Stance is a growing focus of academic writing research and an important aspect of writing development in higher education. Research on student writing to date has explored stance across different levels, language backgrounds, and disciplines, but has rarely focused on stance features across genres. This article explores stance marker use between…

This paper explores the expression of certainty in a set of high- and low-rated Geography argumentative essays. Using one aspect of Hunston's (1989, 2000) concept of the evaluation of status, the paper compares the statement types used to construe the writer's expression of certainty in the construction of arguments. Drawing on the framework,…

Using a survey of 138 writing programs, I argue that we must be more explicit about what we think students should get out of analysis to make it more likely that students will transfer their analytical skills to different settings. To ensure our students take analytical skills with them at the end of the semester, we must simplify the task we…

This article examines how adult learners were socialized by one another in the context of content materials in conjunction with the teacher's participation. Based on the premise that second language learning is experiential and emergent and using discourse analysis of students' asynchronous electronic postings and writing assignments together with…

Online collaborative writing tasks are frequently undertaken in forums and wikis. Variation between these two communication modes has yet to be examined, particularly type of feedback and its effects. We investigated the type of feedback and the impact of English native-speakers' feedback on Spanish peers' discourse restructuring in the context of…

In this essay I present the results of a national study of over 2,000 writing assignments from college courses across disciplines. Drawing on James Britton's multidimensional discourse taxonomy and recent work in genre studies, I analyze the rhetorical features and genres of the assignments and consider the significance of my findings through the…

Examines the far-reaching cultural implications of a kind of writing not usually deemed culturally significant--school assignments. Studies 44 papers written in 1898 by senior class members of the Platteville Normal School in southwestern Wisconsin assigned to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Wisconsin's statehood. Examines the cultural…

Composition pedagogy that challenges students to reflect on their participation in discourse communities reveals an attempt by teachers to balance disciplinary concerns with the realities of students' worlds. Such a pedagogy consists of students repositioning themselves in relation to the various discourses which comprise their own ways of…