A CENTRE FOR ACADEMIC WRITING AT SOUTH URAL STATE UNIVERSITY: WHICH MODEL TO CHOOSE (original) (raw)
Related papers
Academic Writing in a Russian University Setting Challenges and Perspectives Springer Link
Competence in academic writing among university undergraduates has been a key area of research for over the last 30 years. However, the dominant status of English as the lingua franca of the global academic community has led to substantial changes in the academic language landscape of non-Anglophone countries. In particular, local traditions and practices of L1 academic writing within a university context tend to be under-supported while L2 (English) academic writing experience is treated as a top teaching priority. The present study, carried out with the help of the LIDHUM project team, reports results on the current role of academic writing in L1 vs. L2 in Russia. A questionnaire was developed for first-and third-year undergraduates of a leading national research university to answer such questions as: whether academic writing plays an important role in the university, whether L1 writing is supported, which L1 and L2 written genres students use, how much time students spend on classroom-based vs. home-based writing, whether written tasks require critical thinking competence, whether academic writing is supported, and how writing skills are developed. The chapter focuses on L1/L2 similarities and differences as well as on first-year undergraduates' (i.e., entry-level) writing competence vs. third-year students' perceptions of writing skills. The study likewise reflects on developmental needs, which are also relevant for the European context.
Academic Writing in a Russian University Setting: Challenges and Perspectives
Springer, 2018
Competence in academic writing among university undergraduates has been a key area of research for over the last 30 years. However, the dominant status of English as the lingua franca of the global academic community has led to substantial changes in the academic language landscape of non-Anglophone countries. In particular, local traditions and practices of L1 academic writing within a university context tend to be under-supported while L2 (English) academic writing experience is treated as a top teaching priority. The present study, carried out with the help of the LIDHUM project team, reports results on the current role of academic writing in L1 vs. L2 in Russia. A questionnaire was developed for first-and third-year undergraduates of a leading national research university to answer such questions as: whether academic writing plays an important role in the university, whether L1 writing is supported, which L1 and L2 written genres students use, how much time students spend on classroom-based vs. home-based writing, whether written tasks require critical thinking competence, whether academic writing is supported, and how writing skills are developed. The chapter focuses on L1/L2 similarities and differences as well as on first-year undergraduates' (i.e., entry-level) writing competence vs. third-year students' perceptions of writing skills. The study likewise reflects on developmental needs, which are also relevant for the European context.
Russian educational research papers in international publications: the urge for academic writing
The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences EpSBS. EEIA 2018 / Sing Kai Lo (ed.). Future Academy, 2018. Vol. XLVI. No. 36. P. 309-318, 2018
English as the internationally accepted language of scholarly publications is used by multilingual scholars as a shared linguistic code to create knowledge. Despite the difficulties encountered by non-anglophone writers, it should be mastered by all the members of the global academic community. However, this code involves not only linguistic, but also rhetorical and publishing conventions common for all disciplines and aimed at alleviating the process of academic communication, which means that mastering them involves metalinguistic competences that can be learned via the native tongue, bypassing English. The bilingual approach to teaching writing for academic and research publication purposes can reduce the differences between the national and international rhetorical and publishing traditions. Drawing on the studies of writing in discourse analysis, social constructivism and literacy studies, the paper focuses on the problems that can be overcome by teaching writing for research publication purposes. Critical discourse analysis of Russian publications demonstrates the differences between the international (English) and Russian writing and publishing traditions. Qualitative analysis of papers in educational research demonstrates that the drawbacks of Russian papers in English result from the lack of academic literacy and awareness of international rhetorical conventions rather than poor command of English. The solution is seen in developing writing for academic and research publication purposes in a bilingual format, which can foster the development of academic literacy and raise the quality of scholarly publications both nationally and internationally.
Academic Writing in Russia: Evolution or Revolution
Social Science Research Network, 2014
The first time I realized the immense difference between the U.S. and Russia in writing philosophy was in the late 1990s at one of the NATE 1 conferences in Moscow when a young American teacher referred to his writing teaching experience in Russia. His first impression of his students" assignments was as if they had been written by complete idiots. Refusing to believe it, he started to communicate with the students and soon found outmuch to his reliefthat they were quite intelligent and well-read. It took him some time, however, to realize that the way they wrote was the consequence not of inability, but of total unawareness of what is thought to be the basics of academic writing in his own country. I was not surprised, however, for I had already been well aware of all the causes and consequences of this situation despite my little experience in teaching writing by that time.
Blinova O.A. Teaching academic writing at University level in Russia through massive open online courses: national traditions and global challenges // Proceedings of INTED 2019 Conference 11th-13th March 2019, Valencia, Spain. Pp. pp. 6085–6090. , 2019
The paper presents a comparative analysis of two massive open online Academic Writing courses offered by Russian universities. Over the past decade, academic writing, in Russian as well as English, has become one of the top learning priorities in Russian universities. In 2012, the Russian government launched the so-called 'Project 5-100'. The Project aims to bring a minimum of five Russian universities into at least one of the three most authoritative world university rankings. The goal is to be reached by fostering innovation, attracting international students and, more importantly, by increasing the research potential and boosting the employees' science citation index in international databases, such as Scopus and Web of Science. Although the Project currently unites only twenty-one universities in Russia (the overall number of tertiary education institutions in the country is 965), it has had an impact on the Russian tertiary education landscape on the whole, specifically, on teaching English. From now on, research papers were to be published in English rather than in Russian, to be accessible for the international academic community. Thus, responding to the need to promote Russian universities and boost their global recognition through an increase in citations, universities have incorporated academic writing classes into their curricula. Over the past decade, academic writing has come to dominate the English language teaching landscape in Russian universities. Despite the rise in the number academic writing courses offered by Russian universities that the country has witnessed over the recent years, the curricula developers have run into a number of problems. One of the biggest challenges proved to be an immense cultural barrier and a clash of the Russian native academic writing tradition and the need to adopt the Anglo-Saxon tradition imposed by international research universities. This paper examines the cultural differences in the two traditions through content analysis of two Academic Writing MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) currently offered by Russian universities. The first course, Russian Academic Writing, is run by St Petersburg State University through Open Education, a Russian national MOOC platform. The course, which is delivered in Russian, targets Russian-speaking scientists and scholars and promotes the traditional Russian approach to academic writing. The second course, English for Research Publication Purposes, is offered in English by Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology on Coursera, and targets an international audience and is construed as an 'international' course. By conducting a comparative content analysis of the two courses this paper aims at bridging the gap between the Russian and the international (Anglo-Saxon in origin) traditions of academic writing and scholarly publishing.
A Survey of Academic and Professional Writing Instruction in Higher Education of Russia and Ukraine
In recent years, writing scholars have been paying more attention to writing practices and instruction outside of North America. This interest is evident from recent publications (Zemliansky and St. Amant, 2013, Zemliansky and Goroshko 2012, Bazerman et al. 2010), and others. Panels and presentations on international writing research now appear more frequently on the programs of leading academic conferences. In the US, the premier professional conference in writing studies, Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) has included a workshop on international research in writing for several years running. This year, the workshop’s organizers earned a “permanent status” at the conference, which insures that international writing research will be featured at every CCCC meeting for the foreseeable future. Other professional meetings, such as the Conference of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, have also included panels on international professional communication research in recent years. In recent years, writing scholars have been paying more attention to writing practices and instruction outside of North America. This interest is evident from recent publications (Zemliansky and St. Amant, 2013, Zemliansky and Goroshko 2012, Bazerman et al. 2010), and others. Panels and presentations on international writing research now appear more frequently on the programs of leading academic conferences. In the US, the premier professional conference in writing studies, Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) has included a workshop on international research in writing for several years running. This year, the workshop’s organizers earned a “permanent status” at the conference, which insures that international writing research will be featured at every CCCC meeting for the foreseeable future. Other professional meetings, such as the Conference of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, have also included panels on international professional communication research in recent years.
Designing academic writing course in russia: focus on content
2016
The aim of the study is to find the ways to adapt the content of Academic Writing course to Russian educational needs. Methods. The methods involve both – theoretical and empirical. Theoretical methods: the analysis of the teaching materials by English-speaking and Russianspeaking researchers in the field of EAP (English for Academic Purposes) writing, modeling, systematisation. Empirical methods: observation, interview, questioning, students’ needs analysis; longitudinal pedagogical experiment; methods of mathematical statistics. Results. Syllabus design starts with the course objectives that are quite specific with reference to writing academically in English in Russia. The author examines cultural factors that make motivation to use English for academic purposes (EAP) wane. One of them is teaching the subject which has application different from that in English-speaking countries. The author concludes that the experimental results of students’ expectations may contribute to the A...
University Writing in Central and Eastern Europe: Tradition, Transition, and Innovation, 2018
This chapter reports on the LIDHUM institutional partnership project between a Swiss university and three Eastern and Southeastern European partner universities. The aim of the project was to improve our understanding of the role of writing at the respective universities and introduce new ways of teaching and learning writing. This was accomplished by such activities as developing new writing courses, creating writing center conceptions, initiating writing research, networking within the local universities, presenting joint research, and publishing research papers. Beyond the project-related activities, the program involved all participants in a personal learning experience in which intercultural learning was of equal importance to the training units offered and joint research activities. This chapter discusses what the process of transition means and what it takes to set out on a personal, intercultural, and organizational transformation process.
Higher Education in Russia and Beyond
Role of Teachers of English in Publication Rate Growth at Universities
Clearly, an increase in publications in peer-reviewed journals indexed in Web of Science and Scopus databases is impossible without raising researchers’ level of proficiency in foreign languages, primarily English. However, needs analysis conducted at Reshetnev Siberian State University of Science and Technology showed that only a small number of the University’s faculty know a foreign language for professional purposes at the level that would allow them to read authentic sources competently. Even fewer authors can create solid scientific publications in English. They do not know how to structure an English text as a whole; they are not skilled in persuasive argumentation; they are not aware of English academic writing conventions. This can be explained by the fact that they have never been taught academic writing in English. The same is true about teachers of English. That is why, we at Reshetnev University have decided to train teachers of English first, so that they could assist non-linguistic faculty in preparing publications more effectively.