Assessing Writing Oct 2018 Open Access

The BAWE corpus and genre families classification of assessed student writing

Hilary Nesi Coventry University ; Sheena Gardner Coventry University

Abstract

The British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus (www.coventry.ac.uk/BAWE) comprises almost 3,000 pieces of university student writing distributed across four domains (Arts & Humanities, Life Sciences, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences) and four levels of study (from first year undergraduate to taught Master's level). The texts had all been submitted as part of regular university coursework, and had been awarded top grades, indicating that they had met disciplinary requirements in terms of level and task. The corpus was compiled to enable identification of the linguistic and generic features associated with successful university student writing. Our detailed analyses of the corpus led to the identification of thirteen genre families, and supports the premises that university students write in a wider variety of genres than is commonly recognised, and that student writing differs across genres, disciplines and levels of university study. This review introduces the BAWE corpus and the associated genre family classification, then explains how they can be accessed and used for teaching and research purposes, how they have been used to deepen our understanding of academic writing in English, and where

Journal
Assessing Writing
Published
2018-10-01
DOI
10.1016/j.asw.2018.06.005
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Topics
modern rhetorical theory genre theory teacher development
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

  1. DeJeu (2024)
    Topoi of Nonprofit Proposal Writing
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
  2. Black (2022)
    Variation in Linguistic Stance: A Person-Centered Analysis of Student Writing
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  3. Zheng et al. (2019)
    What has been assessed in writing and how? Empirical evidence from Assessing Wr…
    Assessing Writing

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CrossRef global citation count: 17 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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