Abstract

The issues of authentic context and authoritative ethos are explored through a study of a graduate student learning to write for mathematics within the context of an English for academic purposes (EAP) course. The student faced conflicts about audience, purpose, and content knowledge as she was required to write math texts within what she perceived was an inauthentic context, an English as a second language (ESL) course. She questioned the purpose of the writing tasks as well as why an ESL instructor was teaching her to write for math, and she addressed the conflicts by writing for the instructor's discourse community and expectations, rather than her own, to earn a grade for the course. The text the student created was thus inauthentic within her own discourse community and lacked her voice of authority. These findings question the validity of EAP courses and raise several issues, especially in terms of the transferability of skills from EAP to content courses.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2000-01-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088300017001002
Open Access
Closed
Topics

Citation Context

Cites in this index (2)

  1. Written Communication
  2. Written Communication
Also cites 9 works outside this index ↓
  1. Survey of academic writing tasks required of graduate and undergraduate foreign students
  2. 10.1016/S0889-4906(96)00029-4
  3. Text, role, and context: Developing academic literacies
  4. 10.2307/3587624
  5. 10.2307/3587199
  6. 10.2307/3587974
  7. 10.1016/S1060-3743(97)90030-8
  8. 10.1093/elt/48.3.197
  9. 10.2307/3587060
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