Learning to write for academic purposes

This chapter highlights the disciplinary-specific nature of writing and argues for targeting teaching to best support second language (L2) students towards control of the discourses that disciplinary insiders are likely to find effective. The massive expansion of English as the academic lingua franca has meant that many students around the world are studying their subjects in a L2. This means that the ability to write in ways valued by their tutors becomes a key part of their learning and how they demonstrate their competence in a discipline. The written genres are essays and reports that appear in most of the students' common core courses, the course introduces students to features like nominalization, impersonality, argument, metadiscourse, stance and citation. The development of the English in the Discipline courses presented opportunities to conduct research into disciplinary literacies and build closer relationships and understandings with departments.