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Contents
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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- Genres across the Disciplines
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Acknowledgements
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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7 - Writing for oneself and others
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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Summary
Some futurists and radical thinkers consider that the concepts of ‘qualifications’ and ‘professions’ may become obsolete. Instead, people will continually build their own personal portfolios of learning and development and access other learning in an open way on the internet. Each person will have a learning plan and ‘qualifications’ will become incidental markers along the way for those who need them.
(The Higher Education Academy, 2005)The kinds of assignment considered in this chapter enable students to monitor their own development or practise communicating with a readership beyond their own field. Narrative Recounts narrate a series of fictional or factual events. Empathy Writing, a term coined by Lea and Street (2000: 39), mimics non-academic genres ostensibly intended for non-experts.
If Explanations and Exercises (Chapter 3) and Problem Questions (Chapter 6) lie at one end of the convergent–divergent scale, many Empathy Writing and Narrative Recount tasks lie at the other. Explanations, Exercises and Problem Questions are favoured for examination papers because they can be objectively assessed for facts, procedures and logic, but Narrative Recounts and Empathy Writing often require greater creative effort on the part of the writer, and this can only be assessed with a certain amount of subjectivity. Moreover it may be unclear to both the writer and the assessor whether an Empathy Writing text which is effective on its own terms, for example for its potential appeal to the hypothetical reader, should be penalised if it fails to meet some more standard departmental criterion, for example regarding the referencing of sources. Problems with assessment may explain why some of the Empathy Writing and Narrative Recount genres in our corpus were written as part of multi-genre compound assignments, and accompany Case Studies, Essays, Explanations, Methodology Recounts, Problem Questions and Proposals. The assignment task required that they should be included, but it may have had little impact on the assignment’s overall grade.
Like the writing in the other genre families we have discussed in this book, Empathy Writing and Narrative Recounts demonstrate knowledge of the field of study, critical thinking, and the ability to apply appropriate methods of enquiry. In many cases they also showcase the employability skills demonstrated in the apprenticeship genres (see Chapter 6). These accomplishments are not displayed as part of an overt attempt to convince the reader of the writer’s expertise or good judgement, however.
5 - Developing research skills
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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Summary
Typically holders of an honours degree will be able to apply the methods and techniques that they have learned to review, consolidate, extend and apply their knowledge and understanding, and to initiate and carry out projects.
(QAA, 2008: 19)For some students the aim of demonstrating ‘an ability to deploy accurately established techniques of analysis and enquiry within a discipline’ (QAA, 2008: 18) involves developing arguments as in Essay genres, whereas for others greater emphasis is placed on conducting empirical studies, on solving practical problems, and on the ability to ‘apply the methods and techniques that they have learned to review, consolidate, extend and apply their knowledge and understanding, and to initiate and carry out projects’ (QAA, 2008: 19). This chapter focuses on ways in which students prepare for and demonstrate their abilities to initiate and carry out projects in their respective disciplines, with specific reference to the genre families of Research Reports, Literature Surveys and Methodology Recounts.
Developing Research Skills
Perhaps because there is an abundance of professional research writing available to students, less attention has been paid to training students to write research reports than to write essays. Published literary essays by Hazlitt, Montaigne, Will Self or other essayists bear little resemblance to student essays in purpose or nature. This, together with the quantities of essays written, the fact that students seldom see other people’s essays, and the wide distribution of essays across the academy, helps to explain why textbooks for developing student writing focus on essays (Tribble, 2009). In contrast, examples of research articles are readily available in academic journals, and there has been a productive line of inquiry in Applied Linguistics that analyses reported research that broadly follows the Introduction–Methodology–Results–Discussion (IMRD) framework (e.g., Swales, 1990; Lewin, Fine and Young, 2001). Students across the Sciences in particular are expected to read such professional research reports published in academic journals. In some cases journal articles are presented as models for student writing, and assignments from disciplines, such as Biology and Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Management, appear in the guise of journal articles with volume and page numbers, acknowledgements, keywords and formatting such as double columns and fonts associated with published work in their disciplines.
As a Physics lecturer explained, ‘We’re trying to get them to write like a scientific paper, as would be published in a scientific journal, but for an audience of their peers’.
Index
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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8 - Networks across genres and disciplines
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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Summary
In this book we have described the linguistic features and the social purposes of assignments produced by university students. Our descriptions have identified different genres within 13 genre families, and have indicated the central stages through which these genres unfold across and within specific disciplines. In this final chapter we will consider the methodologies we have used, and review our major findings in relation to the broad social purposes of student writing, to genre families, genre networks and registers. We will then identify some of the ways in which these findings can be applied to the teaching and assessment of academic writing. The chapter concludes with suggestions for further research, both in the UK and internationally, and information about how to access the BAWE corpus and related resources.
Our Location Among Research on Student Writing
The landscape of research on university student writing is broad and diverse. In this section we identify where the contribution of this book is located in relation to other research in this area, which we view as complementary and mutually beneficial.
Our aim has been to develop a classification of university writing, and in this respect our research is similar to research that examines university writing tasks. Studies of university writing tasks are motivated by the desire to improve the relevance of university entrance examinations or programme syllabuses; they draw on questionnaire or interview data using university teachers as informants (Jackson, Meyer and Parkinson, 2006; Rosenfeld, Courtney and Fowles, 2004) and / or they refer to course documentation, such as assessment plans, module descriptors and assignment rubrics (Carter, 2007; Cooper and Bikowski, 2007; Gillett and Hammond, 2009; Hale et al., 1996; Melzer, 2009; Moore and Morton, 2005; Zhu, 2004). They usually result in classifications of task types, together with hypotheses about the writing students might produce in response to these tasks. Our research has also drawn on interview data and course documentation to develop our concepts of the social purposes of genres, but importantly our main focus has been on examining and classifying the writing students produce, rather than the tasks university teachers set.
Our classification has been shaped by the broad social purposes that we have identified: demonstrating knowledge and understanding (Chapter 3), developing evaluation and argumentation (Chapter 4), conducting independent research (Chapter 5), preparing for professional practice (Chapter 6) and writing for oneself and others (Chapter 7).
6 - Preparing for professional practice
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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Summary
A graduate will have ‘qualities and transferable skills necessary for employment requiring: the exercise of initiative and personal responsibility; decision-making in complex and unpredictable contexts; and the learning ability needed to undertake appropriate further training of a professional or equivalent nature.’
(QAA, 2001: Annex 1)The framework for higher education qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland states that university students must develop skills that are of value to employers, including the ability to act on their own initiative and make decisions. These requirements are relevant to all disciplines, and are particularly important in disciplines where the degree qualification is recognised by a professional body. This chapter will look at assignments that help students develop decision-making skills, and start to write more like professionals in their chosen fields. These assignments mostly belong in the Problem Question, Proposal, Design Specification and Case Study genre families. Following Spafford et al. (2006) we will refer to them as ‘apprenticeship genres’.
The Requirements of Professional Bodies
Many British university programmes are eligible for accreditation by what is known as a Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Body (PSRB). In some disciplines, such as Medicine, accreditation is essential, whereas in others, such as the Engineering disciplines, it can confer partial exemption from professional qualifications. Eligible departments generally regard accreditation as a worthwhile activity because it provides a means of quality assurance and enhances the employability of their graduates, for example by improving their prospects of practising their profession overseas.
Because of the benefits of accreditation, many university departments develop their programmes and curricula in close collaboration with PSRB members, although there may be some concern amongst lecturers about the need to balance the PSRB focus on practical professional skills against the academic requirements of a university education (LTS, 2007). PSRBs issue guidelines regarding course content, with an emphasis on the student’s future working life outside the university. The academic accreditation guidelines developed by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (2009), for example, emphasise the need to ‘establish the relevance of engineering to real world problems’, and the Chartered Institute for IT, or BCS (2007), requires that their accredited programmes should be ‘influenced by research, industry and market requirements’.
Frontmatter
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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4 - Developing powers of informed and independent reasoning
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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Summary
[A]ssumptions of rationality . . . underpin the processes of higher education. . . .. Graduates . . . are expected to be able to ‘think’ creatively and imaginatively about their discipline but also . . .to be able to apply that creativity to different contexts. Learning to argue, then, could be seen to be a central purpose and activity of attendance at the university.
(Andrews, 2000: 5)In Chapter 3 we examined the importance of developing disciplinary knowledge, and how arguments at university build on such understandings (Section 3.5). We start this chapter with an exploration of expectations of evaluation and argumentation from different perspectives. In Section 4.2 we introduce the six genres in the Critique genre family and the six genres in the Essay genre family. We then focus on shared and contrasting genre features found in introductions, headings and hyperNews. These give us a sense of the organisation and stages of Critiques and Essays. In Section 4.3 we explore disciplinary variation through moves involving the use of first person I and IF–THEN reasoning. In the final section (4.4), we review the basic statistics and multidimensional analysis of Critiques and Essays, then explore keywords in the two genre families, and conclude with a focus on disciplinary variation in the language of Essays, the most populated genre family in the BAWE corpus.
Critical Evaluation and Argumentation
Independent reasoning is developed through critical evaluation and the devising of sustained arguments, which we suggest are semiotically rather distinct processes. They involve the construal of knowledge and understanding in support of a critical appraisal or of a position on an issue. Such links between understanding, argumentation and evaluation are echoed in the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) frameworks for England, Wales and Northern Ireland:
Bachelor’s degrees with honours are awarded to students who have demonstrated
• conceptual understanding that enables the student to devise and sustain arguments, . . . and comment upon particular aspects of current research, or equivalent advanced scholarship, in the discipline
. . .
Typically [BA Hons] holders will be able to: . . . critically evaluate arguments, assumptions, abstract concepts and data . . .
(QAA, 2001/2008: 18–19, emphasis added by authors)As we explained in Section 3.5, there is an assumption that conceptual understanding (such as that displayed in Explanation genres) is inextricably linked to ‘devising and sustaining arguments’ as well as ‘evaluating current research, concepts and data’.
Genres across the Disciplines
- Student Writing in Higher Education
- Hilary Nesi, Sheena Gardner, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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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.
Abbreviations
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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- Genres across the Disciplines
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3 - Demonstrating knowledge and understanding
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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Summary
A . . . graduate will have developed an understanding of a complex body of knowledge . . .
(Quality Assurance Agency 2001: Executive Summary)One central function of university education is to enable students to develop current and specialised academic knowledge in particular disciplines. This chapter begins by exploring what this means for assessed writing (3.1) and continues with an examination of the two genre families which foreground this function of demonstrating knowledge and understanding: Explanations and Exercises (3.2). The Explanation and Exercise genres are described in more detail as they vary across disciplines and levels of study in Sections 3.3 and 3.4 respectively. As developing knowledge and understanding is an important concern across much academic writing beyond the Explanation and Exercise genre families considered here, Section 3.5 previews the role developing knowledge and understanding plays in other genre families. The chapter concludes with an analysis of keywords and word clusters used in Explanations in student assignment writing.
Developing Coherent and Detailed Knowledge
A fundamental criterion for any university degree relates to the expectation that students will demonstrate ‘a systematic understanding of key aspects of their field of study, including acquisition of coherent and detailed knowledge, at least some of which is at, or informed by, the forefront of defined aspects of a discipline’ (Quality Assurance Agency [QAA], 2001: Annex 1). This is the first criterion listed in the framework for higher education qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (QAA, 2001; 2008), and similar criteria are found internationally. Students demonstrate such current and specialised understanding and knowledge in most if not all assignments, but this demonstration is the central purpose of assignment texts in the Explanation genre family.
Our interviews with lecturers point to the role explanation holds in student writing:
An ‘essay’ [in Biology] is written to a title, for example: ‘How is the vertebrate limb patterned?’ It is an exercise in learning about a certain area of science. The student must understand the current state of knowledge and how it was acquired, and be able to explain it. In year 1 you can find everything you need to know from the textbook.
(Biology lecturer)
2 - Families of genres of assessed writing
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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Summary
Genres are abstract, socially recognised ways of using language.
(Hyland, 2002a: 114)Hyland’s definition of genres as ‘abstract, socially recognised ways of using language’ is general enough to be widely acceptable, but as such it masks significant differences in how genres are more specifically defined and operationalised in research and teaching contexts. This chapter explains what we mean by academic genres, and how we classify genres of assessed student writing into groups of similar genres, called genre families.
We begin with a fabricated scenario which raises some of the methodological issues involved in investigating student writing. This is followed by an overview of distinctions and concepts needed to conduct such a study (assignments, texts, genres, academic writing, genre family, social purpose, staging and register).
Our thirteen genre families with their purposes and stages are presented in Section 2.2. They are grouped according to five broad social functions of student writing, each of which is explored in more detail in a subsequent chapter (Chapters 3 to 7).
Differences in register are highlighted in Section 2.3 through the typical clusters of lexical and grammatical features identified by the multidimensional analysis for each of the thirteen genre families. For example, the language of Proposal genres is more persuasive than the language of Literature Survey genres, but both have highly informational registers when compared to argumentative Essay genres.
Section 2.4 maps out the distribution of the genre families across the four university levels (first year to taught Masters) and across four disciplinary groups of study. This provides a broad picture of assignment genres across the academy.
Investigating Student Writing: A Scenario
If you ask a student in Sociology, or in Engineering, what is involved in writing assignments in their discipline, they will soon start to explain that there are different types of writing – essays, research proposals, reports, projects and more – and that each of these has a different function; each relates differently to research or practical work being done and to reading and lectures in the discipline; and so each is organised differently. You will also begin to realise that when a Sociology student talks about a ‘report’ or a ‘project’ or a ‘case study’, they may well be describing a rather different type of assignment than that referred to by an Engineering student who uses the same labels.
Part I - Investigating Student Writing: From Corpus to Genre Family
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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Part II - Social Functions of University Student Writing
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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1 - Investigating student writing with the BAWE corpus
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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Summary
The book draws on the findings of a four-year study to investigate genres of student writing in higher education. It provides an overview of the kind of writing British university students produce, showing the similarities and differences between writing assignments at different levels and across a range of disciplines. This information will be useful to researchers analysing the discourse of academic writing, to academics concerned with developing writing tasks at university level and to teachers who provide academic writing support to students, whether this is within the context of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) or in writing centres which largely cater for native speakers of English.
The book proposes a system of describing and distinguishing between different types of tertiary-level writing task. We identify and describe thirteen major types of assignment, each of which has a unique purpose and structure, but which is also subject to some variation in response to disciplinary requirements. Readers who devise academic writing tasks can use our descriptions of these assignment types as templates or as a stimulus for thought about the purpose and structure of the writing they expect their students to produce. Our descriptions may help them to distinguish between the different requirements of different writing tasks, and may also help them to make these distinctions clear to their students. Additionally, the descriptions can serve as a reference for writing teachers who are guiding their students towards more appropriate stylistic and organisational choices. The book describes the discourse features of successful assignments in terms of their underlying communicative purpose; successful assignments are those which achieve the intended purpose of the writing task, with due acknowledgement of disciplinary norms and expectations.
The Educational Context of University Student Writing
This book is written at a time of massive expansion in higher education. According to UNESCO (2008) about 138 million students were enrolled in tertiary education in 2005, an increase of 45 million university students worldwide since 1999. This rise has been partly due to population growth, and partly due to widening participation policies. Some countries have made great efforts to attract into higher education young people who have been academically disadvantaged, and to this end have encouraged universities to accept students without traditional university entry qualifications. In some countries a state university place is now guaranteed to all young people who have successfully completed secondary school.
Appendices
- Hilary Nesi, Coventry University, Sheena Gardner, Coventry University, Carol A. Chapelle, Susan Hunston
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Summary
Appendix 1.1
Further information about the BAWE corpus holdings
The distribution of assignments written by males and females
A summary of the distribution of assignments written by students whose first language was not English, by level and disciplinary grouping