At least in the United States, the presentation of scholarship is highly formulaic. The emblematic product of this professional domain--the academic journal article--is less a lump of clay waiting to be moulded than a set of fired jars waiting to be filled. Not only are the jars unyielding to the touch, but even their number and order are fixed.…

In West Africa and in Ghana, there exist many modes of communication beyond the verbal and written. For example, at the chiefs' palaces there exist many systems of communication; notably, symbols (ideographs) that tell the philosophies and stories of the chiefs and the people of the tribes. In Ghana, as in many West African countries, it is…

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of using inquiry-based writing instruction on students' academic writing skills. A pretest-posttest two groups quasi-experimental design was employed. Data were obtained through test, focus group discussion, and reflective journal from 62 first-year pharmacy students who were selected using…

A still-widespread perspective on "academic language" is that the most important dimension of language used for academic purposes is the extent to which its linguistic features contrast with "everyday language" used outside of school. But focusing on the unique linguistic features of written academic texts ignores the important…

Writing for social engagement in an academic context indicates the authors' attitude towards the propositional content and the text's audience through metadiscursive maxims markers employment. This study tried to determine whether there are any differences in metadiscourse marking in research articles across different disciplines and different…

Academic language is the key that promotes disciplinary reading, writing, speaking, and thinking. The novice teacher may not be prepared with the knowledge, skills, and strategies to effectively plan, teach, and assess for academic language achievement. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand the novice teacher's experiences…

The kind of writing the author is describing in the article is fostered by academic discourse, which, as Peter Elbow has persuasively argued, "tries to peel away from messages the evidence of how those messages are situated as the center of personal, political, or cultural interest." He goes on, "the conventions [of academic…

Broadly defined, academic language (AL) is a set of lexical-grammatical norms and registers commonly used in educational and academic discourse. Mastery of academic language in writing is an important aspect of writing instruction and assessment. The purpose of this study was to use Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools to examine the extent to…

This report provides an in-depth comparison of TOEFL iBT® and the Duolingo English Test (DET) in terms of the degree to which both tests assess academic language proficiency in listening, reading, writing, and speaking. The analysis is based on publicly available documentation on both tests, including sample test questions available on the test…

Standardised cross-national learning assessments may help drive education policy change and system improvements across Africa but support is required to overcome operational and technical challenges. This recognition has led to sustained technical and geographical development of regional assessments like those from PASEC, the Program for the…

Help adolescents learn and use the academic words that will assist them in school and beyond. The author argues that "words worth using" must matter to adolescents' authentic work in the disciplines and connect to their lived experiences. Rather than using a model of vocabulary instruction that positions students as passive recipients…

This article first contextualizes the authors' perspectives and purpose to aid the reader in situating the narratives of three Black scholars. Their stories are woven together to help other Black scholars navigate and detox from the trauma of academic writing in higher education. Collectively, the authors, via a co-constructed dialogic space,…

The split between analytic philosophy (AP) and Continental philosophy (CP) has mainly preoccupied scholars of philosophy so far, but in fact, it has broader pedagogical implications. This article argues that conventions of argumentative writing, as taught in colleges today, have their roots in analytic philosophy and its assumptions regarding ways…

Academic criticism is a fundamental feature of scholarly discourse. It plays a key role in scientific theory building, whereby ideas are iteratively challenged and redrafted (Kuhn, 1962, 1970). It is also how individual scholars create a research space (see the CARS model, Swales, 1990) and establish themselves as members of the research…

The present study investigates the incremental validity of the traditional books-at-home measure and selected extensions (i.e., number of children's books and number of ebooks) for explaining students' academic achievement as measured by their academic language comprehension. Using multiple linear regressions, we additionally explore the role of…