Wikis and academic writing: Changing the writer–reader relationship

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Abstract

The development of information and communication technologies has resulted in the emergence of new kinds of academic genres and literacies. The more recent social web applications empower learners to create online content in a collaborative way. This paper focuses on the use of wikis in the course of Effective Communication in English. It aims to describe how the course wiki was used to teach writing for academic and professional purposes, and to analyse what impact using the wiki had on the writer–reader relationship. The case study employed several research techniques, including participant observation, text analysis and a self-report questionnaire. The texts published by students on the wiki were examined for reader-oriented features and interactional metadiscourse resources. The results indicate that using the wiki for writing activities made students pay close attention to grammatical correctness and structural coherence. Nearly 60% of the students reported that writing on the wiki made them consider their audience. The extent of the writer–reader interaction was further confirmed by a high use of engagement markers in the argumentative texts. Thus, writing on the wiki can contribute to raising awareness of the audience and to increasing the use of interpersonal metadiscourse.

Section snippets

Introduction: English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and information and communication technology (ICT)

EAP education in the digital age calls for new pedagogical paradigms which can help learners to develop new literacies and skills required for successful communication in academic and professional contexts. As witnessed by the popularity of sociocultural and constructivist approaches in language teaching, collaboration can play a vital role in helping learners to build knowledge and acquire skills that facilitate learners’ integration into given discourse communities or specific communities of

Wikis and academic writing

A wiki has been defined as a “freely expandable collection of interlinked web pages, a hypertext system for storing and modifying information – a database, where each page is easily edited by any user with a forms-capable Web browser client” (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001, p. 14). Its basic features include creating and editing texts, linking different pages through hyperlinks, inserting images and links to other sites, tracking changes and comparing different versions of the text. Most wiki engines

Background to the study

Effective Communication in English is a one-semester 10 ECTS-credit course at Stockholm University. Its overarching aim is to improve the students’ ability to employ English for academic and professional purposes, covering a range of written and spoken genres (formal correspondence, argumentative texts, academic and professional reports, abstracts and summaries and oral presentations). The course is also designed to improve the students’ overall language proficiency (both accuracy and fluency);

Method

In order to find answers to the above questions, the study employed several research techniques, namely, participant observation throughout the course, formal (grammatical) analysis and a self-report questionnaire. As noted above, seven collaborative texts and fourteen individual argumentative essays were available for textual analysis. Although the sample is relatively small, this case study allows us to explore some aspects of student writing and their experiences thereof in greater detail,

The writing process

The results of the questionnaire section dealing with different aspects of writing on the wiki are presented in Graph 1 and Table 1. All nine statements in the questionnaire begin in the same way: ‘Writing on the wiki made me…’, and include different variables concerning various aspects of the writing process for the students to rate, such as considering a potential reader, vocabulary choice, checking for spelling, grammar and syntax, and overall text organisation (see Appendix A). Graph 1

Concluding remarks

In recent years, the notion of a discourse community has been crucial in developing more relevant writing pedagogies and largely replacing the emphasis on cross-cultural differences. In the context where language learners belong to different discourse communities, which was the case with Effective Communication students, developing a sense of audience can be a real challenge. Nevertheless, collaborative learning supported by social web applications, such as wikis, can contribute to creating a

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, as well as Kingsley Bolton, and Philip Shaw, for their constructive feedback and encouraging comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and Sue Starfield for her help and consideration.

Maria Kuteeva is acting director of the Centre for Academic English in the Department of English, Stockholm University. Her research interests include EAP, ESP, online teaching methodology, and second language writing.

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    Maria Kuteeva is acting director of the Centre for Academic English in the Department of English, Stockholm University. Her research interests include EAP, ESP, online teaching methodology, and second language writing.

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