Volume 32, 2022

EN :

While digital writing projects (DWPs) like podcasts, videos, and infographics are rigorous sites of scholarly knowledge production, the growth in their popularity as classroom assignments often has more to do with a sense that these are “fun” assignments. Horner, Selfe, and Lockridge (2015) describe such dismissive attitudes using the term fetishization. When DWPs are fetishized by students and faculty, they are celebrated while being dismissed as pedestrian fads. Ultimately, fetishization decreases the amount of support offered by faculty, the effort invested by students, as well as the demand (and budget) for learning service support. This means that disparities between students (including access to technologies, digital literacies, and “normative” abilities) are exaggerated. In this paper, we illuminate four interconnected drivers of fetishization that obscure the realities of DWPs—the myth of digital natives, assumptions about tool-content division, faith in digital tool neutrality, and idealizations of the web. Like all teaching approaches, thoughtful instructional design and learning supports are required for DWPs to create effective, equitable, safe, inclusive, and accessible learning opportunities. This paper enhances writing instructors’ and tutors’ ability to challenge fetishized perspectives of DWPs in their work with faculty and students alike.

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In this paper, we discuss our research into the use of sentence-level feedback at one stage in a scaffolded assignment in a large second year science course. The assignment involved submitting a lab report in three stages: Introduction, Results & Discussion, and then a final submission of all the parts in revised form. At the start of the term, teaching assistants and students were provided with a list (with explanations and examples) of 10 common sentence level issues; for the results and discussion submissions, teaching assistants were required as part of their feedback to identify at least one of these issues in each student’s writing. This section was selected due to it being the penultimate stage: it was hoped that feedback here would be applied to the students’ final submission. We analyzed the feedback and the response to feedback in 62 randomly chosen samples of student writing from the course (circa 16% of the class in total). We examined the issues from the list that teaching assistants preferred to give feedback on, the sorts of feedback that students were most likely to act on, and the success of student revisions arising from the various forms of feedback. We found that teaching assistants preferred to give feedback on issues related to what we would describe as more intuitive, readerly aspects of sentence-level writing (such as awkward phrasing), rather than on technical grammatical issues (such as clarity of antecedents for pronouns); this former sort of feedback also led to the most revisions, and the most successful revisions, on the students’ parts. Accordingly, we argue that focusing on this more intuitive approach might be a fruitful strategy for teaching assistant training, since it would both play to their preferences and to student preferences.

EN :

Through a case study conducted in 2014 and 2015 at the University of X in South Africa, the researchers collected focus group and survey data to develop a better understanding of the kinds of students who use the university’s Writing Centre and their perceptions of the support they receive. The research question at the core of their study asks whether a South African writing centre’s academic literacies practices and philosophy should be adapted or changed to better serve today’s students. The results of the study demonstrate that the vast majority of students who visit the writing centre speak English as an additional language and believe they need more writing support with a focus on lower order concerns than that currently offered through the academic literacies approach at the university. The researchers concluded that the South African undergraduate students at the University of X need differentiated forms of writing support that go beyond the orthodoxies of the current academic literacies approach embraced by the University’s writing centres. The researchers urge writing centres to acknowledge the need to develop interventions and models of support that target English as an Additional Language (EAL) students without adopting a deficit-perspective and without abandoning the long-term project of challenging the privileged status of the English language within the institution.

FR :

En s’appuyant sur le domaine épistémique des littéracies professionnelles, l’étude vise la construction d’une typologie élémentaire des genres écrits professionnels à des fins d’enseignement. L’enjeu consiste à catégoriser 135 textes authentiques ayant circulé dans trois entreprises dont l’activité s’inscrit dans certaines filières du secteur industriel Production. Dans une perspective descendante qui part des pratiques langagières des acteurs professionnels pour explorer enfin les phénomènes textuels, on vise l’élaboration d’une typologie des genres écrits professionnels selon des critères praxéologiques, pragmatiques et compositionnels. Quatre genres écrits majeurs ont été identifiés, à savoir le rapport, le compte rendu, la conversation écrite professionnelle et la note de cadrage. Une fois les propriétés linguistiques de ces genres analysées, la typologie a fait l’objet d’une transposition didactique. L’étude fournit également les objectifs d’apprentissage et les contenus d’enseignement prioritaires pour concevoir des formations à l’écrit à destination d’étudiants en difficulté avec l’écriture dans les filières universitaires technologiques.

EN :

Based on the epistemic field of professional literacies, the study aims to build a basic typology of professional written genres for teaching purposes. It strives to categorize 135 authentic texts that have circulated in three companies whose activities fall within certain branches of the industrial sector Production. In a top-down perspective that starts from the language practices of the professional actors to finally explore the textual phenomena, we aim to elaborate a typology of professional written genres according to praxeological, pragmatic and compositional criteria. Four major written genres have been identified, namely the report, the minutes, the professional written conversation, and the framework note. After a thorough analysis of the aforementioned genres’ linguistic properties, the typology is then adapted to didactic purposes. The study also provides learning objectives and priority teaching contents for designing writing training for students with writing difficulties in technological Higher Education courses.

EN :

The uneven levels of writing support that dissertation writers receive throughout each stage of their PhDs has contributed to low completion rates and general dissatisfaction with the doctoral process. By offering both collective and individual assistance, the Café and one-to-one writing programming described herein centres students in their own work by examining the often-unspoken expectations that structure their PhDs. This programming establishes honest communication with dissertation writers in order to promote self-advocacy and intrinsic motivation so that they may take greater control over their projects. By modeling a reflective understanding of dissertation writing, this programming enhances longer term productive processes that enable higher completion rates and a greater sense of fulfillment with the PhD.

EN :

This article describes a strategy for teaching undergraduate students to read research articles (RAs)—called the hero narrative reading strategy. This strategy modifies an existing approach to reading RAs (the Scientific Argumentation Model [SAM]), which teaches students to identify an article’s rhetorical moves. The hero narrative reading strategy relabels the rhetorical moves that the SAM identifies in RA introductions (Motive and Objective), and it frames RA introductions as hero narratives; students are taught to see RA writers as making hero claims—claims that they are stepping up to address a critical problem that previous research has not adequately addressed. This strategy can help students to understand the rhetorical structure of RAs.

EN :

This essay outlines the experience of introducing a labour-based grading contract in a section of the University of Victoria’s standard introduction to academic reading and writing that was only open to students who self-identified as Indigenous. Labour-based grading contracts offer an alternative approach to conventional grading, in which a student’s grade is determined by the amount of labour that the student does over the semester. By emphasizing labour and learning, this approach to grading works towards decentering normalized whiteness in academic writing pedagogy. In this essay, I describe our labour-based contract, I explain how our class negotiated the contract, and I share some reflections on what went well and what I would do differently next time.

FR :

Cet essai décrit l'expérience de l'introduction d'un contrat de classement fondé sur la main-d'œuvre dans une section de l'introduction standard à la lecture et à l'écriture académiques de l'Université de Victoria qui n'était ouverte qu'aux étudiants qui se sont identifiés comme autochtones. Les contrats de notation basés sur la main-d'œuvre offrent une approche alternative à la notation conventionnelle, dans laquelle la note d'un étudiant est déterminée par la quantité de travail que l'étudiant effectue au cours du semestre. En mettant l'accent sur le travail et l'apprentissage, cette approche de la notation vise à décentrer la blancheur normalisée dans la pédagogie de l'écriture académique. Dans cet essai, je décris notre contrat, j'explique comment notre classe a négocié le contrat et je partage quelques réflexions sur ce qui s'est bien passé et sur ce que je ferais différemment la prochaine fois.

EN :

An introduction to the special issue for Rethinking the Structures of Academic Writing in the Times of Exacerbated Inequity. This paper presents a discussion of the inspiration for this special call for papers, an analysis of the genre presentation of the typical critical examination of problems emerging from social inequities, and a summary of each of the papers contained within the special issue.

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The last two years have raised important questions about how we can make the teaching of academic writing more equitable. In fact, the current moment invites us to “learn to unlearn” ways of teaching academic writing that perpetuate inequity. In this reflective article, I draw on decolonial theory and antiracist theory to unwind the ways coloniality has shaped the way that I have taught scientific writing for two decades. This work begins with a discussion of the idea of learning to unlearn from decolonial theory. I then examine how that perspective can change the way we teach scientific communication—for example, in contextualizing the development of scientific knowledge as a series of epistemological developments and exchanges, rather than from a zero point of Western thought. Spiraling outward from the classroom, I reflect on how scientific writing is part of a larger matrix of institutional structures that unwittingly compound colonial legacies inequities. In the end, if we are to address inequity in the teaching and assessment of academic writing in new ways, then we need to acknowledge and challenge the legacies of coloniality in the teaching and assessment of academic writing.

EN :

To invite more than imitation, institutional models—of writing and beyond—must leave space for individuals to bring their specific creative intelligence to bear on the rhetorical context. This reciprocal use of models depends on preparing for all students but also on having an open stance to the individual students not adequately accounted for in those preparations, an open stance through which the presence of actual students can disrupt harmful or limited models. Adopting new tools and practices is one thing; adopting a new stance with which to find, approach, understand, and use new tools and practices is something else—something more difficult to bring into public discussion and explicit consideration. I use the practice of book recommendation as an example through which to consider this knowing on the go.

EN :

In the wake of COVID-19, educators are reconsidering not only conventional methods but also those comparatively recent to pedagogy. However, a change in pedagogical strategy can risk being little more than reactive if its philosophical grounding is unvetted. This piece reconsiders the distributed knowledge framework and its potential for writing program administration and writing instruction. The professional communication discipline has used this framework with a frequent result: privileging expertise at the exclusion of other knowledges. This piece chronicles a writing program administrator’s pre-pandemic use of distributed knowledge, and how pandemic surprises led to a revision of the lens. The post-pandemic frame differently addresses the knowledges at play in a learning community. It works to include more students by including more of each student.

EN :

En route to their final thesis examinations, doctoral students face continuous challenges. These include institutional, instructional, personal, and social issues (Cotterall, 2011). These challenges can cause students to question their competency and ability to complete their programmes, despite any previous academic successes. Developing effective and productive writing habits may be the most demanding task facing research students. Academic writing is particularly challenging where students experience conflicts between their developing writer identities (Burgess & Ivanič, 2010) and the duties or responsibilities related to their lives outside the research programme: as carers; parents; or as new arrivals unfamiliar with the language and cultural conventions of a country or institution. We draw on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) description of Communities of Practice to outline the collaborative efforts undertaken by two doctoral students when developing their academic writing skills and writer identities. Both identify as immigrants to Australia: one has English as a second language; the other has returned to university (in a new country) after a 30-year hiatus. Developing academic writing identities has involved creating an English-speaking identity/self to overcome second language and cultural differences as well as to manage extensive challenges in terms of negotiation and navigation of academic writing practice genres. Although supervisors provide writing development guidelines, in this paper we focus on the nurturing support provided via the student community to overcome the different challenges presented during the PhD journey. Adopting an auto-ethnographical approach, we outline our individual challenges when developing writing identities and address the ways in which creating a collaborative support group has helped us improve writing style and productivity. It is in these circumstances – where individual needs extend beyond the readily available resources – that a peer-led community of practice can offer the necessary support and collaborative activities to enhance the learning experience of all participants. The group dynamics have evolved alongside developing writer identities as the nature of the support required changes over time and with experience. Creating this collaborative community has contributed to the development of wider-ranging linguistic, writing, technological, emotional, and social skills that extend above and beyond the remit of the PhD programme.

EN :

Conventions shape scholarly writing and citations practices are one set of conventions that dominate how and what we write. Yet, many of these practices naturalize exclusion and discrimination in a way that becomes normalized and, consequently, invisible. For doctoral students, learning the conventions of citing is part of developing an identity around scholarship, research and writing. In this paper, we examine our own experiences of the politics of citations to understand our socialization processes and resistances. We use an autoethnographic narrative approach to frame this qualitative study. Our findings show how citation use abounds with the contradictions and paradoxes in our doctoral writing journeys where the pressure to succeed can compromise identity-building as ethical scholars. Each of us has many needs and multiple positionalities and resisting the naturalizing grammar of citations can be complicated. Yet, once aware of the politics of citations, one cannot go back to being unaware.

EN :

Standardized academic English is now understood to be rooted in histories and practices that are colonial, classist, nationalist, heteronormative, ableist, and sexist. Current teaching of academic English carries an ethos of making practices of research writing accessible to students from marginalized backgrounds through explicit attention to language patterns and genre structures. In the context of both ideological critique and explicit pedagogy, I discuss three pragmatic elements of research writing—positionality, citation, and evaluation—with examples from one of my courses. I present these elements and my approach to teaching them as a practice that is attentive to both details of published scholarship and students’ agency and intentionality in shaping their own writing projects, claims, and arguments. My work is framed by a functional approach to grammar where grammar is not interesting as a standardized apparatus but as a code that provides a range of options for producing performative effects. I call this spacious grammar.

EN :

First-year writing pedagogies prioritize encouraging students to forge an academic identity by conceptualizing and intervening in scholarly conversations. Student writers from institutionally underprepared backgrounds often find this process both limiting and empowering because specific practices associated with classroom expectations and the university experience remain unfamiliar to them. In this article, I reveal a need for “how-to” exercises within the first-year writing classroom that aim to dismantle the hidden curriculum—a term that denotes the resources, norms, and values that are inaccessible to students who have not received guidance on these aspects of university academics. These interventions, which range from instruction on modes of classroom participation to methods of preparing for office hours, already complement the standard first-year writing curriculum and promise to promote success among underprepared students by rendering possibilities for class engagement explicit.

EN :

Many undergraduate students continue to think of oral presentations as performances for an audience rather than dialogic exchanges of research. This focus on the aesthetics of performance, often promoted by speaking pedagogies in Canadian universities, can exacerbate classroom inequities by valuing certain ways of speaking and, by extension, certain speakers: speaking pedagogies, for example, that instruct students to speak “clearly,” dress “professionally,” or even to appear “confident,” can encode prejudices that privilege some voices and bodies over others, perpetuating discrimination based on gender, race, sexuality, language, ability, and culture. This article argues that an equitable scholarly speaking pedagogy needs to shift student thinking about academic oral presentations away from a focus on aesthetics and toward a view of scholarly speaking as part of a collaborative research process. The writing classroom, where similar changes have occurred in how we teach academic writing, is the best place to change students thinking about scholarly speaking. Drawing on genre-theoretical approaches to academic writing, we argue that this shift can be achieved by using “precedents”—recorded examples of scholarly speaking—to familiarize students with academic oral discourse’s genre conventions, helping students to recognize scholarly speaking as situated and dialogic. The article introduces a web resource, created by the authors, that uses precedents to encourage students and instructors to understand academic oral presentations as opportunities for cooperative research structured by shared discursive norms. Moreover, the site empowers students to challenge these norms, which might themselves encode biases. Ultimately, the site and the pedagogy that informs it not only challenge student prejudices about who can be a “good” speaker, but also remind students of their responsibilities—as speakers and audience members—to contribute to building an equitable classroom and university environment.

FR :

Dans les administrations belges francophones, on retrouve surtout des rédacteurs fonctionnels, c’est-à-dire des rédacteurs n’ayant pas suivi de formation en rédaction professionnelle, et qui réalisent des tâches de rédaction de façon occasionnelle. Nous avons étudié empiriquement, à l’aide d’un questionnaire en ligne, les pratiques de rédaction claire de 51 rédacteurs fonctionnels en Belgique francophone. Nous leur avons posé des questions sur leur vision du langage clair, leur travail quotidien et leurs attentes en matière d’aide à la rédaction claire. De plus, 30 rédacteurs ont également été confrontés à une tâche de réécriture d’extraits de textes administratifs authentiques pour vérifier la concordance entre les pratiques réelles de rédaction et les conseils issus de guides de rédaction claire. Cet article vise à présenter les résultats de cette enquête.

EN :

In this case study, the research team (RT) explores user experience design in relation to digital practices adopted by governments. The goal of this first phase was to identify research opportunities. To do so, the RT adopted a practice-centered participatory research approach (Holkup, 2004). The RT began a partnership with a municipal government (City of Edmonton). Regular meetings were held with the partner organization to discuss—among other things—the organization’s structure, current and future projects, the digital editorial strategies implemented by the organization, and the organization's issues and constraints when designing digital services. This allowed the teams to identify not only interesting research questions but also potential teaching collaborations related to work-integrated learning. In this paper, the practice-based participatory research approach is explained, the timeline and the outcome of the partnership are presented, and the lessons learned through that process are shared.

FR :

Dans cette étude de cas, l’équipe de recherche (ER) explore le design d’expérience utilisateur en relation avec les pratiques de communication numérique adoptées par les gouvernements. L’objectif de cette première phase était d’identifier opportunités de recherche. Pour ce faire, l’ER a adopté une approche de recherche participative dirigée par la pratique (Holkup, 2004). L’ER est entrée en partenariat avec une ville canadienne (Edmonton). Des rencontres régulières ont été organisées avec l’organisme partenaire pour discuter, entre autres, de sa structure, de ses projets actuels et futurs, des stratégies éditoriales numériques mises en œuvre, ainsi que des enjeux et contraintes rencontrés lors de la conception de services numériques. Cela a permis aux équipes d’identifier non seulement des questions de recherche intéressantes, mais aussi des collaborations pédagogiques liées à l’apprentissage intégré au travail. Dans cet article, nous expliquons l’approche de recherche participative dirigée par la pratique, présentons le calendrier et les résultats du partenariat, et partageons les leçons tirées de cette démarche.

EN :

This study aimed to evaluate the benefits and challenges of remote/online tutoring using Zoom software/platform at a Canadian university’s Writing Centre during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020/21. In addition to gathering data on the benefits and challenges of online tutoring, this study also provided work and research experience for a Work-Study student in the host department. The study adopted a mixed methods quantitative and qualitative approach where the employed tutors and tutees that came to the Writing Centre that term were invited to complete a survey asking them about their experience with remote/online tutoring on Zoom. The results indicated that tutors expressed a high rate of satisfaction and preference for Zoom tutoring. In contrast, tutees, although appreciative of the convenience of Zoom tutoring, demonstrated preference for an in-person face-to-face method of tutoring. Some of the benefits of Zoom tutoring for both tutors and tutees were flexibility, working from a comfortable setting like home, not having to secure childcare, and zero commute time. Some of the challenges of Zoom tutoring included technical glitches, isolation from peers and colleagues, lack of motivation, and time zone difference challenges. Besides providing valuable information for the future delivery of Writing Centre services, this study also gave the Work-Study student indispensable experience in conducting primary research. This study received ethics approval from the University Human Ethics Research Board.

EN :

English Language Learners (ELLs) have long been targets for linguicism (i.e., linguistic racism) as they are often subjected to judgement based on deficit models of language proficiency. To support ELLs during the COVID-19 pandemic, a long-running, co-curricular writing support program based on a Learner-Driven, Instructor-Facilitated (LeD-InF) approach was modified for fully online participation. Through this approach, ELLs develop academic reading, writing, and critical thinking skills, using their respective course materials and personalized responses from their writing instructors who provide inclusive learning opportunities that specifically address ELLs’ unique individual needs. This innovative anti-deficit, proactive, and risk-free approach not only increased learners’ willingness to write and volume of written output in their academic journal entries (objectively tracked through word count), but also developed learner identity, agency, autonomy, as well as confidence. Analysis of written output volume combined with learners’ end-of-program reflections provide pedagogical insights for addressing and redressing deficit models as well as combating linguicism, contributing important steps toward ensuring equity, justice, and transformative inclusivity so that diverse voices can be heard in the teaching and learning space.

EN :

Students enrolled in asynchronous online courses explore much of the subject matter through computer-mediated discussion. In this context, students must often negotiate complex factors such as the course content, the assignment goals, their audience, disciplinary expectations, and the writing process. Writing Centres offer students support services to help them succeed in these text-heavy courses. Typically, students come to Writing Centres in person for help with their critical reading and writing assignments; however, increasingly, tutors are asked to participate in online settings to assist student learning. A question associated with online tutoring practices is whether students improve their writing skills when they are given the opportunity to get feedback from a tutor and from peers. How can a cooperative, collaborative pedagogical approach to computer-mediated tutoring support students and improve teaching? This paper examines a pedagogical exploration where one tutor interacted asynchronously with students by posting weekly writing activities. Students were asked to respond individually and collaboratively to each activity. I argue that when a tutor in an online course provides feedback, the collaboration creates a new online ecology of reflection and collaboration that may benefit students in their growth as writers. This exploration can be a useful writing pedagogy that can assist instructors by making stronger connections between students’ writing knowledge and writing practices.

FR :

Les étudiants inscrits à des cours en ligne asynchrones explorent une grande partie du sujet par le biais de discussions assistées par ordinateur. Dans ce contexte, les étudiants doivent souvent négocier des facteurs complexes tels que le contenu du cours, les objectifs du devoir, leur public, les attentes disciplinaires et le processus d'écriture. Les centres d'écriture offrent aux étudiants des services de soutien pour les aider à réussir dans ces cours à forte teneur en texte. En règle générale, les étudiants viennent en personne aux centres d'écriture pour obtenir de l'aide dans leurs travaux critiques de lecture et d'écriture; cependant, de plus en plus, les tuteurs sont invités à participer à des paramètres en ligne pour aider l'apprentissage des élèves. Une question associée aux pratiques de tutorat en ligne est de savoir si les étudiants améliorent leurs compétences en écriture lorsqu'ils ont la possibilité d'obtenir des commentaires d'un tuteur et de leurs pairs. Comment une approche pédagogique coopérative et collaborative du tutorat assisté par ordinateur peut-elle soutenir les étudiants et améliorer l'enseignement? Cet article examine une exploration pédagogique où un tuteur a interagi de manière asynchrone avec les étudiants en affichant des activités d'écriture hebdomadaires. Les élèves ont été invités à répondre individuellement et en collaboration à chaque activité. Je soutiens que lorsqu'un tuteur dans un cours en ligne fournit des commentaires, la collaboration crée une nouvelle écologie en ligne de réflexion et de collaboration qui peut profiter aux étudiants dans leur croissance en tant qu'écrivains. Cette exploration peut être une pédagogie d'écriture utile qui peut aider les instructeurs en établissant des liens plus solides entre les connaissances en écriture des élèves et les pratiques d'écriture.