Academic writing
Rebecca Bell

Academic writing is used to express acquired knowledge in a specific subject area. Such writing tends to be serious in nature and often demonstrates particular theories or arguments in relation to a specified discourse.  Academic writing is mainly undertaken for learning development or course assessment purposes and the same principles apply to publication of academic papers.

Further information:

• Find out about the Academic Writers Reading Group.
• Access links to papers.
• Read about the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Project.

Academic Writing: A literature summary
Academic writing is the primary form of communication within individual subject disciplines and is intrinsic to student development. The changing nature of higher education, however, is creating major issues in the support of student writing and by ignoring the issue problems may arise not only for retention but also for student engagement and overall course satisfaction. In response to this, a number of researchers have begun to investigate the area.

In the UK there are three main approaches to academic writing in higher education: the skills model, the socialisation model and the academic literacies approach¹.

• The skills model identifies writing as a skill to be acquired and involves the teaching of writing through individual one-to-one support sessions or group workshops, usually by non-academic writing or support specialists. Such an approach identifies poor writing ability as a personal failing and consequently such support is often viewed as a remedial service offering a minimal level of support to students who may be struggling.
• Rather than learning through targeted interventions, the socialisation model assumes that students will develop knowledge and skills in their chosen discourse simply by being immersed in the culture of higher education. However this approach is criticised for assuming that students will simply soak up the language of a complex discourse that may have taken their lecturer themselves many years to understand. Nevertheless together these two approaches have traditionally provided the theoretical basis for practical academic writing provision throughout higher education institutions in the UK.
• The limitations of the above approaches has lead researchers to academic literacies theory. This more-holistic approach explores writer identity, the context in which writing takes place and the culture of higher education itself; but is often criticised for being difficult to apply in practice.

Consequently, it is considered that the three models interlink and can play an important part in the process of learning to write academically. This unification of methods is reflected in a number of institutional initiatives from writing centres to the development of peer mentoring schemes. 

¹ It was proponents of academic literacy who initially divided academic writing support in this manner.

Key texts

• Cottrell, S (2003) The Study Skills Handbook. Second edition. Hampshire. Palgrave Macmillan.
  This book is designed to help students develop their study skills and includes a useful section on academic writing. The activities suggested could be used in class or given to students as homework.
• Ganobscik-Williams, L (ed.) (2006) Teaching Academic Writing in UK Higher Education. Hampshire. Palgrave MacMillan.
  This is the most recent theoretical textbook in the area of academic writing and includes chapters from many key thinkers on the main debates in this field.
• Lea, M R, Stierer, B (eds) (2000) Student Writing in Higher Education New Contexts. Buckingham. Open University Press.
  This is a seminal text in the area of academic writing and it is one of the first texts to begin the debate regarding a skills versus an integrated writing approach.
• Lea, M R, Street, B V (1998) ‘Student Writing in Higher Education: An academic literacies approach’. Studies in Higher Education 23 (2) pp.157-171.This paper introduces the concept of academic literacies and begins to identify and discuss the contemporary issues surrounding student writing. 

Case studies

• Thinking Writing
  This site is aimed at academic staff who teach academic writing throughout HE in the UK. Thinking Writing developed from the ‘Writing in the Disciplines’ project that was undertaken at Queen Mary University in London. The project has two case studies where the writing in the disciplines approach has been trialled in two schools.
• An Essay Evolves
  This was a project undertaken by London Metropolitan University and involves uncovering the process of essay writing. The project followed a writer over 15 weeks as she attempted to answer a Psychology essay question. The process was charted on a Wiki and the writer recorded her experience on a blog. The project uncovered the process of essay writing and gave a forum for those working in the field of academic writing to comment and dissect the process of writing an essay.

How to
University of Wollongong academic writing resource helps students to break down every aspect of their writing and understand what is required of academic writing style.

The WAC Clearinghouse website provides a scholarly support network for tutors interested in incorporating writing into their sessions.The website has excellent definitions and examples of 'Writing Across the Curriculum' and 'Writing in the Disciplines' methodologies.The site provides links to academic papers, a teachers' forum, activities and resources plus a link to the informative WAC journal.

The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University in the USA offers a series of online writing guides, it’s very comprehensive, but it’s not for the casual browser as you jump straight into the subject without much of an introduction. Excellent source to link to, but please let them know you are linking to them.

Tool kits
Nottingham Trent University is part of the LearnHigher CETL which has an excellent website full of learning support resources and activities to use with your students. These resources cover a whole range of areas including Presentation skills, group work, reading and note taking and of course academic writing.

If you want to develop your expertise in academic writing then why not come along to a staff seminar session or the Academic Writing Readers Group and discuss recent developments in the field?

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LearnHigher, Providing student feedback, assessment design, marking, improving student feedback.

NTU Regulations and Guidance
The Academic Standards and Quality Handbook covers all aspects of the university regulations regarding academic writing.