Students Writing in the University: Cultural and epistemological issues(8 Studies in Written Language and Literacy)

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.

Table of Contents:
1. Acknowledgements, pvii; 2. Information about the Authors, pix; 3. Foreword, pxiii; 4. Introduction (by Jones, Carys), pxv; 5. A. Interacting with the Institution, p1; 6. 1. Foregrounding Background in Academic Learning (by Hermerschmidt, Monika), p5; 7. 2. What do Students Really Say in Their Essays? Towards a descriptive framework for analysing student writing (by English, Fiona), p17; 8. 3. The Student from Overseas and the British University: Finding a way to succeed (by Jones, Carys), p37; 9. 4. On Not Disturbing "Our Group Peace": The plight of the visiting researcher (by Low, Graham), p61; 10. 5. Writing Assignments on a PGCE (Secondary) Course: Two case studies (by Gay, Brenda), p81; 11. 6. Academic Literacies and Learning in Higher Education: Constructing knowledge through texts and experience (by Lea, Mary R.), p103; 12. B. Mystery and Transparency in Academic Literacies, p125; 13. 7. Whose 'Common Sense'? Essayist literacy and the institutional practice of mystery (by Lillis, Theresa), p127; 14. 8. Academic Literacy and the Discourse of Transparency (by Turner, Joan), p149; 15. 9. Inventing Academic Literacy: An American perspective (by Davidson, Catherine), p161; 16. 10. Agency and Subjectivity in Student Writing (by Scott, Mary), p171; 17. 11. Academic Literacies (by Street, Brian), p193; 18. Index, p229

Review :
It is stimulating to read a critical work that interweaves theory with textual analysis and combines the analytical with the empirical in the exploration of students producing texts and making use of different registers in HE. This is a refreshing investigation of students writing as social practices ingrained with diverse cultural and epistemological issues. This is a collection of papers that offers a great deal for teachers of English for Academic Purposes to reflect on. While these papers are all grounded in UK higher education, the issues discussed are pertinent for all teachers in institutions which employ English — or another international language — as their educational medium. It is heartening to see a collection of papers whose main concern is to place the student at the centre not only of our teaching concerns, but of those reflective practices that will help to inform the practices of our institutions and of our colleagues in other disciplines.