Academic Writing in ESL Composition Classes - Academic Discourse Community

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: 1, West Virginia University, 12 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This paper discusses the concept of Academic Writing and the role of the importance in the ESL classroom. The different perspectives that have to be considered while teaching writing for an Academic purpose and some teaching approaches will be mentioned and evaluated. Thereby the focus will be on the different opinions and methods, as well as constraints and problems that scholars investigated about the notion of Academic Writing. There are a lot of discussions and some research has recently tried to define how the particluar and varied academic discourse communities have to be considered in the curriculum of ESL learners, but still there is a lot of uncertainty of how effective classroom teaching in composition or content classes lead to a the demanded knowledge transformation that the ESL students need in order to fit successfully into a special academic field and write with respect to the expectations of that special audience. This paper tries to mention the most important articles and findings in order to understand the notion of Academic writing and examines some of the constraints students as well as teachers have to deal with and summarizes also some opportunities of making students aware of specific styles, formats, and conventions that are needed in their particular discourse communities and that can and should be involved in ESL composition and content classes with English for an academic purpose to achieve a desired participation in the higher-educational level through fullfilment of the writing standards of educational and academical conventions and values of a particular discourse community. A working definition of Godev explains the notion of Academic writing: „The term ´academic writing´ seems to escape any definition that may try to encompass every writing t