GenAI has demonstrated functionality that seems, uncannily, to parallel reading and writing by identifying/reformulating information from source texts and generating novel content and argumentation. These skills are essential yet challenging for many students tasked with producing literature reviews. This study takes the first steps to investigating the feasibility of a GenAI-facilitated literature review. This investigation starts from the ‘human-in-the-loop’ position that complex processes can be deconstructed and compartmentalized, and that component functions needed for these processes can be delegated to machines while humans contribute to, or control, the overall process. We explore the hypothesis that certain functions of the literature review process, such as information extraction and content classification, might be able to be automated. Prompts modeled on recommended practices for research synthesis were designed to identify and classify particular types of content in research articles. Outputs produced by two GenAI models, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4o, were assessed for reliability with a human coder. Overall, the results posit concerns about the models’ performance on this task, cautioning against direct uses of GenAI output as learning scaffolding for students developing literature review skills.

Here we report a teaching practice exploring integrity issues related to the use of images in scientific and/or academic writing or, more broadly, in communication. The practice is intended to raise students’ awareness of the need of complying with research integrity principles/norms. It is targeted at undergraduate students in the molecular biosciences, more specifically, to students enrolled in a First Degree in Biochemistry course. It has been implemented in the context of a course unit in which the students perform laboratory work – within a small project – usually originating data that is reported as graphs or as pictures in their laboratory reports. These visual representations are also normally used in articles published in scientific peer-reviewed journals. We implemented a group assignment based on the analysis of guidelines of different journals regarding the preparation of figures, including acceptable image processing and manipulation, as well as on the application of these guidelines on both written and oral reports. We could observe that the students performed the proposed activity with commitment and interest in the aspects explored. Moreover, the exercise improved their critical thinking ability as demonstrated through in-class discussions. In the present work, we discuss challenges of including illustrations in scientific texts in view of science teaching.

This teaching practice paper deals with some practical ideas of teaching the concept of ‘warrant’ in Toulmin’s mode of argumentation within EFL/ESL settings. While most students are familiar with making claims and providing evidence to support them, they may not understand the role of the warrant in connecting claims and reasons. Therefore, there is a strong need for teaching students how warrant plays a key role in argumentative writing. This teaching practice paper aims at bridging the gulf between some writing theories and useful examples to dissect the complexities of teaching warrant in writing classes.

The ability to carefully craft writing for an intended audience is crucial in creating persuasive rhetorical arguments. Learning to do so requires knowledge beyond IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion). Many graduate students learn by mimicking this structure, yet lack audience awareness and overuse jargon, producing low-readability texts. What is more, they increasingly rely on AI-based writing tools that mimic the same structures that are already often poorly written. The results are too often uncommunicative articles that fail to persuade the intended audience. Therefore, we suggest writing pedagogy includes a deeper understanding of effective written science communication using the rhetorical triangle. As graduate students most readily understand the importance of logos, i.e., the scientific content, our job as writing instructors should be to emphasize the role a carefully aimed pathos and ethos plays in producing highly readable, persuasive, publishable articles. To this end, this paper first presents a brief background on the IMRaD structure before outlining the much-overlooked role of the rhetorical triangle in scientific writing. Specifically, we offer a detailed table for graduate students to use in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

This study examines how learners’ perceptions of their academic writing difficulties changed over the course of a four-week intensive English for Academic purposes (EAP) programme at a British university. The participants of this qualitative study were 14 Chinese undergraduate students who engaged in interviews and completed learning journal entries. The results of the thematic analyses indicate that vocabulary which constituted the biggest perceived challenge in Week 1 was no longer mentioned in Week 4 as a source of writing difficulty. Another finding is that after four weeks, students felt they had a better understanding of argumentation in a UK academic context and were not facing major difficulties with using sources and the understanding of argumentation in a UK academic context; they also reported that they were not facing major difficulties with using sources and understanding plagiarism in written assignments. Upon completion of the EAP course, students also reported that they tended to experience noticeably fewer challenges with academic reading. This qualitative study provides insights into the contribution of pre-sessional programmes in the development of learners’ writing as they transition into the academic community.

This study explores the use of digital technologies in the writing of an academic assignment. Fine-grained studies on student writing processes are scarce in previous research. In relation to the increasing demands on students’ writing, as well as the debate on students’ poor writing (Malmström, 2017), these issues are important to address. In this study, screen captures of five students’ essay processes are analyzed. The results show that students handle text at different levels: they make use of one or more word processors, arrange texts spatially on screens and use resources to operate directly in texts. Above all these actions seem to meet the need to move and navigate within one’s own text, an aspect that could be especially important in relation to the academic genre and for handling texts as artifacts in activity (Castelló & Iñesta, 2012; Prior, 2006). The results of the study point to the importance of making digital writing practices visible, especially those that could create possibilities to intertwine digital texts, thereby enhancing potentials for academic writing and meaning-making.

Evaluating Academic Literacies Course Types
 This poster represents a mixed methods study conducted at the University of the West Indies (UWI), which seeks to determine the merits of two types of Academic Literacies (AL) courses in promoting successful academic outcomes. Its focus is the first quantitative research phase in which the grade point averages after the first year of study of Social Sciences students successful either in the general purposes Foun1019 ‘Critical Reading and Writing in the Disciplines’ course or in the faculty-specific purposes Foun1013 ‘Critical Reading and Writing in the Social Sciences’ course are compared. The second, qualitative phase will be presented in future publications. This study is a response to an unimplemented recommendation of an external 2018 Quality Assurance Review (QAR) of the UWI, Mona campus, English Language Section, that students successful in the first semester of Foun1019 switch in the second semester to their faculty-specific AL courses. The QAR rationale for the recommended course switch is that the non-faculty-specific nature of the second semester of Foun1019 is academically disadvantageous to students who have shown promise in its first semester. This study is relevant to the debate over the use of general versus disciplinary AL approaches, one publicized by Jordan (1997) and revived by de Chazal (2012) who makes a pedagogical and practical case favouring a general purposes approach. Underlying the study is the premise at the heart of AL courses: that by preparing incoming students, supposed novice writers and readers at the tertiary level of study, these courses serve to maximise their academic performance. Indeed, this is the premise upon which the required pursuit by university students of AL courses is based.
 This Foun1019 general purposes course, introduced for students from all faculties who fail an English language proficiency entrance test (ELPT), places emphasis in the first semester on developmental reading and writing in English as well as on overcoming writer apprehension. Furthermore, a dual language identity – Standard Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole – is conferred on students. This is because whereas English is Jamaica’s sole official language, Jamaican Creole – which has an English lexicon but distinctly un-English grammar, syntax and phonology – is the first language of most of the students. The work undertaken in the first  semester functions as a bridge for students, building their linguistic self-esteem and improving their English language proficiency in order to ease them into what is considered the bona fide AL focus of the second semester: ‘Writing from Sources’. This latter focus is shared with one-semester, faculty-specific purposes AL courses, populated by students who pass or are exempt from the ELPT. These courses seek to respond to the AL development needs of individual faculties’ constituent departments. To do this, they employ as much of a specific purposes AL approach as is possible given the wide range of parent disciplines involved. The Foun1013 course featured in this study, which is pursued by Faculty of Social Sciences students exclusively, falls into this faculty-specific category of UWI AL courses.
 The Foun1019 and Foun1013 Year 1 student groups being compared have both been certified at the end of their first year of study to possess a satisfactory level of English language proficiency on the basis of attaining passing grades at the end of Semester two in their final and major AL assignment: a 1200-word documented expository essay scored via a common holistic rubric. To ensure further comparability of the two groups, control of the potentially influential independent variables of Socioeconomic Status (SES), Gender, Intellectual Aptitude (as estimated via matriculation qualifications) and other selected variables is accounted for by the multiple regression analysis component of the overall study design. To address the unevenness of the size of the two study populations, that is, the relatively small number (51) of Year 1 Foun1019 Social Sciences students versus the high number (630) of their Foun1013 counterparts, the Tukey test of statistical significance for unequal group sizes will be applied.
 To assess the groups’ relative academic performance, the official UWI measurement standard, Grade Point Average (GPA), is used. This measurement shows the typical course result of a student for a semester or year, and ultimately determines the quality of degree awarded (for example, First Class Honours, Lower Second Class Honours, Pass). This measurement encompasses nine bands ranging from 0.00-1.29 to 4.00-4.30 points. The points in question represent the numerical value given to letter grades, e.g. C+ (55-59%) = 2.30 points, F2 (40-44%) = 1.30 points. Grade points are determined by multiplying the points earned by the credit weighting of the course, which is based on the duration of the course (whether one or two semesters). Students earn three credits for one-semester courses, and six credits for two-semester ones. 2.00 is the minimum grade point deemed acceptable (University of the West Indies, 2014). 
 The investigation reveals that the overall Year 1 student pass rates for Foun1013 and Foun1019 at the end of the second semester of the 2017/18 academic year were 60.2% (630/1047) and 62.2% (51/82) respectively. Preliminary findings on the GPAs of the passing groups are as follows: 1) Foun1013 students’ GPAs are more widely spread across the band ranges than those of Foun1019 students; 2) The modal band range of the two groups is 2.30-2.99: 42.6% (269/630) of Foun1013 students versus 54.9% (28/51) of Foun1019 students; 3) The GPAs of 41.9% (264/630) of Foun1013 students fall into the four highest band ranges (3.00-4.29) versus 25.5% (13/51) for Foun1019 students; 4) The GPAs of 10.6% (66/630) of the Foun1013 students fall into the 2:00-2:29 (just acceptable) band range versus 15.7% (8/51) for 1019 students; 5) The GPAs of 4.9% (31/630) of Foun1013 students fall into the three lowest band ranges (0.00 -1.99) versus 3.9% (2/51) for Foun1019 students. Thus, overall, the Year 1 Foun1013 specific purposes students outperformed their Foun1019 general counterparts with respect to their higher band ranges, but the modal range of scores for both groups (a low but acceptable one) was the same; in addition, the Foun1019 group had slightly better outcomes in terms of its lower proportion of students with poor GPAs (under 2.0). Therefore, this cross-tabulation of the two groups’ GPAs reveals that student success in the general purposes course is not more highly correlated with Year 1 academic failure than student success in the faculty-specific purposes course, but it may hold implications for the passing grades received. Corresponding results for Year 2, 3 and 4 students, along with these Year 1 results, will be subjected to the finer-grained statistical analysis needed to reach definitive conclusions, while the qualitative phase of the study will use course content analysis and questionnaire and interview data from students and academic staff to seek explanations for the conclusions drawn.
 References 
 de Chazal, E. (2012). The general-specific debate in EAP: Which case is the most convincing for most contexts? Journal of Second Language Teaching and Research, 2(1), 135–148. http://pops.uclan.ac.uk/index.php/jsltr/article/view/90/37
 Jordan, R. R. (1997). English for academic purposes: A guide and resource book for teachers. Cambridge University Press.
 University of the West Indies. (2014). Grade point average regulations (Internal document). UWI. https://www.uwi.edu/gradingpolicy/docs/regulations.pdf

Supporting Academic Writing and Publication Practice: PhD Students in Engineering and their Supervisors
 This poster documents the bottom-up efforts leading to the establishment of an academic writing support program for doctoral students at an engineering university in the Czech Republic (CR).
 To defend their dissertation, by law Czech doctoral students have to have published their research. Moreover, many faculties require their doctoral students to publish in prestigious English-medium journals, which is a challenge even for the students’ supervisors. Although publication requirements prior to dissertation defence are becoming common in many countries (Kamler and Thompson, 2014; Kelly, 2017), Czech students often face a challenge of writing in the absence of any prior writing support, where insufficient knowledge of English only adds an extra hurdle to the already difficult task of argumentation absent in Czech schooling. CR has a comparatively high number of doctoral students, but also alarmingly high drop-out rates with more than 50% students not finishing their studies (Beneš et al., 2017). In part, this is due to the students’ difficulties to publish (National Training Fund, 2019). This challenge could be addressed with systematic writing development, but Czech educators and dissertation supervisors are not commonly aware of composition being teachable as we learned from our preliminary study on writing support in doctoral programs in several Czech universities (Rosolová & Kasparkova, in press). While supervisors and university leaders tended to see writing development as a responsibility of the students, the doctoral students were calling for systematic support. 
 We strive to bring attention to the complexity of writing development and introduce a discourse on academic writing that conceives of academic writing as a bundle of analytical and critical thinking skills coupled with knowledge of rhetorical structures and different academic genres. We show how these skills can be taught through a course drawing on the results from a needs analysis survey among engineering doctoral students, the target population for this course (for more information on the survey, see Kasparkova & Rosolová, 2020). In the survey, students expressed a strong interest in a blended-learning format of the course, which we base on a model of a unique academic writing course developed for researchers at the Czech Academy of Sciences, but not common in Czech universities. Our course is work in progress and combines writing development with library modules that frame the whole writing process as a publication journey ranging from library searches, to a selection of a target journal and communication with reviewers. Because we are well aware that a course alone will not trigger a discourse on writing development in Czech higher education, we also plan on involving a broader academic community through workshops for supervisors and a handbook on teaching academic writing and publishing skills for future course instructors.
 Colleagues at EATAW 2019 conference commented on the poster sharing their difficulties from the engineering context and for instance suggested a computer game to engage engineers. This resonated with our plan to invite our engineers into the course through a geo-caching game – for more, see Kasparkova & Rosolová (2020).
 References 
 Beneš, J., Kohoutek, J., & Šmídová, M. (2017). Doktorské studium v ČR [Doctoral studies in the CR].  Centre for Higher Education Studies. https://www.csvs.cz/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Doktorandi_final_2018.pdf
 Rosolová, K. E., & Kasparkova, A. (in press). How do I cook an Impact Factor article if you do not show me what the ingredients are? Educare. https://ojs.mau.se/index.php/educare
 Kamler, B., & Thomson, P. (2014). Helping Doctoral Students Write (2nd edition). Routledge.
 Kasparkova, A., & Rosolová, K. (2020). A geo-caching game ‘Meet your Editor’ as a teaser for writing courses. 2020 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (ProComm), Kennesaw, GA, USA, 2020, pp. 87-91. https://doi.org/10.1109/ProComm48883.2020.00019
 Kelly, F. J. (2017). The idea of the PhD: The doctorate in the twenty-first-century imagination. Routledge.
 National Training Fund. (2019). Complex study of doctoral studies at Charles University and recommendations to improve the conditions and results. Report for the Charles University Management. Prague.

Peer review fosters student critical thinking and self-evaluation (Wood and Kurzel 2008). Numerous studies show that peer review is effective in improving student writing (Althauser and Darnall 2001, Bean 2011), and that it benefits the students receiving as well as those giving the feedback (van den Berg, Admiraal and Pilot 2006). However, these issues have not been greatly researched in Greece. Greek culture bestows great authority to the teacher and students are not accustomed to peer feedback.I have embarked on a small-scale, exploratory, classroom-based study conducted at Deree - The American College of Greece where English is the medium of instruction. Data include first and revised drafts of three academic writing assignments, written peer comments, and learner reflections on the peer reviewing experience. To further explore student attitudes toward peer review, I also administered an online questionnaire. Initial quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal (a) in general student reviewers and reviewees alike accept peer review as an appropriate pedagogical activity; (b) students revise their writing taking into account peer feedback and (c) as reviewers, students were not more critical in giving feedback when doing peer review anonymously. Preliminary results are interpreted with an understanding of the limitations of the ongoing study.

After working in Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) in the United Kingdom for over thirty years, and completing a doctoral thesis on the subject of lecturers’ perceptions of academic writing in HE (French 2014), it became very clear to me that many students and lecturers (although that is a subject of another paper) experience the processes of producing academic writing in very physical and emotional ways. In this paper, I will be discussing how my students often articulated the intensity and emotional nature of their academic writing experiences using words like ‘fear’, ‘frustration’, ‘outrage’, ‘exhaustion’ and ‘yearning’. This emotion and strength of feeling drew me to consider the relationship between the development of a positive writing identity and the affective domain. Subsequently, in my practice as a tutor in HE, I incorporated the affective domain into my work and seek here to stimulate debate with subject lecturers about how important emotions, even negative emotions like confusion and anxiety, can be to the development of a positive academic writing identity for students. The paper argues that, by using the affective domain as a pedagogic springboard, subject lecturers can formulate more collaborative, supportive and emotionally sensitive communities of writing practice.

Librarians and academic staff suggest a relationship between the quality of references which students use in academic assignments and the marks received. This study tested that assertion by using a citation analysis methodology to assess the quality of bibliographies written by undergraduate nursing students at the University of York.Bibliographies from sixty essays across three modules were analysed, noting the types and quantities of references used and whether references were sourced independently or included in the module’s reading list. Each bibliography was given an overall quality rating: ‘Poor’, ‘Average’ or ‘Good’. This rating was compared with the mark the student was awarded for the essay.Results showed that, whilst students demonstrated the ability to locate items independently, the quality of those items was often poor. Generally, quality of selected sources and bibliographies improved as students progressed through the programme. There was an association between higher quality bibliographies and higher assignment marks.The study concludes that critical thinking skills are vital for nursing students to develop academically, as these skills will be tested within a clinical environment once students have completed their degree. A benefit for students is the conclusion that using higher quality sources results in higher marks.

Improving postgraduate student writing in English is an ongoing concern in the increasingly internationalised UK Higher Education context. Although the importance of feedback for developing academic writing skills is well-established (Hyland and Hyland 2006), there is still much debate about the components of effective feedback. In response to the call for research investigating teachers’ real-world practices in giving feedback in specific contexts (Lee 2014 and 2012), this article presents an initiative to develop students’ abilities to tackle written postgraduate writing (essays and dissertations) through collaborative on-line academic writing courses. The Grounded Theory-inspired study explores student perceptions of the effectiveness of online formative feedback on postgraduate academic writing in order to identify best practices which can contribute to developing skills in providing feedback. The study analyses tutor feedback on student texts and student responses to feedback. We applied categories which emerged from this data and concluded that the students we investigated had responded most positively when a combination of confidence-developing feedback practices were employed. These included both principled corrective language feedback and positive, personalised feedback on academic conventions and practices. This collaboration between academic writing and content specialists continues to provide further opportunities for embedding practices that encourage the development of academic writing skills on one year postgraduate programmes at the University of Edinburgh.

In this article we present a toolbox for dialogic guidance that we use at the Academic Writing Centre at the University of Bergen when guiding students in various stages of the writing process. Our guidance is dialogic which means that we acknowledge that meaning and learning evolve when we interact with one another, when different and divergent voices meet; we let students themselves explore their writing, their writing processes and their texts, and find their own answers, their own solutions and their own ways. We ask open-ended questions, listen, describe and provide tools that meet different needs at different stages of the writing process, instead of judging and ‘diagnosing’ the written texts - and the students - and then proposing a ‘treatment’. Examples of our tools are spontaneous writing, the academic pentagon and the Toulmin model of argumentation. We seek to strengthen the students’ understanding and awareness of their own writing, thereby improving not just the writing at hand, but also the students’ academic writing skills and learning in general, and to develop a reflective and accepting attitude. Our students engage in dialogues with us, the tools we present, with themselves, their texts and their writing, with fellow students, with previous bachelor and master theses, and with the tradition which they are part of.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.