SocioCultural Context of Writing
WRITING GROUPS SUPPORTING ESTONIAN DOCTORAL STUDENT WRITERS
Anni Jürine¹, Djuddah A.J. Leijen²
¹AVOK Centre for Academic Writing and Communication, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia ²AVOK Centre for Academic Writing and Communication, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
Studies (Baldwin and Chandler 2002; McGrail et al. 2006) have indicated that writing is a major influencing factor why student do not complete their doctoral studies in time, and students have indicated that writing remains challenging at doctoral levels. Writing groups are considered an effective pedagogical tool to benefit doctoral student’s writing skills (Aitchison 2003; Lee and Boud 2003; Aitchison and Lee 2006), and therefore, may contribute in developing the writing skills needed as a PhD student. These skills include not only the writing itself, but also the social aspect involved when engaged in the writing process. This presentation reports on how discipline specific doctoral students’ writing groups within a large crosscurricular doctoral writing course comment on each other’s work, asynchronously using Comment and Track Changes in Word, with the aim to better understand how PhD students enter the writing conversation and apply each others comments in subsequent drafts. Four different groups will be compared and additional artifacts, such as revision plans and writing journals will be used to present initial findings which should contribute to further developing the writing course for the next academic year.
References
Aitchison, C. 2003. “Thesis writing circles”. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics 8(2), pp. 97–115.
Aitchison, C., and A. Lee. 2006. “Research writing: Problems and pedagogies”. Teaching in Higher Education 11(3), pp. 265–78.
Baldwin, C., and G.E. Chandler. 2002. “Improving faculty publication output: The role of a writing coach”. Journal of Professional Nursing 18(1), pp. 8–15
Lee, A., and D. Boud. 2003. “Writing groups, change and academic identity: Research development as local practice”. Studies in Higher Education 28(2), pp. 187–200.
McGrail, M.R., C.M. Rickard, and R. Jones. 2006. Publish or perish: A systematic review of interventions to increase academic publication rates. Higher Education Research and Development 25, no. 1: 19–35.