What is Academic Writing? How does the term Discourse Community relate with AW? Why do I need to know what scholarly sources are? What are primary and secondary sources? How are the views of writing as product and writing as process are diffferent? Does one view exclude the other one? Hat are higher order skills? How does AW help develop higher order skills? What are the features of AW and how can these become obstacles to students?
Product v. Process writingThe first view of the writing activity, writing as a product, emphasizes the final piece as the central aim/objetive of the composing moment, without taking into account how that piece was accomplished. Writing as a process, on the other hand, highlights the different stages involved in the production of a text. It takes into consideration the way in which the writer moves all along the writing process. That is, the writing moment is not perceived as a linear one but as a cycle in which different actions permanently take the writer back and forth in order to shape the desired text.
A discourse community has been described as a group of people who are involved in a professional activity with the same interests and goals, sharing a set of conventions, rules and norms in terms of the texts/genres that circulate to regulate that activity (Borg, 2003) .
What is Academic Writing (AW)? AW it is considered as a social practice because the writer produces their work with a reader in mind. Such reader belongs to a discourse community where members share the discursive skills and the same goals (Natalia Sueldo). Then, in other words, Academic writing can be viewed as a communicative social practice because it is embedded in a social group or community with specific contextual charasteristics, there is a sender of a message with aclear communicative purpose in mind and a receiver who interprets the message according to their previous knowledge, life background and expectations connected with the message.
Academic Writing (AW) is a practice commonly required in higher education courses, where students should make use of their higher-order thinking skills in order to provide arguments on a specific topic and back them up with theory taken from scholarly sources (Milton). AW encompasses many characteristics to be taken into account: One of them, according to Irvin (2010) is the support given to the text. This means that writers should provide evidence for the statements that they include in order to make it convincing and reliable (Mica Grinóvero)Keeping the purpose in mind is another aspect to take into consideration. When we embark on the process of academic writing, we should always keep in mind the purpose of our writing in order to guide and engage our reader. If we bear in mind our intentions from the very beginning, there will be lower likelihood of getting off the track and losing our reader's interest.(Virginia)Another feature of academic writing is its explicitness, in which it is the writer's responsibility to make clear which the connections between the sections in the composition are (Pau Miño).Formality is considered to be important as regards academic writing. This characteristic implies that the writer should not make use of expressions that are generally common in spoken language (Mica Pirez)Another remarkable feature of academic writing is OBJECTIVITY, which implies more emphasis on the information and arguments the writer want to present. Also, as Irvin states, the reason is dominant over other emotions (Ale Vince).Precision is another important feature to be considered in the process of academic writing. The information displayed in the text needs to be correctly specified so as to provide the reader with the exact and detailed data (Julieta Puntin).