Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 26–37

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Journal of English for Academic Purposes

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Using Academic Literacies and genre-based models for academic writinginstruction: A ‘literacy’ journey

Ursula Wingate*

Department of Education and Professional Studies, King’s College London, Waterloo Rd, London SE1 9NH, UK

Keywords:Academic writingWriting instructionAcademic LiteraciesGenre analysisSystemic-functional linguisticsEnglish for academic purposes

* Tel.: þ44 20 78483536.E-mail address: ursula.wingate@kcl.ac.uk.

1475-1585/$ – see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltddoi:10.1016/j.jeap.2011.11.006

a b s t r a c t

Three writing development initiatives carried out at King’s College London UK are dis-cussed in this article to illustrate the need to draw on different theoretical models to createeffective methods of teaching academic writing. The sequence of initiatives resemblesa journey: the destination is to develop academic writing programmes suitable forstudents from all backgrounds; the point of departure was the dominant institutionalprovision of extra-curricular ‘study skills’ courses. The Academic Literacies model subse-quently offered useful guidance for moving away from this provision towards discipline-embedded approaches. However, Academic Literacies could not easily be applied toinstructional practice, because its preference for issues such as identity, power relationsand institutional practices over text seemed to be at conflict with students’ preferences.This finding led to a change in direction towards a genre-based approach to writinginstruction. It is argued that the analysis of discipline-specific texts is the best startingpoint for teaching and learning of academic writing, and that students will be more willingto take a critical perspective when they are able to understand and control disciplinarydiscourses.

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1. Introduction

In this article I discuss the theoretical understanding and practical experience I have gathered during a five-year process ofdeveloping, implementing and evaluating different approaches to teaching writing at King’s College London. I chose themetaphor ‘journey’ because, as Turner (1998) explains, when used in the context of education, it implies value systems suchas challenge, overcoming obstacles, and exploration. Equally fitting for my experience is that the metaphor ‘journey’ candescribe a process with a known starting point and destination, but an unknown route. The starting point was the university’s‘remedial’ provision of writing instruction and my remit to collaborate with academics across the disciplines to offer moreeffective academic writing support to students. The journey has so far passed three stages; each stage was a writingdevelopment initiativewhich aimed to create an instructional model that can be applied across the disciplines. The evaluationof the earlier initiatives informed the design of the later ones, and led to a change in the theoretical orientation. Whilst thefirst two initiatives had Academic Literacies underpinnings, the third relied entirely on genre theory, in particular English forAcademic Purposes (EAP). The destination of the journey is to propose practical solutions for a mainstreamwriting pedagogywhich is available to students from all backgrounds.

Academic writing has become an expanding field of research in the UK, and took a new direction when AcademicLiteracies researchers begun in the 1990s to reveal the shortcomings of writing instruction at UK universities. However

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more than a decade after Lea & Street’s (1998) seminal study, no substantial changes at the institutional level have occurredin the predominantly remedial support provision at British universities. This is partly due to the fact that no writingpedagogy has been developed by Academic Literacies, and the model’s impact on higher education policy has remainedlimited as a result. Progress has been made at some institutions where individuals or groups of writing specialists haveinitiated change. Several of these writing development initiatives follow the US model of Writing in the Disciplines (seeMitchell & Evison, 2006 and Deane & O’Neill, 2011 for examples). Unlike Academic Literacies, Writing in the Disciplineshas the clear pedagogic direction of embedding writing instruction into the discipline’s curriculum and attributingresponsibility for teaching writing to the subject lecturers (Monroe, 2002, 2003). Examples for Writing in the Disciplinesinitiatives are the ‘Thinking Writing’ project at Queen Mary, University of London, and the work carried out in the ‘WriteNow’ Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning at London Metropolitan University. In these initiatives, variousapproaches were taken to integrate writing instruction into the subject teaching. One approach is the collaboration ofwriting experts with subject experts; other approaches are peer mentoring and using formative assessment for thedevelopment of writing.

To achieve improvements in writing pedagogy on a broader scale, a large number of writing development initiatives areneeded to identify the most appropriate approaches to teaching writing in the UK system, and to convince universitymanagers and academics of their worth. It seems unlikely that there can be a one-size-fits-all model of writing instruction,given the diversity of higher education institutions; it is equally unlikely that writing pedagogy can be based on onetheoretical framework. Instead, a mainstream pedagogy must consist of a package of various approaches and methods fromwhich the most suitable for the given context can be chosen. By discussing the three initiatives I was involved in at King’sCollege London, I want to contribute insights into the effectiveness of some approaches and the usefulness of some writingtheories.

The first part of this article offers an overview of those academic writing theories and pedagogic practices in internationalsettings and in the UK that influenced the route of the journey. Then, I discuss in detail the three writing developmentinitiatives. The initiatives were all designed to be discipline-specific and inclusive; they differ in the degrees of subject tutorinvolvement and use of text. The first two initiatives were fully evaluated and relevant results are reported in this paper. Thethird initiative is still ongoing, and only first observations of its impact can be presented.

2. Approaches to teaching academic writing

Higher education systems with a relatively long tradition of mass education, such as the US and Australia, havea substantial body of research andwell developed practices of teaching academic writing. Examples are theWriting across theCurriculum movement in the US which began in the early 1970s and has produced numerous publications (Russell, Lea,Parker, Street & Donahue, 2009), or the learning centres in Australian universities which play a crucial role in discipline-specific writing instruction (Jones, 2004). By contrast, the history of academic writing research and pedagogy in the UK ismuch shorter. Here, access to university education has only been widened since the 1990s, and only since then has theincreasing number of students from diverse backgrounds created a need to offer academic writing support on a broader scale.However, the support provision remains largely inadequate in most institutions, and typically falls into two separate strands:the first, under the label English for Academic Purposes (EAP), is offered to non-native speakers of English, usually by writingspecialists in English Language Centres. The second strand is remedial, offered in form of ‘study skills’ courses to studentsfrom all disciplines. Both strands have been criticised for separating the teaching of writing from the teaching of the subject,therefore divorcing writing from thinking (Mitchell & Evison, 2006), for shifting the responsibility for writing instructionfrom subject tutors to external providers, and for focusing on surface features rather than on the disciplines’ epistemologiesand conventions (Lea & Street, 1998). Another weakness of current writing instruction at UK universities is the failure torecognise that both native- and non-native speakers of English are equally novices to academic writing. A system that fails toacknowledge that every new student needs to learn the specific conventions and discourses of their discipline is inappro-priate. Instead of fixing the problems of some students in an ‘ad-hoc’ manner (Ivanic & Lea, 2006, p. 11), it has been arguedthat UK universities need to teach writing as ‘an integral, ongoing part of disciplinary learning for all students’ (Mitchell &Evison, 2006, pp. 71–72).

Various theories that underpin academic writing practice and policy were considered for the writing initiatives presentedin this paper. In the UK, the Academic Literacies model has been influential in arguing for more emphasis on ‘practice’ ratherthan text (Lillis & Scott, 2007, p. 10). However, others have stressed the importance and central role of text in writinginstruction (e.g. Baynham, 2000; Wingate and Tribble, 2011). Text-oriented models such as ‘Composition Studies’ whichunderpin the North American freshman programme of composition and rhetoric are less suitable for the British highereducation system, as they are concernedwith the analysis of rhetorical modes in ‘general’ texts from all origins (Tribble, 2009,p. 402). For the British system, where students specialise in their discipline from the beginning, genre-based approaches,which analyse language varieties in particular disciplines, are more suitable. These approaches have their origins in Halliday,McIntosh, and Strevens’s (1964) seminal work in register analysis, and have been developed into successful educationalpractices. There have been two main branches of genre analysis: Swales’ (1990) defines genre as a specific type ofcommunicative event with a specific communicative purpose which is recognised by the specific discourse community. Thisdefinition emphasises the interrelationship between text and context. The Swalesian approach is central to the discipline ofEAP. EAP pedagogy is applied mainly in higher education settings; in the UK, it has been largely used for the teaching of

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English to non-native speakers. The second main branch of genre analysis, the Sydney School (Hyon, 1996), also recognisesthe role of the social context as ‘predictive of text’ (Halliday,1978, p.189) and described genre as a ‘staged, goal-oriented socialprocess’ (Martin,1993, p.121) within a specific context of culture. The Sydney School uses systemic-functional linguistics (SFL)as an analytical tool (Halliday & Hasan, 1985; Martin, 1993). The SFL approach has led to major innovations in Australianprimary and secondary education (Martin, 1999), and has also been successfully used in higher education (e.g. Drury, 2004;Ellis, 2004). At the centre of both genre approaches is the text in context, but different pedagogic routes have been taken. InEAP, a large number of texts specific for a genre is analysed by researchers; the analysis is concerned with the individual partsof a genre (such as the Introduction to research articles) and the various ‘moves’ occurring in these parts (Swales, 1990); oncethe characteristics of the genre have been identified, they can be taught to students. Similarly, systemic-functional linguistsanalyse corpora of disciplinary texts and map expert and learner discourses (e.g. Coffin, 2006). In SFL’s pedagogic application,‘genre-based literacy pedagogy’, text analysis is jointly carried out by teacher and students in the teaching/learning cycle ofmodelling, joint construction and independent construction (Drury, 2004; Ellis, 2004). Themodel requires explicit teaching oflinguistic features of particular text types in relation to their social functions. The teaching of writing is embedded in thecurriculum, and the teacher plays a ‘visible and interventionist role’ (Martin, 1999, p. 124).

The main aim of genre-based approaches is to use text analysis to enable students to understand and control theconventions and discourses of their discipline. However, there have been serious objections to the emphasis on text bytheorists from Critical EAP and Academic Literacies. Critical EAP proponents such as Benesch (2009, 2001) and Canagarajah(2002) have stressed the need to pay attention to the socio-political contexts of writing as well as the exploration of teachers’and students’ social identities. Writing instruction in this tradition raises critical awareness of power relations andinequalities (Morgan, 2009). Similarly, Academic Literacies scholars have rejected the ‘textual bias’ (Lillis & Scott, 2007, p. 11)of EAP and other genre-based approaches which they subsumed under the label ‘academic socialisation’ (Lea & Street, 1998).The aim of these ‘normative’ approaches is, according to Lillis and Scott (2007, p.13), to ‘identify and induct’, while the scope ofAcademic Literacies is broader, including the investigation of writers’ perspectives and of ‘alternative ways of meaningmaking in academia’ (Lillis and Scott (2007).

Academic Literacies has seen its role as a ‘critical research frame’ (Lillis, 2003, p. 195) and as an ‘oppositional frame’ (Lillis,2006, p. 32) to instructional practices at UK universities. Academic Literacies researchers have provided much neededinsights into the shortcomings of the still predominant ‘study skills’ provision, and of the struggle that some students facewith writing at university (e.g. Ivanic, 1998; Lea & Street, 1998). However, the model has so far not come up with analternative writing pedagogy, and the need to develop it into a ‘design frame with a focus on pedagogy’ has beenacknowledged (Lea & Street, 2006, p. 228; Lillis, 2006). In the absence of a writing pedagogy, the dismissive attitude towardsgenre-based approaches that is apparent in some Academic Literacies publications seems somewhat unjust. From a researchperspective, the call for enhanced attention to the practices of academic writing (Lillis & Scott, 2007, p. 11) is certainlyacceptable; from a practical perspective, however, it is questionable why Academic Literacies would marginalise theimportant pedagogic contributions which have flowed from genre research (Wingate and Tribble, 2011). Furthermore,Academic Literacies’ critics have tended to ignore the fact that genre-based approaches have long moved from ‘text-boundanalyses of genre to research which provides a much richer account of the contexts in which they occur’ (Jones, 2004, p.257).

A few pedagogic applications of the Academic Literacies model have been proposed; these are mainly concerned with thedevelopment of students’ critical awareness. Lea (2004) discusses how a set of Academic Literacies principles, aimed atrecognising students’ backgrounds, identities and institutional power relations, can be incorporated into learningmaterials ofa distant learning course. Lillis promotes individual dialogues between tutors and students to make ‘language visible’ and togive students an opportunity for challenging ‘dominant literacy practices’ (2006, p. 34). It is difficult to see, however, howstudents would be able to challenge practices before they have fully understood them. As the literacy practices of disciplinesare manifested in texts, it seems that the analysis of texts must either precede the analysis of practices, or at least be the mainfocus of instruction. Nevertheless, it has been long acknowledged that writing instruction must go beyond a prescriptiveinitiation into disciplinary conventions (e.g. Tribble, 1996) and enable students to take a critical view of the context of theseconventions. For this reason, I included the development of students’ critical awareness of writing practices as one of theobjectives for the writing initiatives.

Whilst the role of the text in writing instruction is controversial, theorists and practitioners from genre approaches,Writing in the Disciplines, and Academic Literacies agree that writing instruction should be located in the disciplines. Lessclear is who should actually deliver the instruction. In both EAP and SFL-based approaches, this task seems to be mainlyassigned to the writing specialist, with varying degrees of support from the subject specialist. By contrast, Writing in theDisciplines requires the subject expert to teach writing as part of the regular subject teaching. Some compelling reasons forthis approach are that (a) it includes all students; (b) subject lecturers are experts in the discipline’s discourses andconventions and therefore in a better position to teach writing than writing specialists; (c) subject lecturers are usually theones who assess students’ writing; if they explain the expected criteria, misunderstandings, as reported by Lea and Street(1998), can be avoided (Wingate, 2006, 2011). However, for various reasons subject lecturers tend to be reluctant to takeon responsibility for student writing (Bailey, 2010; North, 2005).

In view of the various approaches and controversies discussed above, the main concerns in the design and evaluation ofthe writing development initiatives were (1) the use of texts, (2) the development of students’ critical awareness, and (3) theextent to which subject tutors could, or should, be involved in the teaching of writing.

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3. The writing development initiatives

As explained earlier, academic writing support at many UK universities has remained remedial, extra-curricular anddivisive. Some institutions have tried to address the shortcomings of this provision by employing writing specialists with theremit to work with academics across the disciplines to find local solutions to student support. When I took on this role atKing’s College London in 2005, my aim was to move away from the existing extra-curricular provision and develop and testdifferent approaches for embedding writing instruction in the disciplines. As the remit of developing writing support acrossthe university was a broad one, my strategy was to develop instructional approaches in one discipline first, and then applythese approaches to further disciplines.

I started the ‘literacy journey’ by consulting department heads and programme directors across the university about thespecific writing requirements in their context, and about the level of responsibility academics were willing to take on forteaching writing. In interviews with 18 senior academics, and workshops with 83 staff members from eight faculties, I founda high level of awareness that more needed to be done to support students with academic writing; however, there was alsoclear agreement that, due to a lack of time and resources, subject tutors could only play a limited role in this provision. Thisfinding influenced the planning of the first writing development initiative, in which the involvement of subject tutors was atthe level of ‘cooperation’ (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998), meaning that they would provide me with subject-specificinformation on writing requirements and texts for the development of instructional materials. Another finding from theconsultationwas that most academic tutors were reluctant to devote classroom time to the teaching of writing; therefore, thefirst initiative was the development of online academic writing courses.

Because of space constraints, I cannot offer full accounts of the three writing development initiatives (for details of the firsttwo see Wingate 2008, 2011; Wingate, Andon, & Cogo, 2011); instead I will focus on the concerns and guiding questionsmentioned above, i.e. the use of texts, raising students’ critical awareness and subject lecturer involvement.

3.1. Initiative 1: discipline-specific online writing support

The first online academic writing course was developed in 2006 for undergraduate students in the Department ofManagement. The course was created with a generic structure that can be filled with subject-specific texts and tasks, andtherefore can be easily adapted to other disciplines. After the course was implemented and evaluated in Management, it wassubsequently adapted to Classics and German, whilst some of its components were adapted for undergraduate and post-graduate students in Spanish, Pharmacy and Applied Linguistics.

The design of the course was guided by constructivist learning theory insofar as the transmission of knowledge wasavoided (e.g. Duffy, Lowyck, & Jonassen, 1993). Unlike many academic writing websites which offer long lists of instructions,the tasks and activities in this course enabled students to find out criteria and principles by themselves.

3.1.1. Use of textTwo types of text were offered to enable students to understand the criteria of writing in the discipline of Management.

The first was a published journal article authored by two tutors from the department; the students were asked to identify thefeatures of academic writing in this article, and were supported in this task by guiding questions and model answers. Furtherinsights into the disciplinary writing requirements were offered through recorded interviews with Management tutors, andlists of feedback comments on various essays (Appendix 1 shows the outline of the online course; Component 3 offers twotypes of tutor feedback). Students were expected to compile their own list of criteria, before accessing the second type of text,which were essays written by previous first-year students. These were presented together with the tutor comments onseparate feedback sheets. Students were asked to assess these essays, based on their list of criteria, and then compare theirassessment with the tutors’ comments.

3.1.2. Developing critical awarenessThe course design incorporated the following Academic Literacies principles listed by Lea (2004, p. 744): (1) taking

account of students’ previous literacy practices, (2) recognising ‘the gaps between students’ and tutors’ expectations andunderstanding of the texts involved in learning’, and (3) recognising ‘issues of identity’.

Table 1 shows how these Academic Literacies principles were integrated in the online course. The table shows only three ofthe five components of the ‘Academic Writing’ course; the full outline can be seen in Appendix A.

Other principles recommended by Lea (2004, p. 744), for instance acknowledging how institutional ‘power dimensions.are implicated in text production’ were more difficult to incorporate, because they would require levels of critique anddiscussion which could not be offered within this online course. As Management tutors were not involved in the delivery ofthe course, student–tutor interaction, for instance online discussions or tutor feedback on submissions made by students,could not be included.

The case studies are followed by a number of questions intended to draw students’ attention to the differences in literacypractices at school and university. They aim to alert students to the fact that the requirements of writing at university areoften not well explained, that there can be a period of insecurity, and that their identity might be affected when they undergoa change from previously successful writing to entirely different requirements. Themodel answers provided for the questions

Table 1Incorporating Academic Literacies principles into the online course.

Selected components of online course Academic literacies principles

Component 1: Possible problems with essay writing Component 1: Case studies refer to:Case study 1 � Mismatches between previous and expected

literacy practices (1)� Gaps between students’ and tutors’ understanding (2)� Impact of tutor feedback on student identity (3)

Case study 2 (both case studies describe variousdifficulties of students writing their first assignment)

Component 4: Applying the criteria Component 4: Students compare their own assessment of essa yswith that of tutors: opportunity to identify gaps between students’and tutors’ understanding (2)

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further explicate these difficulties. It was expected that case study and questions would encourage the students to takea critical approach to the practices they would experience at university.

3.1.3. Subject lecturer involvementAs explained earlier, subject tutors from Management cooperated in the preparation of the online course by contributing

materials. However, for time and resources constraints, they could not be involved in the delivery of the course. Unfortunately,this led to the complete detachment of the online course from the regular subject teaching. When the course was firstimplemented in 2007, it was introduced by me to all students in two-hour introductory sessions. In these sessions, thepurpose of the course was explained, and students had the opportunity to ask for help and further explanations. In thefollowing years, the introductory sessions were not continued. All first-year students were automatically enrolled in thecourse upon registration, and during the induction week a Management tutor would mention the course and give studentsaworksheet with instructions on how to access it. The student interviews revealed that the coursewas not further mentionedin the regular subject classes. The effect of the low level of tutor involvement is discussed in the next section.

3.1.4. EvaluationThe evaluation of this writing initiative was carried out by 1) monitoring the uptake of the course, 2) questionnaires

administered to all students in 2007 and 2008, and 3) interviews with 10 students of the 2007 cohort.The monitoring data showed that of the 2007 cohort, due to the introductory session, all 179 students logged in once, and

28.5% logged in for a second ormore times. Of the 2008 cohort of 180 students, only 56.7% logged in once, and only 13.9%wentback to the course a second ormore times. The return rates of the questionnaires correspond to the decline in uptake: In 2007,40.3% of the students returned the questionnaire; in 2008, the return rate was only 20.6%. The questionnaire data offers someexplanation for the lack of participation. Most respondents rated the online course as ‘useful’, but stated that they could notuse it much because of the amount of their regular coursework. Asked whether they received any encouragement by theirsubject tutors, the majority answered ‘never’. Only a few students had been referred to the course by their subject or personaltutor; this happened either after the students had themselves asked for help, or after they had received a weak grade in theirfirst assignment. Most respondents regarded the online course as ‘far less relevant’ than the timetabled first-year modules.These results show that the lack of tutor involvement affected students’ uptake of the course. As it was not linked to thesubject teaching, the course represented an ‘additional’ rather than an ‘embedded’ instructional approach (Wingate, 2011).For the students, it meant the ‘add on’ of less relevant work to their regular subject workload. The resulting low participationseriously limited the impact of the online course.

Interesting findings emerged in relation to students’ perception of the usefulness of the various components of the onlinecourse. 87.9% of the respondents ranked the text-focused components as the most useful ones: Component 4 (essays writtenby previous students) was regarded as most useful, followed by Component 2 (the journal article). The case studies, whichaimed at raising critical awareness, were at the bottom of the ranking, with only 23% of respondents regarding them as useful.This preference for texts was confirmed by the uptake data which showed that Components 2 and 4 were accessed mostfrequently. By contrast, the case studies were rarely accessed more than once. The interview data provided some usefulexplanations for this ranking. Six of the ten interviewees felt that the case studies had few new insights to offer, as they hadalready been aware of the potential difficulties with writing at university. They had come to university expecting differencesbetween previous and academic writing practices, and were prepared for challenges to their self-confidence.

The interviews also revealed why students regarded other student texts as more useful than the journal article: whilstexpert writing was perceived as intimidating because of the high standards it sets, student essays gave amore realistic pictureof what is expected.

The preferences expressed in the evaluation suggest that students who have just entered university may not be ready totake a critical approach, but rather want to accommodate to the requirements. The interview data seems to suggest thatstudents come to university with more awareness of the issues that Academic Literacies proponents believe have to be madeexplicit.

As the evaluation had shown that low tutor involvement resulted in low participation and therefore restricted the impactof the online course, the second initiative took a radically different approach by integrating writing instruction into thesubject teaching.

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3.2. Initiative 2: embedded writing support

This initiative was awriting interventionwhich was carried out in 2009/10 byme and two other subject lecturers with the60 first-year students of an undergraduate programme in Applied Linguistics. A teaching framework with five instructionalmethods was developed and integrated into the curriculum of a first-term module ‘Language Learning’. The objective was totest these five methods in order to promote them to subject tutors in other disciplines. To make a convincing case, it wasimportant to show the feasibility of embedding these methods in terms of workload and the extent to which the teaching ofsubject content would be affected. Funding was obtained to systematically record the intervention, evaluate the teachingframework and disseminate it to academics across the university. Details of the instructional methods are shown inAppendix B.

3.2.1. Use of textThe texts used in the intervention represented the genres which students had to learn to read and write, e.g. journal

articles, written summaries of their readings as well as student essays. Prior to three teaching sessions, the students wererequired to read journal articles relevant to the session topics. This method recognised that academic writing is based oncritical-analytical reading, and that novices need ‘scaffolding’ (Rose, Rose, Farrington, & Page, 2008) to be able to identifyrelevant information and incorporate it into their writing. The texts were therefore accompanied by specific tasks andinstructions, and the students were asked to submit summaries and notes online. The tutors provided individual feedbackto the online submissions. This was the first of four, increasingly longer pieces the students were asked to write during thefirst term and for which they received formative feedback. The same journal articles were used in the classroom for theexplicit teaching of argumentation and of discipline-specific discourse features. In two sessions, the tutor set aside 20–30 min to explain features such as signposting, how claims are based on evidence, and how arguments are developed. Inanother two sessions later in the term, the students were given time to analyse the third journal article and samples of theirown writing.

3.2.2. Developing critical awarenessIn the middle of the term, the students had to submit an ‘exploratory’ essay. As formative feedback was one of the five

instructional methods, this essay was used to provide detailed comments on an ungraded piece of writing before thestudents wrote the assessed final assignment. Another objective was to offer opportunities for writer-focused ‘talkaround text’, a procedure recommended by Lillis (2001, 2006). For this purposes, the essays were returned to thestudents in individual sessions with the tutors. Lillis argues that such tutor–student dialogues can be helpful in ‘makinglanguage visible’ (2006, p. 32) and in allowing students to challenge literacy practices. In the individual feedbacksessions, the students were encouraged to speak about their previous writing experiences, their difficulties withacademic writing, and how the writing requirements might affect them. Ten of the sixty feedback sessions were audiorecorded to investigate whether students would come up with criticisms or challenges. The findings are reported as partof the evaluation.

3.2.3. Subject lecturer involvementThe writing instruction in this initiative was fully carried out by the subject lecturers. As already mentioned, to

recommend embedded writing instruction to other tutors, it was necessary to give a realistic account of the effec-tiveness and feasibility of this approach. Therefore, the three subject tutors engaged in the initiative recorded the timespent on additional activities and carefully observed to which extent the integration of writing instruction affected theteaching of the subject. The records show that four of the instructional methods did not require considerably more timethan the tutors usually spend on teaching preparation; the method of formative feedback, however, imposed a seriousworkload increase. The additional workload, however, was in the tutors’ view offset by the benefits of this method,which was confirmed through the analysis of student texts, and students’ perceptions (reported in the next section).The subject content of the module could be fully covered, due to increased independent work and interaction by thestudents.

3.2.4. EvaluationThe intervention was evaluated by student questionnaires, interviews, and the analysis of student texts. The tutor–

student dialogues were also analysed to investigate whether this method did, as intended, develop students’ criticalawareness. Furthermore, to establish the initiative’s success in promoting embedded writing instruction tosubject tutors from other disciplines, questionnaires were administered to the participants in the disseminationworkshops.

In the questionnaire, the students ranked the instructional methods of the writing intervention, which had been sub-categorised into a list of nine items. 90% of 42 respondents regarded the tutor–student dialogues as very useful or useful;the second place was taken by the analysis of students’ own texts (88.1% of 42). By contrast, the analysis of journal articlesby students was ranked second-lowest on place 8 (55%). Explanations for these results, particularly the relatively lowranking of the analysis of journal articles, could be obtained from the 10 interviews that were conducted as part of theevaluation.

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There was general agreement among the interviewees that journal articles had an intimidating effect, because it was feltthat they set an unachievable standard. By contrast, the students found that working with samples of their ownwriting gavethem a more realistic picture of the expected standards. These perceptions are represented in the following interviewextract:

1 The

I think with the journal articles it was a bit daunting to have to start with what real academics have been doing, itseemed like we were given such high hurdles to overcome. we were all, we were panicking a lot. I think it wouldhave been really good if we had been given a first degree standard piece, and average piece and to put it quite honesta really poor piece, and then maybe we could see what is expected .

This preference for students’ texts as exemplars coincides with the findings in the first writing initiative.Unlike the first initiative, the method which aimed at developing critical awareness, i.e. tutor–student dialogues, received

the highest ranking. However, according to the interviews, this ranking had more to do with the individual attention andexplanations students received from tutors than with the opportunity to be critical. The analysis of the ten tutor–studentdialogues revealed only a few instances of students questioning writing rules and practices, and these instances reflectedinsecurity rather than criticism. They were mainly related to students’ uncertainty of how to express their voice, concernsabout the lack of freedom to express their opinion, or about the need to refer to authoritative sources rather than their ownknowledge. The following quote is an example of the latter:

Thinking about referencing- I think it’s just frustrating that we don’t seem to be able to write stuff that’sactually ours.

In these cases, the tutors would explain how an opinion or students’ own knowledge could be integrated in the argument,and there would be no further expressions of unease or criticism. On the contrary, the overall tendency was, as in the firstinitiative, that students wanted to learn the rules and comply with them. This can be seen in the next quote:

I think it’s a case of being able to accept the rules change from sixth form to university. It’ll take a while, but we shouldget used to it – I hope.

The students’ willingness or ability to be critical will be further discussed in the Conclusion.The dissemination of the intervention had limited success in convincing subject teachers in other disciplines to embed

writing instruction into their teaching. Workshops were held in six faculties and attended by an average of 10 staff members.Although the evaluation had shown that the intervention had a positive effect on student writing, the workshop participantswere sceptical about using even the less work-intensive methods. The questionnaires showed that the method that tutorswere most willing to adopt was the explicit teaching of discourse features based on the presentation of journal disciplinarytexts.

The evaluation findings led to a greater focus on text in the third initiative.

3.3. Initiative 3: genre-based writing instruction

This initiative marks a considerable change in direction. After the previous initiatives showed that students preferredto accommodate to thewriting conventions rather than challenging them, no attempt to raise critical awareness was madein this initiative. The experience from the previous initiatives also made it seem unlikely that more than cooperation couldbe expected from subject tutors in the mainstream. Therefore, this initiative aimed to use exemplar texts to createteaching/learning materials that can, after introductory classroom sessions, be used independently by students. Thedevelopment of these resources requires a linguist/writing expert who needs to co-operate with subject experts for theprovision of suitable discipline-specific texts. Taking into account the preference for student rather than expert textsexpressed in the previous initiatives, the resources were built from student texts of the specific genre that is to be taught.The first set of materials was developed for MA students in Applied Linguistics, and the approach is currently being pilotedwith a group of them. The exemplar texts came from the KCL Apprentice Writing Corpus 1in which a large number ofassignments and dissertations from students on this MA programme had been compiled over a period of four years(Tribble, 2011).

The teaching approach was underpinned by SFL, which analyses how linguistic choices reflect the context and purpose ofwriting (Halliday & Hasan, 1985). Thus, the students were encouraged to analyse texts from the perspective of what ‘job theyhave to do’, and which linguistic resources are required to do the job (Tribble, 2010a, 2010b, p. 161). The materials address thetwo genres which students are required to write in the MA programme, i.e. assignment and dissertation, and deal with theparts of the genre (e.g. Discussing Literature, Conclusion), and the ‘moves’ occurring in these parts (Swales, 1990) individually.The teaching methodology followed genre-based literacy pedagogy in using the cycle of deconstruction, joint constructionand independent construction (Martin, 1999). Here, I give the example from a teaching/learning cycle on Introductions whichwas recently conducted with nine volunteers from the MA programme.

corpus consists currently of student texts in Applied Linguistics, but is going to be expanded to four further disciplines from 2011.

U. Wingate / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 26–37 33

4. Learning to write Introductions

In the deconstruction phase, students worked in small groups on materials which present four introductions from highscoring assignments. The first three introductions provide a commentary which explains the functions of the various moves;an example is shown in Appendix C. The students then had to carry out their own analysis of the fourth introduction. Next,they looked at introductions from two low achieving assignments which also have commentaries, before filling in a notesection with their own reflections on features of successful introductions. Although the materials were designed for inde-pendent work, the writing teachers were present in case further explanations were needed. The group discussions wererecorded for the evaluation of this method.

For the next phase, joint reconstruction, the students had brought the introduction of the assignment they were currentlywriting. One student in each group volunteered to have his/her introduction text analysed and reworked by the group. Forthis purpose, the student text was uploaded on the computer, and the ‘Track Changes’ function was used to record all thechanges made as the result of the analysis and discussion. The record of the changes, with the original version still visible, wasuseful for evaluating the impact of the deconstruction phase.

In the last phase, independent construction, the students were asked to go back to their own Introductions and makechanges if necessary. These changes were also recorded and, for evaluation purposes, the students were encouraged to sendthe re-written texts to the writing teachers.

5. Preliminary assessment of initiative

This initiative is ongoing, and the procedure needs to be used with more students and genres before a systematic eval-uation can be carried out. Here I can only report students’ feedback and an example of the improvements observed in theintroductions of this group of nine students.

All participants found the approach very useful, and particularly appreciated working with student texts. The revisions oftheir introductions which they submitted with tracked changes showed that there were improvements in all texts; the mainimprovement lay in the structures of the introductions. The audio recordings of the deconstruction phase show how thestudents identified the structure common to ‘good’ introductions:

S1: The framework of A, B and C is very similar, you have to set the academic context and cite enough reference to provethe academic background and then the problem you want to focus on.S2: And then there is the map to show the reader how I am going to address the problem.

The purpose-driven nature of academic texts were also discussed by the students, and, as one student put it, the intro-duction must signpost to the reader ‘why am I reading it and what’s going to happen’. In the joint construction phase, thestudent text was changed accordingly, after the following discussion took place:

S1: The map is there, but not in the right position, shouldn’t it be the last part of the introduction?S3: The problem here is not the there is no map, but that the map is spread all over the introduction.S2: Because without the background and the context, I cannot really understand the map.

The text was re-arranged by the student group to present the information in the order of academic context, specific aspect/problem, outline.

This one instance of genre-based writing instruction does not allowme to drawmajor conclusions. However, it seems thatthe approach has a lot to offer to the UK HE system for several reasons: first, it helps students to learn writing through theanalysis of exactly the genres they need to write. Second, it is inclusive, as the materials can be offered to all students ina programme. Furthermore, the approach does not increase theworkload of academic staff unreasonably, as thematerials canbe prepared by writing experts in cooperationwith subject tutors. After introductory workshops, the students canwork withthe materials independently.

6. Conclusion

My experiences of trying to identify realistic and effective approaches to teaching writing in a UK university doresemble a journey with some changes in direction. My expectation was not to find a one-size-fit-all approach; ratherI wanted to provide insights into the feasibility of some approaches. The writing initiatives reported in this paperaimed at contributing to a better understanding of ways in which students in the UK system can be supported withacademic writing. I also hoped that the approaches which I tested in the three initiatives could serve as models forother tutors.

It is difficult to compare the three approaches in terms of their effectiveness, as they were situated in, and limited by,their specific contexts. In the case of the online course, the context limited the course’s success; the same approachmight have had a greater impact if it had been linked to the subject teaching, or had at least been strongly recommendedby the subject tutors. However, the insights gained from this initiative can be used to offer the course under improvedcircumstances. The second approach had a positive effect on student writing; however, it relied too strongly on theengagement of subject tutors to be widely accepted. The third approach seems particularly promising, but more work is

U. Wingate / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 26–3734

needed to evaluate its impact. This shows that the journey continues. What has been learned from the initiatives needsto be used to refine the approaches, a combination of the methods needs to be tested, and perhaps more initiatives mustbe developed before a comprehensive package of methods for effective writing instruction in UK universities can beoffered.

The journey involved the exploration of various writing theories. The argument made by Academic Literaciestheorists against the ‘textual bias’ of genre-based approaches influenced the design of the first two writing initiatives, inwhich some methods aimed at developing students’ critical perspective. However, student feedback casts some doubtover this approach, because the students’ concerns appeared to be different from the Academic Literacies’ agenda. Boththe case studies in the first initiative and the dialogues in the second initiative did not achieve much in terms of raisingcritical attitudes. Students were primarily interested in learning from text and showed little willingness to critique theconventions. This finding underlines my earlier argument that students must first analyse disciplinary texts in order tounderstand the underlying conventions and practices; only when this understanding is achieved, can the practices bechallenged. Therefore I came to the conclusion that raising critical awareness should not be the first objective inteaching novice writers; rather the analysis of discipline-specific texts seems to be the best starting point for writinginstruction. It can be assumed that students will eventually develop a critical perspective, for, as Duff (2010, p.171)points out, ‘language and literacy socialisation will almost inevitably involve the negotiation of power and identity’.Certainly, writing teachers should encourage students to take a critical perspective at a later stage of the teaching/learning process.

I learned on this journey so far that it is necessary to draw on more than one theory for effective writing instruction. Theprinciples and practices of Academic Literacies, EAP, and SFL were all important in the development of the instructionalapproaches I have presented in this paper, and certainly they can be fruitfully combined for further advances in academicwriting programmes.

Appendix A. Outline of the online course ‘Academic Writing’.

Possible problems with essay writing1.1. Case study 11.2. Case study 2

2. Identifying features of academic writing2.1. Reading a journal article2.2. Making a list of typical features

3. What do tutors expect?3.1. What tutors say3.2. Tutor feedback on essays3.3. Making a list of criteria for successful academic writing

4. Applying the criteria4.1. Making comments on student essays4.2. Comparing your comments with the tutor’s comments

5. Practising some skills5.1. Structure5.2. Paragraphs5.3. Grammar, spelling expression5.4. Shortening sentences5.5. Using tables and figures

U. Wingate / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 26–37 35

Appendix B. Overview of the five intervention methods.

Method Details Timing

1. Reading and writing Students read journal articles, take notes,write summaries.Online submission of notes and summaries

Reading article in preparation for Week 1/Week 2/Week 4

2. Discussion andwriting in class

Group discussions, writing up of summaryof discussion.Online submission of summary

Last 30 min of classroom sessions in Week 2/Week 4

3. Explicit teachingof argumentation

1. Introduction of Toulmin model ofargumentation2. Students analyse arguments injournal articles3. Students analyse samples of theirown writing

1. 30-min lecture in Induction Week2. Week 3/30 min of classroom session3. Week 11/30 min of classroom session

4. Explicit teaching ofdiscourse features

Lecturer pointing out discourse features inliterature as part of lecture

Week 3Week 4

5. Formative feedback Individual and group feedback onincreasingly longer pieces of writing

1. Feedback on online submissions: Weeks 1, 2, 42. Feedback on group submissions: Weeks 2, 4

Feedback for 1–4 to be used for finalassignment due in Week 12

Feedback on exploratory essay provided in Week 7Feedback on essay in parallel module,

provided in Week 10

Appendix C. Extract from genre-based writing materials.

Introductions

1. Introductions in high scoring assignments

TASK 1- Review the analyses for the first three introductions in high scoring assignments.- Complete your own analysis of Example 4.- Summarise what would appear to be the desirable features of assignment introductions

EXAMPLE A. Assignment title: What counts as validity in formative assessment?Introduction

The role of assessment in language teaching and learning is complex and oftenpolitically-charged. In recent years, many researchers have promoted a moresocially and democratically equitable conception of assessment (i.e. Shohamy,2001; Lynch, 2001), that is non-psychometric and non-standardised. This hasled to the promotion, endorsement and implementation of variousclassroom-based alternatives, many of which have shared characteristics andconcerns (cf. Leung, 2005, p. 870 for a brief overview). [1] Despite this changein tide, however, a number of old questions rightly persist. In particular theissues of validity and reliability, which Leung (2005) refers to as “the qualityand soundness” of the assessment approach, are still prevalent (p. 869).Interestingly, these questions are posed by those spearheading this newmovement in an attempt to ensure theoretical, empirical and epistemologicalrobustness (i.e. Leung, 2004). [2] In this discussion I shall address the issue ofvalidity in regard to Formative Assessment (FA). In the first section, I shalldefine, examine and then problematise the central tenets of FA; thisproblematisation will raise three key questions in regard to validity in FA. Inthe second section, I will begin by briefly delineating some of the underlyingassumptions of validity in conventional assessment practice. Following this, Ishall return to the three crucial and interrelated questions previouslyidentified, through which I argue for a reconceptualised understanding ofvalidity in FA that acknowledges its complex and contingent nature. In myconclusion I shall argue that subscription to this viewpoint will enable FA toattain a more prominent position in educational assessment. [3]

[1] This section establishes the intellectual context andrefer to relevant authorities

[2] Refers to the issue or problem that is going to be thefocus of the assignment

[3] Provides a map/set of signposts which guide thereader through the rest of the assignment.

U. Wingate / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 26–3736

Appendix D. Changes made to Introduction in the joint deconstruction phase.

In the past few decades, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach has been advocated as one of the mostsuccessful method in English language teaching (Skehan, 1993; Wills, 1993; Nunan, 1998). In realising this approach, TaskBased Learning Teaching (TBLT) is considered one of the method to realise this approach. Although there are various TBLTmethodologies, they share the similar structure which contains pre-task, task and post task. Jane Willis’ TBLT method isregarded as one of the most developed and the most teacher-friendly. On one hand, according to Curriculum and AssessmentGuide published by Hong Kong Education Manpower Bureau, developing community competence is the main objective forsecondary school students (HKEMB, 2007). Teachers are required to use TBLT, and encouraged to design tasks for students inorder to reach this objective. On the other hand, according to my teaching experience and observation, TBLT is not the mainteaching method in Hong Kong secondary school classrooms. Although TBLT is supported by education policy makers andresearch backup by education scholar, there are also some concerns and conflicts from ‘users’ perspective’.

In the second section, attempting to illustrate the whole picture of TBLT approach, I shall brief look at the different stage ofWillis’ TBLT methodology.

In the final section, I am going to discuss the arguments which for and against TBLT approach. Moreover, the possibility ofdeveloping Hong Kong version’s TBLT will also be discussed.

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Ursula Wingate is Lecturer in Language in Education in the Department of Education and Professional Studies, King’s College London. Among her researchinterests are students’ transition from school to university, theoretical and pedagogic approaches to teaching academic writing, and e-learning. She hascarried out several research projects concerned with the development of writing in higher education.