Norton, 1992) to examine how extending one writing centre‘s provision through the development of an online component has been considered and justified. The BSC is an evaluation tool that takes into account stakeholders‘ perspectives, internal institutional processes, finance and budgets, and staff development needs, and sees these as integral and important drivers of an organisation‘s results (Grayson, 2004: 1). The article discusses the benefits and limitations of such an approach within this case study and its implications for strategic planning for writing centres and other forms of university writing provision.

This paper outlines the procedures used in, and evaluates the success of, a pilot writers’ group for MA-level academic writers. After some background on writers’ groups is provided, the activities used in a pilot Writer Development (WD) Workshop, along with the rationale behind the activities, will be described. The usefulness of the activities will then be evaluated from the viewpoint of the student-writers. Results indicate that along with social and affective benefits, the members perceived academic merit in being involved in the group. Most members experienced, at the very least, a heightened awareness of individual writing processes, and of feedback practices and preferences. The activities in the workshops seemed to help the members develop themselves as writers, and an improvement in the quality of written product was perceived by the writers themselves.

Textual borrowing, a distinctive feature of academic writing, is a very complex practice which poses problems to novice English as a Second Language/English as a Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) writers. Students in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) also encounter these problems when writing in English. The present study investigates the use of source texts in student essays in order to find out how BiH students incorporate borrowed text into their own. The first part of this paper provides a short theoretical background on the topic and offers insight into the BiH education system, while the second part of the paper presents the main research results which show a high incidence of inappropriate textual borrowing in student texts. It is argued that a stronger focus on teaching writing and more hours of explicit teaching are possible ways to overcome this problem.

Scepticism about peer tutoring in writing expressed by university members outside the writing centre is a common problem for staff at several European writing centres. Our workshop at the 2009 EATAW conference focused on this issue by testing a short training to prepare writing centre staff for discussions with sceptical faculty members who reject peer tutoring.This article explains the procedure of the workshop and, as a result of the workshop, gives a compilation and categorization of the pro and con arguments and demonstrates possible answers to typical statements of doubt. It is shown that counter-arguments stem from very different levels of argumentation. There are strategies of how to respond to these arguments, though it will be a great challenge to develop guidelines for argumentation that match the very different institutional conditions of different academic cultures, as they were represented in the workshop.

Based on data gathered via survey questionnaire and follow up in-class discussion, the paper explores the ways undergraduate students think of themselves as writers and readers. Data drawn from a pilot survey in 2007 and a second in 2009 provides the impetus for discussion of issues of literacy and identity in a digital world. Of interest is 1) what first-year students anticipate they need to do and know, and 2) how final-year students reflect on what they have learnt in terms of academic literacies and related skills. A key issue is the way students bring a particular identity as readers and writers to university, and how this is transformed and re-inscribed through their studies. The importance of teaching for the development of rhetorical dexterity in a digital environment is highlighted because students’ digital literacy is a core element in their literacy identity. The paper also asks ‘how far should educators go in working into the space of digital literacies?’

The present study identifies the problems that students of the Educational Science Faculty of the Complutense University of Madrid encounter when revising and rewriting texts. This process involves developing and clarifying their thoughts in order to rewrite the text which, in turn, implies not only evaluating and improving the draft but also transforming and constructing knowledge.It is assumed that the revision and rewriting process specifically consists of identifying, diagnosing and rewriting language units or fragments of text which can be improved. This involves applying cognitive operations of information management to rough drafts at different linguistic and textual levels until the final text is collaboratively produced.In conclusion, it is argued that the potential of collaborative revision and rewriting, as well as the need for writer tutoring through guides which monitor the process and encourage reflection, should be highlighted.

Peer assessment has been used increasingly in English writing instruction in the past two decades. This has given rise to research on peer assessment in developing English learners’ writing proficiency. However, few studies have exclusively examined student variables in relation to peer assessment and, in particular, how students’ English language proficiency affects the use of peer assessment in English-medium writing classrooms. The case study research described in this article examined, through the employment of students’ learning diaries, how Chinese university English- learners’ language proficiency affected the use of peer assessment. Ten second-year English majors at a university in Southern China were asked to keep diaries of their experiences of being involved in peer assessment over sixteen weeks. The diary data showed that the students viewed their English language proficiency as a salient variable influencing the focus, the type, the appropriateness, and the impact of peer feedback on learners’ redrafts.

This action research study reports on Kosovan, English as a Foreign Language, undergraduate students’ perceptions of the usefulness and effectiveness of class activities that promote the panning for gold approach (Browne and Keeley 2004) in the process of argumentative writing. The data obtained from a questionnaire, essay evaluation and a focus group, reveal that students show interest in the approach though they do not feel at ease when required to take a decision that calls for systematic evaluation of their thinking in a quest for new answers. It is apparent from the study that, in order for students to think critically and write argumentatively, the panning for gold approach and the principle of inquiry should be integrated across the curriculum or, in a better case scenario, should be an integrated part of daily life. The results have implications for syllabus and classroom practices.

This project outlines the rationale, design, and findings of a peer tutoring project in a UK teaching-led university. Three students received training and tutored their peers in academic writing. Qualitative data was collected from both peer tutors and tutees; quantitative data was collected through a questionnaire administered by the institution’s Careers department. Findings include a positive effect on the tutors’ self-perception of their own employability and understanding of the conventions of academic writing, along with positive feedback from students who received tuition.

The following set of three papers, ‘University Literacies: French Students at a Disciplinary “Threshold”?’ by Isabelle Delcambre and Christiane Donahue, ‘Modeling Multivocality in a U.S.-Mexican Collaboration in Writing across the Curriculum’, by Mya Poe and Jennifer Craig, and ‘Perceptions and Anticipation of Academic Literacy: “Finding Your Own Voice”’, by Claire Woods and Paul Skrebels, represents some of the ongoing practice-oriented research of the ‘Antwerp Group’, so called because the members came together as teacher-researchers with shared interests in student writing in Antwerp in 2006.

One particularly difficult area for higher education students is writing appropriately for their respective disciplines. As writing is a social, cultural and dialogic act, writing support should create learning events that will allow for useful social exchange of ideas within the appropriate disciplinary cultures. Indeed, many claims are made in favour of disciplinary-based writing support: students will become more engaged with their subjects, will develop as critical thinkers and, through debate, will produce scripts which are more likely to warrant them voice within their disciplinary cultures. In the study described in this paper, two academics from Art and Design and Humanities in a UK university used different techniques to create participatory writing cultures in the classroom. Despite different settings, similar issues arose that are not fully addressed in the literature on writing development, including student non-engagement with active learning; issues with the development of critical skills; and student agency. The authors will discuss their findings by drawing on student feedback and their own reflection on the teaching sessions.

Reviewing keynotes and papers presented at the 2005, 2007 and 2009 EATAW conferences, and subsequent academic and digital literacies research, this paper considers the current agenda for academic writing teachers. It discusses pedagogic issues arising, for instance, from research on genre, multimodality, online communities, and the challenges and resources for the generation of students problematically called the ‘net generation’. Looking at two wings of academic writing research, those focusing on the ‘textual’ and those on processes and contexts, it raises the question of a common agenda for disciplinary writing studies, one exploring the transformatory processes and effects of disciplinary meaning making in ‘the digital university’.

This paper reports on a small-scale study in a post-1992 UK University that set out to explore how lecturers were approaching the challenge of developing first year undergraduates’ writing. It approached lecturers’ everyday writing practices from the perspective of literacy as social practice (Barton 2007, Barton, Hamilton and Ivanič 1999, Gee 1996 and Street 1984). Data collection focussed on the different ways the participating lecturers had tried to support students writing development as well as the extent to which they felt responsible for developing writing as part of their specific subject teaching. This study concludes that it may be beneficial for higher education institutions to provide opportunities for lecturers to develop their own academic writing identities in higher education, as well as supporting them to work more effectively as writing developers within their subject specialisms, or collaboratively with specialist writing development staff.

For over fifty years, US writing centers have been helping students, with writing centers found in approximately 90% of American universities and colleges (Eodice 2009). Because those who direct and tutor see student writers struggling with every kind of assignment, writing centers are important resources for anyone teaching writing or writing-intensive courses.Ironically, though, writing centers are an overlooked resource on literacy. As Eric Hobson and Muriel Harris argue, writing centers should share with those who teach writing to larger groups what writing center professionals have learned about the writing process. Based on four years of systematic research interviewing experienced writing center tutors, this article presents teachers of academic writing with valuable insights into how students misunderstand the writing process and how teachers of academic writing can improve their teaching of writing.

Critical reviews allow access to the critical thinking abilities of their writers, especially with regard to analyzing and synthesizing ideas. In most institutions of higher learning, critical reviews are assigned as coursework, and the general assumption is that students would know how to produce a ‘good’ review, one that meets its readers’ expectations. Is this a fair assumption? If not, which particular skills and strategies do we, as academics, teach them? This study was undertaken to find the answers to these questions and focused on the critical review writing of postgraduates. A mixed methods approach was adopted incorporating questionnaires, interviews and critical reviews of articles written in English by ESL postgraduate students at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya. The critical reviews were analyzed from two perspectives (contents and presentation) using a checklist devised by the researchers. The findings revealed that most of the students lacked the skills and strategies for writing effective reviews.

Since 2006 the ‘Antwerp Group’ group has explored student writing from various country perspectives to understand what practices and pedagogies are country specific and what issues cut across national borders. The insights of the Antwerp Group helped inform a 2009–2010 collaboration between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in which we combined Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and English as Foreign Language (EFL) instruction. This paper describes how a theoretical model used by the Antwerp Group helped us identify the multivocality that each collaborating group brought to this new partnership. In the end, theorizing multivocality helped us recognize our diverse perspectives as a resource even as we sought to find a collaborative voice in setting project goals, defining a student survey, and implementing a curricular design for a WAC-EFL writing course.

Undergraduate social work education in England requires the completion of the necessary academic credits for an honours degree, alongside the demonstration of the necessary standards and competencies associated with a professional award. This requires a challenging and diverse programme of study. However, the skills necessary for successful academic enquiry complement those required for effective practice. In particular, academic writing skills support effective professional communication and research skills allow for evidence-based practice. This paper describes the development of academic skills within a new undergraduate social work programme at a UK university, designed to meet the needs of a diverse and atypical student cohort. Having recognised the flaws in the early delivery of the programme, a revised curriculum has placed the development of academic research and writing skills at its core.

Failure to publish articles in the dominant Anglophone scientific journals has implications for multilingual scholars’ future careers and for the global dissemination of scientific knowledge. Despite the importance of this topic, there have been few studies of the perceptions of multilingual scholars engaged in this process. In an effort to close this gap, an online questionnaire was emailed to 153 German-L1 scholars at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. The 46 respondents ranked 'writing reader-friendly texts' as their number one problem in writing scientific publications in English, followed by 'using correct grammar'. Reader-friendliness was defined by the majority of the respondents as 'writing in a clear and simple style'. The questionnaire also revealed some interesting differences between the views of novice and more experienced scholars regarding the role of different sources of feedback in helping them overcome these problems. The results from the questionnaire will be explored in more detail in follow-up interviews.

Amos Oz writes that in pre-State Israel, ‘All Jerusalem [...] sat at home and wrote [...] everyone had a pencil and a notebook’ (Oz 2004: 285). Later, when he moved to the kibbutz, farmers devoted to manual labor often wrote modest articles and sometimes even poetry (2004: 468). When students entered the university, there was no need to instruct them in academic writing. However, times have changed, technology pervades our lives, and the population of the country has also changed. Today, many students enter institutions of higher education with insufficient writing experience. Although there are a growing number of programs in academic writing throughout the country, even within the same institution instructors often know little of what is happening outside their own programs. Inspired by the symposium at the 2007 EATAW conference, ‘Historical Roots of National Writing Cultures’, we decided to tackle this problem by establishing an organization for people engaged in academic writing instruction. Its purpose was to share resources and insights, to involve policy makers in education in the writing needs of students, and ultimately to provide the best possible writing instruction for Israel's wide variety of students. In this paper we will trace the history of academic writing in Israel and describe the progress of IFAW, the Israel Forum for Academic Writing, in achieving these goals.

for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW).Since EATAW's founding as a professional organisation in

As one of the productive skills, writing is among the most challenging for language learners. Increased opportunities for study in European universities through Erasmus programs and in Anglophone tertiary institutions has made it necessary to place more emphasis on writing skills in Turkish universities. This has made it inevitable that Turkish universities include academic writing as part of their curricula. Considering that even non-native speaking (NNS) scholars have been reported to face challenges with academic writing not usually experienced by native-speaking (NS) writers (Gosden 1992), it is not surprising to see that this activity causes a great deal of anxiety for undergraduate and graduate students. This paper explores the effects of using a multiple-draft process approach on reducing the students’ anxiety levels, as they relate to the academic writing process. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and written reflections by students.

Today’s engineers are expected to be versatile, necessitating a bold shift in the direction of Australian undergraduate engineering education. Alongside the capacity for technical analysis, core engineering graduate attributes emphasise non-technical skills: (i) the ability to communicate effectively, (ii) the ability to function as reflective practitioners on multidisciplinary teams, and (iii) the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions within a global, economic, and environmental context. Increasingly, students are coming from a diversity of backgrounds – academic, cultural, and professional – and academics are being required to meet the complex professional demands they bring. Recognition of the need for literacy support where cohorts comprise a high percentage of students from a non-English-speaking background with strong science/math competence, yet little experience of writing academic English, is challenging. Effective literacy support requires early identification of problems in large undergraduate cohorts. Evidence demonstrates that literacy support is most effective when closely integrated with core assignments and relevant to dynamic professional practice.