Exploring European Writing Cultures Country Reports on Genres, Writing Practices and Languages Used in European Higher Education. School of Applied Linguistics Working Papers in Applied Linguistics 10 (original) (raw)

At European universities, writing is a traditional way of learning, assessment, and independent study, but it is handled in an implicit, tradition-based way that has only recently been contrasted with and supported by a more explicit writing ped- agogy. Still, little systematic knowledge is available about the pedagogical ap- proaches to writing, writing practices, and genres across Europe and much of it is codified in the national languages without correlation to internationally accept- ed terminology and theories. This book explores the writing cultures of Europe, nation by nation, and reports the idiosyncrasies for each respective country. The reports are based on a 17-item topic list used by the authors to collect data be- fore synthesizing the results. Next to writing practices and genres, a high level of emphasis was placed on the structure of educational systems, the languages in use, and the kind of support provided for student writers.