ABSTRACT
In this chapter I look at the interaction between academic reader and student in one of the major domains of English dominance, international higher education. My focus is on the attitudes that lecturers have towards written work submitted for assessment in international higher education, and my main argument is that there is a need for attitudinal shift in the uptake of writing, especially given a language in international use. I have used the term ‘writtenness’ (Turner 2015a, 2018, 2019) to highlight not only the importance of written language in the representation, communication, and assessment of knowledge and understanding but also the evaluative culture surrounding its uptake. Writtenness often plays an implicit role in assessment, as opposed to the explicit focus on the conceptual content of what is written. The contrast is not to deny the importance of writing as content but rather to redress the balance in the hierarchy, where content is favoured and the writing as linguistic materiality usually only surfaces as a problem or a deficit. The prevalence of such an attitude creates a rather negative environment for ELF users as well as indeed for many students with English as their first language.
