How Students Write: A Linguistic Analysis
- Author: Laura Louise Aull
- Pages: 220
- Published: 2020
- ISBN: 9781603294683 (Hardcover)
- ISBN: 9781603294522 (Paperback)
“This book is an especially important contribution [that] helps address issues of equity by improving the ability of writing instructors to diagnose and communicate how student writing matches discourse conventions.”
—The Journal of Writing Analytics
Broad generalizations about “people today” are a familiar feature of first-year student writing. How Students Write brings a fresh perspective to this perennial observation, using corpus linguistics techniques. This study analyzes sentence-level patterns in student writing to develop an understanding of how students present evidence, draw connections between ideas, relate to their readers, and, ultimately, learn to construct knowledge in their writing.
Drawing on both first-year and upper-level student writing, the book examines the discourse of students at different points in their education. It also distinguishes between argumentative and analytic essays to explore the way school genres and assignments shape students’ choices.
In focusing on sentence-level features such as hedges (“perhaps”) and boosters (“definitely”), this study shows how such rhetorical choices work together to open or close opportunities for thoughtful exchanges of ideas. Attention to these features can help instructors foster civil discourse, design effective assignments, and expose and question norms of higher education.
List of Tables (ix)
List of Figures (xi)
Acknowledgments (xiii)
Introduction: Discourse and Student Writing (1)
Why Student Discourse Matters Now (4)
Analyzing Student Discourse (5)
Three Qualities Constituted in Student Discourse (6)
Chapter Outline (8)
1. What We Know (and Don’t Know) about Student Writing (15)
What We Know: Macrolevel Expectations for Student Writing (15)
What We Don’t Know: Microlevel Discourse Patterns in Student Writing (24)
A Preview of Key Ideas (32)
2. School Genres (39)
Constructing Student Writing through Assignments (39)
First-Year School Genres (40)
Constructs in First-Year Writing (49)
Upper-Level School Genres (51)
Constructs in Upper-Level Writing (59)
School Genres in Higher Education (59)
3. Student Discourse in First-Year Genres (64)
Assigning First-Year Writing (64)
First-Year Writing Context (65)
First-Year School Genres (66)
First-Year Writing Analysis (69)
Student Discourse in First-Year Genres (90)
4. Student Discourse in Upper-Level Genres (95)
Assigning Upper-Level Writing (95)
Upper-Level Writing Context (96)
Upper-Level School Genres (97)
Upper-Level Writing Analysis (99)
Student Discourse in Upper-Level Genres (118)
5. A New View of Student Writing (121)
Genre-Specific Student Discourse (122)
Level-Specific Student Discourse (129)
A New Taxonomy: Making a Written Contribution through Macro- and Microlevel Choices (139)
Considering Patterned Discourse in Discussions about Discourse (139)
Afterword: Applications for Instructors and Students (146)
For Instructors (146)
For Students (152)
Appendix: Additional Corpus Analysis Information (172)
Additional Detail about Keyword Analysis (172)
Tables with Additional Detail (174)
Works Cited (189)
“This book fills a critical gap in our understanding of how undergraduates and early-career graduate students develop as academic writers and, crucially, why their writing evolves the way it does.”
—Dylan B. Dryer, University of Maine
“This book makes a timely contribution to writing and composition studies. Among corpus-based studies of academic writing, this work responds to a clear gap in the field.”
—Suguru Ishizaki, Carnegie Mellon University
