Analysing the use of some academic writing strategies

Academic writing can be considered as a bridge that connects professional growth to a discourse community. According to Grabe and Kaplan (1996), academic writing is a type of writing that involves composing for knowledge transforming. Examples of these compositions can be: journals, notes, reports or proposals. In order to transform knowledge or as Pintos (2009) states,

“... [I]n order to construct knowledge, we should be aware of some specific characteristics which delimit the area of writing academically. Many well-known researchers and theorists have listed them (Campbell, 1990; Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998; Hunter & Morgan, 2001; Jordan, 1997; Reid, 1993). These characteristics ... are regulated by a general academic register, a formal style, a proficiency in language use, the ability to integrate information from other sources...” (p.7)

Analysing Myles’s (2002) work, Second Language Writing and Research: The Writing Process and Error Analysis in Student Texts, we can observe she makes use of a variety of academic strategies to support her research and analysis. A great deal of in-text citations are used in Models of First Language (1L) and Second Language (2L) Writing section, para. 3 as well as she makes two omissions when quoting two different authors’ points of view as regards skilled and less-skilled writers. They can be seen in the paragraph quoted below,

The Flower and Hayes (1980, 1981) model focuses on what writers do when they compose. It examines the rhetorical problem in order to determine the potential difficulties a writer could experience during the composing process. The "problem-solving activity" is divided into two major components: the rhetorical situation (audience, topic, assignment), and the writer's own goals (involving the reader, the writer's persona, the construction of meaning, and the production of the formal text). By comparing skilled and less-skilled writers, the emphasis here is placed on "students' strategic knowledge and the ability of students to transform information . . . to meet rhetorically constrained purposes" (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996, p. 116). However, the social dimension is important too. Indeed, writing "should not be viewed solely as an individually-oriented, inner-directed cognitive process, but as much as an acquired response to the discourse conventions . . . within particular communities" (Swales, 1990, p. 4).

Myles (2002) also inserts an upper-case letter at the beginning of two block quotations. The following are the examples

[L]earners lack the necessary information in the second language or the attentional capacity to activate the appropriate second-language routine. But such an account says little about why certain linguistic forms transfer and others do not. (McLaughlin, 1988, p. 50 as cited in Cognitive Factors, para. 7)

[A]lthough we should not cripple our students' interest in writing through undue stress or grammatical correctness, the influence of second language factors on writing performance is something we have to reckon with and not pretend that concentrating on the process would automatically resolve the difficulty caused by these factors. (Yan, 1991, p. 268 as cited in Summary and Conclusion, para.2)

Various kinds of quotations are also used, direct and block ones can be mentioned as the examples above. Myles (2002) also paraphrases other authors’ words, for example in the first paragraph of her work

The ability to write well is not a naturally acquired skill; it is usually learned or culturally transmitted as a set of practices in formal instructional settings or other environments. Writing skills must be practiced and learned through experience. Writing also involves composing, which implies the ability either to tell or retell pieces of information in the form of narratives or description, or to transform information into new texts, as in expository or argumentative writing. Perhaps it is best viewed as a continuum of activities that range from the more mechanical or formal aspects of "writing down" on the one end, to the more complex act of composing on the other end (Omaggio Hadley, 1993).

The author also introduces phrases by means of appropriate reporting verbs, such as:
Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) also propose a model that suggests...
According to Ellis (1985), it is through analyzing learner errors that...
Taking the concept of "knowledge transformation" further, Wells (2000) argues that...
In addition to the use of written models, Cumming (1995) also points out the benefits of...

The reporting verbs are not overused nor repeated so as not to make it difficult the smoothness of the reading act.

All in all, the examples above can show how an academic piece of writing should be looked like as regards the use of appropriate citing sources. As Pintos (2009) defines, composing is “the ability to combine sentences into larger cohesive and coherent pieces of writing...” (p.7). It is important to take into account that when producing a piece of academic writing, we are not only using different statregies but we are also getting involved in a discourse community.


















Reference
Myles, J. (2002). Second Language Writing and Research: The Writing Process and Error Analysis in Student Texts. TESEL-EJ, 6, 2, 2002. Queen's University. Retrieved from http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESl-EJ/ej22/a1.html, April 1, 2008
Pintos, V. (2008). Unit 3: Academic Writing. Handout for Licenciatura en Enseñanza del Idioma Inglés. Buenos Aires: Universidad CAECE. Retrieved August 2009, from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=2730