Learning and Teaching Challenges of Research Writing

Abstract

Research writing poses a great challenge for graduate students who are novice writers struggling with transitioning from peripheral to full participation in the discourse of their disciplinary community. At the same time, teaching research writing is often daunting for writing instructors due to the unfamiliar disciplinary conventions of research genres. Addressing these learning and pedagogical challenges necessitates an understanding of the individual-cognitive and socio-disciplinary dimensions underpinning research writing. In this first chapter, I elaborate on what these dimensions entail and how they intertwine in the construct of research writing competence. To further reason about how that applies to L2 research writing pedagogy, I discuss two epistemologically different genre teaching traditions — linguistic and rhetorical. I then put forth a rationale for enhancing L2 research writing instruction with genre and corpus-based AWE technology that can foster fundamental linguistic and rhetorical principles.