The intention of this paper is to unsettle our habits of scholarly writing and reading, from within the grids of intelligibility of Western, rationalist materiality, so as to make visible what we/I no longer often see: the academic writing and publishing constraints that discipline our assemblages of knowledge. Taking poststructuralist…

The literature on academic writing in higher education contains a wealth of research and theory on students' writing, but much less on academics' writing. In performative higher education cultures, discussions of academics' writing mainly concern outputs, rather than the process of producing them. This key component of academic work remains…

This paper discusses the contrasting perspectives of academic prose versus grant writing, and lists strategies grant specialists can use to help researchers break old habits and replace them with techniques better suited to the world of competitive grant proposals. [This article is a reprint of "Why Academics Have a Hard Time Writing Good…

Expectations for high-level academic writing, especially in the Common Core era, have never been higher. Middle school and high school students are being asked to do close readings of complex texts and then respond in writing using academic discourse. This is a challenging task for many students, but perhaps none as great as for English language…

In this article, Mlynarczyk traces her career-long exploration of the relationship between personal, narrative writing and so-called academic discourse. Believing that both are important for college students, particularly students placed in basic writing or ESL composition, she has come to believe that rather than viewing the two as separate modes…

The teaching of writing, and the teaching of developmental and ESL/EFL writing in particular, has historically given priority to the sentence, often in theory and almost always in practice. The writing approach modeled here simply argues that the paragraph should be given primacy of place in ESL/EFL academic writing instruction. The…

This article considers how narrative constructs could be used to strengthen the writing process. The authors outline the narratological devices of plot, point of view, authorial distance, and character, and examine how these concepts can be used when writing with qualitative data. Narratological tools equip the researcher to selectively manage the…

Although this author had experience teaching postsecondary academic writing, she had never done one-on-one tutoring. Therefore, One-on-One Literacy trained her as a novice volunteer tutor to work with adults who wished to expand their reading and writing skills. The tutor training included developing an individualized program suited to the…

This article offers a first-person account of an academic writing workshop from the perspective of a participant. What is significant is that the workshop combines traditional and creative writing approaches to the teaching of academic writing. This provides new insights into a process of academic writing that can have a significant effect on the…

If you want to learn how to shoot a basketball, you begin by carefully observing someone who knows how to shoot a basketball. If you want to be a writer, you begin by carefully observing the work of accomplished writers. Recognizing the importance that modeling plays in the learning process, high school English teacher Kelly Gallagher shares how…

This article shares strategies that educators can use to assist students in meeting the challenges of academic writing more effectively. In order to foreground an understanding of struggling writers, the text begins with a brief review of composition theory and history related to basic writers and identity. It goes on to examine classroom…

Given the current emphasis on disciplinary discourses, it's not surprising that so little recent attention has been devoted to identifying conventions that are universal in academic discourse. In this essay, the author argues that there are shared features that unite academic writing, and that by introducing these features to first-year students…

Taking an assertive stance toward research being reviewed or reported is a challenging task for second language writers. This aspect of interpersonal meaning is especially difficult to address through direct instruction, as attention to particular grammatical and lexical choices outside of contexts of use is not enough to help students develop the…

A reading-writing initiative began in 2011-12 at the University of Toronto as a partnership between an East Asian Studies (EAS) department and an English Language Learning (ELL) Program. In this institution, students are expected to enter into scholarly discussions in their first year essays, yet many (both native English speakers and non-native…

This article describes and analyses a specific mechanism, the writing consultation, designed to help academics to prioritise, reconceptualise and improve their writing practices. It makes the case for its potential to stimulate consideration of writing practices and motivations, a possible precondition for creating time for writing in academic…