Defining
what academic writing is and deciding on the methods to teach it are hard tasks
to accomplish and ELT has changed its approach to teaching of academic writing
in course of time. Early approaches involved controlled writing moving from
paragraph to essay.
Starting
from 60’s ESL writing moved from controlled writing with emphasis on structure
and practice to process method which borrowed a lot from L1 composition
research, and later to newer approaches based on research in L2 writing.
Many
researchers drew attention to the differences between cultural practices,
differences in rhetorical patterns and even differences in logical processes
since logic is not something universal. It was observed that different cultures
approach logical reasoning and conventions of logic differently. Bizzell (1982)
pointed out that the students’ social situations and previous training may
hamper their ability to succeed in the academy. For ESL students the gap is
even bigger: there are linguistic problems and cultural differences involved.
The role of the university level ESL/EFL teacher is to bridge the linguistic
and the cultural gap. Whether she is teaching basic writers or highly trained
writers, she has to find a way to initiate the students into the culture of the
university and at the same time help the students master the language of the
discourse community they are heading for.
WAC
(Writing Across the Curriculum) programs were
developed for L1 writers: freshman English teachers and subject teachers
collaborating when possible. In such programs, adjunct writing courses are
designed for specific courses. For instance, history department considering the
needs of this particular discourse community offers a writing course for
history students, or students taking a course have to attend an adjunct writing
course for 3- or 6 weeks. In such courses students learn the conventions,
rhetorical patterns and styles of their own discipline.
Meanwhile,
ESP (English for Specific Purposes) was developed for ESL/EFL learners. With a
focus on science and technology, ESP was offered as an alternative to general
English courses, which usually concentrate teaching English for general life
and literary purposes. However, ESP is hard to teach for the English teacher
because the teacher has to know the writing conventions of the subject matter
in question. It can also be misleading since the English teacher cannot be an expert
in those subjects. English teachers cannot and should not be held responsible
for teaching writing in the disciplines. Instead the aim should be to create
programs that develop
The
common writing assignment in college level ESL/EFL courses is the personal
opinion essay in which the student is asked to draw on his personal experience.
Be it argumentation, cause and effect or comparison, the student rarely
utilizes or analyzes information he obtains from other sources. On the other
hand, research has shown that “students will be confronted with either a
academic or professional writing task that surface in relation to texts of
various kinds (literary, historical, psychological, legal, managerial) or data
(computer, laboratory-testing, statistical, chemical)” Schreiber (1987, p.15).
In many schools, ours included, writing courses are designed to include text
based or data based tasks in which written language acts as a medium for
learning something else.
Students
are led to formulate and test explanatory generalizations, observe and repeat
significant details, and generate criteria for contrasting phenomena. Examples
of such tasks are the mini weekly or monthly projects as well as the research
project done in the second term.
Spack (2001) stresses that the most important skill
English teachers can engage students in is the complex ability to write from other texts, which is a major part
of their academic writing experience. In the same vein,
Bizzell (1986) states “students’ intellectual socialization may be accomplished
not only by interacting with people, but also by encountering the writing of
others.”
Bazerman
(1980) adds that “we must cultivate various techniques of absorbing,
reformulating, commenting on, using reading” if we want to prepare our students
to “enter the written exchanges of their chosen disciplines and the various
discussions of personal and public interest.”
In short as Spack (1988) aptly puts “To become
better writers, students need to become better readers.” Techniques of reading
are actually a part of L1 and L2 composition instruction. Marginal notes, note
taking, working journals can train students to discover and record their own
reactions to and evaluations of a text. (Refer to critical reading
and critical writing and combining reading and writing.)
For this purpose summarizing, quoting and paraphrasing are skills students
should master not only for linguistic purposes but also for analyzing an
author’s style and logical reasoning.
This review is based on an
article by R. Spack, “Initiating ESL students into the academic discourse
community: How far should we go”, in Landmark Essays, T. Silva and P. Matsuda , Eds., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates:
Written by Zeliha Gulcat,
September 2004