ABSTRACT
To get a macro sense of what the various stakeholders would say about their expectations for academic writers, the author surveyed all FYC courses (pre- and post-) for a full academic year, so approximately 2,500 FYC student respondents and 50 FYC instructors. Although the number of categories might seem high, it is worth noting that the authors started with 30 to 35 categories when the undergraduates working with the author simply tried to name the myriad kinds of survey responses they encountered from the first set of surveys. In fact, all the undergraduates who helped him generate the categories remarked on just how many kinds of expectations there were, reflecting how overwhelming academic writing proficiency demands seem for their students. Grounded in activity theory, knotworking is a conceptual framework to help describe how individual consciousness can be understood by studying practices in an organizational system, and it seeks to temporarily stabilize and address shared concerns.
