Paper 2: Academic Summary

Writing Beyond the Teacher and the Student's Desk

“Writing for the world: Wikipedia as an introduction to Academic Writing” (Tardy, 2010) provides a reflection upon the different challenges foreign language students face “when moving from writing personal essays to writing formal academic texts in English” (p.12). Tardy (2010) depicts how she has introduced her students to the academic writing through a step-by-step description of how to carry out a Wikipedia project.

Wikipedia is a collaborative online encyclopedia where people can not only add a new entry but also edit and add information to existing entries. Tardy (2010) exploits this resource by introducing easy-to-follow steps so that students can reach the final pedagogical goal: publish an academic text online.

Each of the steps described by Tardy (2010) attempts to unweave the complexity of writing academically. Step one is based on making students familiar with the tool they will be using. Step two focuses on students collecting information about the topic they are going to write about. Step three concerns outlining and paraphrasing what students have jotted down. Then, it is time for drafting and revising, while the last steps concern formal aspects such as polishing and publishing.

Tardy (2010) finds Wikipedia beneficial in the classroom as students can approach the main aspects of academic writing purposefully:

Wikipedia offers an excellent forum for students to begin confronting the challenges of academic writing: research, citation, generic conventions, and style. Acquainting students with Wikipedia and its procedures for content creation and editing has the additional benefit of raising their awareness about the credibility and reliability of information that they may locate as Wikipedia users (p.13).

Classrooms can turn into academic settings where academic literacy skills can be developed. Tardy (2010) approaches such a challenge by making students participants of a real discourse community, fostering them to publish their writing for an audience broader than their own teacher.

References

Tardy, C. M. (2010). Writing for the world: Wikipedia as an introduction to Academic Writing. English Teaching Forum, 1, 12-19, 27. Retrieved on October, 10th from

http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/docs/10-48-1-c.pdf