Student Writing In Higher Education

This is the first book to examine student writing in the context of major changes taking place in today's higher education. For example, students now come to higher education from an increasingly wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, to study in a number of diverse learning environments. Their courses often no longer reflect traditional academic subject boundaries, with their attendant values and norms. there is also an increasing recognition of the importance of lifelong learning, and the necessity for universities to adapt their provision to make it possible for learners to enter and return to higher education at different points in their lives.

This volume aims to raise awareness of the underlying complexities concerning student writing in the universities. The authors address a series of theoretical as well as practical questions regarding the literacies required of students in Higher Education, from the perspective of both students themselves and of their tutors. The research described here intends to move beyond the narrow confines of current policy debates and the quick fix solutions of writing manuals, to explore the epistemological, cultural, historical and theoretical bases of such writing. Issues addressed include the nature of competing epistemologies that underlie the writing process and the varying degrees of explicitness about what academic writing entails; ways of challenging the institutional marginalisation of academic writing as teaching, learning, and research practice; what counts as knowledge and how far it is mediated by the rhetorical conventions of one culture; to what extent the challenging of such rhetorical conventions is itself a crucial epistemological issue. Writing, in this volume, then, is addressed in terms of academic literacy practices involving relations of power, issues of identity and theories of knowledge.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Academic writing is a key practice in higher education and central to international students’ academic success in the country of education. International Student Adaptation to Academic Writing in Higher Education addresses the prominent forms of adaptation emerging from international students’ journey to mediate between disciplinary practices, cultural norms and personal desires in meaning making. It introduces new concepts that present different patterns of international student adaptation including surface adaptation, committed adaptation, reverse adaptation and hybrid adaptation. Drawing on these concepts of adaptation, this book provides readers with new and deeper insights into the complex nature of international students’ adjustment to host institutions. It works through many unresolved issues related to cross-border students’ intellectual, cultural, linguistic and personal negotiations. This book presents a trans-disciplinary framework for conceptualising international students’ and lecturers’ practices within the institutional structure. This framework has been developed by drawing on a modified version of Lillis’ heuristic of talk around text and positioning theory. The framework enables an exploration of not only the reasons underpinning international students’ specific ways of meaning making, but also their potential choices in constructing knowledge. A distinctive contribution of the book is the development of a dialogical pedagogic model for mutual adaptation between international students and academics rather than the onus being on exclusive adaptation from the students. Existing research on international education indicates the significance of reciprocal adaptation between international students and academics. Yet very little has been done to conceptualise what mutual adaptation means and what is involved in this process. The dialogical model introduced in this book offers concrete steps towards developing reciprocal adaptation of international students and academics within the overarching institutional realities of the university. It can be used as a tool to enhance the education of international students in this increasingly internationalised environment. This book is a significant contribution to the field of international education. It takes a critical stance on contemporary views of globally mobile students. The insights into international students’ voices, hidden intentions and their potential choices in meaning making presented in this book will attract dialogues about the critical issues related to inclusive practices, internationalised curriculum and institutional responses to the diverse needs of international students.

Student Writing presents an accessible and thought-provoking study of academic writing practices. Informed by 'composition' research from the US and 'academic literacies studies' from the UK, the book challenges current official discourse on writing as a 'skill'. Lillis argues for an approach which sees student writing as social practice. The book draws extensively on a three-year study with ten non-traditional students in higher education and their experience of academic writing. Using case study material - including literacy history interviews, extended discussions with students about their writing of discipline specific essays, and extracts from essays - Lillis identifies the following as three significant dimensions to academic writing: * Access to higher education and to its language and literacy representational resources * Regulation of meaning making in academic writing * Desire for participation in higher education and for choices over ways of meaning in academic writing. Student Writing: access, regulation, desire raises questions about why academics write as they do, who benefits from such writing, which meanings are valued and how, on what terms 'outsiders' get to be 'insiders' and at what costs.