This paper reviews the potential role of writing textbooks in increasing our understanding of academic writing. It argues that this role is underappreciated for several reasons. These include the dampening effects of existing discoursal and social-constructionist accounts of introductory college textbooks, a reluctance to look beyond the ostensible student audience, and a diffidence in recogniz...

This paper reports on a preliminary study on second language (L2) learners’ interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) development in academic written discourse by examining how epistemic modality is used by non-native speaker (NNS) writers compared with NS writers in both native speaker (NS) and NNS corpus data. This study also investigates how NNS writers gradually develop interlanguage pragmatic competen...

This study intended to investigate the interplay of critical thinking explicit instruction, academic writing performance, critical thinking ability, and critical thinking dispositions of Iranian students. To this end, 140 students of Jahrom University of Medical Sciences (73 males and 67 females) were selected. They were divided into the experimental and control groups. Both groups received ins...

this study investigated the impact of using the technique of self-monitoring on non-academic efl learners’ composition writing. fifty female students studying english at navid english institute in shiraz, iran were chosen based on the results of a proficiency test. they were all 16-20 years old and were intermediate learners of english who were divided into two control and experimental groups a...

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

The expression of doubt and certainty is crucial in academic writing where the authors have to distinguish opinion from fact and evaluate their assertions in acceptable and persuasive ways. Hedges and boosters are two strategies used for this purpose. Despite their importance in academic writing, we know little about how they are used in different disciplines and genres and how foreign language...

We distinguish obscure writing from difficult writing, and argue that refereed journal publications in all disciplines can—and should—be written without undefined terminology, with identifiable claims, and with arguments for those claims. Conventional practices in mathematics, for instance, yield this outcome. There is a place for obscure writing—and potential value in obscure writing. But it w...

I provide an overview of approaches to writing referred to as ‘academic literacies’ building on broader traditions, such as New Literacy Studies, and I draw out the relevance of such traditions for the ways in which lecturers provide support to their students with regard to the writing requirements of the University. I offer three case studies of the application of academic literacies approache...