Flowerdew, J., & Costley, T. (2017).
Discipline-specific writing: Theory into practice. Abington,
England: Routledge. 232 pages, paperback.
Supporting students in writing in a specific discipline, for
example in engineering or business, through offering a specialized
writing course is quite common in academia. However, developing and
teaching a discipline-specific course might be a rather daunting and
challenging task for language instructors. Discipline-Specific
Writing: Theory Into Practice (2017), edited by John Flowerdew
and Tracey Costley, offers practical ideas grounded in research from
leading professionals in the field to provide support for course
developers and teachers. Students taking courses in the areas of applied
linguistics, teaching English as a foreign or second language, or
English for specific purposes (ESP) will also benefit from reading this
book. Each of the 12 chapters that follow the introduction comprises the
theoretical discussion of a method or approach followed by a specific
practical application of the research in pedagogy. Chapters end with
discussion questions and activities to engage readers in creating
connections to their own teaching contexts.
In Chapter 1, the editors provide the background to the book by
defining discipline-specificity in its relation to writing, genre, and
ESP, and introduce the continuous Curriculum Cycle framework. This
framework, which consists of the main areas of consideration and stages
involved in discipline-specific writing course development, outlines key
curriculum components that are further discussed in detail in the rest
of the book. Chapter 2 opens the discussion of discipline-specific
writing by explaining how a discourse-based approach might be useful in
conducting needs analysis for teaching undergraduate and graduate
discipline-specific courses. Richard Forest and Tracy Davis provide
readers with a toolkit for examining local institutional and
sociocultural contexts and their discipline-specific practices, as the
appropriateness of assignments and materials largely depends on
institutional norms.
The next stage in the Curriculum Cycle, course design, is
discussed by Helen Basturkmen in Chapter 3. She focuses on the dichotomy
of writing for general and specific academic purposes and provides key
considerations for selecting an appropriate level of specificity while
designing a writing course. The detailed description of the curriculum
design process at the end of the chapter provides readers with an
insider view of the activities involved in course development. Moving to
specific components of a course, Lindsay Miller and Jack Richards
(Chapter 4) concentrate on integrating grammar in academic writing
courses by outlining 12 key principles and exemplifying their
implementation based on an English for Science course. The integration
of another important component, vocabulary, is discussed by Averil
Coxhead in Chapter 5, who offers practical suggestions on how to choose
appropriate vocabulary, integrate it in the curriculum, develop
materials, and provide feedback and assessment.
Frequently referred to in previous chapters, the genre-based
approach to teaching academic writing is examined in Chapter 6, where
Sunny Hyon provides a sequence of six activities that allows instructors
to introduce the notion of genre and offer practice
to students in terms of recognition, production, and evaluation of genre
features. The genre-based approach is also influential in the next four
chapters, which focus on specific disciplines. Jean Parkinson in
Chapter 7 explores the peculiarities of teaching a laboratory report for
science and technology, providing an example of teaching this genre
through the rhetorical move analysis. In Chapter 8, Damian Fitzpatrick
and Tracey Costley focus on writing in the social sciences and how
annotated bibliographies can provide writers with more effective
engagement with sources. Writing for business is examined in Chapter 9,
where Julio Gimenez discusses the results of ethnographic research about
how students and faculty members conceptualize writing. The research
informed the design of seven text-oriented activities presented at the
end of the chapter. Finally, in Chapter 10, John Flowerdew and Simon Ho
Wang address teaching writing for publication, revealing students’
perceptions on learning through exploring genres, registers, textual
mentors, and language reuse.
From the genre-based approach, the volume transitions to the
discussion of other methods applied in discipline-specific writing
courses. In Chapter 11, Laurence Anthony discusses the data-driven
learning (DDL) approach, which is based on learners’ use of the target
corpora. Available corpora and concordance tools, as well as the example
of DDL implementation in teaching biography writing for STEM students,
provide readers with a comprehensive summary of the DDL method. In the
next chapter, Christian Chun focuses on the critical literacy approach,
which allows learners to view writing as a representation of social
relationships, power, and identity. Using an example from a business
communication class, Chun presents how the critical literacy approach
can be implemented in discipline-specific writing instruction. Chapter
13 concludes this volume with the discussion of assessment by Jane
Lockwood, who after providing findings of previous research on
assessment in ESP turns to the detailed description of the postentry
assessment for first-year undergraduate students, allowing readers to
examine the activities that accompany test development.
Although only several main approaches and examples of
discipline-specific writing are included in this volume, given limited
space Discipline-Specific Writing: Theory Into Practice is a comprehensive and quite exhaustive guide to developing
and teaching discipline writing courses. The main advantage of this book
is that general theoretical principles in every chapter are supported
through specific examples derived from English as a second or foreign
language contexts in different geographical locations. The
implementation of approaches in diverse contexts demonstrates that the
edited volume is relevant for practitioners throughout the world. Also,
the activities and tasks reflect a student-centered approach to teaching
that allows writers to be in charge of their learning and develop
critical analysis skills. The effective structure of the book and the
chapter progression that walks readers through every stage of the
Curriculum Cycle provides invaluable information for both novice and
experienced discipline-specific writing practitioners.
Tetyana Bychkovska, who received her master’s
degree in applied linguistics from Ohio University, currently serves as
the Writing Center ESL specialist at George Mason University. She is
interested in second language academic writing, corpus linguistics, and
English for specific purposes. |