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FLC: What We Talk About When We Talk About Academic Writing

Apply for this Faculty Learning Community at http://tinyurl.com/mzghstt


Facilitator: Dr. Kelli Prejean, Associate Professor, COLA/English Department

Comparing academic writing to ball handling, David Russell, in his oft-cited sports analogy, has this to say: “There is no autonomous, generalizable skill called ball using or ball handling that can be learned and then applied to all ball games” (57). In the spirit of Russell’s ball handling analogy, join us as we look at Writing in the Disciplines–an offshoot of Writing across the Curriculum–and think about how we might discover more nuanced ways to talk about and teach all the things we mean when we ask students to write for academic audiences.

As a group, we will discuss the differences between writing as a skill and writing as a form of knowing. We will examine discipline-specific research on writing with an end goal of thinking about how the ways we communicate knowledge in our disciplines rely both on general writing skills as well as specific rhetorical stances and conventions.

In light of this goal, the group will tackle questions of this nature:

  • How do we open up conversations in our disciplines about the relationships between writing and knowing?
  • How do we better prepare students to understand the kinds of writing they will encounter during their academic careers?
  • How do we better define what we mean when we refer to academic writing (and all its manifestations)?
  • How do we better prepare instructors in all disciplines to articulate the rhetorical practices of their fields of study?
  • How can we teach writing in a way that transfers across disciplinary boundaries?

With these guiding questions in mind, this FLC will explore how writing is used in all disciplines as a way of expressing and sustaining knowledge, solving problems, and sharing social and ethical values. The ultimate goal is to think through ways writing can be seen and used to find common ground across disciplines and how sharing our writing knowledge with students can help them become more prepared, rhetorically aware writers.

Members of this FLC will review the literature on writing in the disciplines, co-author a best practices guide for teaching writing in the disciplines, and disseminate the results of the FLC’s individual and collaborative work.

Works consulted:

Anton, Chris M. “Citation as Speech Act: Exploring the Pragmatics of Reference.” Research Writing Revisited: A Sourcebook for Teachers. Ed. Pavel Zemliansky and Wendy Bishop.     Heinemann, 2004. 203-213.

Bazerman, Charles. Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science. Madison: U Wisconsin P, 1988. Rpt. WAC Clearinghouse Landmark Publications in Writing Studies, 2000.

Carter, Michael. “Ways of Knowing, Doing, and Writing in the Disciplines.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 58, no. 3, 2007, pp. 385-418. www.jstor.org/stable/20456952.

Russell, David R. “Activity Theory and Its Implications for Writing Instruction.” Reconceiving Writing, Rethinking Writing Instruction. Ed. Joseph Petraglia. Mahwah: Lawrence Erbium, 1995. 51-77.

Soliday, Mary. Everyday Genres: Writing Assignments Across the Disciplines. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011.