Approach writing

Academe, 2018

This article claims that learners of academic writing should consider the genre and how certain structures are constructed in that genre, specifically arguments. Arguments in the genre of academic writing in the humanities are explicated through their structure and by their location in the academic article. The structural components are identified in arguments, including some excerpted from published academic papers. The grammar and style of the components is also explained. Additionally, this article demonstrates how argument structures may vary depending on the different sections of the article where they are located. Lastly, this article provides a set of recommendations for writing arguments. The recommendations are intended as a guideline rather than a strict set of instructions.

Abstract This thesis is concerned with the quality of argument in lengthy academic texts. The aim of the research reported in this thesis is to better understand the ways arguments in undergraduate dissertations are constructed through the employment of a range of linguistic resources. It investigates two dissertations written by student writers who, while from very different linguistic background and educational contexts, are both neophyte participants in an increasingly global higher education market. In this research, argument refers to “a mode of thinking and composition or ‘metagenre’” (Andrews, 2005), by which undergraduate student writers create and organise meanings in the dissertations. The research is particularly interested in the textual and the interpersonal zones in academic texts where novice writers must learn in constructing effective arguments that embody the organisation of the texts as unified whole, the staging of meanings to achieve texts’ communicative purposes, and the enactment of the writers’ engagement with others in the literature as they take up their positions in the discourse community. The research is underpinned primarily by comprehensive theoretical frameworks of the model of “language as social semiotic” (SFL) (Halliday, 1994, 2004). Particularly, the research draws on the Periodicity framework (Halliday, 1985b; Martin & Rose, 2007), the genre theories (Swales, 1990; Martin, 1992; Martin & Rose, 2008), and the Appraisal framework (Martin, 2000a; Martin & White, 2005) to conduct in-depth linguistic analyses on the linguistic resources utilised to construct the arguments, focusing on three-key text features: Periodicity, genre and Engagement. A complementary theory of the model of “the layout of argument” by Toulmin (1958, 2003) is utilised to assess the organisation of the elements of arguments laid out across stretches of the dissertations. This research is descriptive in nature; in which, the in-depth linguistic analysis is conducted to investigate the phenomena emerging in both texts with a view to noticing the similarities and differences in the ways the two student writers manage these tasks. It analyses an Honours dissertation from an Australian university and a dissertation written by an Indonesian student writer studying English as a foreign language (EFL) in an English department at an Indonesian university. Three-stage analyses are conducted in the top-down manner suggested by the three-key text features. Firstly, Periodicity analysis explores each dissertation to see how each student writer organises meanings as unified whole hierarchically and construct the macro-argument effectively. Secondly, genre analysis examines three selected chapters from each dissertation to see how writers stage meanings to achieve their communicative purposes in the meso-level of argument. Thirdly, analysis on Engagement in the sentence level (i.e. micro-level of argument) is conducted to samples from each text those that potentially show how the writers engage with readers and other writers in the field. The research uncovers that the two writers employ linguistic resources to organise meanings to construct arguments in both similar and different ways. The Periodicity analysis reveals that both writers structure their texts at the macro-level of arguments according to conventional ways of organising dissertations. This suggests commonality in modelling practices across the students’ institutions. However, genre analysis and Appraisal analysis show important differences that emerged in how students structure their texts at the meso-level (at chapter, section and paragraph levels), and in how the writers accomplish negotiation by their employment of evaluative language at the micro-level of sentence and below. The arguments within these levels are differently organised that might influence their soundness (quality). These practices indicate the dissimilarities the way each discourse community employs linguistic resources in academic setting, and the academic discourse practices within communities where each student writer participated in. The thesis contributes to the understanding of how arguments are constructed across lengthy texts through (i) choices in the ways meanings are hierarchically organised at various levels of texts, and (ii) in the ways meanings are staged to achieve the texts’ communicative purposes, together with (iii) how writers engage with others in respect to other voices in the discourse within the academic context. The research extends existing explanations of text development and its relations to genre staging. This staging is verified by the evaluative linguistic analysis in which the staging is signposted. Pedagogically, the findings of the research contribute to the advancement of the teaching of argument in academic genre in EFL educational context. More specifically, a more nuanced approach to pedagogy is necessary in the Indonesian tertiary context.

2010

This report presents the results of classroom research designed to measure whether and to what extent instruction on how to write an argument in English resulted in improved ability of university students to write such a genre. Improvement was measured through a pre-test/post-test design. Some problems with such a research design are discussed. The results show that the majority of students improved in their displayed ability to write an argument in English.

American Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2019

Past studies have reported varying reasons for difficulties in academic writing. There have been reported studies revealing academic writing problems stem from lack of background knowledge in the content area. Some studies reported that some writer have to deal with their fear of writing. One of the major problems in writing is not lack of linguistic competence of the writer. The source of difficulty is the lack of competence in composing. Recall the way we were taught writing- we spent much time thinking of “what” to write” but when it comes to the process of writing, we are alone. This qualitative study looks into the problems that writers face in their composing process. Three writers comprising of one undergraduate, one postgraduate (masters) and one postgraduate (doctorate) were asked about what their writing problems were. Data will be coded into specific categories to reveal different categories of difficulty faced by these writers. Findings bear interesting pedagogical implications to both teachers of writing and writers.

2017

Most scholars have studied written discourse both in academic and professional setting within the scope of genre-based analysis, which demonstrate an increase interest in analysing the rhetorical structure of written texts. Conversely, there is a dearth of research in Malaysia that explains the rhetorical structure of argumentative essays from a genre analysis perspective. This paper introduces a genre-based corpus analysis using a compiled representative corpus of the argumentative essay for developing a rhetorical structure, also known as , an analytical framework to enhance the students’ writing skills. The compiled representative corpus was consisted of 24 argumentative essays. As a qualitative study, a corpus–based analysis is employed to explore the distinguished move patterns used in the argumentative essays. Using Hyland’s (1990) 11 move pattern as an analytical framework of the argumentative essay, this study revealed a list of moves and steps which were signaled by the ...

Journal of General Education and Humanities, 2022

Universities have placed academic writing skills as valuable skills for university students; some universities have compulsory modules for undergraduates, and some have dedicated writing centers for students to seek assistance in composing academic writing. Without a doubt, writing in English, particularly for those whose first language is not English, is considered a complex and challenging skill to master. In addition, academic writing is even more complex, as an essential element of academic writing is the inclusion of claims and opinions. Therefore, the struggle observed is that students cannot voice their opinions in a formal writing context, which perhaps resulted in the structure of the written piece not being coherent and cohesive as per the standard of academic writing. In order to achieve its aim, this study will use a phenomenographic research approach to investigate the undergraduate"s conceptions of academic writing. A phenomenography approach is used in this study because students" experience composing academic writing would be the focus, and the research object would look at the variation in ways of experiencing such phenomena. The study relates to learners from various faculties at the University with a common ground of their English language proficiency that is used to gain entry to the University.

Writing has become one of important skills in English language acquistion since a long time ago. Without leaving aside the importance of using active English to communicate, the passive one also plays important role to convey the message. Writing, as a way to explore our passive English is not merely intended to describe any topic without purposes. In this case, writing is a progressive activity. Oshima and Hogue (1997:2) explain the meaning of progressive in writing is when we want to start the first step to write about a certain topic, actually we have already known what we are going to write and how we explore it. After that, we read over our writing than we will do some corrections and also changes. In short, in order to have a better writing we should never stop only in one step. The more particular and specific urgency in writing is how to make our writing academic. This is what the most college students face in their writing tasks such as essays and final projects which become the requirement for them to finish their study in a university. In fact, academic writing is not as easy as the students think that they will just ask to write a passage freely. In this case, academic writing gives full description and complete guidance on how to make their writing sounds academic. So that is what the researcher tried to explained to the readers especially for students who need to shape their ability to in doing such academic writing.

Journal of Academic Writing, 2018

The 9th conference of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW) was held in subtropical conditions from 19th-21st June 2017 in Egham, UK. More than 400 participants from over 40 countries gathered at Royal Holloway, University of London to deliberate 'what teachers of academic writing can offer the global academy in terms of imaginative, creative and principled responses to the increasingly international, diverse and marketised reality of higher education' (EATAW 2017). As two of the co-organisers of the conference, and guest editors of this special issue, we want to thank our colleagues in the Centre for the Development of Academic Skills and other supporting departments at Royal Holloway for the assistance and hard work that a conference of this scale required. We are also grateful for the guidance of the EATAW board and the planning committee of the 2015 conference. Lisa Ganobscik-Williams and George Ttoouli are due our deep gratitude for their expert guidance, patient understanding and timely responses, despite the competing pressures and multiple responsibilities that both they and we have experienced. Many thanks go to all those who acted as reviewers, and of course to the contributors, who offered so many compelling and thought-provoking contributions and were responsive and timely throughout the review, revision and proofreading process. The conference theme, 'Academic Writing Now: Pedagogy, Policy and Practice', was intended to generate contributions articulating a response to the shifting realities of Higher Education at the levels of policy, pedagogy and practice. The call for proposals was enthusiastically received, and the conference included 168 contributions in the form of 116 paper presentations, 8 symposia, 15 workshops, 20 poster presentations and 9 Lightning Talks. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the themes most represented were pedagogy and practice, with some very insightful contributions on policy. Our three keynote speakers offered challenging perspectives on each of these three themes; their talks will be available on the EATAW 2017 website until autumn 2019, for those who wish to revisit them. 1 EATAW 2017 Keynote Speeches Prof. Rowena Murray launched the conference with the recognition of the expertise that our profession offers to the academy, and acknowledged the difficulties inherent in having a voice in policy. She posited the 'retreat' model that she and others have developed for academic writing as a possible means of disengaging from everyday activities to create space for policywriting. However, her problematisation of the various modes of disengagement that writers seek in order to prioritise writing not only articulated the scope of the challenge, but also identified a accessed here.

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2012

Af ter one last look, Caleb (all names are pseudonyms) uploaded his paper comparing the economic systems of two neighboring countries, one a democracy, the other a kingdom. He was certain he had captured the essence of academic writing for this assignment in his social studies course. When asked what made his paper a good example of writing for an academic audience, Caleb explained that he had avoided the use of first person, checked spelling for errors, and followed the format prescribed by his teacher. His operational definition of academic writing had emphasized his attention to surface structures. He thought he knew exactly what his teacher wanted, but she was looking, instead, for evidence of deep connections with content through academic discourse. This misinterpretation is not uncommon. Awareness of the discrepancies between teacher expectations and student perceptions of academic writing can help teachers formulate an approach to student writing. Academic writing is a window into what students can do in the larger domain of academic discourse within disciplinary communities. In many ways, Caleb explored content in the important ways his teacher intended; however, his view of what was expected differed markedly from his teacher's. He is, after all, a novice in a secondary school (Heller, 2010) who has a ways to go in developing disciplinary expertise. Teachers often have well-defined perceptions of what content knowledge is and how that knowledge should be conveyed. Sometimes these perceptions are tacit and hard to define without sustained discussion, because they represent one's beliefs about linguistics, pedagogy, culture, and command of specific disciplinary knowledge and language. How students navigate academic discourse is evident in their written and oral classroom work. Realizing this, we wondered if students and teachers viewed academic discourse in the same ways. This inquiry focuses on students' and teachers' perceptions of written discourse in science, social studies, and English language arts in 10th grade. "Why do we have to do this?" Students often ask this question about written work. Let's be sure we teach them worthwhile skills.