Teaching Academic Writing to Undergradu...

Teaching and learning academic writing are extraordinarily complex endeavors which entail a plethora of separate but mutually dependent skills and considerations. These range from reading and research, critical thinking, text organization and linguistic accuracy to concerns of critical language awareness. Particular importance must be attached to the nature and effects of feedback on student writing and its role in student progress. Simultaneously, curricular objectives and classroom activities are subject to the interplay of distinct power relationships in this context. On an institutional level, these include student-teacher relationships and privileges that come with academic literacy. In the broader context of education, teachers and students must navigate the oftentimes conflicting objectives of being able to compete on neoliberal labor markets on the one hand, and issues of social justice or environmental sustainability on the other. Finally, language is itself a site where power relationships are negotiated continuously. In this construct, language is both the smallest common denominator (the word) and the overarching framework in which we learn about the world; it is where teachers and learners of academic writing skills can either participate in reproducing colonial, patriarchal or ecocidal realities, or create new, more egalitarian and more sustainable ones.