For undergraduates following any course of study, it is essential to develop the ability to write effectively. Yet the processes by which students become more capable and ready to meet the challenges of writing for employers, the wider public, and their own purposes remain largely invisible. Developing Writers in Higher Education shows how learning to write for various purposes in multiple disciplines leads college students to new levels of competence. This volume draws on an in-depth study of the writing and experiences of 169 University of Michigan undergraduates, using statistical analysis of 322 surveys, qualitative analysis of 131 interviews, use of corpus linguistics on 94 electronic portfolios and 2,406 pieces of student writing, and case studies of individual students to trace the multiple paths taken by student writers. Topics include student writers’ interaction with feedback; perceptions of genre; the role of disciplinary writing; generality and certainty in student writing; students’ concepts of voice and style; students’ understanding of multimodal and digital writing; high school’s influence on college writers; and writing development after college. The digital edition offers samples of student writing, electronic portfolios produced by student writers, transcripts of interviews with students, and explanations of some of the analysis conducted by the contributors. This is an important book for researchers and graduate students in multiple fields. Those in writing studies get an overview of other longitudinal studies as well as key questions currently circulating. For linguists, it demonstrates how corpus linguistics can inform writing studies. Scholars in higher education will gain a new perspective on college student development. The book also adds to current understandings of sociocultural theories of literacy and offers prospective teachers insights into how students learn to write. Finally, for high school teachers, this volume will answer questions about college writing. Companion Website Click here to access the Developing Writers project and its findings at the interactive companion website. Project Data Access the data from the project through this tutorial.

This book takes a fresh look at what it means to learn and develop as a writer in response to concerns on both sides of the Atlantic, and elsewhere in the world, about standards in writing. In this book, the authors seek answers to some perennial questions: Why does performance in writing tend to lag behind that in reading? Are the productive skills of speaking and writing more difficult because they require the learner to make something new? What does it mean to develop as a writer? This book provides the foundation for developing the teaching of writing. It does so by: Reviewing and comparing models of writing pedagogy from the last fifty years Discussing the notion of development in depth Developing a new theory and model for writing in the multimodal and digital age Its basic premise is that writing needs to be re-conceived as one crucial component of communication among other modes. Andrews and Smith argue that although existing theories have provided insights into the teaching and learning of writing, we need to bring such theories up to date in the digital and multimodal age. Developing Writers is designed for teachers, academics, researchers, curriculum designers, parents and others who are interested in writing development. It will also be intended for anyone who is interested in developing their own writing, and who wishes to understand the principles on which such development is based. Continue the conversation at www.developingwriters.org.

Drawing on writing research, the book takes into account recent developments such as the increasing diversity of the student body, the use of the Internet, electronic tuition and issues surrounding globalisation.

It is now held that writing influences and is influenced by the discipline where it occurs. The representations that writers employ to produce and comprehend texts are said to be sensitive to the specificities of their disciplinary discourse communities. This exposes writers to divergent disciplinary demands and expectations on what counts as good and appropriate writing in terms of generic structure, discourse features, and stylistic preferences, reflecting dissimilar practices. Because of such exigencies, academic writing seems at times to be very challenging, especially for novice scholars. Thus, any attempt to perceive the function of academic writing in higher education or to evaluate its quality should not discard the shaping force of the disciplines. Teaching Academic Writing as a Discipline-Specific Skill in Higher Education is a critical scholarly resource that examines the role of writing within academic circles and the disciplinary practices of writing in scholastic environments. The book will also explore the particular difficulties that confront writers in the disciplines as well as the endeavors of educational institutions to develop discipline-specific writing traditions among practicing and novice scholars. Featuring a range of topics such as blended learning, data interpretation, and knowledge construction, this book is essential for instructors, academicians, administrators, professors, researchers, and students.

Genres across the Disciplines presents cutting edge, corpus-based research into student writing in higher education. Genres across the Disciplines is essential reading for those involved in syllabus and materials design for the development of writing in higher education, as well as for those investigating EAP. The book explores creativity and the use of metaphor as students work towards becoming experts in the genres of their discipline. Grounded in the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus, the text is rich with authentic examples of assignment tasks, macrostructures, concordances and keywords. Also available separately as a paperback.

This book develops academic writing in higher education. Viewing writing as a complex sociocultural act, it analyses key issues in writing environments and their impact on student writing. Drawing on research, practice and the existing body of knowledge, it also offers practical writing activities that can be used with students in the disciplines.

Student writing has long been viewed as a problem in higher education in the UK. Moreover, the sector has consistently performed poorly in the National Student Survey with regard to assessment and feedback. Academics Engaging with Student Writing tackles these major issues from a new and unique angle, exploring the real-life experiences of academic teachers from different institutions as they set, support, read, respond to and assess assignments undertaken by undergraduate students. Incorporating evidence from post-1992 universities, Oxbridge, members of the Russell Group and others, this book examines working practices around student writing within the context of an increasingly market-oriented mass higher education system. Presenting a wealth of relevant examples from disciplines as diverse as History and Sports Science, Tuck makes extensive use of interviews, observations, texts and audio recordings in order to explore the perspectives of academic teachers who work with student writers and their texts. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of academic literacies, higher education, language and literacy, language in higher education, English for academic purposes and assessment. Furthermore, academic teachers with experience of this crucial aspect of academic labour will welcome Tuck’s pioneering work as an indispensable tool for making sense of their own engagement with student writers.

This book brings together a variety of voices – students and teachers, journal editors and authors, writers from the global north and south – to interrogate the notion of risk as it applies to the production of academic writing. Risk-taking is viewed as a productive force in teaching, learning and writing, and one that can be used to challenge the silences and erasures inherent in academic tradition and convention. Widening participation and the internationalisation of higher education make questions of language, register, agency and identity in postgraduate writing all the more pressing, and this book offers a powerful argument against the further reinforcement of a ‘northern’ Anglophone understanding of knowledge and its production and dissemination. This volume will provide food-for-thought for postgraduate students and their supervisors everywhere.

To fulfill their academic purposes in higher education, students must mobilize knowledge learned in the classroom, but also obtained individually and with access to a variety of sources, in particular, the information resources available in their libraries. To achieve an academic degree as master or doctor, information resources grow in importance and meaning, since because from them a great part of the theoretical and methodological support is obtained for the pursuit of this purpose. The validation of their learning is carried out in large part by the written presentation of these academic works. The book reflects on the importance of academic writing and presents methods and techniques for writing in a grounded manner. The contributions that make up the book Improving the Academic Writing Experience in Higher Education aim to bring ideas and share experiences, broaden horizons and shed some light on the landscape of academic writing. The different formulations, perspectives, and approaches are divided into two parts: the first one with a conceptual point of view, explaining the importance of the development of academic writing within the university and theorizing about the transformative impact of this practice on the higher education' student. The second one seeks to bring a more practical, diversified and comprehensive contribution to the thematic and to respond to the challenge of professionals related to the area - particularly those involved in higher education libraries, but not only - and who work with the transformation of information into knowledge. Through concrete tips for writing appropriately in a university context, the focus is on how and why to write well. The challenge that mobilized the achievement of this book was to encourage better learning and academic success, through awareness of a concrete action of teachers, students, and librarians who, in higher education, develop their activities in support of academic writing. We hope, therefore, that this will be a catalyst for renewed learning around this subject.

This is the comprehensively revised second edition of a popular professional book on textbook writing and finding one's way in the higher education publishing world--for academic authors and editors, college instructors, and instructional designers. The second edition has two new chapters on the latest industry trends--such as the pricing revolt, open access movement, and wiki-textbook phenomenon, and on the use of learning objectives to structure textbook package development. Every chapter features new sections, links, forms, models, or examples from an even greater range of college courses. Contains updated and expanded appendices, glossary entries, references, bibliography entries, and index. BISAC: Language Arts & Disciplines/Authorship and Publishing