Teaching Academic Writing

reviewed by Neil McBeath, Oman

Neil McBeath served as a uniformed Education Officer in the Royal Air Force of Oman from 1981 to 2005. During that time he gained two Masters degrees and the Omani Distinguished Service Medal. Refusing to renew contract in 2005, he taught for two years with BAE Systems in Saudi Arabia. He has now returned to Oman and is teaching at the Sultan Qaboos University. E-mail:neilmcbeath@yahoo.com

Teaching Academic Writing
Patricia Friedrich (Ed)
Continuum International Publishing
ISBN 978-0-8264-9533-4 pp. 246

This is an important collection of 10 papers, in which the editor has made every effort to be as comprehensive as possible in her coverage of the topic. The book examines History, Disciplines, Pedagogy, Tasks, Feedback, Support, Technology, Diversity, Community and Academic Integrity, making it hard for even the sternest critic to find fault.

Friedrich’s own contribution “’I want to be Part of the Club’; Raising Awareness of Bilingualism and second Language writing among Monolingual Users of English” (pp. 177-191) is written from an American perspective, but raises an international concern. It is a timely reminder that “acceptable” standards of academic discourse are, in fact, the standards fixed by BANA countries in the twentieth century. If those “standards” have become little more than a method of gate-keeping, then it is difficult to argue with Friedrich’s conclusion that “As the world shrinks through globalization, we should pay special attention to our own linguistic communities.” This reviewer is currently peer-reviewing papers from the Sultan Qaboos University 8th English Language Teaching Conference, and several of the contributions would not pass muster if they were the work of undergraduate students.

Academic writing, however, has to be placed in both its historical and disciplinary context, and in this respect, both Knoblauch and Masuda (Pp. 3-25) and Etherington (pp. 26-58) have important insights.

Knoblauch and Masuda, in “First Year Composition in the Twentieth Century US Higher Education; A Historical Overview” indicate that the United States has a tradition of providing writing tuition in “composition”. This could be sub-divided into impersonal writing for a specific audience, as opposed to expressive personal writing for a wider audience. The question now is whether this model ought to be revised, giving way to reading-based programmes of post-modern cultural studies, as opposed to the rhetoric of discourse form and genres.

Sian Etherington “Academic Writing and the Disciplines” would select the latter. She argues that if students are to succeed, then it is crucial that they master discipline-specific discourse. To this end, she suggests that language instructors should both liaise with, and collaborate with, core subject teachers. This is not a new idea. It was suggested by Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998), but Etherington proposes collecting texts, examining the organization and structure of those texts and then examining lexico-grammatical patterns and lexical items. Specific activities are outlined and recommended, and the pasoper concludes with annotated lists of web-based resources, books, journals and further reading on the benefits of collaboration.

Dana R. Ferris (pp. 93-124) on “Feedback; Issues and Options” suggests using a checklist or course rubric to identify specific feedback points, and warns that using jargon can sometimes be completely ineffective. Unfortunately, writing from California State University, she appears to assume that all student writing is now completed on computers, and that electronic feedback can be delivered at the touch of a button. Would it were so!

Against this, she has the courage to admit that some “teachers can actually be abusive to students in their commentary” (P. 109), giving two examples of behaviour that is totally indefensible. She makes the excellent point that even experienced teachers should “regularly evaluate the impact and the effectiveness of their feedback” (p. 115) citing Segade (2004) to support the idea that ineffective feedback is a waste of everybody’s time.

In any review of a collection of papers it is invidious to select specific work, but this collection’s final paper, Diane Pecorari’s “Plagiarism; Patch Writing and Source Use; Best Practice in the Composition Classroom” (pp. 222-241) must be mentioned. Plagiarism is a constant concern in the Arab Gulf, but this reviewer has already pointed out (McBeath, 2004) and Pecorari herself indicates, that there is an enormous difference between deliberate deception and “using language and/or ideas from a source without sufficient attribution.” (p. 224) This latter failing frequently occurs among students who come from cultures which place a high value on rote learning, and among students who genuinely fail to understand academic conventions.

Pecorari suggests that this problem can be addressed by formally teaching students (a) why prototypical plagiarism – straightforward copying – in wrong and (b) how to use sources.

As has been indicated earlier, this is a thought-provoking collection of papers. It manages to be comprehensive without being repetitive and while certain publications receive repeat citations in the bibliographies, this is a very good way of establishing seminal sources. This is a collection that can be recommended to anyone engaged in the teaching of Academic Writing.

References

Dudley-Evans, T. and St. john, M.J. (1998) Developments in English for Specific Purposes; A Multidisciplinary Approach. Cambridge. University Press.

McBeath, N. (2004) Steps towards Solving the Problem of Plagiarism in Student Projects. TESL Reporter 37/2. Pp. 29- 38

Segade, G. (2004). Book review: Response to Student Writing by Dana R. Ferris.
http://writingproject.org/cs/nwpp/lpt/nwpt/1990 (retrieved 10 June 2008)

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