Clarity and Coherence in

Academic Writing

This book presents a lively, rich, and concise introduction to the key con-
cepts and tools for developing clarity and coherence in academic writing.
Well-known authors and linguists David Nunan and Julie Choi argue that
becoming an accomplished writer is a career-long endeavor. They describe
and provide examples of the linguistic procedures that writers can draw on
to enhance clarity and coherence for the reader. Although the focus is on
academic writing, these procedures are relevant for all writing. This resource
makes complex concepts accessible to the emergent writer and illustrates
how these concepts can be applied to their own writing. The authors share
examples from a wide range of academic and non-academic sources, from
their own work, and from the writing of their students. In-text projects and
tasks invite you, the reader, to experiment with principles and ideas in devel-
oping your identity and voice as a writer.
David Nunan is Professor Emeritus of Applied Linguistics at the University
of Hong Kong; and President Emeritus, Distinguished Research Professor,
and Director of the David Nunan Institute, Anaheim University. He is also
a former president of TESOL International. He is well-known internation-
ally through his many academic and English Language Teaching textbook
publications.
Julie Choi is Senior Lecturer of Education at Melbourne Graduate School
of Education, Australia. She is the author of Creating a Multilingual Self:
Autoethnography as Method, and ­co-editor
​­ of Plurilingualism in Teaching and
Learning and Language and Culture: Reflective Narratives and the Emergence
of Identity.
Clarity and Coherence in
Academic Writing
Using Language as a Resource

David Nunan and Julie Choi

Designed cover image: © Getty Images
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 David Nunan and Julie Choi
The right of David Nunan and Julie Choi to be identified as authors of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
ISBN: 9781032015590 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032013824 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003179092 (ebk)
­
DOI: 10.4324/9781003179092
Typeset in Goudy
by codeMantra
To our students
past, present and future
 Contents

Acknowledgments viii
Foreword ix

Introduction and overview 1

1 What every writer should know about language 11
2 Only connect 28
3 Product and process approaches to writing 49
4 Audience and purpose 71
5 Toward active voice 94
6 Using figurative language 123
7 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback 143
8 The power of revising 164
9 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away 174

Glossary 197
Index 211
 Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our graduate students and teachers who contributed
their writing and learning experiences to this book, sharing their insights,
and raising with us questions and concerns about how best to guide their
own students’ writing development. Special thanks to Kailin Liu, Tharanga
Kalehe Pandi Koralage, Xingyi (Sean) Wang, Francesca Lo Presti, Xiaotong
Zang, and, in particular, to Catriona Mach who not only assisted us in re-
vising each chapter but also provided insightful comments on the text along
the way. To Routledge Senior Editor, Karen Adler, who embraced the pro-
ject when it was first suggested, and whose encouragement and enthusiasm
sustained us at those times when our own begin to flag. Olivia Powers was
invaluable in guiding through pre-publication editing stages. Last but not
least, we are grateful to Debra Myhill for graciously agreeing to write the
foreword. Her influence on our own approach to teaching academic writing
will be evident throughout the book.
 Foreword

At its heart, this book is about understanding academic writing and under-
standing yourself as a writer. What it is not is an instruction manual on ac-
ademic writing. And this is its strength. The authors invite you as readers
to engage with how academic texts are crafted, to consider how you tackle
the process of writing, and to reflect on your own writing. The book is about
being a writer, as much as it is about academic writing.
For me, as an academic writer myself, as a journal editor, and as a supervisor
of doctoral students, there are two fundamental messages underpinning the
book which resonate powerfully with my own experiences. The first concerns
the role of grammar and knowledge about language. The authors recognize
the inseparability of form and content and emphasize a Hallidayan functional
view of language, where grammatical choices shape meaning and effective
communication. Writers need to understand how texts work and how dif-
ferent grammatical forms function to establish meaning. The authors stress
that this is not about knowledge which is learned then routinely applied, but
about understanding which supports and informs authorial decision-making
and writer agency. The second fundamental message relates to the writing
process, shifting the gaze from the academic text to the academic writer.
This foregrounds the key processes of planning, drafting, and revising but,
crucially, disrupts the rigid notion of first, you plan, then you draft, then you
revise. Instead, the recursive and messy nature of writing is described, and
particularly that writing and thinking co-occur. The process of writing itself
generates new ideas or new problems not anticipated in initial planning,
and equally the process of writing is one of constant rewriting and ‘shuttling’
between phrases, sentences, and paragraphs.
In developing their argument about understanding language and under-
standing the writing process, the authors do not avoid difficult concepts or
challenging issues, but address them head-on, without adopting dogmatic
x Fo r e w o r d

stances. For example, Halliday’s metalanguage is explained clearly, using

examples (in contrast to the conceptual density of some of Halliday’s own
explanations!). The problematic concept of ‘voice’ is considered from mul-
tiple perspectives and with rich complexity and not simply reduced to su-
perficial discussion of first and third-person pronouns. There is recognition
that ‘academic writing’ is not a genre, as implied in so many resources for
academic writing support, but is a term which groups together a range of
written genres, including, for example, theses, journal articles, reports, and
applications, and which varies across academic disciplines.
The title of the book is enacted in the way it is written. The writing is a
model of clarity and coherence, with chapter topics providing both a clear
structure and supporting the development of a clear argument. Throughout,
the voices of the authors are strongly present, sharing their own experiences
and understandings of being an academic writer, and offering direct invita-
tions to readers to think, reflect, and act. This book will not tell you the top
ten steps to writing success: instead, and much more importantly, it will open
up how you think about the academic texts you write and about yourself as
a writer. Confidence and success as an academic writer is not about knowing
what you should do, but about understanding the infinitely creative possibili-
ties of language as a resource.

Debra Myhill
University of Exeter, UK
 Introduction and overview

This book is a collaborative effort between two experienced writers. There

were times in the course of writing the book that we wanted our individual
voices to be heard. We have made these occasions evident within the text.
We also wanted to engage you, the reader, in the ideas presented in the
text. We have done this by inserting ‘Making Connections’ boxes into the
text. These consist of tasks and questions to help you relate what we have
to say to your own context and experience as a creator of academic texts. As
we worked on the book, we also sought feedback from emergent writers. We
were fortunate in being able to enlist a group of young graduate students who
read earlier drafts of the manuscripts, and posed many questions, challenging
us on points that were not clearly or adequately articulated. We have added
a selection of these, along with our responses, at the end of each chapter.
Their enthusiasm for the project sustained us during difficult periods in the
writing process.

David’s voice: how the book was born

This guide was born out of a conversation I had one evening with Julie
who is a Senior Lecturer in Education (Additional Languages) at the
Melbourne Graduate School of Education where I have given many
face-to-face and online seminars. The conversation had turned to the
topic of academic writing, and Julie urged me to produce a guide to
good, clear academic writing. Flattered, but also puzzled, I asked why.
“My students like your books. I’m constantly told many of the standard
texts in the field are extremely challenging, but yours are clear. What’s
his secret?” they want to know. “Most of them struggle to express their
own ideas. This is true, not only of the second language speakers, but

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179092-1
2 Introduction and overview

the first language speakers of English as well. If you could share your
insights, I’m sure the students would find it helpful”.
She challenged me when I commented that learning to write by read-
ing a book or article was akin to learning to drive by watching a video.
“Of course, you can’t spare them the blood, sweat and tears, but if you
can share with them your insights, it will give them concrete ideas they
can try out to improve their own writing skills. Telling them ‘this isn’t
clear’, or ‘this is garbled’, or ‘I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking
about here’, isn’t helpful. It might indicate where the problem lies but
tells them nothing about how to fix the problem”.
Julie’s suggestion reminded me of an incident that occurred about
ten years into my academic career. At the time, I wasn’t desperate to
scramble up the academic ladder. However, one day a colleague for-
warded to me an advertisement from a well-regarded university for a
position a grade or two above the one I currently occupied. From the
criteria for appointment, it seemed my experience, qualifications, re-
search record, and publications were a good match for job. I applied,
was shortlisted, acquitted myself well at the interview, and waited for
a phone call from the Dean to inform me that the position was mine.
The phone call never came. Eventually, I received a proforma letter
thanking me for my interest in the position and expressing regret that
the university was unable to offer me a post at that time. Resisting the
urge to write back saying that any time would do, I consigned the letter
to the dustbin.
At a conference some months later, I bumped into a member of the in-
terviewing committee. I accepted his invitation to have a drink. After
a second drink, I asked him what had been lacking in my application.
“Well, I supported you”, he began. (Yes, they all say that, I thought.)
“Unfortunately, a majority of the committee didn’t. The burden of
their objection was that your books and articles were clear and acces-
sible to their students. One of the members said that even some of his
undergraduates understood your work”.
Even some of his undergraduates? Goodness! That’s the nicest thing any-
one has ever said about my work. I couldn’t help smiling.
He was surprised at my reaction. I told him that I saw clarity as a vir-
tue. I have never subscribed to the notion that if academic writing is
 Introduction and overview 3

comprehensible it must be superficial. While there are profound works

that should carry a health warning, there are others that are only pro-
found in their incomprehensible triviality. So, significance and clarity
are not to be confused. You owe it to yourself, but more importantly,
you owe it to your reader to strive for clarity while at the same time pre-
senting often complex ideas in a non-trivial fashion. It’s called showing
respect.
Although flattered by what Julie’s students had to say about my books,
I hesitated about taking up her suggestion. To offer advice on how to
write is to invite criticism. Fashions, practices, and standards of accepta-
bility change over time. Take the case of The Elements of Style. The first
edition was written and privately published in 1918 by William Strunk
before being commercially published in 1920 (Strunk, 2018). The
book was a best-seller. A second, expanded edition was produced by E.
B. White (Strunk & White, 1959) after Strunk’s death. In 2011, Time
magazine named this edition one of the 100 best and most influential
books of the previous century. Now in its fourth edition, the book con-
tinues to sell well. It has been highly praised by celebrated authors such
as Dorothy Parker and Stephen King, the latter arguing that it should
be read by every aspiring author. It has also been trenchantly criticized.
Pullum’s (2009) main criticism is that while Strunk and White dish out
a great deal of advice on grammar (avoid the passive voice), their own
knowledge of English grammar is either misguided or just plain wrong.

Some of the recommendations are vapid, like “Be clear” (how

could one disagree?). Some are tautologous, like “Do not explain
too much.” (Explaining too much means explaining more than
you should, so of course you shouldn’t.) Many are useless, like
“Omit needless words.” (The students who know which words are
needless don’t need the instruction.) Even so, it doesn’t hurt to lay
such well-meant maxims before novice writers.
(Pullum,
­ 2009, p. 32)
­
After thinking about Julie’s suggestion for a week, I decided to accept
her challenge. However, I’d do so on only one condition. We met for
a lunch, and she was delighted with my decision. “But what’s the con-
dition?” she asked.
“That you co-author the book with me”, I replied.
4 Introduction and overview

Defining academic writing

Academic writing has been defined as any formal written work produced
in an academic setting. While academic writing comes in many forms, the
following are some of the most common: literary analysis, research paper,
and dissertation (or thesis) (Valdes, 2019). The serious business of producing
pieces of written work that can be characterized as ‘academic’ usually begins
in junior high school and, for many students, continues all the way through
senior high to undergraduate study at university and, for some, on to grad-
uate school. In the book, we deal with a range of academic writing genres,
although our focus will be those of concern to our primary audience (see
below), most particularly academic assignments and dissertations.
At this point, we won’t elaborate on the definition provided above. The char-
acteristics, conventions, and controversies over the nature of academic writing
will emerge as your read the book and complete some of the application activ-
ities along the way. You may be surprised at the notion that academic writing
stirs controversy. It does. This is particularly the case in those disciplines con-
cerned with qualitative inquiry such as the social sciences, education, and the
humanities. In our final chapter, we devote the first section to revisiting and
elaborating on the controversies touched on in the body of the book.

Audience

The primary audience for this book is graduate students. As our own fields are
applied linguistics, education, and the teaching of English as an additional
language, it should come as no surprise to find that many of our examples are
drawn from these fields and directed to readers who plan to become teachers.
However, we hope the book is also useful for those from allied disciplines as
well as undergraduates and even those who are in senior high school.
In developing the materials, we followed our usual practice of trying them out
with our students as well as getting feedback from those who had recently grad-
uated. From them we learned that the material should appeal to a wider audi-
ence, including undergraduates. It should help teachers in a range of disciplines
developed their own writing skills as well as giving them insights into how
they might improve the writing skills of their own students. The notion that
every teacher is a language/literacy teacher has been around for many years. In
the United Kingdom the Bullock Report, officially called A Language for Life,
recommended that every school should develop a language policy for language
across the curriculum in which there is a dual focus on language skills and
 Introduction and overview 5

subject knowledge. The prevailing notion that developing academic language

skills was the sole responsibility of language/literacy teachers was challenged.
In secondary school, memorizing content and mastering procedures in subject
areas such as science, history, or geography was only part of the learning pro-
cess. Students also needed to master the language of history and learn to think
as an historian. The same was held for other subjects. Teachers of these subjects
had a major responsibility for teaching the language of their subject. Unfortu-
nately, most were ill-equipped to do so. The point is that language and subject
content are inseparable. You can’t think and communicate without language,
and you have to think and communicate about something, be it content related
to everyday life or specialized subject matter. This is not always appreciated by
subject specialists. We often encounter lecturers from other disciplines who
argue that our job is to teach students language so that they can get on with the
(more important) task of teaching science, law, or mathematics.
In the rest of this introduction, we provide a synopsis of the chapters to come
along with brief overview of the concepts and principles you will encounter
in the rest of the book. The book falls naturally into two parts. Chapters 1–3
address questions that underpin the rest of the book:

• What fundamentals of language should writers, teachers, and students should

know about?
• What linguistic tools are available to writers to enhance the clarity and coher-
ence of their writing?
• What are the intended outcomes of the writing journey and what processes do
writers deploy along the way?

The remainder of the book deals with practical issues and techniques, in-
cluding the use of figurative and academic language, knowing one’s audience,
finding one’s voice, dealing with feedback, and revising/redrafting initial ef-
forts. As you embark on this challenging, but hopefully rewarding journey
with us, you would do well to keep in mind what the author and broadcaster
Clive James had to say about the art and craft of writing: that expressing
yourself clearly is the most complicated thing there is.

Chapter 1: What every writer should know about language

The proposition we put to you in this chapter is that a basic knowledge of the
English language will help you become a better writer. The proposition probably
raises several questions in your mind: What counts as ‘basic’? What aspects of
6 Introduction and overview

the language should I know about? and how can this knowledge help me become
a better writer? In this chapter, we introduce you to the elements of grammar,
vocabulary, and spelling that you should be familiar with. We also introduce you
to functional grammar, describing what it is, how it different from other mod-
els of grammar, and why we favor this model over its competitors. Succeeding
chapters will look at other key aspects of language that you should know about
such as language relating to discourse, figurative language, and voice. We also
give you an example of how explicit knowledge can help you make informed
decisions about revising your written work rather than relying on intuition.

Chapter 2: Only connect

In Chapter 2, we move beyond sentence-level aspects of language to longer

stretches of text. At the paragraph level, we examine resources of thematiza-
tion, given/new structuring, and cohesive devices for improving coherence
between and across sentences within the paragraph. In the course of the dis-
cussion, we discuss the concepts of cohesion and coherence: the differences
between the two concepts and the relationship between them. We also look
at signposting, informing the reader at the beginning of a chapter of the
section of terrain to be covered and reminding them at the end of where we
have come. We elaborate further on functional grammar and give examples
of how we can use functional grammar to make connections between gram-
matical form and communicative meaning.
One of the biggest challenges in creating a clear and coherent text is rep-
resenting real and imagined worlds in print. These worlds are populated by
ideas, entities, events, actions, states of affairs, and so on. In the experiential
world these phenomena are interrelated in intricate, multidimensional ways.
Texts on the other hand are linear. The line of print marches on, one word
at a time. The challenge for you is to capture in sequential lines of print, the
complexity of the multidimensional world where phenomena interrelate and
overlap. The resources we describe and illustrate will help you represent a
non-linear world in a linear form that makes sense to the reader.

Chapter 3: Product and process approaches to writing

Writing can be seen as both a process and a product. Writing as a process

involves initial drafting of ideas, revising and redrafting, incorporating new
content that arise during the writing process, inserting new ideas as a result
 Introduction and overview 7

of feedback from a teacher or critical friend, dividing a complicated sentence

into two or more sentences, combining two or more sentences into a single
sentence by turning them into clauses and phrases, shifting sentences and
even whole paragraphs around, and so on. In this chapter, we’ll describe
and give examples of these different processes. The end result is a product: a
report on the state of the economy, a set of instructions on how to conduct
a science experiment, a short story, a discussion on how to improve an ac-
ademic essay. Beginning writers are often advised not to put a finger on the
keyboard until their ideas have been thought through and formulated. This
advice is misguided. Thinking and writing go hand in hand. It is through
writing, and rewriting, that we discover what we think. In this chapter, we
introduce two important concepts: register and genre. These are part of
systemic-functional linguistics, the approach to language we have drawn on
throughout this book.

Chapter 4: Audience and purpose

Audience and purpose are fundamental to the writing process. They will
have a powerful influence on the linguistic choices you make when you
write. The two questions you should keep firmly in mind throughout the
writing process, from planning, through draft and revising are: Why am
I writing this? And who am I writing for? In the beginning, your purpose
may be vague, or you may have several competing purposes in mind. The
process writing approach we discussed in the last chapter may help to bring
the main purpose into focus. Similarly, the audience may not be clear to
you. If you are a student, your audience will probably be restricted to your
teachers or perhaps an examiner. This doesn’t mean that the audience will
be unproblematic. Some teachers, you’ll know well, and you’ll be able to
tailor your piece to their interests and perspectives. Others, you may not
know well. In this chapter, you will read an academic conversation between
David and a recent graduate. In it the graduate discusses the complexities
and problems she encountered with audience and purpose in writing up her
thesis and then turning it into an article for publication. We then present
a view of writing as problem-solving when tailoring a piece to a particular
audience and purpose and give an example from our own writing in rela-
tion to the construction of a single paragraph. We discuss the importance
of the register variables of field, tenor, and mode in relation to purpose
and audience. We also reintroduce the ‘linearity problem’ when making
choices about selecting and structuring content for particular purposes and
audiences.
8 Introduction and overview

­
Introduction and overview 9

­
10 Introduction and overview

parsimonious drafts. We know there’s no such thing as a perfect final draft,

but at a certain point, often dictated by a looming deadline, we are forced to
admit that enough is enough.

Chapter 9: In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away

The book introduces what we consider to be the fundamentals of academic

writing. In this final chapter, we pull together the themes that have emerged
into the course of the book and summarize the suggestions that have been
made by us and others on improving the clarity and coherence of your writ-
ing. While interrelated, they provide different perspectives on the theme of
language as a resource for writing. They are not presented in any hierarchical
order of importance, although the first point, that a detailed and explicit
knowledge of language is fundamental to good writing, underpins the others.
The second focuses on the relationship between language and thought. A
great deal of confused and confusing prose reflects confused and confusing
thinking. The writer has published prematurely rather than using the writing
and rewriting process as a method of discovery. This process can also help
you clarify and refine your purpose and audience.
A fundamental problem is representing the non-linear experiential world
in linear form. Resources such as cohesive devices and thematization can
help us solve this problem. As we say, solving problems is at the heart of the
writing problem. Also important is receiving meaningful feedback and using
this in the rewriting process. Through this work, and with the judicious use
of other resources such as figurative language, you will find your own voice
and your identity as a writer will emerge.
Two other themes we highlight in the final chapter are the fact that aca-
demic writing is no one’s native tongue. This leads to the issue of standards,
and who gets to adjudicate on which standards should apply.

References

Pullum, J. (2009). 50 years of stupid grammar advice. The Chronicle of Higher Edu-
cation. https://www.chronicle.com/article/50-years-of-stupid-grammar-advice/
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Strunk, W. (2018). The elements of style: The original 1920 edition. Suzeteo Enterprises.
Strunk, W., & White, E. B. (1959). The elements of style. Macmillan.
Valdes, O. (2019). An introduction to academic writing. ThoughtCo. https://www.
thoughtco.com/what-is-academic-writing-1689052
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
 1
What every writer should know
about language

In this chapter, we will tell you what you need to know about the English
language to improve the clarity and precision of your writing. We focus on
those aspects of language that are relevant to the writing process, in particu-
lar, the sub-systems of grammar (technically referred to as morphosyntax)
and vocabulary (technically known as lexis) (Nunan, 2013). In addition,
we will have something to say about punctuation, which is also important,
particularly in its association with grammar. If you are aiming to enter a
profession where advanced proficiency in English language and literacy are
essential (which are, or should be, most) the basics of English grammar and
vocabulary we describe in this chapter are an absolute minimum require-
ment. You’ll certainly need them to understand the more complex aspects of
language we deal with in the subsequent chapters.
For students planning on a career as a language teacher, it’s possible to reg-
ister for graduate programs in TESOL with little or no knowledge of the
basics of language. This is not the case for programs preparing students to
teach science or mathematics where prerequisites will usually include having
majored in the subject in your bachelor’s degree. The lecturers will assume
that students have the requisite content knowledge and will focus on how
to teach the subject. In the case of English, the assumption is that if you
can speak the language you can teach it. If there are prerequisites, they are
menial, such as having done a semester of a foreign language as an under-
graduate. A semester of German or Japanese will not equip you to write or
teach academic English writing (or any other aspect of the language, for that
matter). While the audience for this book is broader than aspiring language
teachers, we know that many readers will plan on entering the profession. It’s
for this reason that we make this point.
Many years ago, in the preface to his play Pygmalion, the Irish author George
Bernard Shaw famously wrote It is impossible for an Englishman to open his

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179092-2
12 What every writer should know about language

mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. These days,
‘hated’ or ‘despised’ for the way you speak may be too strong, but people will
make judgements about you. They may not voice their opinion to your face,
but they will have formed one just the same. When you speak, certain people
will make judgements about your nationality or social class based on your
dialect and accent. If you mispronounce a word, they will make judgements
about your level of education and possibly even your intelligence.
The same holds for writing. Grammatical errors, poor vocabulary choices, as
well as punctuation and spelling mistakes will be held against you. It’s for this
reason that some people are unwilling to show others their writing. What
you write and how you write reflects your voice and identity as a writer.
This chapter introduces linguistic terms that might be unfamiliar to you. If
you do encounter a term that is unfamiliar, you’ll find a glossary with expla-
nations and examples at the back of the book. Although we have treated
grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation separately, in reality, they are not so
easily segmented. In fact, many linguists integrate the description and analy-
sis of grammar and vocabulary under the single label of lexicogrammar.

Grammar

Answering the question, what is grammar?, in a paragraph or two is an au-

dacious undertaking, when entire volumes have been devoted to the task.
Here, we provide a basic definition which we’ll elaborate on in the rest of
the book. Most definitions see grammar as sets of rules for forming words,
phrases, and clauses and specifications for arranging these to form mean-
ingful sentences (see Harmer 1987; Richards, Platt  & Weber, 1985). We
follow a linguistic model known as functional grammar. This model describes
the systematic relationship between grammatical form and communicative
function. Fundamental to the model is the notion of choice. Debra Myhill
(2011) draws an analogy between the tools of a mechanic and the grammat-
ical tools of the writer.

Both have to create products from the materials available, be that phys-
ical materials or linguistic resources; both have to test things out to see
how they work, both have to make choices and decisions about the pur-
pose of their work.
(p. 81)
­­

In the course of the book, we show how you can use linguistic resources to
make informed choices and solve problems in creating clear and coherent text.
 What every writer should know about language 13

David’s account of what writers should know about grammar

At a recent seminar, I made the point that all teachers should have
a ‘reasonably comprehensive’ knowledge of grammar regardless of the
subject they teach. A member of the audience raised his hand and
asked, “What do you mean by ‘reasonably comprehensive’?” When I
wanted to bone up on my knowledge of grammar, I did an Amazon
search for books on grammar. I didn’t want anything too complicated
and came across a book that had the ideal title A Short Introduction to
English Grammar. Before ordering it, I looked inside and found that it
ran to over 200 pages!
In a little book on teaching grammar (which runs to only 178 pages!), I
argued that at the very least, teachers should be familiar with the word
classes in English, the grammatical roles they play, and the clause types
they are used to form. In English, we have the common word classes of
nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and less common (closed classes)
such as articles and prepositions. Within the sentence, these word
types have five grammatical roles: subject, verb, object, complement,
and adverbial (Nunan, 2005).

Traditional grammar recognizes seven different clause types made up of these

basic building blocks.

­
Clause type Example
Type 1: Subject + Verb Maria sang.
Type 2: Subject + Verb + Object William saw a UFO.
Type 3: Subject + Verb + Complement I became wary.
Type 4: Subject + Verb + Adverbial I’ve been in the office.
Type 5: Subject + Verb + Object + Object Malcolm bought his wife a
diamond.
Type 6: Subject + Verb + Object + We think traditional grammatical
Complement analysis rather pointless.
Type 7: Subject + Verb + Object + Adverbial We had to take our children
home.
14 What every writer should know about language

This knowledge can be helpful when it comes to making choices as you pro-
duce successive drafts of your writing in order to achieve greater coherence
and clarity. Revising and refining can be done intuitively, of course. But we
find it useful to be explicit not only in terms of our own writing but also when
giving feedback to students on their own writing. It enables us to go beyond
vague generalities such as “this isn’t clear”, or “this is garbled”, or “I haven’t
got a clue what you’re talking about here”.
We advocate a functional approach to grammar which accounts for gram-
matical structures in terms of the communicative acts they enable us to
perform through speaking and writing. Functional grammar demonstrates
the choices available to us when we are constructing our sentences. By
thinking in terms of ‘meaningful chunks’ (word groups that form around
a head word), we can see “how these words work together to make mean-
ing or how different shades of meanings could be made through author
choices” (Derewianka, 2011, p. 11). Writers can change the order of the
groups depending on their purpose or intentions. Consider, for example,
the sentence ‘A golden ray of sunlight was shining through the leaves’.
In this sentence, the writer may be drawing attention to the ‘who’ or
the ‘what’ by starting the clause with a noun group. If the author wrote,
‘Through the leaves, a golden ray of sunlight was shining’, she/he is draw-
ing our attention to the physical environment by starting the clause with
an adverbial of place. Drawing our attention to a sentence element (word
or group) by placing it at the beginning of the sentence is called the-
matization. We’ll elaborate on this process in the next chapter. In the
following table you can see how the simple sentence ‘Sunlight shone
through’, can, in Derewianka’s words, be given greater elaboration or
shades of meaning by inserting additional elements to the head word (see
Table 1.2).

­
Word Sunlight (Noun) Shone (Verb) Through
(Preposition)
Group A golden ray of Was shining (Verb Through the
sunlight (Noun
­ Group) leaves (Adverbial
­
Group) Group)
Function Naming ‘who’ or Naming ‘action’
­ Naming ‘where’
­
‘what’
­
 What every writer should know about language 15

Grammar offers us tools for thinking, creating, and crafting meaning in ways
we want them to be communicated. It can help us to create dramatic effect in
telling a story which enables us to become more compelling and expressive
storytellers. Writers can also take greater control of their writing – they can
influence the reader to read for particular messages or details depending on
their purpose and we begin to develop a sense of the writer’s ‘voice’. Julie re-
calls how learning about functional grammar well after her formal education
allowed her to develop much more appreciation of texts and allowed her to
read and write more critically. Later in the chapter, we elaborate on the ben-
efits of studying grammar. (For a detailed discussion of functional grammar in
relation to academic writing, see Caplan, 2023.)

Assessing your own knowledge of language

How detailed or sophisticated is your own knowledge of linguistic termi-

nology? Presumably you know the different word classes of English (nouns,
verbs, prepositions, determiners, etc.). Do you know the difference between
an object and a complement or why we have a passive voice in English? We
think it would be useful for you to take an inventory or ‘snapshot’ of what
you know of the language you are currently studying, teaching, or proposing
to teach. There is a range of online instruments which are designed to help
you carry out such an inventory. One we would recommend is the Cam-
bridge Teaching Knowledge Test (TKT).
The TKT is a comprehensive set of self-study modules through which you
can assess and improve your knowledge of English vocabulary, grammar, lan-
guage functions, and pronunciation. As it’s aimed at aspiring language teach-
ers, it also includes modules such as first and second-language acquisition
and techniques for presenting new language items. If you have no plans to
become a language teacher, you can ignore these modules. Both print and
online versions of the test are available.
Here are two sample items from the online version of the TKT. This ver-
sion contains free, downloadable practice tests. Having completed one of
the tests, you can download the answer key and check their answers. The
site also contains a glossary of terms, which the teacher can consult if he/she
is unsure of any technical terms. On the site, it is also possible to purchase
support materials which include coursebooks and practice tests. These also
exist in both print and digital forms.
16 What every writer should know about language

Making connections
Example 1: Knowledge of lexical/grammatical terms

Instructions
For questions 8–13, read the text. Match the underlined words or
phrases in the text with the lexical terms listed A–G. Mark the correct
letter (A–G) on your answer sheet. There is one extra option which
you do not need to use.

Lexical (and grammatical) terms

A phrasal verb
B compound noun
C word with negative affix

D compound adjective
E word family
F verb and noun collocation
G noun with affix
Text
During his career, Sean Connery made over 70 films and became very
rich. However, as a child (8) growing up in Scotland during the Great
Depression in the 1930s, he was poor. He and his family were not (9)
unusual in living in a two-roomed flat with no (10) bathroom. Sean left
school at 13 and did a variety of jobs to (11) make money including being
a milkman and a (12) builder. Eventually he began acting and his role as
​­
the first James Bond made him (13) well-known all over the world.

Example 2: Knowledge of language functions

Instructions
For questions 20–25, match the underlined parts of the email with the
functions listed A–G. Mark the correct letter (A–G) on your answer
sheet. There is one extra option which you do not need to use.
Functions
A expressing ability
B making an offer
C making a prediction
D expressing intention
 What every writer should know about language 17

We like this resource from Cambridge for a number of reasons. First, it is amena-
ble to a range of instructional contexts, from instructor-guided classroom use
to self-study. Second, the online version is easily accessible for students regard-
less of where they happen to be living and/or studying. Third, source texts,
such as the ones in the samples we have provided, are either authentic or simu-
late authenticity. (What Brown and Menasche (1993) refer to as ‘altered’, i.e.,
adapted from authentic sources.) Finally, many of the test items make explicit
the links between linguistic form and communicative function.

Making connections
Click on the following link to access the Cambridge TKT free online
practice modules. Complete several of the modules.
• How useful was the activity?
• How good is your knowledge of English grammatical terminology?
• What areas of grammar do you need to improve on?
https://web.archive.org/web/20220717062756/https://www.cambridgeen-
­ ­
glish.org/teaching-english/teaching-qualifications/tkt/prepare-for-tkt/
­​­­ ​­
18 What every writer should know about language

David’s example of putting grammar to work

Here is an example of how knowledge of grammar can help us go be-
yond intuition when redrafting our initial writing efforts. It consists
of the first draft of a paragraph from an anecdote I’d been writing up
followed by a ‘think aloud’ piece in which I talked about my concerns
with the draft. Finally, I present the second draft resulting from my
critical ­self-evaluation.
​­

Draft 1:
The genesis of this piece began one evening when a friend and colleague
with whom I had just had supper suggested (in fact, urged) me to write
something on writing clearly. Slightly flattered, but also puzzled, I asked her
why. My friend is a lecturer at a prestigious graduate school of education.
“The final sentence doesn’t follow coherently from the preceding sentences,
but I want to get that information in. I’ll demote it from the status of a sen-
tence in its own right to a relative clause. Having supper is irrelevant – drop
it. ‘The genesis of this piece…’ Hmmm, don’t like this. By beginning the sub-
ject with the noun phrase ‘the genesis’, I’m thematizing its origin, but that’s
putting the cart before the horse. I’ll re-thematize the subject giving ‘the piece’
the status it deserves. I’ll also add the prepositional phrase ‘in a conversa-
tion’. ‘The conversation’ will be instantiated as the subject of the second sen-
tence. The indefinite article ‘a’ becomes a definite article because the reader
knows which conversation I’m referring to. Creating this anaphoric link also
improves the coherence of the paragraph. In the second sentence, I’ll drop
the ‘slightly’ because it’s wishy-washy. ‘Be hard on yourself when it comes
to adverbs and adjectives!’ I remind myself. (Advice I give my students, but
don’t always follow myself.) Oh, I’ll also delete the possessive adjective ‘her’.
It’s cohesive but redundant”.

Draft 2:
This piece had its genesis in a conversation I had one evening with a
friend who is a lecturer at a prestigious graduate school of education.
The conversation had turned to the topic of academic writing, and my
friend suggested (in fact, urged) me to produce something on writing
clearly. Flattered, but also puzzled, I asked why.
 What every writer should know about language 19

Of course, it’s perfectly possible to revise drafts of your writing without pos-
sessing a detailed knowledge of grammar. The majority of writers probably
don’t possess such knowledge. They revise their text intuitively until it ‘feels’
right. However, knowledge of grammar provides you with a tool for knowing
why the revised version feels better. It also provides you with vocabulary for
talking about your text.

The status of grammar within the curriculum

For many years, in western educational contexts such as the United King-
dom and Australia, the teaching of grammar in schools has been contro-
versial. The traditional way of teaching grammar was dry, decontextualized,
and lacked creativity. Students spent hours parsing and analyzing sentences
that had no obvious applications beyond the classroom. (The same could be
said about many subjects in the curriculum.) As a result, the anti-grammar
brigade won the battle.
In her investigation into the empirical evidence for the explicit teaching
of grammar, Myhill (2016) makes the point that the debate over whether
or not grammar should be explicitly taught in schools has been highly po-
liticized for decades. Politicians, and policy-makers, conflate grammar with
accuracy and correctness and tend “to equate mastery of grammar with
standards, including moral standards” (p. 36). She gives the example of a
London newspaper (the Daily Standard) which attributed street riots across
England in 2011 to the fact that rioters couldn’t speak correctly. The no-
tion that forcing young protesters to use the “Queen’s English” might quell
civil unrest is clearly ludicrous, but not uncommon. Recently, a conserva-
tive Minister for Education in Australia pronounced that poor literacy in
schools could be cured with explicit instruction and a good dose of phonics
(Tudge, 2021). We have no argument with either explicit instruction or
phonics. Phonics is one of a number of tools that can assist young learners to
make the often painful transition from spoken to written English although
it has major limitations. (For one thing, that 26 letters in the English lan-
guage have to represent almost twice that number of sounds. For another, it
will be of little assistance to the beginning reader when it comes to words
such as ‘through’ and ‘tough’.) In addition, use of the singular noun ‘literacy’
is problematic. The terms ‘multiliteracies’ and ‘multimodalities’ are prom-
inent in the educational literature (see Vinogradova & Shin, 2021). This
has been prompted by globalization and technology which have transformed
20 What every writer should know about language

the ways in which we communicate and created new, hybrid, communica-

tion modes.
Educators opposed to the explicit teaching of the sub-systems of language
including grammar, in particular, argue that such a focus cripples creativity
and stifles freedom of expression. This may be true, if the focus is restricted
to the decontextualized manipulation of grammatical forms isolated from the
communicative functions they exist to serve.
Myhill’s research demonstrated that the explicit teaching of grammar
had a positive effect on learners’ writing when it was taught from a func-
tionally oriented perspective in which connections were made for the
learners between “grammatical choices and meaning-making in their
own writing” (p. 42). She concludes that “there is a clear emerging body
of research signaling real benefits of explicit grammar teaching when the
teaching is grounded in meaningful language learning contexts” (p. 44).
In a recent call for putting grammar in its (rightful) place, David echoed
this view:

I’m not arguing for a return to transmission teaching accompanied

by the dreary, decontextualized parsing and analysis exercises to
which I was subjected as a schoolboy - although through such ex-
ercises, I did develop a thorough understanding of the structure of
English, along with the metalanguage to talk about it. … A detailed,
contextualized introduction to the fundamentals of language under-
pinned by a functional model of grammar, can be taught through
the scaffolded, inductive procedures promoted by Bruner all those
years ago.
(Nunan,
­ 2023, p. 18)
­

Although the status of language in general, and grammar in particular, is

beginning to change under the influence of Myhill, Jones et al. (2013),
and other proponents of functionally oriented perspectives, the influ-
ence is scant in some educational systems and non-existent in others.
In this book, we try to show how knowledge of language in general, and
grammar in particular, can assist you in your efforts to become a better
writer.

Vocabulary

Making effective vocabulary choices also has a significant impact on the

clarity of your writing. In this regard, lexical collocations are particularly
important. Lexical collocations are pairs or groups of words that naturally
 What every writer should know about language 21

or commonly co-occur. The development of corpora (singular, corpus), mas-

sive, computerized databases of words, and the linguistic contexts in which
they naturally occur, enable linguists to “identify patterns, principles, reg-
ularities and associations between words that would not be apparent from
a casual inspection of language samples” (Nunan, 2013, p.  219). Corpora
that researchers, publishers, textbook writers, and so on include the Brit-
ish National Corpus which consists of over 100-million word samples taken
from a wide range of spoken and written sources. Unlike a dictionary, these
corpora can answer questions such as What are the 100 most common words
in English? and What are the other words and phrases with which they collocate
(co-occur)?
­­ ​­ Dave Willis, an applied linguist and textbook author, was one of
the first writers to use a corpus (COBUILD) to guide decision-making about
which words to include in the course and when to include them. He points
out that a number of important words such as problem, solution, idea, and
argument are often omitted from most English language textbooks. He goes
on to say:

A particularly striking example is the word way, the third commonest

noun in the English language after time and people. The word way in
its commonest meaning has a complex grammar. It is associated with
patterns like:
…different ways of cooking fish.
A pushchair is a common way to take a young child shopping.
What emerges very strongly once one looks at natural language, is the
way the commonest words in the language occur with the commonest
patterns. In this case the word way occurs with of and the -ing
​­ form of the
verb and also with the to infinitive.
(Willis, 1990, p. vi)

For second-language writers, mastering lexical collocations is particularly

challenging. The difficulty is that pairings are often metaphorical and can’t
always be deduced from context. In the following examples, the writer’s in-
tended meaning is clear, although readers who are familiar with the colloca-
tions may find them odd.

“She likes to drink powerful coffee” (strong coffee)

“John has been a large smoker all his life” (heavy smoker)
“I need to go out and achieve money” (make money)

While effective writers select the best lexical option from two closely com-
peting alternatives, the truly accomplished writer will make creative, and
22 What every writer should know about language

Making connections
Listen to the following webinar in which Professor Mike McCarthy
talks about the use of corpora to inform the analysis and development
of academic vocabulary and answer the following questions. Go to
YouTube and enter the following: Using corpora to inform the teaching
of academic vocabulary.
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­
https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2016/04/08/using-corpora-inform- ­​
­­teaching-academic-vocabulary/
­​­­ ​­

• What types of analysis did he use to analyze the words in the corpus?
• What is a key word?
• Why don’t we think of single words but word chunks?
• What’s dispersion of academic language? Why is it important?
• What does he say about the most frequent words in academic English?
• Why are nouns and noun phrases significant in academic English?
• Do a search of one of your assignments for the existence of four-word
chunks. How many of these chunks appear in your text? Which do you
think you might like to include in your writing?

Making connections
Are the words in bold acceptable to you? Which (if any) would you
change and why?

• The small sailing boat battled through the hilly waves.

• Technology makes a pivotal role in students’ learning.
• Jane is celebrating a party for everyone on Tuesday.
• Don’t lose time.

sometimes surprising choices that express their own attitudes toward the
subject at hand. The late author, poet, and broadcaster Clive James (2007)
was a master at surprising the reader with choice of words and turn of
phrase. In an essay on Auden, he refers to the English poet as “the achingly
modern Auden”. That single, inspired adverb says what it would have taken
a less accomplished writer a paragraph to articulate his attitude to Auden.
Similarly, in his critique of narrowly focused, experimental research, the
American educational researcher, Terry Denny (1978) critiques academics
 What every writer should know about language 23

who come up with “nifty solutions” to problems that teachers never pose.
Most dictionary definitions cast the adjective in a positive light: a ‘nifty’
person or an action as skillful or effective. It is also a colloquial word and
used to describe the writing of one segment of the academy is a clever put-
down on Denny’s part. The alliterative collocation with ‘shifty’ is also no
accident.

Punctuation

Punctuation has a number of important roles in written language. One role

is to tell the reader when to take a breath and how long the breath should
be. In advising young writers to learn punctuation, Dillard (2005) put it most
eloquently – poetically, you could say.

Learn punctuation: it is your little drum set, one of the few tools you
have to signal the reader where the beat and the emphases go. (If you
get it wrong, the editor will probably throw the manuscript out.) Punc-
tuation is not like musical notation; it doesn’t [only] indicate the length
of pauses, but instead signifies logical relations.
(p. 5)
­­

The mention of logical relations brings us to the second important role played
by punctuation. (We would have used ‘grammatical relations’ rather than
‘logical relations’, but we won’t quibble about terminology here). In many
respects, punctuation can be seen as a part of the grammatical sub-system
of language. Let us give you an example. Consider the following sentences:

1. My sister who lives in Atlanta is visiting me in Melbourne.

2. My sister, who lives in Atlanta, is visiting me in Melbourne.

The only difference between the two sentences is the addition of a couple
of commas. It may seem that an additional comma here or there is incon-
sequential. However, they signal an important difference in meaning. The
implication in sentence 1 is that the writer has more than one sister, and
the function of the relative clause ‘who lives in Atlanta’ is to specify or
define which of the sisters she is referring to – the one who lives in Atlanta,
not the one who lives in Toronto. It provides essential additional infor-
mation and for this reason is known as a defining relative clause. In the
second sentence, the information in the ‘who’ clause is incidental, and the
commas mark the fact that this is so. For this reason, it is referred to as a
non-defining relative clause. The implication is that the speaker only has
one sister.
24 What every writer should know about language

If you think that punctuation is a dry subject, albeit a necessary but me-
chanical aspect of the writing process, we urge you to read Lynne Truss
on the subject. Here is the introduction to her marvelous little book on
the subject. Interestingly, in light of our discussion above, she begins the
book by recounting a personal anecdote about the misplaced apostrophe.

Either this will ring bells for you, or it won’t. A printed banner has ap-
peared on the concourse of a petrol station near to where I live. “Come
inside,” it says, “for CD’s, VIDEO’s, DVD’s, and Book’s.” If this satanic
sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or
quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at
once. … For the stickler, the sight of the plural word “Book’s” with an
apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar
to the stages of bereavement, though greatly accelerated.
(Truss,
­ 2003, ­p. 1)

Questions from readers

Q: As a non-native speaker of English, it is really difficult to grasp colloca-

tions. Do you have any advice on how I can learn collocations?
A: Yes, collocations, idioms, phrasal verbs, and other forms of figurative lan-
guage are particularly challenging for second-language learners because they
have no ‘logic’ and have to be learned individually. Native speakers ‘pick up’
collocations as they acquire other aspects of their native language. Several
resources can help you increase your knowledge of collocations. For example,
dictionaries such as the Oxford Collocational Dictionary for Students of English
is available in both print and online versions.
Q: Am I correct in thinking that a functional approach to grammar fo-
cuses on ‘meaning’ rather than prescriptive ‘rules’? If the meaning comes
through, does it mean we don’t have to worry so much about correcting
grammar?
A: The notion that functional approaches to grammar focus on meaning
rather than form is not correct. In fact, grammar is fundamental. Functional
grammarians seek to establish principled relationships between form and
meaning. In ‘traditional’ approaches to grammar, learners are taught gram-
matical forms with little or no reference to meaning. For example, when the
passive voice is taught, learners are shown how to transform active voice
statements. (“The boy broke the window”.) into the passive voice (“The­ win-
dow was broken by the boy”.) They are then drilled until they are fluent in the
new form. They might be able to make statements in passive voice, but have
 What every writer should know about language 25

no idea how, when, and why to use it. Functional grammars not only teach
the form but also meaning and use of a particular grammatical item.

Summary

The main message of this chapter is that a knowledge of language can make you
a better writer. The level of detail is a matter for conjecture. We’ve set out what
we believe to be the bare minimum. Knowing terminology, particularly gram-
matical terminology, is a useful tool and can provide a shortcut when it comes
to discussing your writing with a teacher or other writers. Identifying instances
of grammar in action within texts and being able to see how accomplished
authors are able to put grammar to work to communicate their ideas effectively
will be important steps along your path to doing the same. In this chapter, we
cite research supporting the contention that an explicit knowledge of grammar
has a positive impact on the quality and effectiveness of writing if it is learned
functionally. In other words, if you can experiment with and see the different
meaning-making or communicative effects that result from making different
grammatical choices within and beyond the sentence, this will help you be a
better writer. This experimentation is not a technique that, once mastered, can
be applied to automatically to your writing. Like us, every time you sit down
(or stand up) to write, you will have choices to make and problems to solve.
We’ve covered a lot of ground and introduced some difficult concepts in this
chapter. For many readers, this will be difficult to digest. To help you develop
and refine your ideas on function grammar, we have recommended six books.
We don’t expect you to read all of these from cover-to-cover. However, con-
sulting one or two that appeal to you will help to consolidate the ideas we
have introduced here.
In the next chapter, we build on the ideas introduced in this chapter and
will explore other linguistic tools such as thematization and cohesion. These
tools will also help you improve the clarity and coherence of your writing.

Further readings

Derewianka, B. (2011). A new grammar companion for teachers. Primary English

Teaching Association.
This is an accessible reference book for people interested in learning more about
systemic functional grammar, an approach that many schoolteachers use in Aus-
tralia as it was written in response to the new Australian Curriculum.
26 What every writer should know about language

Derewianka, B. (2020). Exploring how texts work (2nd ed.). Primary English Teaching
Association.
For people interested in how language and text work particularly within the
curriculum, this book will be the perfect introduction.
Humphrey, S., Love, K., & Droga, L. (2011). Working grammar: An introduction for
secondary English teachers. Pearson Education Australia.
This is a professional resource book for teachers seeking an introduction to
teaching systemic functional grammar. It provides many exercises to try for those
interested in this approach to grammar.
Thornbury, S. (2001). Uncovering grammar. Macmillan Heinemann.
This book takes the view that grammar is not a ‘thing’ to be studied, but a tool
to be used. It contains a wealth of ideas for the practicing teacher as well as
providing valuable insights into ways in which teachers can guide students to
‘discover’
­ grammar.
Truss, D. (2003). Eats, shoots  & leaves: The zero-tolerance approach to punctuation.
Profile Books.
An insightful, and very funny introduction to English pronunciation.
Webb, S., & Nation, P. (2017). How vocabulary is learned. Oxford University Press.
An extremely accessible introduction to the nature of vocabulary and how it is
learned by two of the most authoritative figures in the field.
Willis, D. (1991). The lexical syllabus. Collins ELT.
A clear and accessible introduction to collocations, corpora and concordancing.
Although aimed at language teachers, it is a useful text for all those who want to
know more about the patterns of vocabulary in texts.

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Brown, S., & Menasche, L. (1993). Authenticity in materials design [Conference pres-

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­ ­ ­ ­ ­
bridgeenglish.org/teaching-english/teaching-qualifications/tkt/prepare-for-tkt/
­­ ​­ ­­ ​­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­
Caplan, N. (2023). The grammar choices that matter in academic writing. In E.
Hinkel (Ed.),
­ Handbook of practical second language teaching and learning (Vol. 4,
pp. 466–479).
­ ­ ​­ Routledge.
Denny, T. (1978). Story-telling and educational understanding. Case Study Evalua-
tion: Past, Present and Future Challenges, 15, 41–61.
­ ​­
Derewianka, B. (2011). A new grammar companion for teachers. Primary English
Teaching Association.
 What every writer should know about language 27

Dillard, A. (2005). Introduction: Notes for young writers. In L. Gutkind (Ed.), In

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Harmer, J. (1987). The practice of English language teaching. Longman.
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Jones, S., Myhill, D., & Bailey, T. (2013). Grammar for writing? An investigation
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Myhill, D. (2011). Grammar for designers: How grammar supports the develop-
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Linguistics and the secondary English classroom (pp. 36–47).
­ ­­ ­ ​­ Routledge.
Nunan, D. (2005). Practical English language teaching: Grammar. ­McGraw-Hill.
​­
Nunan, D. (2013). What is this thing called language? (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Nunan, D. (2023). The changing landscape of English language teaching and learn-
ing. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of practical second language teaching and learning
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­ 4, pp. 3–23).
­ ­ ​­ Routledge.
Richards, J., Platt, J., & Weber, H. (1985). Longman dictionary of applied linguistics.
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Truss, D. (2003). Eats, shoots  & leaves: The zero-tolerance approach to punctuation.
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Tudge, A. (2021). Roaring back: My priority for schools as students return to the
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au/tudge/roaring-back-my-priorities-schools-students-return-classrooms
­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Vinogradova, P., & Shin, J. K. (Eds.). (2021). Contemporary foundations for teaching
English as an additional language: Pedagogical approaches and classroom applications.
Routledge.
Willis, D. (1991). The lexical syllabus. Collins ELT.
 2
Only connect

Creating a coherent piece of writing involves making decisions about where

to place information in a text so that it makes sense to the reader and to
make connections between the different pieces of information in the text. In
shorter pieces of writing such as essays and reports, this involves making de-
cisions across paragraphs, within paragraphs, and within sentences. Making
choices at each of these levels, the text, the paragraph, and the sentence will
influence and be influenced by the other levels.
In the case of longer works such as theses and books, connections and choices
have to be made about the placement of content across chapters and even
the location of individual chapters within the work. For example, if you are
writing a book-length research report or doctoral thesis you need to decide
whether to locate your research questions at the end of your literature review
or at the beginning of your research methodology chapter.
In this chapter, we describe the resources available to writers to help them
craft coherent sentences, paragraphs, and texts. For the sake of convenience,
we will look at each of these elements separately. However, the act of writ-
ing requires constant shuttling between the sentence, the paragraph, and
the text as a whole. We begin with the sentence, describing and illustrating
the concept of thematization. However, in order to provide a satisfactory
account of thematization, we will have to stray beyond the sentence and
into the paragraph. In examining the inner workings of the paragraph, we
will introduce the important concepts of cohesion and coherence. What are
these concepts? How are they related and what differentiates them?
Another concept introduced in the chapter is signposting. The word sign-
posting is used metaphorically. Through it, you indicate to your reader the
terrain you plan to traverse in the paragraphs and pages ahead. At the end
of a section, and also at the conclusion of the chapter, you can remind the
reader of the main points you have covered.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179092-3
 Only connect 29

In the final section of the chapter, David shares with you an exercise he car-
ried out with a graduate student. The exercise is introduced to illustrate how
the various tools and techniques introduced in the chapter can be mobilized
to make connections and strengthen the coherence of your writing.

Thematization

The first resource for making connections at the sentence level is thematiza-
tion. We will describe the phenomenon before showing how it can be used
to improve the clarity and coherence of your writing. We will also give you
an application exercise. In keeping with our philosophy, we won’t simply
provide tricks of the trade and formulae to follow but will give you insights
into how and why the procedure works. As we mentioned in Chapter  1,
you’ll be introduced to unfamiliar terms and concepts. Learning any new
subject, skill, or discipline always entails learning new vocabulary and the
concepts they represent. Some academics liken it to being initiated into a
new discourse community. In a sense, you’ll be learning academic writing as
a foreign language.
Thematization concerns the choice you have to make when writing a sen-
tence: which word or word group do you select as the point of departure for
your sentence? This word or word group is the theme. The choice you make
will direct the reader to the element they should focus on and how they are
to interpret the sentence. Although it is a sentence-level phenomenon, it
has important implications for the sentence that follows, and the one after
that, through to the end of the paragraph. This underlines a point that we’ll
return to constantly throughout the book. Choices at the sentence level will
have implications for the paragraph, and choices at the paragraph level will
have implications for those that follow.
In explaining thematization, what it is and why it’s important, we draw on
the work of the British/Australian linguist Michael Halliday who in his
many years as professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney and else-
where had a profound effect on language teaching, learning, and use around
the world. Halliday was a functional grammarian, and the approach we have
taken to language in this book has been profoundly influenced by his work.
The approach he pioneered is called systemic-functional linguistics. As we
discussed in Chapter 1, this school sees language in communicative terms.
It seeks to explain the link between grammatical form and communicative
function and demonstrate how grammatical forms exist to enable us to make
meanings. In the rest of this discussion, when we refer to ‘the sentence’, we
30 Only connect

are talking about simple sentences which as we saw in Chapter  1, are the
same as a clause, having a subject, a finite verb, and expressing a single idea
about the subject.
In explaining thematization, Halliday looks at the sentence in terms of
message structure. All sentences have a message. As such, they are commu-
nicative events and are made up of two parts: an entity or event, called the
theme, and a message about the theme, called the rheme. In making a word/
word group the theme of the sentence, the writer is telling the reader “this
is the thing I want to tell you something about”. The rest of the sentence, the
rheme, is the message. He says:

We may assume that in all languages the clause [simple sentence] has the
character of a message: it has some form of organization giving it the sta-
tus of a communicative event. … In English, as in many other languages,
the clause is organized as a message by having a special status assigned
to one part of it. One element in the clause is enumerated [designated]
as the Theme: this Theme combines with the remainder so that the two
parts together constitute a message. … The Theme is the element which
serves as the point of departure of the message; it is that with which the
clause is concerned. The remainder of the message, the part in which
the Theme is developed, is called … the Rheme. As a message structure,
therefore, a clause consists of a Theme accompanied by a Rheme: and
the structure is expressed in that order.
(Halliday,
­ 1985, p. 38)
­

Why does this matter? It matters because it gives writers a choice about which
entity/phenomenon in a communicative event they want the reader to at-
tend to and what they want the reader to learn about the entity/phenomenon.
Halliday illustrates this issue of choice with the following rather quaint (and
presumably invented) sentences (Table 2.1).
In the first, ‘the duke’ is the theme, and he is the focal point of the clause.
The rheme tells the reader what happened to him. Halliday wants us to
know about the act of gift giving, not that the duke has a wooden leg, that
he marched his men to the top of the hill, or that he picks his nose in public.

­
Theme Rheme
The duke has given my aunt that teapot
My aunt has been given that teapot by the duke
That teapot the duke has given to my aunt
 Only connect 31

In the second, ‘­my aunt’ is the theme, she is the focus, and the rheme tells
us what happened to her. Notice that he can only achieve that end by using
a grammatical ­resource – ​­the passive voice. In the third, ‘­that teapot’ is the
point of the departure and the focus is on what happened to it. So, the writer
has a choice. Does he/­she want the story (­or this part of the story) to be about
‘­the duke’, ‘­my aunt’, or the ‘­teapot’?
Beyond the sentence, the rheme of an initial sentence becomes the theme of
the next sentence. The rheme of that becomes the theme of the next and so
on. Here is an example explaining how milk gets from the cow to the con-
sumer which shows graphically the way the given new patterning works. (­It’s
a bit like a ­ping-​­pong game!) (­­Figure 2.1)

Theme Rheme

The milk flows to the refrigerated tankers.

The refrigerated tanker delivers the raw milk to the factory.

At the factory the milk is pasteurized in the pasteurization

plant.
In the pasteurization plant, the milk is heated to kill off germs.

­Figure 2.1  A ­zig-​­zag pattern of theme/­rheme as adapted from Polias and Dare

(­2006, ­p. 130).

We have just introduced you to the very simplest theme/­rheme structure in

which the theme is a noun or noun/­nominal group. This is all the background
you will need for the purposes of the following discussion. We won’t venture
into themes with multiple constituents or clauses in which the theme is not
the point of departure for the clause.
It’s now time to demonstrate ways in which thematization can improve the
clarity and coherence of your writing. We will do so by examining the open-
ing paragraph from a student essay. The paragraph consists of five simple
sentences/­clauses, each containing a single piece of information.

Some educational systems have a large number of immigrants. Many

immigrant students possess multilingual repertoires. Educational systems
have policies. Policies favour traditional monolingual practices. Lan-
guage and cultural uniformity are the norm.
32 Only connect

Making connections
In ­Chapter 1, we said that English possesses a limited number of basic
clause types. Each clause type is constructed of combinations of two,
three, or four of the following grammatical building blocks: subject,
verb, object, complement, and adverbial.
1. As a form of review, can you identify the clause types in the above par-
agraph in terms of the grammatical building blocks? (­The first one has
been done for you.)

• S1 = S+V+O
• S2 =
• S3 =
• S4 =
• S5=
2. Underline the theme of each sentence.
(­1) Some educational systems have a large number of immigrants;
(­2)  Many immigrant students possess multilingual repertoires;
(­3) Educational systems have policies; (­4) Policies favor traditional
monolingual practices; (­5) Language and cultural uniformity are
the norm.
3. How coherent is the paragraph? That is, to what extent does it seem to
‘­hang together’?

Here is the theme/­rheme breakdown for each sentence (­­Table 2.2).

We asked several of our students to complete this exercise. All agreed that
the content of each sentence is clear, there are no grammatical errors, and
the pieces of information seem to be about the same general topic. However,

­Table 2.2  A breakdown of theme/­rheme from the Making Connections task

Theme Rheme
Some educational systems have a large number of immigrants
Many immigrant students possess multilingual repertoires
Educational systems have policies
Policies favor traditional monolingual practices
Language and cultural uniformity are the norm
 Only connect 33

there is something wrong with the paragraph. “It’s a bit jarring”, said one stu-
dent. “It’s not really coherent”, reported another. A third astutely observed
that there was a problem with sentence three. “The theme jumps back to the
theme of sentence one, but there’s nothing to connect it to sentence two.
And what it tells us is that educational systems have policies which hasn’t
been mentioned before”.
Doing a theme/rheme analysis of the student’s paragraph can help us see
where the lack of integration lies. One solution to the integration problem is
to draw on a range of grammatical resources such as the creation of phrases
and coordinating/subordinating clauses to link and integrate multiple pieces
of information into one or two complex sentences. This requires care. Over-
burden the sentence, and it will collapse under its own weight, leaving the
reader confused, if not downright irritated. So why bother going beyond the
simple sentence? Grammatical resources such as different clause types enable
us to describe and make explicit complex interrelationships between the en-
tities, actions, and state-of-affairs that remain implicit in simple sentences.
As we have already mentioned, one of the, if not the, major challenges in
representing (re-presenting)
­­ ​­ the experiential world in written or spoken form
is that language is linear. When we seek to re-present the experiential world
in written form, we can only do so one word, clause, and paragraph at a time.
Here is an option for integrating the separate pieces of information in the
five-sentence student paragraph into a single sentence. We would not recom-
mend that you try to produce such complex sentences. We have included it
here simply to illustrate some of the grammatical resources that can be used
to integrate information from simple sentences into more complex ones. (If
you’re unsure about complex sentences, you can find an explanation and
examples in the glossary.)

Educational systems with a large number of immigrant students who pos-

sess complex multilingual repertoires disadvantage these students when
they implement institutional policies that favour traditional monolin-
gual practices in which language and cultural uniformity are the norm.
In creating this sentence, our first challenge was to decide what to thema-
tize. We opted for “educational systems with a large number of immigrants”.
When you select a theme, you are saying to the reader, “What I’m going to
tell you about, is …” (in our case, educational systems with a large number of
immigrants). The next challenge was to integrate some of the grammatical re-
sources noted above to integrate the rest of the information into our sentence.
Choosing which piece of information to thematize will be largely dictated by
the audience for and purpose of the piece. (In Chapter 4, we go into greater
34 Only connect

detail on purpose and audience.) If we are writing a submission to a govern-

ment inquiry into language policies in the school system, it would make sense
to thematize ‘institutional policies’. But what kind of institutional policies do
we want to tell the inquiry about? The answer is those of educational systems
favoring traditional monolingual practices in which language and cultural uni-
formity are the norm. This gives us a long and complex theme that is difficult
to process: “Institutional policies of educational systems favouring traditional
monolingual practices in which the language and cultural uniformity are the
norm…”. What do we want to tell the committee about these policies? That
they “devalue the multilingual repertoires of large numbers of immigrants”.
But what if we want the focus on the plight of multilingual students? A third
option presents itself.

Large numbers of immigrant students possessing complex multilingual

repertoires are disadvantaged in educational systems based on tradi-
tional monolingual practices in which language and cultural uniformity
are the norm.

Here is a theme/rheme analysis of the three options (Table 2.3):

­
Theme Rheme
Option 1
Educational systems with a large disadvantage these students when they
number of immigrant students implement institutional policies that
who possess complex multilingual favor traditional monolingual practices
repertoires in which language and cultural
uniformity are the norm.
Option 2
Institutional policies of educational devalue the multilingual repertoires of
systems favoring traditional large numbers of immigrants.
monolingual practices in which the
language and cultural uniformity are
the norm
Option 3
Large numbers of immigrant students are disadvantaged in educational
possessing complex multilingual systems based on traditional
repertoires monolingual practices in which
language and cultural uniformity are
the norm.
 Only connect 35

Which is the ‘best’ option? The answer is, it depends. It is up to you, the
author, to decide on the focus, or theme, of the sentence in the light of your
purpose and audience. It also depends on how much information is in the
form of pre-and post-modification of the head noun. A useful exercise is to
identify the clause type (similar to what we asked you to do in the ‘Making
Connection’ exercise above).
Type 2: S+V+O: Systems disadvantage students.
Type 2: S+V+O: Policies devalue immigrants.
Type 3: S+V+C: Students are disadvantaged.
You can then determine how much ballast you can add to the head word
before it sinks. Let us reiterate a point we made above: we are not advo-
cating overstuffing sentences with content. The point of this exercise is to
demonstrate the options and choices available to you as a writer when dis-
tributing large amounts of content in a paragraph according to audience and
purpose. Awareness of theme/rheme distribution in your writing can help in
this regard. Hedge (2005) suggests beginning by breaking ideas into simple
propositions which can then be built into more complex sentences (p. 84).
Making decisions about theme and rheme has implications for the rest of the
paragraph. Ideally, one of the elements in the rheme of the first sentence in
the paragraph becomes the theme of the next sentence. This theme/rheme
patterning helps knit the paragraph together and (hopefully) makes it more
coherent for the reader. This knitting together can be seen in the student
assignment we have been working with in this section.

Educational systems [theme] with a large number of immigrant students

who possess complex multilingual repertoires disadvantage these stu-
dents when they implement institutional policies that favour traditional
monolingual practices in which language and cultural uniformity are the
norm. These monolingual practices [theme] do not facilitate the acqui-
sition of content and literacy for multilingual students. Such students
[theme], who possess myriad linguistic resources, are educated as if they
were monolinguals, which inhibits them from using their linguistic (and
non-linguistic) resources to make meaning.

Making connections
Carry out a theme/rheme analysis of the sentences in a paragraph from
your own writing.
Try out different themes. What effect does this have on the meaning
you are trying to convey?
36 Only connect

Cohesion and coherence

In the preceding section, we stressed the importance for a writer to assist the
reader by making the text as clear and coherent as possible. We introduced
the concepts of theme and rheme and demonstrated how selecting the ap-
propriate theme for each sentence within a paragraph should strengthen the
coherence of the paragraph. In this section, we want to take a closer look
at coherence and introduce the concept of cohesion. Our first concern is to
address two questions: What do we mean by coherence? And what role does
cohesion play in establishing coherence? In dealing with these questions, we
have to confront a paradox.
Coherence (and incoherence) are words that turn up constantly in everyday
conversation. The first speaker was incoherent. I couldn’t make sense of what
he had to say. The second speaker, on the other hand, was most coherent. His
argument was well-organized, logical, clear, relevant and comprehensible. These
adjectives capture the concept of coherence. The phrase ‘make sense of ’ is
also telling. It is up to us to make sense of what we see, hear, smell, taste, and
touch. Sense is not an inherent quality of entities in the external world, en-
tities which includes spoken and written language. Herein lies the paradox.
We can’t create coherence for the reader because it’s an “inside-the-head”
phenomenon, not an “on-the-page”
­­ ­​­­ ​­ phenomenon.
What are the on-the-page phenomena that enable readers to perceive a par-
ticular text as coherent rather than a random collection of sentences? Fur-
ther, what is it that makes one version of a paragraph more coherent than
another? Familiarity with the subject matter helps. The degree of coherence
will vary from reader to reader depending on how much they already know
of the subject. Linguistic knowledge also helps. “While readers need to know
the meaning of individual words and sentences in order to comprehend writ-
ten texts, they also need to know how the sentences relate to one another”
­
(Nunan, 2013, ­p. 113).
It is here that the writer can help. As we saw in the last section, distribution
of information in a paragraph is most important. Does the writer use thema-
tization and given/new structuring effectively so that successive sentences
follow one another in a way that helps the reader make sense of the text or
not? However, thematization and given/new information structure are insuf-
ficient. As Halliday (1985) notes:

Theme and information constitute the internal resources for structuring

the clause as a message. But in order that a sequence of clauses … should
constitute a text, it is necessary to do more than give an appropriate
 Only connect 37

internal structure to each. It is necessary, also, to make explicit the ex-

ternal relationship between one clause … and another, and to do so in a
way that is not dependent on grammatical structure.
(p. 287)
­­

He goes on to say that the non-structural resources that allow us to make

explicit relationships between entities, actions, and ­states-of-affairs
­​­­ ​­ across
clauses/sentences are known as cohesion. He illustrates the way that cohe-
sion works by analyzing a children’s nursery rhyme.

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn!

The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.
Where is the boy that looks after the sheep?
He’s under the haycock, fast asleep.
Will you go wake him? No, not I!
For if I do, he’ll be sure to cry.
The use of he … him … he to refer back to ‘the boy that looks after the
sheep’ is an instance of reference. The forms no, not I and if I do exem-
plify ellipsis; they have to be interpreted as no I (will) not wake him) and if
I (wake him). The word for expresses a conjunctive relationship between
‘I will not’ and ‘if I do, he will cry’. The word sheep in line three reiter-
ates sheep in line two; cow related to sheep, corn, meadow, and wake and
asleep; these are all examples of lexical cohesion.
(Halliday,
­ 1985, p. 288)
­

The first comprehensive instruction to cohesion was published in 1976

by Halliday and Hasan. In it they describe linguistic devices which dif-
ferentiate coherent texts from random sentences. For this reason, they
were referred to as ‘text-forming’ devices. Writers employ these to ‘pull
sentences together into texts’ and assist the reader to achieve coherence.
In their book, Halliday and Hasan describe five cohesive devices. These
devices signal relationships between entities, events, and ­states-of-affairs
­​­­ ​­
that occur in different sentences within a text. A sentence containing one
of these devices cannot be understood if it stands alone outside the text.
The five devices are reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexi-
cal cohesion. Halliday later collapsed substitution and ellipsis into a single
category. However, here, we will retain the original five. At the risk of
oversimplifying, we will give a brief description along with examples of
these cohesive devices.
Reference: The use of various pro-forms (e.g., pronouns or demonstratives:
he, she, it, they, this, that) to represent information provided elsewhere in the
38 Only connect

text. Encountered outside the text from which it has been taken, a sentence
containing one of these items is uninterpretable. For example:

Sentence out of context: This necessitated the collection of additional data.

From the sentence presented out of context, it is not possible to answer
the question What required the collection of additional data?
Sentence in context: Two studies were conducted, both of which were in-
conclusive. This necessitated the collection of additional data.

Conjunction (also called logical connectives): These signal relationships

such as causality, time, and concession that exist across and sometimes within
sentences in the text. Examples include for example, however, therefore, in
addition, although, and firstly.

Sentence out of context: However, the research team was encouraged to reapply.
Out of context, the sentence is uninterpretable.
Given a textual context, however, it makes perfect sense. After consider-
able discussion, ethics approval for the research was withheld. However, the
research team was encouraged to reapply.
Without the conjunction, the two sentences would still make sense. As
a writer, you have to decide whether the addition of the conjunction is
helpful to the reader. Given the larger context of the entire paragraph,
you might even decide to blend the two sentences using the conjunction
‘but’.
­ After considerable discussion, ethics approval for the research was with-
held, but the research team was encouraged to reapply.

Ellipsis: Ellipsis is a noun formed from the verb ‘to elide’ or to leave out. The
second sentence in the example above also serves to illustrate this cohesive
device.

Sentence out of context: However, the research team was encouraged to

reapply.
From the sentence presented out of context, it is not possible to answer
the question What was the research team encouraged to apply for? (Or, if
you want to avoid ending the question with a preposition, For what was
the research team encouraged to apply?)
However, given the context, the answer is (or should) be perfectly ob-
vious. In the second sentence, the words ‘ethics approval’ are redundant
and, in the interests of economy, have been elided, or left out. Again,
as a writer, you are perfectly within your rights to restate them, but you
would then be violating the principle of economy.
 Only connect 39

Substitution: Substitution and ellipsis are closely related. In fact, in a later

version of their model of cohesion, Halliday and Hasan collapsed them into
a single category. In the case of ellipsis, information assumed to be obvious
to the reader is omitted. In the case of substitution, a noun, verb, or clause
is replaced with a ‘stand in’ word such as do/does, one/ones, and so. While
substitution occurs most commonly in spoken discourse, it can also be found
in written texts.

Nominal substitution: Effective use of cohesive devices enables you to

highlight certain pieces of information. It also allows you to downplay
others (others = certain pieces of information).
Verbal substitution: The experimental group didn’t follow the instruc-
tions. The control group did (did = followed the rules).
Clausal substitution: I consulted my advisor on whether I should try to
replicate the experiment. He said he thought so (so = try to replicate
the experiment).

Lexical cohesion: As the label implies, lexical cohesion analyzes the way
that networks of words that are related in some way contribute to the coher-
ence of a text. The simplest is lexical repetition. Other types are synonym
(similar in meaning), antonym (opposite in meaning), or a hyponym (where
one word is an example of a more general word such as ‘animal and ‘dog’)
can be used. Collocational relationships are also part of lexical cohesion.
Collocation exists when two words are related because they belong to the
same semantic field, for example, ‘student’ and ‘teacher’. This type of lexical
cohesion can be problematic when searching for lexical patterns or chains,
in texts. ‘Table’ and ‘chair’ clearly belong to the semantic field of ‘furniture’;
in fact, they are both hyponyms of furniture, but what about ‘table’ and ‘leg’.
Despite the headaches it can cause, exploring collocational patterns in texts
can be fascinating. The most comprehensive treatment of this aspect of co-
hesion is provided by Michael Hoey (1983, 1991). Here are some examples
of these types of lexical cohesion.

Repetition: Clive James’ first memoir was considered a classic. His sec-
ond memoir was less favourably received.
Synonym: Clive James’ autobiography was well-received. Not so, his
second life-account.
​­
Antonym: Clive James should have stopped with his first memoir. How-
ever, he continued with three more.
Hyponym: The first memoir by Clive James is still in print today. The
book was one of his favourites.
40 Only connect

Collocation: To be counted as empirical research, any scholarly activity

needs a number of essentials elements. It the first place, it requires a
question. Next it has to have data that have relevant bearing on the
question. Analysis and interpretation are fundamental. The researcher
needs to deal with threats to reliability and validity. Finally, the results
must be published.

Although cohesion doesn’t ‘create’ coherence, as critics were quick to

point out (Carrell, 1982), the ability to manipulate these devices can
help you strengthen the coherence of your writing. As we have already
pointed out, cohesion exists in the text. Coherence resides in the head.
That said, while cohesive devices don’t ‘create’ coherence, without them
our writing would be clumsy and disjointed. (For a detailed discussion of
the contribution of cohesion to the perception of coherence in texts, see
Connor and Johns (1990).) Consider the following versions of a simple
text.

Version 1

The research team could not agree on a site for their research. The research
team argued about the site for their research for several days. Some members
of the research team wanted the site for their research to be in a simulated
setting. Some members of the research team want the site for their research
to be in a naturalistic setting.

Version 2

The research team could not agree on a site for their research. They argued
about it for several days. Some wanted it to be in a simulated setting. Others
argued for a naturalistic setting.
In version 2, the use of cohesive devices (reference, ellipsis, and substitution)
results in a text that is more readable and coherent than version 1. The iden-
tical content is expressed half the number of words.
In order to consolidate our students’ understanding of the way cohesive de-
vices function within written texts, we have them identify their cohesive
chains in a text by tracking them with different colored highlighting pens.
(A chain exists when a text entity is linked by a cohesive device across two
or more sentences.) We then get them to do the same with one or two of
 Only connect 41

their own paragraphs. An example of cohesive chaining is illustrated in the

following box.

David’s example of lexical chains

Here is an example of lexical chains in a passage from a semi-fictionalized
memoir I wrote some years ago in which I described, among other
things, meetings with famous writers (Nunan, 2012). In one chapter, I
recount meeting Anthony Burgess who wrote many best-selling nov-
els, including A Clockwork Orange, which was made into a film. At
a writers’ festival where I first met Burgess, I was deputed to chauffer
him to a winery where a lunch was to be held in honor of the keynote
speakers at the festival.

Getting Burgess to the winery wasn’t difficult. The town only had
one main street and Hardy’s winery was the largest enterprise in
town. We were met by numerous members of the Hardy family.
These including Frank – later to be dubbed Sir Frank Hardy for his
services to yachting. (What would Burgess have made of that?).
Also in the party was an elderly member of the family whom
everyone called ‘Uncle Tom’. We were taken to a massive barn
where hundreds of wine barrels were stacked from floor to ceiling.
Inside the barn, it was cool. A sweet, rotting smell came from the
barrels. Through the gloom, I could see that at the rear of the barn
trestle tables had been set with food and wine. ‘This looks promis-
ing,’ said Burgess eyeing the victuals, and rubbing his hands. He
moved towards the spread like a hunter advancing on his prey.
And then, the celebrated author pounced.

In this chain, there are five cohesive ties: three of lexical repetition,
one of reference, and one synonym. Can you find any other examples of
simple cohesion (one instance of a cohesive tie) and cohesive chaining
(two or more cohesive ties)?

If you completed this activity, you may have found that there is one con-
junction (‘also’, and a couple of instances of referential cohesion, but the
vast majority of the items are lexical). Carrying out this type of cohesive
analysis demonstrates the intricate interweaving that occurs in even a sim-
ple descriptive paragraph. There is not a single sentence that doesn’t con-
tain at least one cohesive link to one or more of the other sentences in the
paragraph.
42 Only connect

Making connections
Select a paragraph of your own writing. Ideally, it should be around
150–200 words. Go through the paragraph and identify the instances
of cohesion. You can do this by underlining the items or changing the
font or color of the words. Create a matrix showing the cohesive chains
in the paragraph, using the one above as a model.
What did you learn about the way cohesion works to bind a text
together?

Connections at the text level: signposting and summarizing

When writing, you should tell readers what you’re going to write, write it,
and then remind the readers of the journey on which you’ve have taken
them. Signposting, or alerting readers of what’s to come, and then summariz-
ing the terrain that has been covered, are not only a courtesy to the reader,
but an invaluable aid in helping them navigate their way through your text.
You should do this regardless of whether you are writing a book or a short
article of 1,000 words or less. If your text has sub-sections, as is usually the
case with journal articles, each subsection should be signposted and summa-
rized. (If you return to earlier paragraphs of this chapter, you will see how we
signposted the content to come.)
Aitchison (2014), following Feak and Swales (2009), refers to the language
used by writers to signpost as ‘metadiscourse’, i.e., talk about talk or dis-
course about discourse which, generally speaking, is empty of content. She
says that at the beginning or ending of a chapter/article, or the beginning
of a new section within a piece, the signposting can provide for the reader
one of three orientation: a current, a backward, or a future orientation.
Here are some of the phrases that can orient the reader in one of these
three directions:

Current orientation:
The focus of this chapter is on …
This chapter reviews the literature on …
Backwards orientation:
This chapter follows from a detailed report of the finding that …
 Only connect 43

The previous chapter provided an historical review of the evolution of these

models. To recap the main …
Future orientation:
Having established the central argument, the next chapter …
… and thus, the next chapter explores the key themes …
She also points out that orientations can be combined:
Following from the discussion of key findings in Chapter 5, this chapter lays
the ground for the resultant recommendations presented in the final chapter.

Making connections
Most academic journals require an abstract at the beginning of articles
accepted for publication. An abstract is a formal type of signposting.
In the following abstract, the authors begin by providing a context.
They describe the problem to be addressed, make reference to several
relevant studies, state the premises on which the study rests, describe
the research method, and summarize the argument to be presented in
the article.

1. Read the following abstract. Underline instances of metadiscoursal

signposting and note the tense choices made.
In contemporary educational contexts, technology, globalization, and
mobility have brought about a blurring of the boundary between lan-
guage learning and activation in and beyond the classroom. (We prefer
the term “activation” to “use” as it has a more dynamic connotation.)
This contrasts with the pre-globalized, pre-Internet world when, in
many EFL (and even ESL) settings, opportunities for language use
outside the classroom were either limited or non-existent. These days,
regardless of the physical context in which learners are living, there
are many opportunities for language activation outside the classroom
(see Benson & Reinders, 2011; Nunan & Richards, 2015, for over 40
case studies of such opportunities). Additionally, there is a prob-
lematic distinction between classrooms, as places where language
is learned, and the world beyond the classroom, as spaces where
classroom-acquired language and skills are activated. Inside the class-
room, experiences can be created in which learning and activation can
co-occur (Swain, 2000). Beyond the classroom, learners are not only
activating their language in authentic contexts, they are also develop-
ing their communicative repertoires and acquiring language skills that
44 Only connect

are not readily acquired in the classroom (Choi, 2017). This paper thus
rests on the following premises: learning and activation can co-occur
inside and outside the classroom; and, language learning/activation
outside the classroom offers challenges and opportunities that are not
available inside the classroom. In the body of the paper, we will expand
on, exemplify, and attempt to justify these premises. We will also argue
that a blended, project-based approach, incorporating both in class
and out of class learning/activation opportunities provides optimal
environments for language development. In the body of the paper,
we showcase the rich learning affordances in blended project designs
drawing on four case studies from a range of contexts. Finally, we dis-
cuss the need to rethink the roles of teachers, learners and pedagogy
within the blended model. (Choi & Nunan, 2018, p. 49)

This abstract consists of two principal moves, a summary of literature rele-

vant to the article to come and a statement of the premises (claims) to be
argued in the article and the justification for it. Signposting is signaled by
the phrases This paper thus rests on … In the body of the paper … We will also
argue … we showcase … Finally …. In Chapter 5, we introduce you to the
concept of moves and how to carry out a move analysis.

Making connections
Select a picture or short video (5–10 seconds) taken in any social set-
ting such as a park, a shopping mall, or a dinner party. Describe what is
going on in about 20 short simple sentences. (Ensure that there is only
one main verb per sentence.)
Here is an example from David based on his morning run around a
harborside park on Hong Kong Island.

It’s mid-morning in Cyberport Park.

The park is rapidly filling up with people.
Kids of various ages belt around the path that circumnavigates
the park.
Some kids are on skateboards.
Some kids are on bike.
Adults scatter onto the grass to avoid injury.
 Only connect 45

A dad kicks a soccer ball to his small sons.

A pack of dogs of various sizes chase each other across the grass.
The harbourside is in full sun.
The sun bites into my back.
A stand of trees shades the landside of the park.
The shade and a breeze cool the sweat on my back.
Shall birds swoop and whirl.
The birds are brunching on insects.
Effortlessly, they take their prey on the wing.
A Hakka lady in a rattan hat clear the path of twigs and leaves
with a broom made of brush.
On the harbour, a massive container ship makes slow progress to-
wards the container port.
A diminutive fishing boat bobs dangerously in the wake of the
ship.

Use the sentences to produce a short narrative. Draw on what you

learned from this chapter. Now reflect on the contrast between the
existential world as represented by the photo and the word world you
have created.

Question from readers

Q: I’m still confused about the relationship between cohesion and coher-
ence. Does cohesion create coherence or doesn’t it?
A: This is an excellent question, and one that has caused quite a lot of con-
troversy. In the 1970s, when Halliday and Hasan described their system of
cohesion, it caused quite a lot of excitement. Halliday pointed out that the
difference between random sentences and a text that was perceived as coher-
ent was the existence of cohesion: linguistic devices that made explicit con-
nections between sentences in a text. As we point out in the chapter, these
became known as ‘text-forming’ devices. Some linguists hypothesized that
the number of cohesive devices in a text divided by the number of clauses
could give us an “index to coherence”. However, the notion that a direct
causal relationship could be established between cohesion and coherence
turned out to be naïve. There were several problems. First of all, not all
46 Only connect

cohesive links have the same text-forming power within a given text. Sec-
ond, it is perfectly possible to have texts that contain no cohesion, but are
readily perceived as coherent: readers or listeners can make sense of them.
(Although, we should point out that these are almost invariably short texts
concocted by linguists to challenge the link between cohesion and coher-
ence.) Conversely, it is possible to concoct texts containing cohesive devices
that are incoherent. Here’s an example:

I bought a new car last week. On Thursday, the circus came to town. It
used to be a medieval village. Daily life is very different there since the
new expressway was built.

One of the most trenchant criticisms of the notion that cohesion could pro-
vide an index of textual coherence was made by Carrell (1982) in a widely
cited TESOL Quarterly article entitled ‘Cohesion is not coherence’. Her
central argument was that Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion concept assumes
that “coherence is located in the text and … fails to take the contribution of
the text’s reader into account” (p. 479).
We believe that Carrell is correct in viewing coherence as an ‘inside the
head’ factor. However, we disagree that Halliday and Hasan assume that
coherence is a text factor. We also agree with Carrell that reading compre-
hension is an interactive process between the reader and the text. There
is also evidence to support the view that the effective and appropriate use
of cohesive devices on the part of the writer can assist the reader to make
sense of the text (Nunan, 1983). Finally, research indicates that cohesive
chains in texts do contribute to coherence (Hoey, 1983, 1991) although
the relationship is much more intricate and complex than was assumed by
those linguists who first sought to establish a relationship between the two
concepts.

Summary

In this chapter, we introduce a number of complex concepts which are

fundamental to clarity and coherence in academic writing. They include
thematization, cohesion, coherence, and signposting. Understanding these
concepts and being able to exploit them will provide you with tools to re-
flect on and rework your writing. (We will look in greater detail at the re-
vision process in Chapter  8.) We called the chapter Making Connections
because the function of these devices is to enable you to transform a mul-
tifaceted, multisensory world into a world of a very different kind: a linear
 Only connect 47

world, constructed by you, one word at a time. If you succeed, you will be
making the only connection that matters, the one between you and your
reader. In the next chapter, we dig deeper into this extraordinary process
of writing for ourselves to figure out the world as we see it to produce lines
of print that someone else will, at the very least, recognize, and, at the
very best, be enlightened if not transformed. In the words of E.M. Forster:
“Only connect! … That was the whole of her sermon. Live [and write] in
fragments no longer”.

Further readings

Burns, A., & Coffin, C. (Eds.). (2000). Analysing English in a global context. Routledge.
This collection contains a number of seminal articles that speak to the issues and
concepts presented in this chapter. We would particularly recommend papers in
parts three and four of the collection: Analysing English: a text perspective, and
Analysing English: a clause perspective.
de Oliveira, L., & Schleppegrell, M. (2015). Focus on grammar and meaning. Oxford
University Press.
For readers interested in how to teach grammar and meaning, this book will
provide insights teachers can experiment with in their classrooms.
Hoey, M. (1991). Patterns of lexis in text. Oxford University Press.
A comprehensive and authoritative treatment of many of the concepts and is-
sues covered in this chapter, including the cohesion/coherence controversy and
given/new structures in text.
Whittaker, R., O’Donnell, M., & McCabe, A. (Eds.). (2006). Language and literacy:
Functional approaches. Continuum.
This edited collection of essays examines the relationship between language and
literacy from a systemic-functional perspective. Part three may be most relevant
to readers interested in understanding literacy involved in specific disciplines
and in examples of students’ writings.

References

Aitchison, C. (2014, November 15). Where’s this going!?: Metadiscourse for readers and
writers.https://doctoralwriting.wordpress.com/2014/11/15/wheres-this-going-metadiscourse-
­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­
­​­­for-readers-and-writers/
­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Benson, P., & Reinders, H. (2011). Beyond the language classroom. Springer.
Carrell, P. (1982). Cohesion is not coherence. TESOL Quarterly, 16(4),
­ ­479–488.
​­
https://doi.org/10.2307/3586466
­ ­ ­
48 Only connect

Choi, J. (2017). Creating a multivocal self: Autoethnography as method. Routledge.

Choi, J., & Nunan, D. (2018). Language learning and activation in and beyond the
classroom. Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(2),
­ ­49–63.
​­ https://dx.doi.
­
org/10.29140/ajal.v1n2.34
­ ­
Connor, U., & Johns, A. (Eds.). (1990). Coherence: Research and pedagogical perspec-
tives. TESOL.
Feak, C. B., & Swales, J. M. (2009). Telling a research story: Writing a literature review
(vol. 2). University of Michigan Press.
Forster, E. M. (1910). Howards end. Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. Longman.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. Edward Arnold.
Hedge, T. (2005). Writing (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Hoey, M. (1983). On the surface of discourse. Allen and Unwin.
Hoey, M. (1991). Patterns of lexis in text. Oxford University Press.
Nunan, D. (1983). Discourse processing by first language, second phases, and second
language learners. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Flinders University.
Nunan, D. (2012). When Rupert Murdoch came to tea. Wayzgoose Press.
Nunan, D. (2013). What is this thing called language? (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Nunan, D., & Richards, J. (2015). Language learning beyond the classroom. Routledge.
Polias, J., & Dare, B. (2006). Towards a pedagogical grammar. In R. Whittaker, M.
O’Donnell  & A. McCabe (Eds.), Language and literacy: Functional approaches
(pp. 123–143).
­ ­­ ­ ​­ Continuum.
Swain, M. (2000). The output hypothesis and beyond: Mediating acquisition
through collaborative dialogue. In J.P. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural theory and sec-
ond language learning (pp. 97–114).
­ ­­ ­ ​­ Oxford University Press.
 3
Product and process approaches
to writing

In this chapter, we look at product and process approaches to writing.

Although we have divided the chapter into two major sections, the first fo-
cusing on product-oriented and the second on process-oriented approaches,
we have done so partly for organizational convenience. The process/product
labels refer to differences in emphasis and orientation, not categorial dis-
tinctions. Approaches to writing exist on a continuum from more product-
oriented at one end to more process-orientated at the other. Writing is both
a process and a product, and any of the approaches we examine in this and
other chapters will have elements of both. Assigning an approach to one ori-
entation rather than another is a matter of relative emphasis. If the approach
is based on a predetermined template to which the writer is required to con-
form, we will assign it to the product-oriented category. An example from
the world of accounting would be an audit report, which has a format that
must be adhered to by the auditor. In the legal profession, the same holds for
tort cases. If there is no pre-determined framework, and writing/rewriting is
a process of exploration and discovery out of which a structure emerges for a
final product that satisfies the writer, then we will deem the approach to be
process-oriented. Personal letters to family and friends usually emerge in this
way. We may have a mental or written list of what we want to say but only
the vaguest idea of how we want to say it. The final product emerges through
the process of writing. In scholarly writing, the process/product distinction is
clearly visible. Some academic disciplines have predetermined, often rigid,
and sometimes unspoken, templates for presenting the results of an empirical
study. Other disciplines have principles of procedure which give the writer
greater freedom.
Maggie Sokolik argues that writing is a process which results in a product.
She provides the following description of the relationship between the
two.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179092-4
50 Product and process approaches to writing

The writer imagines, organizes, drafts, edits, reads, and rereads. This pro-
cess of writing is often cyclical, and sometimes disorderly. Ultimately,
what the audience sees, whether it is an instructor or a wider audience,
is a product – an essay, letter, story, or research report.
(Sokolik,
­ 2021, p. 88)
­

We begin the chapter by looking at product-oriented approaches. In this

section, two important concepts, register and genre, are defined and illus-
trated. These concepts were developed within systemic-functional linguistics
and have had an important influence on writing pedagogy. We then turn
to process-oriented approaches where we explore the relationship between
thinking and writing and introduce the notion of writing as a thinking process.

Product-oriented approaches to writing

A product orientation has, and arguably still is, the dominant approach to
the teaching of academic and other forms of non-fiction writing. Students are
taught rules and principles underlying ‘good academic writing’ and are often
provided with a template or model to follow. Accuracy of spelling, grammar,
and punctuation is given a high priority when it comes to assessing a piece of
written work. The focus is on the outcome such as an environmental science
report, a journalistic essay on the causes of the war in the Middle East, or a
procedural text on how to operate a piece of machinery. The process through
which the end product was arrived at is largely overlooked.
In our Introduction, we referred to Strunk and White’s widely read and cited
book The Elements of Style, which provides advice on how to write clearly
and succinctly. In the book, the authors argue for a product orientation, with
a nod to process.

A basic structural design underlies every kind of writing. The writer will
in part follow this design, in part deviate from it, according to his skill,
his needs, and the unexpected events that accompany the act of com-
position. Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the thoughts of
the writer, but not necessarily the order in which the thoughts occur.
This calls for a scheme of procedure … [I]n most cases planning must
be a deliberate prelude to writing. The first principle of composition,
therefore, is to foresee or determine the shape of what is to come and
pursue that shape.
(Strunk & White, 1959, p. 10)

We now return to systemic-functional linguistics and elaborate on the de-

scription presented in Chapter 2. The model originated from several strands
 Product and process approaches to writing 51

of European linguistics and has evolved from there into one of the most im-
portant branches of contemporary linguistics. (Some would say the most im-
portant branch of contemporary linguistics.) In recent years, it has become
increasingly influential in the teaching of writing. Two concepts developed
within systemic-functional linguistics are relevant to our discussion: register
and genre. While they are relevant to both speaking and writing, given the
purpose of this book, we will focus on the latter.

Register

Register analysis was developed to study the relationship between language

and the situational contexts in which it is used. Linguists identified three
register variables as being particularly important:

• What is the topic or content of a spoken or written text? (This variable refers
to what people are ‘on about’ when they communicate. The options here are
vast ranging from intercultural communication to childbirth, from business
ethics to fly fishing.)
• What is the relationship between those involved in a particular communica-
tive act? (Again, the options here are considerable: parent to child, neighbor
to neighbor, shop assistant to customer, teacher to student, most particularly
in our case, author to reader).
• What is the medium of communication? (Spoken versus written is an obvi-
ous distinction, but modern communication demands finer distinctions. Var-
iables include phone, ­face-to-face,
­​­­ ​­ email, text messages, Zoom/Skype,
­ and
other technological affordances.) The technical terms for these variables are
field, tenor, and mode, respectively. Holding one of these variables constant
and ringing the changes on the other two will result in considerably different
discourses marked by distinctly different linguistic features.

Making connections
Read the following vignette.
Val, a graduate student, is doing an ethnographic study into inter-
cultural communication in a high a school where students, teachers,
and support staff come from many different linguistic and cultural
backgrounds. Last week was a busy one. She had numerous academic,
professional, and personal commitments. She is so excited about and
52 Product and process approaches to writing

focused on her research, it’s all that she wants to talk about. On Monday
morning, she had an informal meeting in the faculty coffee lounge with
her supervisor to discuss the draft of a paper she had worked on over
the weekend. Later that afternoon she had drinks at a wine bar with
two recently graduated fellow students to get advice on a data analysis
problem she was having. On Tuesday, she had a formal meeting with
her supervisor in his office. Wednesday was busy. In the morning, she
had a Zoom meeting with one of her lecturers to go over a presentation
she had to give to a research foundation to which she had applied for
research funding. That afternoon, she gave the presentation, which
was followed by a round-table discussion. On Thursday, she had a long
Face Time chat with a friend and fellow student who was on a field trip
in Thailand. That evening she attended a family dinner party at her
parents’ place where she described the nature of her research to an un-
cle and aunt who were visiting from interstate. Friday was important.
In the afternoon, she gave a confirmation seminar to an audience of
faculty and fellow students. She spent the weekend revising a journal
article in the light of feedback from an anonymous reviewer. She sub-
mitted the revised article on Sunday evening along with a cover letter
to the editor documenting and justifying the changes she had made. In
good ethnographic fashion, Val kept audio recording and journal notes
of all these events. These would become part of the database for her
dissertation.
Carry out a register analysis of the events in Val’s week. The field,
Intercultural Communication, is the constant. Tenor and mode vary.
The first one has been done for you.

Event/context Tenor Mode

Monday: Coffee with ­Student – ​­Supervisor ­Face-to-face;
­​­­ ​­
supervisor informal
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Friday:
Saturday:
Sunday:
 Product and process approaches to writing 53

Varying just one register variable will change the nature of the communica-
tive event. So, in Val’s case, holding the field (intercultural communication)
and the mode (face-to-face)
­­ ­​­­ ​­ constant and varying the tenor (student-to-
­­ ­​­­ ​
supervisor/student-to-student)
­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­ will change the nature of the event. An audio
recording of the two conversations will reveal that the different tenor rela-
tionship is reflected in the discourse. In the vignette, to illustrate this point,
we held field constant and introduced changes to both tenor and mode.
On Wednesday morning, Val had a Zoom meeting with one of her lecturers.
If, on a subsequent occasion, she had a follow-up conversation on the same
subject with the same lecturer, but this time on the phone, the conversa-
tion would be different in several respects. If, for example, the topic of both
conversations concerned a diagrammatic model she was developing, in the
phone conversation, she couldn’t talk about “this part of the model” or “the
relationship between these two factors”. She would have to be more explicit
and detailed in describing the features and factors she was referring to than
in a face-to-face meeting when she could point to the feature of interest and
use cohesive ‘pointing’ devices such as ‘this’ and ‘these’.
The tenor relationships in the vignette include student to teacher/supervisor,
stranger to stranger, friend to friend, student to student, and family member
to family member. Of course, the relationships can overlap. Some of Val’s
colleagues could be both fellow student and friend (or fellow student and
rival). Mode variables included face-to-face in a variety of setting (coffee
shop, meeting room, office, home, wine bar) as well as remote (Zoom, Face
Time, written).
The spoken versus written distinction is a fundamental one. Writing is an
unnatural act. This is underlined by the fact that many languages don’t have
a written form. In the case of languages that do have a written form, there
are millions of speakers who never master that.
Val drew on a wide range of spoken and written source texts in writing her
dissertation. She found it particularly challenging to transform recordings of
informal coffee shop conversations into formal academic English. She no-
ticed that not even well-educated, articulate people spoke in full sentences.
The conversations were fragmentary. In the coffee shop or wine bar with fel-
low students, topics shifted about, changed, and then returned to the original
topic. She found it extremely challenging to organize messy conversations
into coherent, linear arguments.
In the next section, we’ll see that there are many different forms (genres) in a
given language. Academic writing in its various guises differs in fundamental
ways from informal genres such as letters to family and friends or personal
54 Product and process approaches to writing

diary entries. (Later in the book, we’ll discuss the assertion that academic
language is no-one’s mother tongue.)
Initially, it was assumed that spoken language was a corrupted version of writ-
ten English. With its hesitations and false starts, it was equated to the first draft
of a piece of writing. However, McCarthy (1998) has argued that spoken lan-
guage is not a ‘corrupted’ version of writing but has its own grammar and dis-
course features. Phenomena in the real world occur simultaneously, but writing
is linear. In the last chapter, we introduced some of the linguistic resources
such as thematization and cohesion for dealing with the limits of linearity.
Another feature differentiating written from spoken language is that it has
a greater ratio of content words to grammar words. This is known as lexical
density. Halliday (2001) explains lexical density in the following way:

If we compare written with spoken English, we find that English typ-

ically shows a much denser pattern of lexical content. Lexical density
has sometimes been measured as the ratio of content words to function
words: higher in writing, lower in speech … Lexical density is the num-
ber of lexical elements [content words] in the clause. Here is a sentence
taken from a newspaper with the lexical elements in bold.
Obviously the government is frightened of union reaction to its move
to impose proper behaviour on unions.
There are nine lexemes [content words] all in the one clause  – lexical
density 9. If we reword this in a rather more spoken form we might get
the following.
Obviously the government is frightened || how the union will react
|| if it tries to make them behave properly||
There are now three clauses, and the number of lexemes has gone down
to six – lexical density 6 / 3 = 2.
(Halliday,
­ 2001, pp. 182–183)
­ ­ ​­

The lower the lexical density, the easier it is for the reader or listener to pro-
cess a sentence. The higher the lexical density, a register variable of academic
writing, is a result of nominalization, that is, turning verbs such as ‘react’ into
nouns: in this case ‘reaction’. This enables the writer to pack more informa-
tion into the sentence, and to make generalizations, and through the use of
passive voice, to shift the focus from the performer of an action to the action
and its consequences. A noun formed from a verb is what Halliday refers to
a grammatical metaphor. We’ll have more to say about this phenomenon
in Chapter 6. Being familiar with this process can help you make decisions
about how much information to pack into a given sentence.
 Product and process approaches to writing 55

According to Martin (2001) register was developed in an applied, educa-

tional context for studying the development of children’s writing abilities
from infant through secondary school.
As the study progressed, however, it became clear that register was not an
appropriate tool for the purposes of the research. For example:

… it fails to give a satisfactory account of the goal-oriented beginning-

middle-end structure of most texts (for example, the Orientation, Com-
plication, Evaluation, Resolution, Coda structure for narratives). We
felt a need to give a more explicit account of the beginning-middle-end
(or schematic) structures which characterise children’s writing in differ-
ent genres. So we took the step of recognising a third semiotic system,
which we called genre, underlying both register and language.
(pp. 154–155)
­ ­­ ­ ​­

We now turn to genre, defining the concept and providing examples so you
have a clearer idea of what it is.

Genre

A genre is a purposeful, socially constructed oral or written text such as a

narrative, a casual conversation, a poem, a recipe, or a description. The start-
ing point for genre analysts is the overall purpose or function of a text. The
purpose will determine the internal generic structure of the text as well as its
key grammatical features. Three key questions form the point of departure
for analyzing a given text: ‘What is the purpose of this instruction booklet,
narrative account, or argumentative text?’, ‘How is the purpose reflected in
the overall structure of the text?’, and ‘What linguistic (grammatical/lexical)
features characterize this genre?’
Common genres include recounts, narratives, procedures, reports, explana-
tions, expositions, and discussions. The purpose of each of these texts is as
follows:

• Recount: to tell what happened, to document a sequence of events and evalu-

ate their significance in some way
• Narrative: to create a sequence of events culminating in a problem or crisis
and a solution or resolution
• Procedure: to instruct the reader on how to make or do something
• Report: to present information on an event or circumstance
• Explanation: to explain how and why something occurs
56 Product and process approaches to writing

• Exposition: to present an argument in favor of a proposition

• Discussion: to look at an issue from a number of different perspectives before
reaching a conclusion (Nunan,
­ 2013, pp. 120–121)
­ ­ ​­

Genres can be clustered together into ‘families’ according to the general func-
tions they perform. For example, narratives, recounts, and (auto)biographies
form what we might call the ‘story’ family, expositions, discussions, and de-
bate fall into the ‘argument’ family, and reviews, interpretations, and expos-
itory responses belong to the ‘text response’ family.
Here is an example of a familiar genre, the narrative. The narrative describes
the death of Neil Davis, a celebrated war correspondent and cameraman,
who covered regional wars and conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region, most no-
tably the Vietnam War and the civil war in Cambodia. Davis was based in
Bangkok. From here, he travelled around the region covering topical stories
for an international news service based in Tokyo. Unfortunately for Davis,
he happened to be in Bangkok one September morning when a series of
events occurred that resulted in his death. The account below follows the
generic structure of a narrative as described by systemic-functional linguists.

Early on the morning of Monday 9 September, Davis’s soundman Bill

Latch was taking his daughter to school when he noticed tanks on
the streets. Thailand was about to experience another coup d’état  –
something that veteran correspondents regarded as part of the cycle of
life in Bangkok, like the wet and dry seasons (Orientation).
­ Latch called
the head of their news service, Bruce MacDonnell, in Tokyo (Event). ­
MacDonnell, an experienced newsman, was not overly excited by the
news, but he appreciated the early tip-off on what could develop into a
major story (Event).
­ He called Davis and, with some apologies, put paid
to his plans for a relaxing day (Event).
­ In Bangkok, Davis and Latch
filmed military activity in the street and made arrangements to have the
early footage shipped out to Hong Kong to be sent to New York by sat-
ellite (Event).
­ Suddenly they came under direct tank and machine gun
fire, and took cover behind a telephone junction box. The ground shud-
dered beneath them and shrapnel sprayed indiscriminately. The noise
was stunning (Complication).
­ A withering burst of fire was directed
into the wall directly behind them, spewing out thousands of steel frag-
ments (Crisis).
­ There was just time for Davis’s brain to register that he
had been mortally struck. He turned the camera on himself and filmed
his own death (Resolution).
­ Through the crash of explosions could be
heard his last words. There was not exclamation and expletive, but mon-
umental irritation as he registered the futility of it all ‘Oh...shit!’ (Coda).
­

This passage is adapted from Tim Bowden’s dramatic account of the incident
in his biography of Davis entitled One Crowded Hour. It displays the essential
 Product and process approaches to writing 57

stages of a narrative: orientation, event, event, event, complication, crisis,

resolution, and coda. Narratives are closely related to another genre – the
recount. Both tell the story of a past event or series of events. Grammatically,
both make extensive use of the simple past tense. The key difference between
the two genres is that at the heart of the narrative is a crisis or problem fol-
lowed by a resolution or solution. These two steps are absent from recounts.
We have included genre in the product-oriented section of the chapter be-
cause the goal is focused firmly creating a product: a set of instructions on
how to make or do something, to explain how and why something occurs,
to present an argument in favor of a proposition, and so on. However, as we
pointed out at the beginning of the chapter, and as Sokolik (2021) has ar-
gued, when it comes to writing, or the teaching of writing, product-oriented
approaches will also contain processes, and process-oriented approaches will
ultimately result in a product of one sort or another.

Making connections
Study the following vignette. What aspects of the instruction are
­process-oriented,
​­ and which ­product-oriented?
​­
Jake teaches English to science majors in an English medium univer-
sity in Hong Kong. He uses a genre-based approach. The theme for his
current semester with a group of first-year science majors is environ-
mental studies and the project for the students is to write a report on
waste disposal in the local city area. At the beginning of the semester,
Jake introduces the topic, which is a major problem in Hong Kong.
This leads into a discussion of the sociocultural context underlying the
problem. Jake then introduces the genre of report writing. He provides
examples of reports and guides students, working in small groups, to
identify the generic structure and typical grammatical and lexical fea-
tures of reports. The groups are then broken into pairs. The pairs are
directed to collaboratively construct a draft report. As the pairs work
on their reports, the teacher circulates and provides assistance when
needed. The following week, when the class reconvenes, the teacher
analyzes three of the draft reports and provides corrective feedback,
indicating where the reports have deviated from the generic structure
of the models they had studied the previous week as well as pointing
out grammatical errors and problems of vocabulary. The students then
revise their reports in light of the feedback from the teacher.
58 Product and process approaches to writing

The genre approach has been criticized for being mechanistic, rigid, and lack-
ing in opportunities for the writer to display any creativity or imagination.
We have observed writing classes in elementary and secondary schools in
which these criticisms are justified. We have also observed classes in which
students are given little if any explicit instruction on the structure and lin-
guistic features of the academic texts they will need to master to succeed
academically. While some develop academic writing skills intuitively, many
flounder.
We like Jake’s approach because it illustrates the point we made at the
beginning of the section. His goal is product-oriented, that is, to have
the students produce a report which follows the generic structure and
grammatical/lexical features of a report as stipulated by the genre approach.
However, numerous elements in his classroom are process-oriented. These
include class discussion, group and pair work, teacher feedback, and student
revision.
In academic writing, there is a range of genres. The student essay/assignment
and thesis/dissertation are probably the ones of most interest to you. Oth-
ers include refereed journal articles, chapters in edited collections, schol-
arship applications, examiner’s reports, and monographs. Each of these can
be further divided into a sub-genre according to purpose and audience. For
example, assignments can be divided into those requiring the student to
collect and analyze original data (primary research) and those requiring a
survey of the literature related to a particular topic or problem (secondary
research).
The conventional genre in disciplines dominated by the positivist para-
digm is the scientific report. While there are minor variations, the typical
generic structure is: abstract, introduction/overview, problem statement,
questions/hypotheses, method, data, analysis, discussion, conclusion, and
references. While academic writing in naturalistic inquiry can follow this
structure, greater flexibility and innovation are allowed and even encour-
aged. Julie explores these tensions in the next section through her own
writing experience.
The argument that the genre-approach to writing, by definition, lacks
opportunities for creativity and innovation is challenged by Christine
Tardy (2016). In her book, Beyond Convention: Genre Innovation in Aca-
demic Writing, she argues that genres aren’t fixed, and that creativity and
innovation are possible. This does not mean that breaking or even bend-
ing conventional rules is not likely to go unchallenged, a point we make
in Chapter  5. She points out that conventions are necessary. Without
 Product and process approaches to writing 59

them, neither creativity nor innovation would be possible. Also, if the

innovation strays too far from the conventions, it will no longer be an
innovation but a new genre. She cites a number of studies that change
the conventions of the written academic journal article. For example, a
chapter in an edited collection by Matsuda and Atkinson (2008) is based
on a conversation between the authors on the subject of contrastive rhet-
oric. Rather than repackaging the substance of the discussion into one
of the sub-genres of a scholarly article, they present it as a conversation.
They justify this stance “because contrastive rhetoric (CR) may be at
a critical point in its history  … we decided to match this exploratory
moment with an equally exploratory genre: the academic conversation”
­­
(p. 277).
The academic conversation comes in numerous forms: face-to-face and on-
line interactions between members of a community of practice (CoP), blog
post, conference symposia and panels, etc. Unlike other genres, such as a for-
mal academic debate, which has a conventional generic structure and rules
of the game, the academic conversation has a much looser structure. Its aim
is not to win an argument or develop a theory, but to explore an issue, prob-
lem, or puzzle.
At the beginning, the Matsuda and Atkinson article looks like a conven-
tional piece of academic writing, with an abstract and an introduction.
These describe the physical context in which the conversation takes place
and articulate the problem statement: Given that it is at a crucial point in its
history, what are the future possibilities for contrastive rhetoric for the 21st
century, and how they plan to address the problem.
The rest of the piece consists of the conversation. For readers unfamiliar with
the notion of an academic conversation, a cursory look might lead them to
believe that it has the generic characteristics of an everyday conversation. It
includes listener clarification requests, confirmation checks, feedback, elab-
oration, listener completing the speaker’s utterance, and so on. However,
it quickly becomes apparent that the discourse reads more like academic
written language than spoken conversation. Topic shifts are signposted by
subheadings (First experience with CR…, The relationship between research and
pedagogy in CR…, Renaming and reconceptualizing CR…, Contrastive rhetoric
as a field?..., Future directions for CR…). The turn-taking is atypical: each
speaker taking lengthy turns, many running to several hundred words. There
are no run on or incomplete sentences, no pauses, repetitions, false starts,
and hesitations. The discourse incorporates numerous in-text citations and
concludes with a list of references.
60 Product and process approaches to writing

We have discussed the Matsuda and Atkinson chapter at some length be-
cause it supports Tardy’s claim that genres aren’t set in stone. Whether the
academic conversation as exemplified by this piece is an innovation or a
genre in its own right is a matter for conjecture. We believe that it is. It also
sits comfortably with a trend by some qualitative researchers to make their
writing more engaging by appropriating techniques from the domains of fic-
tion and creative ­non-fiction.
​­
In this section, we introduced the concept of genre. The concept has been
influential in the teaching of academic writing in a range of in secondary and
tertiary contexts. We discussed it in this section because of its emphasis on
the outcome or final product of the writing process. In some contexts, this
results in a narrow, prescriptivist approach in which writers are required to
adhere a template setting out the steps for the genre in question. “It’s a bit
like painting by numbers”, as one jaded writer observed.
The section concludes with a discussion of Tardy’s thesis that creativity and
innovation are possible, and that genres are more fluid than the prescrip-
tivists maintain. Unfortunately, limited space precludes our dealing with
Tardy’s approach and its practical implications in greater detail; however,
it provides a segue into the next section on process-oriented approaches to
academic writing.
Throughout the section, we have been at pains to point out that all writing
has both process and product dimensions. This is true of the most narrowly
prescribed reports produced within the positivist paradigm with its emphasis
on objectivity and authorial invisibility. While references to the processes
are downplayed, they do make cameo appearances, often at the end of the
report under headings such as ‘limitations of the study’ and ‘suggestions for
further research’.
While we discuss writing products and include many samples of different
kinds of writing in this book, our main focus is on the writing process. In the
next section, we turn our attention to the processes involved in crafting a
product. We begin by describing process writing, a method that grew out of
the whole language movement.

Process-oriented approaches to writing

The name most associated with the whole language movement is Ken-
neth Goodman. Goodman was a vigorous proponent of the process writ-
ing method, based on his theories of language development. His academic
 Product and process approaches to writing 61

output was prodigious. In addition to his many articles, book chapters, and
presentations, he wrote over single or co-authored 80 books. His book What
is Whole in Whole Language? was an international best-seller for an academic
text with sales exceeding 250,000 copies.
While the writing process is not synonymous with process writing, we think
it is useful to provide an overview of the method because some of its prin-
ciples influenced the development of process-oriented writing. The method
developed as an antidote to the traditional mechanistic, product-oriented
approach to the teaching of writing that had dominated educational systems
for many years. Based on a behaviorist notion, in this approach, learners
were given models to reproduce. Beginning writers were not to be given the
freedom to write as they liked because they would make mistakes. These
mistakes would then have to be “unlearned”  – a lengthy and tedious pro-
cess. Proponents of process writing rejected this premise, arguing that it was
mechanistic, and behaviorism was a discredited theory of human learning.
Creativity was fundamental to the education of the child. The process writ-
ing method led the writer through five stages: pre-writing, drafting, revising,
editing, and publishing. At the pre-writing stage, the teacher would engage
learners in discussing a topic of interest. They would be encouraged to ex-
plore the topic, to pose questions, and seek answers to the questions through
library research, making notes as they did so. Using the notes, they would
develop a first draft. This reflective and recursive process is fundamental to
current process-oriented approaches and one we endorse. In producing their
first draft, writers were to write freely, to use their creativity and imagination.
At this developmental stage, they are not to worry about grammar, spelling,
and punctuation. Our attitude is that at the first draft stage they shouldn’t
be overly concerned about these conventions but should not ignore them
entirely. We’ll have more to say on this issue in Chapter 8 where we spell out
our approach to the stages in the revision process.
At the next stage, students discuss their draft with the teacher. In the jargon
of the process writing method, this stage was called ‘conferencing’. They
then revise their initial draft in the light of feedback and suggestions from
the conferencing session. At the third draft stage, the writers edit their work
for errors of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The final stage, publication,
involves sharing their work with others. (For an updated account of Good-
man’s work, see Goodman, 2014.)
Proponents of the genre approach criticized process writing on the grounds
that, while encouraging creativity and imagination were important, pro-
cess writing over-emphasized narrative. Students became adept at writing
62 Product and process approaches to writing

recounts and stories, but many struggled to produce procedural texts on sci-
ence experiments, laboratory reports, historical explanation, expositions on
environmental issues, and so on. The genre school argued that to navigate
one’s way through secondary school successfully, it was necessary to master
these academic text types. Middle-class students were able to develop writ-
ing skills in relation to these genres implicitly, if not explicitly, by virtue of
their privileged social and economic position, access to literary resources in
the home, membership of local libraries, and so on. Many working class and
non-English speaking background students were not.
Ironically, the genre approach to teaching writing, initially developed in
Australia in reaction to the shortcomings of process writing, has been crit-
icized on the grounds that it represents a return to the traditional practice
of copying model texts. In the initial, we don’t see this as a bad thing.
Imitating models is a legitimate strategy for developing academic writing
skills.
In addition, as we showed in the previous section, the pedagogical model
developed for teaching genres can incorporate elements from process writing
such as establishing the field through teacher led discussion, collaborative
peer group drafting, revising, and polishing initial efforts, and so on.
In academic writing at the university level, process-oriented writing is hav-
ing an impact among scholars engaged in naturalistic inquiry. These scholars
challenge the positivism paradigm which has a well-developed and articu-
lated procedure in which question formation, data collection, and analysis
precede the writing up and publication stages. They reject the procedure in-
itially proposed by Strunk and later elaborated by Strunk and White (1959)
that a fully developed plan must precede the writing phase and that it’s only
when your ideas have been fully developed that you can start writing.
The alternative view is that writing and thinking are bound together that
it’s through writing that we develop and clarify our ideas. Writing as a
thinking process has been described by Laurel Richardson, one of its most
prominent advocates, as a messy, fluid process in which writing and think-
ing ­co-occur.
​­

I write because I want to find something out. I write in order to learn

something that I did not know before I wrote it. I was taught, though, as
perhaps you were, too, not to write until I knew what I wanted to say, un-
til my points were organized and outlined. No surprise, this static writing
model coheres with mechanistic scientism, quantitative research, and
entombed scholarship.
(Richardson,
­ 2001, p. 35)
­
 Product and process approaches to writing 63

This quote is taken from an article in which Richardson challenges the no-
tion that thinking and writing are two separate processes and that thinking
precedes writing. Rather, writing is a method of self-discovery. Through it,
we find out about ourselves and the knowledge we are building.
Richardson also questions the notion that the sole purpose of writing is to in-
form others of ideas, states-of-affairs, and so on. This could well be the product
of writing. But the product is preceded by a process, a process of writing to find
out something we didn’t know. This is not a new idea. Many years ago, Mary
Lawrence wrote an influential little book called Writing as a Thinking Process
(Lawrence, 1972). The book went through many editions before finally going
out of print. Although written specifically for the second-language learner, the
book contained an important insight for all writers: one does not formulate
ideas which are committed to print resulting in a product – an essay, a report,
or a thesis. It is through the process of writing, and rewriting, that one develops
one’s ideas. Producing good writing is like producing good bread. You won’t get
good bread without giving the dough a good pummeling. Without pummeling
your words, you won’t get good texts. This complex nexus between the pro-
cess of writing and the final product was captured by the novelist E.M. Forster
(1974) when he said, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”
In an article, Getting Personal: Writing-Stories,
­ ​­ Richardson (2001) gives a
graphic account of how writing recused her career and, in a sense, saved her
life. In a car accident, she sustained multiple injuries including serious brain
damage. Through the accident, she says, “I had lost access to my brain. I
had lost language: my sword and my shield. My habitual routines for naming
things were torn up, blocked off: paths to words and formulae were gone”
(p. 33). It was through writing that she slowly and painfully regained access
to her brain and developed a new perspective on the relationship between
thinking and writing. If she couldn’t retrieve a word, she left a blank space to
be filled in later. Writing gave her a feeling over time and space, and a faith
that she would recover.

Writing was the method through which I constituted the world and re-
constituted myself. Writing became my principal tool through which I
learned about myself and the world. I wrote so I could have a life. Writ-
ing was and is how I come to know.
(p. 33)
­­

Of course, it isn’t necessary to have a near-death experience to benefit from

Richardson’s insights into the relationship between writing and thinking.
Other writers have made a similar point. William Zinsser frames his perspec-
tive rather differently, but the essence is the same.
64 Product and process approaches to writing

Julie’s process and product writing experience

As a child, I have always enjoyed writing – mostly diaries and letters
to friends. Writing allowed me to put my thoughts and feelings down
on paper and escape into an imaginary world where I could be the
sole author of the stories I wanted to create. At the time, writing
was probably more of a therapeutic process than a thinking process.
Not until writing my doctoral thesis, did I come to understand writ-
ing as a thinking and discovery process. My thesis project involved
autoethnographic writing where I, as researcher and participant of my
research, used my own multilingual experiences and research writ-
ing to understand processes of multilingual identity development. My
stories, which turned out to be a combination of analysis of various
artifacts from my history, memories of personal encounters with oth-
ers, and interpretations of these experiences drawing on academic and
non-academic literature, felt stilted, disconnected, and unrelatable
when I separated the content and practices into traditional doctoral
thesis sections (i.e., Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology,
Data Analysis, Discussion, and Conclusion). The stories needed to be
scholarly, but I also wanted them to connect and resonate with read-
ers. I began looking into storytelling writing techniques from genres
such as creative non-fiction, which enabled me to engage in a crea-
tive process of melding academic and non-academic writing processes.
I experimented (often with great frustration and uncertainty) with
many different narrative structures and writing advice from different
books but as soon as I brought my experiences to the writing, I found
myself abandoning the models. I realized there was no existing struc-
ture I could follow and none of the advice made sense to my own
ways of thinking and making meaning. Coming across Richardson’s
article on ‘writing as a method of discovery’ was a revelation; I in-
stantly stopped trying to fit into other people’s templates and started
to discover what my story was about using writing/thinking processes
that made sense to me.
Meaning started emerging in ways I understood to be meaningful. But
this creative process also made me realize how vague my understand-
ings of the expectations in each of the sections were, and how impor-
tant it was to learn them explicitly in order to make sure I was producing
 Product and process approaches to writing 65

a text that would be recognized as ‘legitimate’ by a community of schol-

ars. This sounds terrible, but up until my doctorate, I don’t think I gave
much thought to the need for an explicit understanding of what I was
expected to produce. Like many others, I learned to write academically
through imitation, and one could ‘get away with’ a bit of vagueness in
their writing.
I became obsessed with learning about the expectations of each sec-
tion carefully and when I had a crystal-clear understanding, the ‘rules’
no longer felt like requirements or constraints. They became valuable
thinking tools that helped me to produce a particular kind of knowl-
edge that would not have been possible otherwise. The tools provided
me with structure. The product of my thesis (also, now turned into a
book, see Choi, 2017), what my research story turned out to be, are
products of trusting in my own creative process and using the ‘rules’,
the expectations, as tools to not only figure out what I wanted to say
but also to make an original contribution to knowledge in my field.
Done purposefully and strategically, one might say in this context,
“the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules” (Gleick,
1987, p. 24). But one has to know the rules before anything can be
changed.
I learned the structures, rules, and expectations at a time when it was
meaningful to learn them and had a context to plug in the informa-
tion. Without freedom to explore, some sense of power that my ways of
thinking are legitimate, a purpose, and resources to learn the rules of the
game, I don’t think I would be able to appreciate what both processes
and product approaches offer in providing the kind of ‘transformative’
experience that writing can provide. My own transformative experi-
ence has now helped me to see writing in the way Foucault once de-
scribed his way of understanding writing:

An experience is something that one comes out of transformed. If

I had to write a book to communicate what I’m already thinking
before I begin to write, I would never have the courage to begin. I
write a book only because I still don’t exactly know what to think
about this thing I want so much to think about, so that the book
transforms me and what I think.
(Foucault,
­ 2001, pp. 239–240)
­ ­ ​­
66 Product and process approaches to writing

Making connections
Think about your own writing process.
Do you make lists and notes, brainstorm with peers or fellow students,
write drafts, etc.? What is the most effective and least effective aspect
of your writing technique?
How do your techniques change depending on the subject/topic and
goal of the writing task – to produce an assignment, to write a letter to
the editor, to produce a blog, etc.?
­ – the
Where would you place yourself on  ​­ ­ ​­ ­­
product-oriented/process- ​
­
oriented continuum?
Think of a topic or subject that is of interest to you but about which
you know comparatively little. Without consulting the Internet or
other resources, brainstorm a list of everything you know or think you
know about the topic. Now begin writing. Don’t try to polish your text
as you go or worry too much about grammar, spelling, or pronunciation.
The aim is for you to experience the method of writing as a thinking
process. Try to write about 500 words. Revise and polish your initial
effort.
Evaluate your experience. Was it challenging? Did you learn something
you didn’t know, or didn’t think you knew about the topic? Did you
learn something new about yourself?

… we write to find out what we know and what we want to say. I thought
of how often as a writer I had made clear to myself some subject I had
previously known nothing about just by putting one sequence after
another  – by reasoning my way in sequential steps to its meaning. I
thought of how often the act of writing even the simplest document –
a letter for instance – had clarified my half-formed ideas. Writing and
thinking and learning were the same process.
(Zinsser,
­ 2013, pp. viii–ix)
­ ​­

Questions from readers

Q: You mention the use of fiction techniques in writing up qualitative

research. When I was in high school, I wanted to be a creative writer. I
wrote tons of short stories and even got one published in a local newspaper
 Product and process approaches to writing 67

completion, but that’s as far as I got. Can you say a bit more about the use of
fiction techniques in academic writing? I don’t know if I’d have the courage
to try out fiction techniques in one of my term papers. What do you think?
A: Let’s deal with your second question first. Christine Tardy isn’t opposed
to creativity and innovation, of course, or she wouldn’t have written Beyond
Convention. But she warns of the dangers of pushing innovation too far, par-
ticularly if you are a younger, inexperienced writer. Established writers have
a better chance of pushing academic boundaries because they’ve demon-
strated mastery of conventional genres. Regarding term papers, we would say,
‘proceed with caution’. You’re writing for a known audience – your teachers.
How are they likely to react?
Let’s return to your first question. Fiction techniques have been used for
many years by creative non-fiction writers. That’s no surprise. Fundamen-
tal to both forms are narrative and storytelling. In academic circles, not all
qualitative researchers are keen on the idea. In fact, some hold views that
are as conservative as their quantitative counterparts, although they’re in
the minority, and it’s a minority that continues to dwindle. Many leading
proponents of adapting techniques from the world of fiction argue that the
distinction between fiction and non-fiction has always been fuzzy. With the
passage of time, it grows fuzzier. Norman Denzin (2018) goes so far as to ar-
gue that everything written is fiction, pointing out that the Latin derivation,
ficto, means ‘something constructed’. This echoes Richardson’s assertion
that when we write, we are constructing a representation of the experiential
world with words. However, she warns, the word-world is not the same as the
experiential world. Ethnographers and autoethnographers draw on a wide
variety of sources to tell their lived stories. In her own autoethnography,
Julie lists “short stories, poetry, fiction, novels, photographic essays, personal
essays, journals, fragmented and layered writing, and social science prose”
(Choi, 2017, p. 28). Norman Denzin (2018) goes so far as to suggest that
ethnographic and autoethnographic writing is a performance.
Q: How does process writing deal with writing texts such as writing scientific
reports? Do they have specific strategies?
A: As we’ve said, the scientific report has a rather rigid generic structures and
conventions when it comes to the final product. If you’re studying or working
in one of these areas, it’s advisable to stick to the demands of the discipline.
However, there is nothing to stop you borrowing techniques from process ap-
proaches as you produce an initial draft, and then revise, push, pull, and polish
successive drafts until you have a product that is acceptable to your audience,
whether this is a member of the academic, business, or some other community.
68 Product and process approaches to writing

Q: Julie talks about the moment she had a ‘crystal-clear understanding’ that
helped her to go beyond seeing rules as requirements or constraints. What
did this understanding involve? What exactly does one have to learn to be-
gin to see rules like this?
Julie: It involves learning about genres. Having a clear understanding of the
purpose of the text, a structure to work with, and common language features
helped me to organize my thoughts and made me feel more confident because
I knew I was producing what was expected. However, I don’t think I was just
carrying out ‘the expected’. I thought a lot about how to create scholarly
first-person narratives and what the best form of representation would be for
the message I wanted to get across. My writing decisions weren’t dictated by
templates or rules; they were helpful tools to ensure I was creating appropri-
ate texts, but they had to be thought about creatively and strategically in
relation to other elements of writing such as voice, purpose, audience, and
so on. I sometimes wonder whether it would have been good for me to have
a ‘crystal clear understanding’ of the thesis writing genre when I started. It
could have constrained me. In some ways, not being so clear forced me to
experiment, explore, and exercise my creativity.
Q: I teach adult learners who have never learned to write. What approach
(process, product, writing as a method of discovery) should I be taking with
such learners to start their writing journey?
David: Writers who have low levels of literacy need clear frameworks and
models to follow in the initial stages of learning to write. For example, cop-
ying a model email to a friend, but inserting into a gap-fill email template
content that is relevant to them such as their name and where they are
living. As they develop a basic mastery over genres such as personal emails
to family and friends, aspects of process writing can be introduced. Years ago,
when I was teaching low-literacy immigrants and refugees, as my students
began to develop their writing skills, I encouraged them to begin keeping
simple diaries. Then, through a dialogue journal approach, I helped them
revise and polish their initial efforts. (For a description and discussion of
dialogue journals, see Chiesa & Bailey, 2015.)

Summary

In this chapter, we have looked at product- and process-oriented approaches

to writing. Throughout the chapter, we argue that all writing is a process that
results in a product. Although the rest of this book focuses mainly on writ-
ing as process, we don’t want to imply that the product is unimportant. The
 Product and process approaches to writing 69

destination of most thinking/writing journeys is a product: a term paper, a

journal article, a report on the state of the economy, a newspaper account of
a battle in a war zone, an autobiography, or some other form of personal nar-
rative. However, as Richardson reminds us, not all writing will be destined
to land on the desktop of an external (and usually unknown) reader. If we
employ writing as a tool to facilitate our thinking and as an aid to untangle
jumbled vaguely held notions, the product may be a journal or diary entry
which has an audience of one – ourselves. We will pursue this notion further
the next chapter where we address the issues of purpose and audience.

Further readings

Hyland, K. (2009). Teaching and researching writing (2nd ed.). Pearson Education.
Written by one of the major authorities in the field, this book is a guide to cur-
rent theoretical, empirical and practical approaches to the teaching and learning
of writing. It presents complex concepts in a manner which will prove useful for
the experienced teacher/researcher, while being accessible to less experienced
students.
Martin, J., & Rose, D. (2012). Learning to write/reading to learn: Scaffolding democracy
in literacy classrooms. Equinox Publishing.
This book provides insights into genre-based pedagogy informed by research of
the ‘Sydney School’ in language and literacy pedagogy. It is written by two ex-
perts on the subject.
Nunan, D., & Choi, J. (Eds.). (2010). Language and culture: Reflective narratives and
the emergence of identity. Routledge.
In this edited collection, we invited key authors in the field to write a narrative
based on a critical incident involving language learning, teaching, or communi-
cating. They were then to analyze the narrative, drawing on relevant literature.
Contributions to this collection provide models of how critical incident analysis
can be carried out and exemplify the creative potential of academic writing.

References

Bowden, T. (1987). One crowded hour: Neil Davis combat cameraman 1934–1985.
William Collins.
Chiesa, D., & Bailey, K. (2015). Dialogue journals: Learning for a lifetime. In D.
Nunan & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Language learning beyond the classroom (pp. 53–
­ ­­ ­ ​
­62). Routledge.
Choi, J. (2017). Towards a multivocal self: Autoethnography as method. Routledge.
70 Product and process approaches to writing

Denzin, N. (2018). Performance autoethnography: Critical pedagogy and the politics of

culture. Routledge.
Forster, E. M. (1974). Aspects of the novel and related writing. Edward Arnold.
Foucault, M. (2001). Power. The New Press.
Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making of a new science. Penguin Books.
Goodman, K. (2014). What’s whole about whole language in the 21st century? Heine-
mann Educational Books.
Halliday, M. A. K. (2001). Literacy and linguistics: Relationships between spoken
and written language. In A. Burns & C. Coffin (Eds.), Analysing English in a global
context (pp. 181–193).
­ ­­ ­ ​­ Routledge.
Lawrence, M. (1972). Writing as a thinking process. University of Michigan Press.
Martin, J. R. (2001). Language, register and genre. In A. Burns & C. Coffin (Eds.),
Analysing English in a global context (pp. 149–166).
­ ­­ ­ ​­ Routledge.
Matsuda, P., & Atkinson, D. (2008). A conversation on contrastive rhetoric. In U.
Connor, N. Nagelhout,  & W. Rozycki (Eds.), Contrastive rhetoric: Reaching to
intercultural rhetoric (pp. 227–298).
­ ­­ ­ ​­ John Benjamins.
McCarthy, M. (1998). Spoken language and applied linguistics. Cambridge University
Press.
Nunan, D. (2013). What is this thing called language? (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Richardson, L. (2001). Getting personal: Writing stories. Qualitative Studies in Edu-
­ 33–38.
cation, 14(1), ­ ​­
Sokolik, M. (2021). Writing. In D. Nunan (Ed.), Practical English language teaching
(2nd ed.). Anaheim University Press.
Strunk, W., & White, E. B. (1959). The elements of style. Macmillan.
Tardy, C. (2016). Beyond convention: Genre innovation in academic writing. University
of Michigan Press.
Zinsser, W. (2013). Writing to learn: How to write and think clearly about any subject at
all. HarperCollins.
 4
Audience and purpose

The celebrated actor, Sir Ian McKellen, best known these days for his role as
Gandalf in the film version of Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings, tells of
setting aside the better part of a year to write his autobiography. However, he
never completed the project because he couldn’t get a clear sense of his audi-
ence. As a stage actor, he would be acutely sensitive to the importance of audi-
ence. Being physically present, he was able to connect with audience members
and engage them in the performance. For McKellen, changing roles from ac-
tor to author and redefining his notion of audience proved insurmountable.
In this chapter, we focus on purpose (why we write) and audience (for whom
we write). While the two differ conceptually, when it comes to the act of
writing, they’re inseparable. This can, and does, cause problems for the writer
when a piece intended for a particular purpose and audience ends up being
used for a different purpose by someone for whom it was never intended.
Who gets to define purpose and audience? The answer to this question will
depend on the type of writing and the genre. In the world of fiction, there are
certain genres such as crime, thriller, science-fiction, historical novel, and so
on. The purpose of such genres is reasonably circumscribed (to entertain, to
inform), and the audience is self-selecting. As a student, when it comes to
academic writing, your primary audience will be your teachers. A secondary
audience could be your peers. There may also be times when you are writing
for yourself, keeping a diary or journal, or, as we saw in the last chapter, writ-
ing as a form of self-discovery. Your primary reason for writing will be to fulfil
course requirements, and the rationale for writing will be determined by the
teacher or course director. In their book on writing, Coffin et al. (2003) list,
as examples, the following purposes:

• as an aid to critical thinking, understanding, and memory

• to extend students’ learning beyond lectures and other formal meetings

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179092-5
72 Audience and purpose

• to extend students’ communication skills

• to train students as future professionals in particular disciplines

The importance of audience has long been acknowledged. Over 30 years

ago, Kroll wrote that, “From Aristotle’s Rhetoric to the latest composition
textbook, we can find broad agreement that the writer’s consideration of his
(or her) audience exerts considerable influence on written communication”
(Kroll, 1984, p.  172). Kroll goes on to point out that despite its centrality
to effective communication, views on the nature of audience differ consid-
erably. While it is not our purpose to spend time discussing theoretical argu-
ments for or against these different views, we do want you to note that the
notion of audience is complex and can be problematic.
As a writer, some audiences will be familiar to you, and some will not. If you
are a student, the audience for most of what you write will be your teacher.
It’s reasonable to assume that writing for an audience you know, such as
your teacher, will cause fewer problems than writing for an audience you
don’t know well, although this is not always the case, as we show later in the
chapter.
The next section is given over to a conversation between David and Kailin
Liu, an early career secondary school teacher and recently graduated univer-
sity student. In the conversation, they discuss the challenges of audience and
voice in academic writing.

Audience matters: a conversation with an emergent

academic writer

The conversation began as an email exchange between David in Hong Kong,

and Kailin in Melbourne. It was initiated when Kailin asked for feedback on
a piece of writing. David was working on an early draft of this book, and Kai-
lin was in her second year as a secondary school teacher. Later, when David
was in Melbourne for an extended period during the second Covid outbreak,
the conversation continued ­face-to-face.
­​­­ ​­ Originally from China, Kailin
holds masters’ degrees in applied linguistics and TESOL. In her applied lin-
guistics thesis, she looked at how graduate students responded to different
kinds of written feedback. Neomy, her supervisor, was so impressed with the
research that she encouraged Kailin to revise and submit her thesis to a peer-
reviewed journal. Neomy mentored her throughout the revision process and
co-published the article with her when it was accepted for publication. Julie
also played an important mentoring role in Kailin’s development as a writer.
 Audience and purpose 73

Much of what Kailin said in various email exchanges gave us insights into
the dimension of ‘audience’, so we decided to turn the interview into an
academic conversation presenting the information in three sections corre-
sponding to different academic writing domains. Our purpose was to learn
more about what is involved in thinking about ‘audience’ in academic
writing. At three pivotal points, Julie enters the conversation and provides
a reflective commentary on what she, as a university lecturer, is learning
from Kailin’s comments. The introduction of a ‘third voice’ is an innovative
feature that you won’t find in other academic conversations. (For example,
see Heath & Kramsch, 2004; Matsuda & Atkinson, 2008.) You may want to
make similar notes before reading Julie’s thoughts and then compare the two.

Audience in coursework assignment writing

DN: When you wrote your university assignments, did you think about your
audience: in your case, your lecturers and what you knew about their
attitudes and interests?
KL: I think it depends. For some lecturers I know well and who demonstrate
to me their particular position or interest toward certain issues, topics, or
theories, I would be more inclined to try thinking, writing, and exploring
from their perspective. I think this could be a rewarding experience as I
may genuinely find their interests, concerns, or points of view resonant
with my own life experiences and it helps extend my thinking. Yet, there
are times where I find few connections with the theories they put for-
ward. On these occasions, I found myself writing simply for the sake of
gaining acknowledgment.
DN: And better marks, perhaps?
KL: Oh, better marks, for sure. At other times I don’t know my lecturers well.
I don’t know what they value and how they evaluate my assignments
(e.g., the rubrics may be too general to offer me any guidance, the lectur-
ers may not provide feedback, or their feedback is too formulaic for me
to learn anything from it). At these times, I may look at their previous
research articles – if I can find any – to see what kind of person they are,
what they care about, and what their stances are on certain issues. By
getting to know them better through their writing or the way they teach
in class, I can sense whether they’ll like my assignments and how many
marks they’ll give me. Yet I think this process is just for me to get to know
them. When I’m doing my writing, I’m still doing my own thing without
thinking that I’m writing for them. I’m just trying to make the writing
74 Audience and purpose

make sense to me and using writing as a way for me to organize my ideas.

I think I don’t tailor everything toward them not only because I don’t
know what they like but also that I feel some lecturers don’t really care
about my assignments. Maybe to avoid the disappointment of getting
nothing from the lecturers on my writing, I downplay my expectations
that they’ll read my assignments carefully or to give me any meaningful
feedback on drafts of my assignment. Writing assignments then becomes
my own thing; it’s a way to talk to myself and to work through the issues
through writing and thinking.
DN: So you were basically writing for yourself – writing was part of the think-
ing process.
KL: Yes. Julie passed me various articles that got me thinking in that way.
DN: Such as?
KL: Such as Richardson’s (2001) article about getting personal. And that
gave me the idea for my thesis.
DN: Which was …?
KL: I wanted to explore the question of how L2 graduate students engage
with and learn from different kinds of feedback. That question grew out
of my own experience of the kind of feedback I got from my own lec-
tures, as I already mentioned.
DN: This is interesting. I find reactions to my feedback varies enormously.
Some students want to challenge me, some want more detailed feed-
back than I have time to give. Others don’t seem to care about the
comments – all they cared about is the grade. At the end of semester,
I leave the assignments, with feedback attached, to be picked up at the
faculty office. Some are never retrieved. The students get their grades
online and just don’t care about the feedback. Why do you think this is?
What did you learn from the feedback you got on your thesis?
KL: My purpose was to explore the question of how graduate students from
L2 backgrounds like me engage with and learn from different kinds of
feedback. I wanted to get insights that I could apply to improve the qual-
ity of the feedback I give my own high school students  – the kind of
quality feedback that Julie gave me on my own assignments when I stud-
ied with her. Most existing studies didn’t give the insights I was looking
for. They were too limiting, only discussing written corrective feedback.
Probably the best article I came across was by Dr. Ellis (2010) which was
scholarly and thorough, but it didn’t give me much to go on in terms of
the questions I wanted answers to.
 Audience and purpose 75

DN: That may not have been his purpose!

KL: Probably not. Anyway, during the process of researching, talking with
my participants, and writing the thesis, another purpose came up  – I
wanted my participants’ voices to be heard. I really did. I understood
where they were coming from because their experiences were just like
mine. I understand that in class, lecturers may not have a chance to get
to know these students, so I hoped my little study could help them un-
derstand a bit more about these learners and how they engage with and
learn (or don’t learn) from the feedback.

Julie’s commentary: meaning-full self-strategies to sense ‘the

audience’
In this increasingly ‘de-humanized’, mechanistic educational economy
of pushing out content with fewer instruction hours and opportunities
to connect with students in increasingly large classroom sizes, I find it
amazing that there are still highly thoughtful students like Kailin who
do just the opposite, enacting all the rich humanly ways in which we
learn, i.e., thinking, writing, exploring from others’ perspectives, get-
ting to know the lecturers better by reading their articles, and gaining
a sense not only of a lecturer through the ways in which he/she teaches
but also relating that sense back to whether the lecturer will like what
she produces. These are not simple tricks and tips in thinking about
‘audience’ but ways of learning full of meaning-making (‘meaning-
full’ strategies?) that require time, cognitive energy, and thoughtful
relational work. Unsurprisingly, discourses of “how many marks” also
commonly feature in these assemblages of thinking about audience and
writing assignments as part of one’s coursework.
It is a shame that students have come to accept and adopt a position of
low expectations in receiving “any meaningful feedback” on their assign-
ments. That perception about the audience also shapes students’ writ-
ing. But interestingly, this negative understanding doesn’t seem to deter
Kailin. She uses this phenomenon to investigate the issue further which
not only extends her own literacy repertoire into the domain of research
but also creates knowledge that contributes to the field (i.e., providing
knowledge for busy lecturers, helping marginalized voices to be heard, and
gaining insights to improve her own feedback to her current students).
I spend an inordinately crazy amount of time trying to give what I think
of as meaningful feedback in my students’ assignments (and this is not
76 Audience and purpose

easy to do when you have a 150 papers to mark each semester with
only three weeks turnaround time!), but if “the kind of quality feed-
back that [I] gave” has played some role in motivating Kailin to improve
on her own feedback responses, that feels really rewarding. It just goes
to show that students need to experience and see what ‘quality’ and
‘meaningfulness’ look like if we want them to enact these in the future,
which also begs the question, ‘have teachers ever written for an audi-
ence that gave them meaningful feedback?’ And if so, what did that
meaningful feedback look like? This is a question we take up in the
chapter on feedback.

From thesis to journal article

DN: So now you’ve had your article published for publication in a respectable
referred journal. Let’s talk about how this came about and the challenges
and stumbling blocks you encountered along the way.
KL: When I was doing the study, it never occurred to me that it might be con-
sidered for publication. The suggestion first came from two anonymous
examiners in the faculty. One of them said reading the thesis helped her
understand more about her learners. This was the first time I realized that
my research question had some value and could be shared with many
others. That’s the moment I thought my findings, and the message that
learners engage with feedback in complex ways, could be shared with a
wider audience. And of course, on a practical or strategic level, I knew
that if this paper was published, it could be very helpful for a PhD ap-
plication in the future. So, I think all these made me want to grab this
chance and revise my thesis in whatever ways to get it published.
DN: How about when you were working on your thesis? What were your
thoughts about your audience?
KL: I don’t think I had a particular audience in mind when I was working on
my thesis. I knew Neomy, my supervisor, would be reading my thesis and
giving me feedback, but I don’t think I was particularly writing for her.
Rather than considering Neomy as ‘the audience’, I thought of her more
as a mentor, someone who was actively involved in the process of my cre-
ation, offering me ideas and ways of organization. As I mentioned before,
the process of writing this thesis was mainly about me trying to get the ideas
straight for myself – to use writing as a way to help me explore and under-
stand the question that I was asking and to describe my understandings in
 Audience and purpose 77

a way that was coherent and made sense to me. My writing needs to make
sense to me first so that I can then hand it over to other people, such as
Neomy, to see if it makes sense to them. But problems did come up with
purpose and audience.
DN: In relation to the thesis or the journal article?
KL: Both. As I mentioned earlier, in my thesis, I wanted my participants’
voices to be heard. When I was writing the findings and discussion sec-
tions in particular, I had strong hope that some university lecturers could
read this and develop a greater understanding of graduate L2 learners.
While I’m not entirely sure how this desire impacted my ways of writing,
I think maybe it encouraged me to try to write in a way that clearly re-
flected my participants’ ideas. I wanted to present my research in a way
that didn’t accuse certain people or turn people off, but would attract
both university lecturers and my participants to read the paper.
DN: You mean that you didn’t want university lecturers to be offended by
your conclusion that they didn’t listen to or want to know how their L2
learners dealt with feedback on assignments?
KL: Exactly. Then when I was revising the paper for publication, the audience
was even more blurry to me. I knew the paper would be critically examined
by many experienced researchers, but I wasn’t quite sure what they would be
looking for. I went back to my principle that I wanted my writing to make
sense to me. I then wholeheartedly followed Neomy’s advice for revision.
DN: Journal reviewers always have recommendations for revisions. How
many reviews did you receive? Did the reviewers agree and/or diverge on
the changes that would need to be made for the article to be accepted?
Did you accept all recommended changes? How did you respond to the
journal editor regarding recommended changes you disagreed with?
KL: We received feedback from four reviewers. The suggestions didn’t
diverge too much. The main issue was to incorporate a conceptual/
theoretic framework and refer to it throughout the article. Although
I strongly agreed with the advice, I was a bit reluctant to begin with
because it meant refocusing and rewriting the entire article. But in the
end, I did it.
DN: Did you think that you had to incorporate all their suggestions into your
revised article?
KL: Yes. But Neomy said that wasn’t necessary. She advised me on which to
follow and which to disregard, also how we could address certain issues.
78 Audience and purpose

DN: She is right, but it’s a good idea to let the editor know why you’re not
incorporating certain recommendations.
KL: In this process of getting the paper published, I just became a humble
little person, listening to and accepting all the suggestions and ideas
coming from Neomy and the reviewers. I just wanted to get this paper
acknowledged in the field. Some of their criticisms I didn’t quite under-
stand. For example, one reviewer said that our statistical analyses weren’t
well developed. I worried about how I could make this better, but Neomy
said that we could ignore this comment because we were only using de-
scriptive stats, not inferential ones. In any case, Neomy and I were in the
process of writing and revising together. My writing had been reviewed
and revised hundreds of times by her, which made me feel like I have an
ally and together we can cope with whatever comes at us from the public.

Julie’s commentary: supervisors/mentors/experts as mediators

to ‘the audience’
Just as there are practical considerations such as ‘marks’ involved in
thinking about ‘audience’, here we also see personal strategic dimen-
sions (PhD application possibilities) and negotiations of how much
actual work is involved (time, energy, etc.) in taking on feedback from
the audience.
Unlike coursework where students generally submit a piece of writing
and put it aside, in this domain of thesis writing and publishing, students
take on the role of an apprentice. Supervisors may or may not be experts
in students’ actual research focus, but they have the knowledge that can
guide students to the other side of the fence. This knowledge involves
subject content knowledge as well as their understanding of the field,
the scholarly practices, and cultural discourses they have accumulated
over many years of experience to develop a sense for what the audi-
ence (the reviewers) want. In this regard, they are not only supervisors/
mentors but also mediators that can help students gain a sense for what
the audience expects. Thesis writing and publishing are generally high-
stakes activities so the seriousness of it all I think can bring students to
realize themselves as a “humble little person” which I think can also
be a conducive disposition to have when one is an emerging academic
writer. Humility also doesn’t mean that the apprentice isn’t thinking for
herself. A recurring strategy in Kailin’s way of learning to write in her
 Audience and purpose 79

Going public

DN: How did you feel when the article finally appeared?
KL: I was thrilled, seeing my name and my article in print. I’m very happy
that it was accepted for publication. I still can’t quite believe it!
DN: Overall, then, the experience was a positive one. Do you plan to con-
tinue offering articles for publication? Would you consider writing for a
journal or magazine that isn’t peer-reviewed?
KL: Overall, yes, I think it was positive, although I felt that during the process
the focus became directed more toward publication than my original pur-
pose which was to get my participants’ voices heard and my desire to build
connections between students and lecturers. Publishing became the over-
riding purpose, and writing was about how I could weave my data nicely
together under the new theoretical framework. While this was also an
interesting experience as it enabled me to see something new in my data,
at the same time I might have lost the kind of human touch or care that
I had while writing my thesis. This paper was created more for the sake
80 Audience and purpose

of publication than a genuine exploration as was the case with my thesis.

Having said that, I’ve learned a lot through this experience. Writing for
publication has altered my ways of thinking about and doing research.

I would like to continue exploring the questions that I’m interested in for
language education, and if I can write well and am fortunate enough, I
would love to see my work reach a wider audience through publication. I’m
not quite sure about writing for n­ on-­​­­peer-​­reviewed journals or magazines. I
don’t know the audience for these journals or magazines and don’t yet have
the confidence to think about publishing by myself. By sending my work to
a ­peer-​­reviewed journal, hopefully I’ll receive some experienced reviewers’
feedback or acknowledgment before showing my writing to the public.

Julie’s commentary: audience matters

While a public platform can stimulate our writing (­as pointed out in
the previous commentary), getting caught up in publication goals can
also sideline intentions and passions that originally drove our work.
However, as in all the comments Kailin made throughout this process,
it is clear that she is thinking carefully about where she can continue
to contribute her work, according to her knowledge about the audience
and places where she can continue to grow. By continuing to send in
her work to ­peer-​­reviewed journals, she is developing her own ‘­feel’ for
the context, audience, and purpose. This kind of learning by doing be-
gins to move young academic writers away from their reliance on their
supervisors and into more agentic roles as independent writers and
thinkers. If they have opportunities to become journal article reviewers
themselves, this new role will strengthen their “­feel” for the audience.
I particularly like what Kailin says, “­writing for publication has altered
[her] ways of thinking about and doing research”. Thinking about all
that I have learned from Kailin’s experience, I now understand matters
of ‘­audience’ and purpose in particular domains of academic writing (­in
this case, research writing) is never just about who our audience is and
what the purpose is, but a concept that involves negotiations between
strategies, meaningfulness and meaninglessness, power, knowledge,
networks, as well as grades, future possibilities, and other logistical
considerations such as time and energy. For students interested in writ-
ing, good mentors can open incredibly powerful academic pathways for
thinking, writing, and becoming.
 Audience and purpose 81

The art and craft of writing

‘How to’ books on writing often begin with the cliché that writing is both
an art and a craft. (Google ‘the art and craft of creative/academic/business
writing’ and you’ll see what we mean.) While accepting the claim, in this
book we have focused on writing as a craft. The word is most commonly
defined as the skilled creation by hand of an object such as a piece of furni-
ture, pottery, or tapestry. In a sense, the definition fits. Essays, dissertations,
journal articles, and other written genres are ‘objects’ you produce by hand.
The degree of skill evident in the final product will be determined by your
audience.
If you want to develop the skills to make furniture you need to find some-
one who has already develop these skills and learn them from observation,
imitation, feedback, guidance, and direct instruction. In other words, you
have to apprentice yourself to a master furniture-maker. This can take years,
which brings us back to the academic conversation. In it, Kailin details the
apprenticeship she received through Neomy’s supervision.
David made a more modest contribution to her development through an
extended conversation that began when she asked for feedback on a piece
she had written. The parts of the conversation that are relevant to audi-
ence and purpose were shaped into the academic conversation you have
just read.
Rather than taking a red pen to the piece, David revised it and asked Kai-
lin to read the revised version and note the modifications that he made.
They then discussed the nature of the changes and why these were made.
Some were motivated by factors outside the text such as audience and pur-
pose. Others were determined by factors inside the text. David sought to
strengthen paragraph level coherence by adjusting theme/rheme structuring
sentence-by-sentence, so the link from one sentence to the next was made
explicit for the audience. Text-level coherence was improved by switching a
number of paragraphs around within the piece.
David pointed out to Kailin that constructing a paragraph that is clear and
coherent to the reader is a form of problem-solving. Here’s where the art
comes in. Knowledge of theme/rheme, coordinate, and subordinate clauses
and other grammatical devices are the tools, the hammer, and chisel, you
use to sculpt a paragraph that will convey your intended meaning clearly
to the reader. You start with the purpose you have for your paragraph in
relation to the purpose of the text as a whole as well as the audience you’re
writing for – insofar as you know who your audience is. In most cases, if your
82 Audience and purpose

audience is a teacher, you’ll be writing a ‘display’ piece. The purpose is not

to tell your teacher something she doesn’t already know, but to display to her
what you know. So, you include everything that is pertinent to the topic. If
your purpose is to convey content to a ‘real’ audience, you have to make de-
cisions about what information to include and what to leave out. You won’t
want to include everything. If you do, the audience may assume you’re either
patronizing or ­simple-minded.
​­
Let us give you a concrete example by describing how we began to fashion
the first paragraph of this section. To start with, all we had was the section
title and a general idea of what we wanted to tell you. Just as the first par-
agraph is key to the success or otherwise of the rest of the section, the first
sentence is key to the success or otherwise of the rest of the paragraph. It
sets the direction for the rest of the paragraph. How it’s structured, limit the
options available to you when it comes to the second sentence. As such, it
will present the problem of how the second sentence should be structured.
Solving that problem will present you with the problem of how to structure
sentence number 3 and so on throughout the construction of the rest of the
paragraph.
Our first attempt at the sentence began as follows:
As we said at the beginning of the previous section, including a conversation … We
didn’t even complete the sentence because it was pointing us in a direction
we didn’t want to go. Also, the lengthy, somewhat clumsy, and redundant
clause at the beginning, threatened the sentence with collapse before it had
been completed.
We tried again:
The previous section explores challenges confronting, and opportunities presented
to …

Better, but not much. We needed to take our marching orders from the
section heading. We wrote:

It’s a cliché to suggest that writing is an art and a craft…

The paragraph was heading where we wanted it to go, but not as precisely as
we wanted. Already, we were considering sentence 2. Finally, at the fourth
attempt, we arrived at a sentence that we were happy with. Although not
absolutely sure of how the theme would evolve, the direction had been set.
Sentence 2 was an aside, and we signaled this by enclosing it in brackets.
The succeeding sentences were knitted together thematically. (You might
 Audience and purpose 83

like to return to the paragraph and examine how we did this in terms of the-
matization and given/new structuring.)
In the rest of the section, we revisit the register variables of field, tenor,
and mode, show how they relate to audience and voice, and demonstrate
how they are fundamental to achieving clarity and coherence in your
writing. Confused and confusing paragraphs (ours as well as yours) are
a result of failing to keep in mind our audience and our relationship to
that audience (tenor), our purpose, that is, what we want to tell our
audience about the subject at hand (field), and the mo de (how we are
going to inform our audience). As we craft each sentence, we should ask
ourselves:

• Is what I’ve just written appropriate to my audience in terms of my use of

language?
• Is it appropriate in terms of what I want to say?
• Is the mode I have selected appropriate for the audience and purpose?

While field, tenor, and mode are interrelated, particular attention needs to
be paid to the second question, relating to field, the what of we want we
want to say. At the level of paragraph construction, this does not relate to
the overall topic and purpose of our piece of writing. This should be covered
in the introduction to the text, regardless of whether it is as limited as an
assignment on climate change or as extensive as book or academic writing.
It has to do with that aspect of the subject we want to address in any given
paragraph. Herein lies the problem. It stems from the non-linearity of the
experiential world we are trying to represent in print. There will always be
many things we want to tell our audience – far more than our paragraph can
encompass. Our brain fizzes with ideas that are not connected in a clear,
coherent, linear sequence. (Brains don’t work like that!) To produce a clear,
coherent paragraph, the ideas have to be presented in a linear sequence, the
logic of which is made clear to our audience through theme/rheme structur-
ing. Failure to obey this injunction is one factor that leads to confused and
confusing writing.
And so, as you’ve seen from our example, the struggle begins with the initial
sentence. This will, or should, determine the direction of the entire para-
graph. We showed you the struggle we had to set the direction for the first
sentence of the paragraph that initiated this section. We did so, not because
we wanted sympathy, but to show you that the challenge never goes away,
regardless of how experienced of a writer you are.
84 Audience and purpose

After much massaging, you have an initial sentence for your paragraph. You
work hard to craft the next sentence, so it flows in a clear, linear fashion from
the first. Then what happens? You have another brain fizz. An idea pops into
your head that demands your attention. Rather than parking it aside for a
future paragraph or abandoning it altogether, you write it down. When your
piece finally goes public, the effect on your audience, in this case your lec-
turer, is jarring. Your paragraph has lost its way, and you have lost your reader.
She scratches her head, wonders what on earth your paragraph is on about,
and reaches for her red pen.
We conclude the section with an example of how a writer’s confusion of
audience, purpose, and mode leads to a failure on the part of the writer to
achieve her purpose.

Making connections
Below is an email to Julie from a prospective student. What is the pur-
pose of the email and why does it fail to achieve its effect?

Dear Prof. Choi,

For a research project I do need to get my hand on your thesis ‘narrative
analysis of second language acquisition and identity formation’. I’d
highly appreciate it if you could possibly mail it to me.
By the way, I am currently reading your invaluable and innovative
book ‘Language and Culture: Reflective narratives and the emergence
of identity’ co-edited by Prof. Nunan. The narratives are hilarious.
Nice job. Looking forward to reading more from you.
My best wishes

Retrieve from your sent mailbox an email related to work/study and a

recent piece of academic writing. Compare the two in terms of subject
(field) and relationship of you to the audience (tenor). Keeping the
field constant, rewrite each piece swapping the tenor and mode (i.e.,
rewrite the email as an academic piece and vice-versa).

• What changes to the language did you make to each piece?

• What insights did the exercise reveal about the relationship between the
register variables and language?
 Audience and purpose 85

Tailoring your writing to different audiences

Before you begin writing, you should ask yourself three questions:

• What do I want to say?

• What do I want to achieve?
• Who am I writing for?

Answering these questions will help you deal with a fourth: How will I craft
my text to achieve the desired effect on the intended audience? This question
takes us to issues of style, tone, and voice as well as the stance you take toward
the content you are dealing with. These issues are the subject of the next
chapter. Obviously, your work will be more positively received if your views
match those of your audience. Politicians are well-versed in tailoring their
message to their audience, which can result in charges of hypocrisy when they
take one position on a controversial issue with one audience and a different
position with another. As we saw in the conversation with Kailin, these ques-
tions aren’t always easy to answer. Like Kailin, you are probably a student, and
your primary audience will be your teachers, and, like Kailin, some teachers
you will know well, and some you won’t. Although your primary purpose will
be to get a good grade, you won’t always want to do so by matching your views
to those of your teacher – assuming you know what they are.
In the rest of this section, we illustrate how David took a text intended to
achieve a particular purpose with one audience and tailored it to a different one.

Making connections
What do you think David’s purpose was for each text? Who was his
intended audience? How are these reflected in the language choices he
makes?

Text 1
There is some contention in the literature over the distinction be-
tween the verbs ‘to educate’ and ‘to teach’ and the corresponding
nouns ‘educator’ and ‘teacher’. Some argue that there is no difference,
others that the difference is palpable. A parent teaches her son to tie
his shoes. It would be unremarkable to hear the parent performing such
action referred to as a teacher, but never as an educator. Teachers of
86 Audience and purpose

­
 Audience and purpose 87

(I know this is the likely reaction, because over the years I’ve asked
plenty of non-teachers what it means ‘to teach’.)
This view of teaching is known as ‘transmission’ teaching because one
person (the ‘knower’) is transmitting information into the heads of
other people, known as learners, students, or pupils. In schools, there are
people who are masters of certain content knowledge – mathematics,
science, and the like – who are paid to pass this content on to those
who don’t possess it. They are known as teachers or instructors.
I would argue that this is a very limited view of that art and craft of
teaching. In the first place, the ‘transmission’ view is a poverty-stricken
one. The mind of the child is not an empty vessel waiting to have
information poured into it. In fact, research has demonstrated that
for learners of any age, the lecture is one of the least effective means
of bringing about learning. Educators, who take a broader view, have
always known this. Over 2,000 years ago, the philosopher Socrates,
possibly the first of the great educators, said that “Education is not the
filling of a vessel, but the lighting of a flame”. In fact, the English word
education is derived from the Latin word educere, “to draw out”, to work
with what learners already know, and to shape, refine, and develop that
knowledge to build bridges between what they already know and what
they need to learn.

Here is David’s commentary on the texts.

The audience for the first text was aimed at graduate students and teachers.
Its purpose was to tease out differences between educating and teaching/
instructing in the context of a discussion on the purpose of education. In
the second text, I wanted to discuss the same issue for an educated but non-
specialist audience. It’s extracted from a column I write on educational issues
for lifestyle and culture magazine. The purpose of the column is to entertain,
inform, and provoke thought in generally well-educated readers. There are
no in-text citations or references to the work of other authors. I elaborate
on terms that may be unfamiliar. For example, ‘transmission teaching’, is
defined as “passing on, or transmitting, information to someone else who
doesn’t know”. The colloquial expression, ‘person on the street’ which may
be unfamiliar to some audiences, is glossed as a ‘layperson’ or “someone
without specialist knowledge”. Finally, the Latin derivation of ‘education’
is provided to stimulate deeper understanding of the central point of the
article.
88 Audience and purpose

Making connections
Take a paragraph or two from a text that has been written for an ac-
ademic audience. It could be a text you have written or a published
piece written by someone else. Rewrite it so that it accessible for a non-
specialist (lay) audience. What changes did you make?

Writing for yourself

As we’ve already mentioned, if you are a student, most of the writing you
do will be for a known audience  – your teachers. We also noted that this
isn’t always straightforward. Some teachers will be more approachable and
sympathetic to your ideas and feelings than others. If you write for public
consumption, for example, writing a newsletter piece, producing an article
for a journal, or posting your writing on the Internet, your audience could
be anyone who happens to open the journal or stumbles across your blog. In
addition to the audience, you know and the audience you don’t, there is one
other individual you need to consider – you!
But why would we write for ourselves? Purposes vary. A hastily scribbled
shopping list reminds us not to forget the washing powder and eggs. Keeping
a diary can provide us with a reflective record of our everyday life as well
as a note of appointments and commitments. In the last chapter, we wrote
about how Richardson described personal writing as a thinking process, the
idea being that through writing we can discover things we didn’t know. You
may have wondered how this is possible, that the notion is counterintuitive,
paradoxical even. In our own work, we have found that the process of writing
our way into a topic we know little about or trying to find our way toward an
unknown destination (as we illustrated earlier in the chapter) can open up
all sorts of possibilities. It can peel back layers of memory, making explicit
facts and phenomena that have been locked away in our subconsciousness. It
can help us see connections between things that we had previously thought
to be unrelated. It can restructure and bring into sharp focus vaguely formed
ideas and shards of information. Writing as a means of discovery can work in
these and other ways. In the conversation between Kailin and David, Kailin
touches on Richardson’s article. It was so influential it set her on a path that
led to her to the thesis topic that had, to that point, proved elusive. While
you may later share with others the discoveries you made and insights you
generated, in the first instance, you are your own primary audience. Writing
for yourself, in the first instance, can help you address the first of the key
 Audience and purpose 89

questions we posed above: What do I want to say? This will be crucial when
it comes to writing for others.
A journal, like a diary, is another example of writing that, initially at least,
is intended for the self. An academic or professional journal provides an
opportunity to reflect and record, not on everyday life, but on concerns
and issues to do with your student or professional life. As authors, we keep
track of our various writing projects along with problems, frustrations, and
occasional successes. Here’s a suggestion for graduate students on keeping a
research journal from two highly experienced writers and researchers.

Each time you think of a question for which there seems to be no ready
answer, write the question down. Someone may write or talk about
something that is fascinating, and you may wonder if the same results
would obtain with your students, or bilingual children, or with a dif-
ferent genre of text. Write this in your journal. Perhaps you take notes
as you read articles, observe classes, or listen to lectures. Place a star or
other symbol at places where you have questions. These ideas will then
be easy to find and transfer to the journal. Of course, not all of these
ideas will evolve into research topics. Like a writer’s notebook, these
bits and pieces of research ideas will reformulate themselves almost like
magic. Ways to redefine, elaborate or reorganize the questions will occur
as you as you read the entries.
(Hatch &
­ Lazaraton, 1991, pp. 11–12)
­ ­ ​­

Making connections
Using the suggestions of Hatch and Lazaraton as a point of departure,
keep a journal relating to your studies or professional life. It could have
a specific focus such as research, or it could be a reading journal in
which you note your reflections and reactions to the set readings for
your course. However, it could be more general, relating to one or more
of the courses you are taking. If possible, keep it over the course of a
semester. If that proves difficult, keep it for at least a month. Write
something every day and try to write a minimum of 200 words. During
this period, resist the temptation to look back over what you’ve writ-
ten. (Kathi Bailey suggests that you tape or staple the pages together
to help you resist temptation.) Be as candid as you can. Remember,
you’re writing for an audience of one! At the end of the period, reread
what you’ve written. What themes or issues emerge? What do you learn
about yourself as a student, reader, or writer?
90 Audience and purpose

For an authoritative and comprehensive overview of journal writing and au-

dience, see Casanave (2014). Although the book is aimed at the field of
second-language education, it contains helpful information and background
for anyone interested in keeping a journal.

Questions from readers

Q: One of my biggest challenges is getting stuck. It can happen before I even

put finger to keyboard or at any point during the process. When I read your
draft chapter, I thought it might have something to do with the fact that I’m
often unsure of the audience I’m writing for or have doubts about what it is
that I’m trying to say. Can you give me some advice?
A: There’s a technical term for your condition – writer’s block. Every writer
suffers from it at some time or other. And, yes, being unsure of who you’re
writing for and your purpose in writing, other than fulfilling program require-
ments and getting a passing grade are two causes of writer’s block. One way
to get ‘unblocked’ is to follow the advice of a famous American writer who
said that your audience should be a single reader. Rather than trying to write
for an unknown audience, pick out a person, real or imagined, and write for
them. Our friend and colleague, the late Ruth Wajnryb, said that’s what got
her through the writing of her doctoral dissertation. When she suffered a
crippling bout of writer’s block, she obtained a photo of a writer she really
admired, taped it to the wall above her desk, and wrote the thesis for him.
She got outstanding reports from her examiners.
Another cause of writer’s block is that we run out of steam. We think we
have nothing more to say on the topic. One solution here is to stop writing
for the day, or evening, while you still have something to say on the subject,
or when you know what you’re going to say next. You’ll then have a head
start the next time you boot up your computer. If that doesn’t work, try ‘speed
writing’. Turn off your phone and iPad so you won’t be tempted to check
your bank account or send a congratulatory birthday text to your favorite
niece. Open a blank word document and write 300 words relevant to the
assignment you’re working on. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, or
grammar – you can deal with those later. Don’t stop writing until you’re the
word counter on your computer tells you that you’ve reached you target.
Q: The writing I have to do for my course is completely artificial. The only
person who reads the stuff is my teacher and you can hardly call her an
‘audience’, can you? I’m a business studies major, and at the moment I’m
 Audience and purpose 91

writing an essay on marketing. She knows way more about the subject than
I do. I won’t be telling her anything I don’t already know, and I’ll in any
case, I’ll probably get it wrong. Her role is to test me, not to learn something,
right?
A: Up to a point, this is true. But audiences play different roles. Don’t expect
your teacher to be cognizant of what you know. What she wants to learn is
what you know about the topic and how clearly you can express what you
know. Yes, she will be critically evaluating you, but that will be the case
with most, if not all, audiences. If you leave out certain facts on the grounds
that your teacher already knows them, she’s free to assume you don’t know
them and may mark you down accordingly.

Summary

Purpose and audience go hand in hand. A mismatch between what you

wanted to say, why you want to say it, and who you want to tell will lead to
problems. Clarity of purpose and audience will go a long way to achieving
clarity in your writing. However, as a writer, you will not always have con-
trol over who reads your work. While knowing your audience can reduce
the chances of your work being misinterpreted or misunderstood, this is not
guaranteed. As a student, you may think you know your teachers. Some you
will know better than others. Knowing your teachers well, knowing their
biases, pet theories, and attitudes toward the topic you have chosen or been
asked to write on will go some way toward getting you the grade you desire,
but this is not always the case. In her interview, Kailin also described the
tension between the need to gain a good grade by writing what the lecturers
wanted to hear and the desire to pursue themes and perspectives that were
important to her. At the heart of her dilemma was her desire to satisfy two
audiences: herself and lecturers who were not particularly interested in read-
ing what she had to say. In the end, she remained true to herself. Writing was
a thinking process, and what she wrote had to make sense to her before she
could produce a text that would make sense to others.
Writing for an unknown, or even partially unknown, audience brings its
on challenges. The audience might be anonymous faculty member, exter-
nal thesis examiners, or reviewers of referred journals. Having your writing
evaluated by an unknown critic can result in writer’s block, a malady feared
by professional writers. It can be crippling, particularly if the deadline for
submitting your writing is looming. Writing for an unknown audience is not
the only cause of writer’s block of course. Uncertainty about what you want
92 Audience and purpose

to say and the direction your writing needs to take, are other causes and
probably reflect lack of confidence about your audience.
In this chapter, we argued that producing a clear, coherent text involves
problem-solving. Every sentence you write places constraints on the one that
follows in terms of what you can say and how you can say it. Fortunately,
linguistic tools such as thematization and cohesion can help you create a
smooth pathway for your readers, not one where they have excessive induc-
tive work to do to establish a logical progression from one sentence to the
next.
In the next chapter, we turn to the related issues of identity and voice in
academic writing. You will see that the concepts are not only closed related
to each other but also to the concerns of this chapter as well.

Further readings

The Writing Center. (2022). Audience. https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/

­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­
audience/
This guide to addressing your audience in academic writing is clear, and prac-
tical. It provides a useful checklist of questions to guide you in identifying your
audience and addressing their needs.
Coffin, C., Curry, M. J., Goodman, S., Hewings, A., Lillis, T., & Swann, J. (2003).
Teaching academic writing: A toolkit for higher education. Routledge.
As the title suggests, this is a book containing practical suggestions and tasks for
helping students develop their writing skills.

References

Bass, R. V., & Good, J. W. (2004). Educare and educere: Is a balance possible in the
educational system? The Educational Forum, 68(2),
­ ­161–168.
​­
Casanave, C. P. (2014). Journal writing in second language education. University of
Michigan Press.
Coffin, C., Curry, M. J., Goodman, S., Hewings, A., Lillis, T., & Swann, J. (2003).
Teaching academic writing: A toolkit for higher education. Routledge.
Craft, M. (Ed.). (1984). Education and cultural pluralism. Routledge.
Dearden, R. F., Hirst, P. H., & Peters, R. S. (Eds.). (1972). Education and the develop-
ment of reason. Routledge.
 Audience and purpose 93

Ellis, R. (2010). A framework for investigating oral and written corrective feedback.
­ 335–349.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 32(2), ­ ​­
Gopnik, A., Meltziff, A. N., & Kuhl, P. K. (1999). The scientist in the crib: Minds,
brain and how children learn. William Morrow & Co.
Hatch, E., & Lazaraton, A. (1991). The research manual: Design and statistics for ap-
plied linguistics. Newbury House.
Heath, S. B., & Kramsch, C. (2004). Individuals, institutions and the uses of literacy.
­ ­75–91.
Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(1), ​­ https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v1.i1.75
­ ­ ­
Kroll, B. (1984). Writing for readers: Three perspectives on audience. Composition
and Communication, 35(2),­ 172–185.
­ ​­ https://doi.org/10.2307/358094
­ ­ ­
Matsuda, P., & Atkinson, D. (2008). A conversation on contrastive rhetoric. In U.
Connor, N. Nagelhout,  & W. Rozycki (Eds.), Contrastive rhetoric: Reaching to
intercultural rhetoric. (pp. 227–298).
­ ­­ ­ ​­ John Benjamins.
Oxford Union. (2017, December 7). Sir Ian McKellen |Full Address and Q & A [Video].
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVH0nM4_IaU&ab_channel=
­ ­
OxfordUnion
Richardson, L. (2001). Getting personal: Writing stories. Qualitative Studies in Edu-
­ ­33–38.
cation, 14(1), ​­
 5
Toward active voice

As we indicated in our introduction to the book, this is not a “how to” guide.
Our aim is to introduce you to concepts that will help you be an effective
writer. Two such concepts are voice and identity, the central concerns of
this chapter. As you embark on the chapter, we need to warn you that it
won’t be an easy read. (If it’s any consolation, it wasn’t easy to write, either.)
The concept of voice, and its relationship to identity is complex and elu-
sive. And if Martin Amis, a master craftsman if ever there was, spends most
of his time trying to find his voice, you can look forward to doing the same.
Voice matters in the sort of writing we are advocating in this book. It
challenges one of the central principles of traditional academic writing,
that of objectivity. The purpose of the linguistic conventions of traditional
style – avoid first-person singular, privilege the passive voice, etc. – are to
render the author invisible, to silence his/her voice. Richardson (2001)
says that this ‘objective’, scholarly writing puts her to sleep. She objects to
it because it

…requires writers to silence their own voices, to view themselves as

contaminants. Homogenization occurs through the suppression of indi-
vidual voices and the acceptance of the omniscient voice of science or
scholarship or the social-script as if it were our own. Writing as a method
of inquiry is a way of nurturing our own individuality and giving us au-
thority over our understanding of our own lives.
(p. 35)
­­

Early in our careers as academic writers, we were instructed to keep our

writing objective and impersonal. “There is no place for subjectivity in ac-
ademic writing”, we were warned. “Avoid the first person ‘I’”. As graduate
students, and then entry-level academics, we dutifully obeyed. Although
we began our careers in different decades, we soon grew tired of the anemic

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179092-6
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 95

prose we felt we had to produce. It was inconsistent with the type of work
we were doing: the medium failed to match the message. Although we were
uncomfortable at being rendered invisible, we felt bound by the conven-
tions of traditional academic writing. Things changed when, in our own
separate ways, we came across writers with whom we could identify, who
showed us that there was another way. For David, Shirley Brice Heath’s
monumental Ways with Words was an inspiration. When Richardson de-
rided the static, voiceless writing model for its ‘mechanistic scientism’
which put her to sleep, Julie knew exactly what she was talking about. It
was these, and other authors like them, who opened up ways of represent-
ing our work in print that we had never considered, certainly not for young,
untested writers.
In this book, we have attempted to add color and life to the prose by in-
jecting it with anecdotes, stories, and narratives – our own as well as the
occasional contribution from our students, colleagues, and other authors.
These have a purpose other than adding entertainment value. They elab-
orate on or illuminate the content under discussion or the argument being
made. We have set these off in boxes so they don’t interrupt the flow of the
chapter.
The purpose of this chapter is to unpack key concepts and perspectives
on voice and identity. We review what prominent qualitative researchers
and writers have to say about the concept: how they make the “I” visible
in their own writing, and the challenges this sometimes presents when it
comes to publication. By the end of the chapter, you should have an idea
of what is meant by voice in academic writing and how you can develop
your own authorial voice and the payoffs and pitfalls in doing so. For a more
detailed treatment of identity and voice, we recommend Ivanič (1998) who
describes three ‘selves’ that capture the identity of a writer. These are the
‘autobiographical self’, the ‘discoursal self’, and the ‘self as author’. Later in
the chapter, we will say more about the autobiographical self.
Before we get into substantive issues to do with voice and identity in aca-
demic writing, we should point out these concepts will not be relevant for
all genres: institutional reports, meeting minutes, grant submissions, or doc-
uments produced by a committee for other bodies who will, in all likelihood,
have a ‘house style’ and house rules. With such genres, you need to be aware
of required format and the rules of the game. These usually include deper-
sonalized, mechanistic, product-oriented writing. Although, as Tardy (2016)
reminds us, no genre is ‘set in stone’, and there are many opportunities for
innovation and creativity in most genres.
96 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

The evolving story of voice in academic writing

Some years ago, we wrote a paper in which we traced the historical

evolution of ‘voice’ in qualitative research. We thought that sharing a
precis of the terrain covered in that piece would be useful background
for you in understanding the evolution of voice as a key ingredient in
academic writing. In the paper, we argued for the centrality of the au-
thor’s personal voice to research in terms of what the story is and how
the story is told, in particular, making our role a central element in the
research story.

‘Traditional’ research admitted a limited number of voices. Typically, the

researcher was an invisible “I”. In this piece we shall explore some of the
ways in which making the “I” visible, that is, part of the research story,
challenged and transformed not only the nature of the research report,
but the ways in which research can be defined.
(Nunan & Choi, 2011, p. 222)

Our purpose was not to claim ownership over the personal stance in quali-
tative research. That honor belongs to others. Our aim was to tell the evo-
lutionary story of the emergence of voice and to argue that use, for example,
of the first person “I” was not a superficial case of surface style, as some have
argued. Rather, it was central to what we mean when we talk about research.
It places the writer within the text and makes explicit the active role he/she
lays in the research process. It allows researchers to pose challenging ques-
tions such as: Who gets to define a given activity as research? Who gets to
lay out the ground rules in terms of how the story should be told? On what
authority?
We began the story in the 1960s, although the battle lines had been drawn
long before then. In that decade, and into the next, qualitative researchers
accepted the ground rules of the positivists. They sought legitimacy by at-
tempting to show how their writing could meet the rules. For example, in a
major contribution to the debate, LeCompte and Goetz (1982) articulated a
set of steps that qualitative researchers could take to strengthen the internal
and external reliability and validity of their research. Hard-line positivists
remained unconvinced.
By the 2000s, qualitative researchers had not so much given up, but sim-
ply turned their back on positivists within the academy and began develop-
ing their own ground rules. Reliability and validity were waived in favor of
‘transparency’, ‘believability’, ‘experiential resonance’, and similar criteria.
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 97

Research genres and boundaries began to blur. While deference was paid to
longstanding methods such as ethnography, case study and narrative inquiry,
concepts, practices and perspectives crept in from cultural, media, gender
studies, and a range of other perspectives and disciplines. Autoethnographies
appeared more frequently. Writing techniques were appropriated from fic-
tion. Traditional academia was appalled when research output appeared as
playscripts and poems.
With this new assertiveness in which qualitative researchers unashamedly
inserted themselves into their research story, voice and identity came in-
creasingly under the spotlight by both proponents and critics. In the next
section, we look at how several key scholars have defined and characterized
voice and identity in academic writing.

What is ‘voice’?

Voice and identity are elusive concepts. So is the way that writers reveal
their writerly selves through the texts they construct. Academics who write
about voice define the concept in different ways. Here’s the definition we
came up with in paper we summarized in the preceding section.

By ‘voice’ we are referring to the centrality of the human story to qual-

itative research in terms of what the story is and how the story is told.
Stories touch the human heart as well as the mind. From time immemo-
rial they have provided a vehicle for entertainment, but, more impor-
tantly in pre- and non-literature societies, for passing cultural knowledge
from one generation to the next. In taking this stance, we believe that
research methodology has to do with not just how the research is con-
ceptualized and conducted, but how it is represented. We are aware of
the ambiguity in the term ‘represent’; that it can be taken two ways – ‘to
stand for’ and ‘to
­ re-present’.
­ ​­
(Nunan & Choi, 2011, p. 222)

In this definition, we argue that qualitative researchers reveal themselves

in what they choose to write about and how they choose to report their re-
search. The best way to make concrete the elusive concepts at the heart of
this chapter is to show you some examples.
We take the first example from Jerome Bruner, a world-renowned psy-
chologist and educator. Bruner begins an article entitled Life as Narrative as
follows.
98 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

Jerome Bruner’s voice

I would like to try out an idea that may not be quite ready, indeed it
may not be quite possible. But I have no doubt that it is worth a try.
It has to do with the nature of thought and with one of its uses. It has
been traditional to treat thought, so to speak, as an instrument of rea-
son. Good thought is right reason, and its efficacy is measured against
the laws of logic or induction. Indeed, in its most recent computational
form it is a view of thought that that has sped some of its enthusiasts to
the belief that all thought is reducible to machine computability.
But logical thought is not the only or even the most ubiquitous mode of
thought. For the last several years, I have been looking at another kind
of thought, one that is quite different in form from reasoning: the form
of thought that goes into the constructing not of logical, or inductive
arguments but of stories or narratives. What I want to do now is to
extend these ideas about narrative to the analysis of the stories we tell
about our lives: our “autobiographies” (Bruner, 1987, p. 11).

In a chapter with the intriguing title of Coat hangers, Cowboys and Com-
municative Strategies: Seeking Identity as a Proficient Foreign Language Learner,
Kathi Bailey describes growing up on a flower range in southern Califor-
nia and attempted to acquire Spanish by interacting with the Mexican farm
workers. Here is part of her story.

Kathi Bailey’s voice

Under those circumstances, I should have learned Spanish easily from
the workers and my neighbors. But there were invisible social barriers
more powerful than our physical proximity, and like other Anglo chil-
dren in our school district, I started to learn Spanish as a foreign language
in junior high school. After two years of grammar exercises and vocabu-
lary lists, I was bored with Spanish and switched to Latin in high school
because it would surely be helpful if I decided to become a doctor or a
nun. (No, I’m not Catholic, and yes, you may laugh.) Studying Latin
consisted of textbook exercises, translating texts into English, learning
the cases, and taking vocabulary quizzes. There was never an expectation
that we would speak the language. At best, the Latin classes gave me
word-attack skills and a certain amount of meta-language that would
be useful in the future for taking standardized tests (Bailey, 2010, p. 14).
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 99

We hope you agree that the author’s voice is clear. How does she do this?
First of all, she has an arresting title which draws on figurative language. She
contextualizes the research by telling a personal story. She reveals her feel-
ings and emotions (“invisible social barriers”, “was bored”, “would be useful
in future”). She brings in irony and humor and speaks directly to the reader
(“No, I’m not Catholic, and, yes, you may laugh”). These devices work to-
gether to convey a sense of who she is, that is, they reveal her identity as a
writer.

Storytelling

The most transparent way of inserting yourself into your writing is to tell a
story in which you are one of the characters. Your role in the story may be
central, as is the case with Jerome Bruner and Kathi Bailey, or peripheral, an
observer and commentator of an incident in which the action is performed
by others. The story can be a complete narrative or a snippet – a vignette.
It could recount a series of physical actions with some editorializing along
the way, as is the case with Kathi’s story, or be an interior narrative, as is
the case with Bruner’s. Essentially, Bruner is taking us into his confidence,
telling us the story of how he came up with an idea. He isn’t sure if the idea
is plausible but wants to try it out on us. As Adrian Holliday (2002) says,
he’s “showing us the workings”. The proposition he proposes is that there
are two ways of making sense of the world/existence. The first is through a
process of deductive or inductive reasoning. The second is through the sto-
ries we tell about our lives. His speculations conclude with the observation
that “we seem to have no way of thinking about ‘lived time’ save in the form
of a narrative” (p. 11).
The following vignette by Stacy Holman Jones is called “Am I that name?”,
a title just as intriguing as Bailey’s. We’ve selected this piece because Holman
Jones has a strong, clear voice, and because the piece makes an important
statement about identity.
The Holman Jones piece is presented in two parts. In the very first sentence of
part 1, she tells us that as an undergraduate, she had an identity problem: she
didn’t know who she wanted to become. In the rest of the paragraph, rather
than tackling the problem head on, she circles it. She is in limbo, waiting
for something to happen. Why doesn’t she come right out and proclaim her
identity as a writer? She’s too good a writer for that. She doesn’t tell us, she
shows us. She gives us hints – “waiting takes place in language … possibility
is made in writing … waiting in language” (p. 111). There’s another hint at
100 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

Stacy Holman Jones’ voice

As an undergraduate, I didn’t know who I wanted to be, who I
wanted to become. True to form (or was it content?), I was an Inter-
disciplinary Studies major. This designation  – this name  – was a
placeholder for the undecided, the emergent, the possible (and not,
as I assured my parents, a flimsy legitimizing discourse that covered
over underachievement, failure, and lack of choice). This name was
a space of waiting – for something to come together, for something
to happen. My scholarly interests were spaces where waiting takes
place in language – in politics, in journalistic portraits, in story and
verse. These were spaces where possibility is made in writing, though
not in some utopian, fixed sense of an inscription that makes some-
thing tangible or something real; object and objectified. They were
spaces of possibility where “actual lines of potential that a some-
thing coming together calls to mind and sets in motion” (Stewart,
2007, p.  3). Mine was a waiting in language as “becoming, differ-
ence, encounter, motion, creativity” (LeVan, 2007, p. 50). Process,
rather than product, to use the cliché, though I didn’t know it then.
I was waiting.
I see the invitation, written in red: Please see me. Never mind his com-
ments on my short story. Never mind his encouragement, his gentle
prodding, his attention to my work in words. I was being summoned to
his office. I was in trouble, though at the time I didn’t think of trouble
as something positive, something affectively good in the sense of sub-
version of whatever norms I might have violated. And, indeed, I know
I have violated … something. I just don’t know what.
I arrive early and lean against the cinderblock wall outside his office. I
have never been upstairs to the faculty offices. I spend many of my days
in the basement of this building, reading the poetry and short stories of
others and offering up my own. Until now, there was no invitation, no
reason to go upstairs. The door opens and his head emerges, swiveling
around until his gaze lands on me, on my body pushed up against the
wall.
“Hi. I didn’t know you were here. Come in”.
I follow him into the office, which is no bigger than a closet and
crammed full with books and a massive desk piled high with paper. He
inches around the desk and sits behind the stacks of paper, which rise
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 101

high on either side of him. I take the chair opposite him, pulling my
backpack around my body and hugging it to my chest. “You wrote on
my paper that I should come and see you”.

“Yes. I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“I know my story wasn’t finished. I didn’t quite get where I wanted
to go, but I didn’t want to hand it in late.”
“Your paper is fine. Quite inventive, really. I’ve made what I think
are some good suggestions for revision. That’s not what I wanted
to see you about, though.”
“Oh?”
­
“No. I want to talk to you about graduate school. Have you
thought about it?”
“Graduate school? Um, no. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Well, you should. You’re a wonderful writer, very smart.”
“I­ am?”
“Yes. Didn’t you know that?”
“No.”
­
“Well, you are. And you should know.”

He said more that day, about graduate programs he thought would be

a good fit with my interests and my work, about how to prepare for
the GRE and request letters of recommendation, about ordering tran-
scripts and meeting deadlines, though I don’t recall any of these details.
What struck me then, what strikes me now, was what happened in our
conversation. In a moment, in the movement of his pen on the page
and in our brief conversation, he waltzed me an imaginative what if.
What if I was a writer? What if that is my name? (Holman Jones, 2010,
pp. 111–112).
­ ­ ​­

the end of the paragraph. Although she didn’t know it at the time, writing is
a process of becoming not of being.
Another reason is provided in the second part of the piece which takes the
form of a narrative. Proclaiming herself as a writer was beyond the limits of
her imagination. It required an audacity she didn’t possess. It required an
authoritative figure, an unnamed professor to proclaim it for her. “You’re a
102 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

wonderful writer, very smart”. Only then could she entertain the possibility.
Textual devices she uses include the simple present, which brings an imme-
diacy to the narrative, direct rather than indirect speech, and italics which
brings her voice into sharp focus. We can hear her emotional state at differ-
ent points in the narrative: trepidation, bemusement, incredulity.
If you decide to include a story of one sort or another in your work, you need
to have a justification for doing so besides adding color to the piece. If nec-
essary, you should make the purpose explicit to the reader, as we have done
in this book. Another consideration is where to position the story within the
piece. Beginning with a story can draw the reader in, create interest, or even
a sense of mystery. Julie does this in a piece entitled “Living on the hyphen”.
She begins with the following conversation.

“How do you get the glass table so clean?” I ask Sophia, my Korean
cleaner in Sydney who has been coming every two weeks for the last
three months.
“You need to use … some kind of … sponge. Mmm … no, like some
cleaning material … No …”
“You mean like a cloth?” I interrupt.
“Yes, yes, like cross [cloth]. Mmm … bery [very] soft cross.”
“Some kind of special fabric?”
“Special? Mmm … yes … sha … sham … Mmm … I don’t know what
you say English … I show you…” and she goes to get it.
(Choi,
­ 2010, ­p. 66)

She goes on to say that her Anglo partner, who has overheard this rather
tortured conversation, asks her with a touch of irritation why she hadn’t
simply asked Sophia in Korean, why she has hidden from the cleaner the
fact that she is Korean-American and that they share a common language.
Julie’s response opens up complex intergenerational cultural issues. While
Stacy Holman Jones could have initiated her article with the story of her en-
counter with her professor, she begins with a framing paragraph that creates
intrigue and provides a segue into the action narrative.

The personal in academic writing

Various devices are used by the authors of the three vignettes we have pre-
sented so far to reveal their voice. All three are present in the text. All
three tell a story. Bruner’s is the story of how he came to the view that there
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 103

are two ways of making sense of the world, through logical thought and by
analyzing the stories we tell about our lives. Bailey relates early encounters
with language other than her first. Holman Jones talks about a meeting with
one of her professors during which the notion that she could legitimately
consider herself a writer becomes a possibility. All three reveal personal feel-
ings, attitudes, and insecurities. We have a sense that all three are speaking
directly to us, although Bailey addresses us directly (“yes, you may laugh”).
Tone of voice (humor, irony, etc.) also gives us a sense of the author’s identity
as does the use of figurative language which is the topic of the next chapter.
As we have noted at several points on the book, the practice of researchers
inserting themselves into their writing is becoming increasingly common.
This practice reflects a growing assertiveness on the part of qualitative re-
searchers not to play by the rules of positivism. However, not all writers agree
that voice matters in academic writing. Stapleton (2002) is one critic who
is skeptical of the practice, suggesting that it’s substance (i.e., content) that
matters, not style and that voice is irrelevant to academic writing. He argues
that the extended (i.e., excessive) focus in journals and monographs implied
that voice is far more important than it deserves to be, and that “… if passed
down to students, may result in learners who are more concerned with iden-
tity than with ideas” (Stapleton, 2002, p. 187).
Cynthia Nelson, an exceptional writer by any measure, disagrees. She ac-
knowledges that authorial subjectivity has been perceived as “irrelevant,
self-indulgent, or insufficiently critical”, but defends the practice of inserting
one’s “subjective experiences, thoughts, and impressions” into one’s writing
(Nelson, 2005, p.  315). However, she adds a caveat. The personal stance
must contribute to knowledge-making and be relevant to the subject at
hand. In negotiating the delicate balance between underacknowledging and
overacknowledging your presence in your writing, you should ask yourself
what’s the point and what’s the effect likely to be on the reader?

Textual features and voice

In the preceding section, we discussed the most transparent way of inserting

ourselves into our text: weaving into the text personal texts in which we
feature as protagonist or onlooker. Voice and identity are closely entwined,
voice being a key concept in capturing a writer’s identity (Matsuda & Tardy,
2007). As we said in the previous section, what we choose to write about,
and how we choose to write it reveals the identity we want to present to the
reader. Actually, we should use the plural because we have multiple voices
104 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

and identities. In everyday life, we identify/affiliate with, or desire to affil-

iate with, different cultural groups  – football fan clubs, wine appreciation
societies, mah-jong groups, expectant parent gatherings, and so on. These
intersect, overlap, and sometimes conflict. The different subgroups within a
particular culture will have their own rituals, discourse conventions, vocab-
ulary, and patterns of interaction.
When speaking, we have resources that are not available to our writerly
self. We can shout, whisper, cajole, pause for dramatic effect, and use body
language (gesture, wink, scowl, and smile). Through linguistic and non-
linguistic resources, we convey our thoughts and emotions and reveal aspects
of our identity and personality. When we use the word ‘voice’, as in “Don’t
use that tone of voice with me”, or “Ellie’s voice sank to a whisper as she ter-
minated her relationship with Jack”, we are using the word ‘voice’ literally.
When we use ‘voice’ in writing, it takes on a metaphorical meaning. We can
be ironic, humorous, or somber. We can hedge an assertion by adding cave-
ats and conditions, but in doing so, we rely entirely on the written word. In
writing, then, voice refers to the personal tone or style you adopt in crafting
a piece of work. Because vocal resources and body language are unavailable,
we have to use textual resources of a very different kind. These resources are
many and varied. Here is a sample: sentence length (long or short), sentence
structure, word choice, tense choice, thematization, active vs passive voice,
direct vs indirect speech, tone of voice, pronoun choice, writer stance toward
the reader, use of figures of speech, and the way the text is presented on the
page (choice of font type and size, paragraphing, use of bold or italic type,
punctuation, e.g., choice of colon, semi-colon, or dash, bracket, quotation
marks, exclamation marks, etc.). Non-discoursal elements such as tables,
chart, figures, diagrams, photographs, and many other forms of realia are also
important and becoming more so in a multimedia world. Some of these were
used by the authors of the vignettes we shared with you earlier. For example,
Stacy Holman Jones used italics to very good effect in expressing attitudes
and emotion. For a more detailed and nuanced discussion of these features of
voice, see Matsuda (2001).
Matsuda and Tardy (2007) argue that it is a reader’s interpretation and re-
action to these features that assist them to construct their own sense of the
writer’s voice, and from that to larger identity issues: Is this writer male or
female? A first or second-language speaker? A student or an academic? In a
study reported in their article, they show how two readers can arrive at an-
swers to questions such as these but do so by focusing on different features.
Two reviewers of an article submitted for journal publication, for example,
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 105

identified the author as male. Reader 1 did so “primarily because of the ways
in which he positioned and framed other works within the manuscript”
while Reviewer 2 did so because the author “ignored the issue of gender”
even though gender and race were central to the topic of the article (p. 246).
Because of the number of features and the fact that the effect on the reader
is the key to their definition of voice, Matsuda and Tardy say it would be
inappropriate to determine a set of features a priori. “Instead, we sought to
identify the overall impression of the manuscript first and then to identify
discursive and non-discursive features that contributed to that impression”
(p. 239).
­­

Making connections
How much can you deduce about the identity of the authors of the
following texts in terms of gender, age, occupation, level of education,
first-language background, etc.? What is it about what they said and
how they have said it that helped you make these deductions? What do
you think was the source from which the texts were extracted – e.g., a
magazine article, a student essay, and a tourist guide?

Text 1
Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice
what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He
is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or
loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.
Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming
young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a
piece of non-fiction writing learns – when the article or book appears –
his hard lesson. Journalists justify their treachery in various ways ac-
cording to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom
of speech and “the public right to know”; the least talented talk about
Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living.

Text 2
It’s dusk by the time I get to Soho. I shoulder my way into Staunton’s
Bar and Grill between the knots of suited wage slaves. Different bars
tend to be patronized by different professions and people from different
walks of life. Sporting types gravitate toward The Globe. The Makumba
Bar attracts musicians, designers, and artists. Lawyers, airline pilots,
106 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

dentists, and investment advisors form the core of Staunton’s clientele.

Not really my types. However, the bar has a number of advantages.
Being situated next to the escalator makes it a perfect people-watching
spot if you’re drinking alone. Because of its location, visitors and others
unfamiliar with the jumble of narrow streets and alleyways that con-
stitute Soho have little trouble finding it. For some years, I lived in a
cramped little studio apartment just opposite, so it was also convenient
from that point of view. The bar girls, mostly Nepalese, all know me.

Developing your own voice

Your identity as a writer will be strongly conditioned by your purpose and the
audience you are writing for. If you are a graduate student, your audience will
most likely be one of your teachers. Your overriding purpose will not be to
inform the teacher of certain facts relating to the topic of your piece that he/
she doesn’t know. You will have several interrelated purposes: to demonstrate
the extensive reading you have done to inform yourself of the topic, your
mastery of the genre, be it a report, a procedure, or an analytical text, your
creativity and so on. The extent to which you inject your personality into
the piece through irony, humor, and hedging will depend on the relationship
you have with the teacher you are writing for. (Unless you know your teacher
well, we’d advise you to think carefully before trying humor. The last thing
you want is to become the butt of the teacher’s joke.) When you write, you
are putting on a performance through the written word. The ‘act of writing’
is more than a metaphorical phrase. As Denzin (2014) reminds us, writing is
a performance.
In our introduction, we mentioned the struggle we had to develop our own
voices. Our diffidence stemmed from several sources. Like Stacy Holman
Jones, we were unpublished students. Our authorial identities were not only
unformed, they were non-existent. We had no authority to proclaim our-
selves as writers. Our response to Stacy Holman Jones’ “Am I that name?”
was a ringing “No!” Whenever the “I” crept into drafts of David’s academic
writing, including his doctoral thesis, it was struck through with a red pen
and replaced with “one”. It was only with time and the vicarious encourage-
ment we received from reading the work of writers we wanted to emulate
that our voices began to emerge.
We encourage our students to develop their voices and identities as writers,
beginning with their ‘autobiographical self’, described by Ivanič as “a writer’s
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 107

Making connections
How do you feel about calling yourself a writer? Do you think that
only those who have published successfully have the right to identify
themselves as writers? When David’s early attempts at ‘performing the
personal’ were struck through with a red pen, he felt his emerging writ-
er’s voice was being dismissed. Have you ever had a similar reaction to
corrections of your own work?

sense of their roots, or where they are coming from…” (Ivanič, 1998, p. 24).
When you sit down to write, you bring with the task your past history, which
is constantly changing as your life history evolves. You also bring with you the
beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions which are shaped by your past history as
you have constructed it for yourself. Ivanič says that a writer’s autobiograph-
ical self may be difficult to get at because the writers themselves may not be
consciously aware of the way their writing is shaped by their life histories. She
suggests that the relationship might be revealed by addressing questions such
as: “What aspects of people’s lives might have led them to write in the way
they do?” and, more generally, “How does autobiographical identity shape
writing?” (p. 25). In other words, how do your experiences and perceptions
shape the writing itself? Another important point stressed by Ivanič is the
notion that your ‘writerly’ identity is only one of your numerous identities,
as we have discussed earlier. The notion reflects another point we made, that
writing is a performance, and the persona you present through your writing
will be shaped by your purpose and your (real or imagined) audience.
The following vignette captures Ivanič’s sentiment. In it, Julie’s master’s stu-
dent, Cat, describes her distaste for academic writing. This distaste stemmed
from the denial by her teachers of her embryonic autobiographical voice. Only
by producing pale imitations of her teachers’ prose could she escape censure.

Cat’s journey in academic writing

At dinner one night with Julie and David, I made a comment about how
much I ‘hated’ academic writing. Having recently completed a research
degree with Julie (who was my academic supervisor at the time), I ranted
about how mentally gruelling it was to write such long stretches of prose,
so many times over. There was no such thing as a ‘perfect’ first attempt.
Every time I sent my writing to Julie, I secretly hoped that she would
108 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

skim through my writing, find no errors, and let me move onto the next
section. It was foolish of me to ever think that. Every time I opened
up my feedback, I was confronted by a thousand comments from Julie
questioning what on earth I was saying. How does one not get frustrated?
A few days later, Julie tells me what David said to her about my comment.
“It’s such a shame that she doesn’t enjoy writing. It’s through writing
and rewriting that she’ll discover what she really wants to say”.As I re-
flect on David’s comment whilst writing this piece, my feelings toward
academic writing and the frustrating journey to find my own writer’s
voice draws me back into my own life history and socialization. In high
school, teachers would drill into us that there was no ‘I’ in an academic
essay, the passive voice was a big ‘no-no’ and one needs to ‘stick’ to the
sample. I was so wedded to reproducing these structures that I never
really wrestled with what I wanted to say. In my mind, there simply
wasn’t a place for it. I just had to follow the structure.
In university, I continued to rely upon models and sample texts found
in the work of my professors  – it was like an academic form of training
wheels. I could not make my own linguistic choices. I was so afraid of
trusting myself to the point that I hid. I hid behind the work of my pro-
fessors and slightly edited their sentence structures. I hid behind endless
citations to try and shield my writing from attacks of plagiarism. If you
were to look at my in-text referencing alone, you would assume that I
had read the literature widely. However, beneath the surface of every sin-
gle essay was a messy patchwork of text that screamed deep insecurities.

Cat’s journey in academic writing continued

When I enrolled in a research degree, Julie saw straight through it.
“The way you cite the work of others, it’s like you don’t know what you
want to say”.
She suggested that I pick three articles and carefully analyze the ‘moves’
that each author makes. I was initially skeptical of such a simple task
since I had always written looking very closely at the work of others.
But the way in which Julie made me interrogate the text allowed me
to see how writers were strategic with their linguistic choices. After
multiple rounds of highlighting, annotating, and making notes, she
brought to my attention how writers hedged, used reporting verbs and
transition words to make their voice cut through the pages. Such a task
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 109

helped me see how I could add nuance to my own claims and assertions
rather than unthinkingly copy another person’s voice or rely on generic
phrase banks. In some ways, it felt like the training wheels had come
off. Although, I still fall sometimes and get stuck in the voice of others,
I know now that there is no academic prose I can copy to try and say
what I want to say. Only I can say what I want to say by writing it. Yes,
it is exhausting; but in many ways, it has become rewarding.
At the moment, I am experimenting with more evocative forms of nar-
rative writing for reflection. I could never have imagined myself writing
in such literary ways especially in the genre of research writing. Here’s
a small snippet of a piece I recently wrote about an incident that hap-
pened to me as a beginning teacher:

With two loud clicks, my attendance on a spreadsheet is marked off. She

begins to run a red pen along the boxes in my form, reading out numbers
under her breath. 1.1… tick…2.3…tick… 3.4…tick…. The form is
flipped over. In the silence, her pen passes over paper and ‘buzz’ words
are written down. Evidence, strategies, ZPD, confirmation, endorse-
ment. As her red pen struggles to tick one of the boxes, a question
emerges. My fast reply allows her to continue being engrossed in the
act of marking each standard off. Nearing the end of the form, the next
person announces their arrival. My supervisor stands up and shows me
out of her office, quickly signing off a key form for my probation.

The opportunity to write in more creative and compelling ways has

paved another uncertain yet exciting road for me. It has made me look
forward to discovering a bit more about who I am and the world around
me through text.

We have shared Cat’s story in full because it illustrates some of the key themes
of the chapter. The training wheels metaphor is a familiar, but particularly
apt one. She describes how, with Julie’s guidance, she shed her training
wheels and realizes that no one else’s voice can enable her to say what she
wants to say. Only through her own voice, can she discover what she wants
to say. In the next section we describe the value of apprenticing yourself to a
writer you admire, but that, like Cat, you will only discover what you want to
say by discarding your training wheels. At the end of the vignette, she gives a
glimpse of her emerging voice in describing how her progress in the complex
art of teaching is reduced to atomistic items on a checklist.
Here’s an example of how Cat used Julie’s ‘move analysis’ technique
(Figure 5.1).
­­
110 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

Making connections
Using Cat’s example as a model, review an assignment you have re-
cently completed or are currently completing. Identify the different
moves in the piece. Ask yourself, what am I doing here? Is my voice
appropriate to the move? If not, how can I strengthen it?
Possible moves might be:

• Giving background to your topic

• Signposting to the reader the terrain to be covered
• Providing a personal narrative
• Summarizing what others have discovered or claimed
• Including data such as journal entries, interview transcripts, and obser-
vation notes
• Analyzing data
• Interpreting data
• Discussing your personal feelings and attitudes (e.g., to your data, to-
ward what others have asserted)
• Summarizing and making concluding remarks
• Admitting to limitations and shortcomings of your work
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 111

Injecting yourself into your academic writing takes courage because you
may be criticized by readers who subscribe to conventional notions of what
constitutes acceptable academic style. If you are a graduate student, this
could include an unsympathetic thesis examiner. If you offer a piece for
publication, you may be criticized by gatekeepers such as editors and re-
viewers whose rules of the academic publishing game include objectivity
and authorial invisibility. Regardless of the audience, you should keep in
mind Nelson’s (2005) point that admitting a subjective voice into your
writing has to have a point, that is, it has to add something to the piece
you are writing.
Adrian Holliday tells a cautionary tale about a student who as a graduate stu-
dent, found it an affront to be forced to conform to traditional conventions
which sanctioned creativity and the polemical voice he had developed as an
undergraduate majoring in English literature.

Mark had a first-class bachelor’s degree in English literature from a

well-known university in England. He then became a language teacher
and after accruing a considerable amount of professional experience,
he enrolled on a master’s program in language education. As a master’s
student he displayed considerable ability as a critical thinker with a so-
phisticated awareness of the politics and ideology of education. How-
ever, he ‘failed’ as an academic writer. His assignments were articulate
and elegantly written, and succeeded in communicating a profoundly
critical argument; but they were in the wrong genre. Mark wrote com-
petently in the polemic style of his undergraduate literature days, not in
the technical genre of the social sciences. He found the latter impossible
to work with and eventually left the programme.
(Holliday,
­ 2002, pp. 125–126)
­ ­ ​­

Mark’s experience is unfortunate. While it underlines the fact that institu-

tions and disciplines vary when it comes to the conventions of academic
writing, things are changing. This is true, not only in the human sciences
but also in the so-called ‘hard sciences’ such as physics and engineering. As
Canagarajah (2005) notes, “[t]he personal has become mainstream in re-
search writing. Even quantitative studies make a nod towards acknowledging
the personal in the article” (p. 309). Tardy (2016) has also written about an
increasing interest in creativity and innovation in disciplines such as envi-
ronmental science.
In this section, we have looked at the relationship between voice and iden-
tity in writing. We made the point that when it comes to writing, the word
‘voice is used metaphorically. Although not wishing to overstate the case, we
have also warned of the potential perils of speaking personally. Developing
112 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

a personal voice is a tool for giving clarity and coherence to your writing
as well as making your writing more interesting for the reader. In the next
section, we will give you some suggestions and examples of how you can de-
velop your voice by, paradoxically, imitating one or more writers who have
influenced you.

The apprenticeship of writing

A key source of inspiration and guidance for the apprentice author who is
struggling to find his/her voice is the work of others. In the preceding sec-
tion, Zinsser (2013) says that “writing is learned mainly by imitation” (p.
viii). The general reader focuses on content, reading a book or article for
what the author has to say. They are generally unaware of the techniques
or ‘tricks of the trade’ used by the author to pull them into the text and to
keep them there. As a writer, you need to read other authors, particularly the
ones you admire, not only for what they have to say but also how they say it.
What is it that makes the voice of a Bill Bryson or a David Sedaris instantly
recognizable?
It’s not clear how many people read the American author Ernest Heming-
way’s work these days. He has been dead for years, and his machismo as well
as lifestyle are no longer palatable. Despite this, there are plenty who seek
him out in search of a writing style. Google How to Write like Hemingway,
and you will find over a dozen sites. They are all directed at novice writers
and offered a list of tips based on that author’s analysis of Hemingway’s style.
Despite some variations, the lists are similar. ‘Clarity’ and ‘simplicity’ are the
adjectives most frequently used words to capture his style and remain one of
the most recommended models in ‘how to’ books, websites, and courses for
budding writers.

Making connections
Identify a writer you admire. It can be a writer of fiction or non-fiction.
What is it that attracts you to this writer? What three to four things
about writing did you learn from them that you might try out in your
own writing?
Write a short piece in the style of one of the writers you admire.
Then try rewriting it in your own voice.
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 113

David’s voice: learning from a master – a cautionary tale

I was a voracious reader from an early age. I was a glutton for words
and, while still in primary grade, was determined to become a writer. In
junior high school, while my classmates honed their skills on the foot-
ball field, I sat at my desk chewing he end off a BIC biro and staring at
a blank sheet of foolscap paper. This was going to be a long, hard road.
In secondary school, my English teacher thought I had ‘promise’. She
wasn’t going to flatter me with ‘talent’, and I’d have despised her if she
had. She bullied me into entering essay writing competitions. I came
second in one, after a girl from the nearby convent school. This was a
consolation. First prize would have convinced me that I was the only
entrant.
I discovered Hemingway in senior high school and was immedi-
ately captivated by the power of this prose. His voice was instantly
recognizable. He produced a prodigious body of work before running
out of ideas and shot himself in 1960. I read every novel and short
story I could get my hand on. I reread them, hungry for his secrets.
His prose was a model of clarity, his voice strong and clear. Mine
was anything but: clumsy rather than clear, awkward, not author-
itative. I was never temped to put a gun to my head on re-reading
my turgid, muddy prose. Nor was I tempted to give up. If writing is
in your blood, you have no choice. With Hemingway at my elbow,
I pressed on.
He preferred short, simple sentences, particularly for action scenes. If
a descriptive piece called for it, he could use more complex construc-
tions such as prepositional phrases and relative clauses as in the first
sentence of A Farewell to Arms (1929): “In the late summer of that
year, we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and
the plain to the mountains”. In his lexical choices, he preferred single
rather than multisyllabic words, high frequency, simple words rather
than low frequency complex ones.
And so, I set out to renovate my prose on these principles. My sen-
tences became skinnier. I privileged single syllable words of Anglo-
Saxon or low German origin over those with Latinate or Norman
roots. When it came to vocabulary, I chose clever over erudite, like
as opposed to akin. When it came to adjectives and adverbs, out
came the red pen. Interestingly, when used as an adjective, the word
114 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

‘fine’, one of the weakest in the English language, was so overused

by Hemingway, that it became one of the defining features of his
voice.
Over time, with Hemingway as a model, my prose grew closer to his in
style. As more time passed, however, I realized that my writing was a
weak parody of Hemingway’s, a crippled imitation of his voice rather
than my own. I was stuck with his voice and, if I didn’t move on, would
never develop one of my own. I extracted myself before imitation had
hardened into a habit that would be impossible to break. But the year
of living in Hemingway’s skin wasn’t wasted. Some of the lessons I
learned during that period became part of the voice that I eventually
developed.

As the vignette demonstrates, if you slavishly follow someone else’s voice,

you will never develop your own. It’s important to remember that state-
ments such as “keep your sentences short”, “use high-frequency, simple
words rather than low frequency difficult words”, and “treat adverbs and
adjective with cautions” are principles to bear in mind rather than rules to
be obeyed. Used appropriately, they will increase the clarity of your writ-
ing. Applied unthinkingly will result in boring, repetitive prose. There are
times when the meaning you really want to get across will only be achieved
by using complex sentences and words with more than one syllable. Anne
Lamott put it eloquently when she said there’s nothing wrong with ap-
propriating the voices of a writer we admire, but we need to realize that
they’re just props, temporary artifacts on the road to finding your own voice.
They’re just on loan and have to be returned. Here’s the advice she gives to
her students.

[It’s] natural to take on someone else’s style … it’s a prop that you use
for a while until you have to give it back. And it just might take you
to the thing that is not on loan, the thing that is real and true: your
own voice.
(Lamott,
­ 1995, ­p. 195)

In the rest of this section, we will elaborate on what we have said in this
paragraph using examples related to the principles above. These are tips for
you to think about as you revise your writing and work on uncovering your
own voice: they are not rules to be slavishly followed.
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 115

Interrogating advice for aspiring authors

In this chapter, we have looked at numerous factors that will have an im-
pact on your voice. These include the use of personal narratives, figurative
language, and critical commentary on the subject matter of what you write,
revealing beliefs and attitudes relevant to the subject at hand, use of hedging
to indicate degree of certainty regarding your own claims and assertions and
those of others. Voice, and its understudies, style and stance, will also be
revealed by the words you choose, the way you arrange them into sentences
and combine these into paragraphs. In this final section, we look in greater
detail at how grammar and vocabulary choices can help or hinder you in your
quest for voice. We’ll do this by commenting on three pieces of advice that
commonly appear in books for aspiring authors: ‘Keep your sentences short’,
‘Privilege simpler words over harder ones’, and ‘Treat adverbs and adjectives
with caution’.

Keep your sentences short

We dealt with sentence length earlier in the book. We return to the topic
now looking at it through the lens of voice and identity. In general, we like
shorter sentences because they are easier for readers to process as they gener-
ally only contain one idea. They can work well with narratives and critical
incidents if you want to create a sense of suspense. However, they have to
be appropriate to the text you are producing. If you overdo it, your prose
will come across as staccato, and the last thing you want is for your reader
to hyperventilate. Chopping what you want to say into a sequence of short
sentences can also result in a text that is more difficult to process.
Here is how the above paragraph reads as a sequence of short sentences:
We dealt with sentence length earlier in the book. We return to the topic now. We
look at through the lens of voice and identity. We like shorter sentence. They are
easier for readers to process. They generally only contain one idea. They can work
well with narrative and critical incidents. You might want to create a sense of sus-
pense. They have to be appropriate to the text you are producing. Don’t overdo it.
Your prose will come across as staccato. The last thing you want is for your reader
to hyperventilate. Don’t always chop what you want to say into a sequence of short
sentences. The text will be more difficult to process.
We’re sure you agree that this version is more difficult to process. Present-
ing the same information as a sequence of shorter sentences and removing
linking devices such as cohesive conjunctions increases the processing load
116 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

on the reader because relationships that are made explicit in the original are
implicit in the second. As a consequence, the reader has inferential work to
do to establish the relationship.
Reading aloud what you have written will help you get a sense of how your
text will come across to the reader. Hearing the text reveals overloaded
sentences, clumsy expressions, and lack of connectivity between sentences.
It can reveal which sentences are too long, but also sentence sequences
that are too short. The technique enables you to hear your voice in a literal
sense.
In much academic writing, complex concepts demand complex sentences.
Grammatical devices such as cohesion, subordinate clauses, and n ­ on-​­finite
constructions facilitate the process of making explicit the complex inter-
relations between entities, events, and s­tates-­​­­of-​­affairs in the text. To il-
lustrate this point, consider the following sentence, written by one of our
students. The student was asked to write a reflective piece based on a lan-
guage portrait she had produced as part of her course assessment. Here we
present the original sentence, our thoughts on the sentence, and our re-
written version.
Original sentence:
To begin with, I would like to admit from the start, that this assessment task was my
very first experience with employing human artefacts and their respective analysis
to extract meaning and shape an argument with regards to a topic.
Our concerns:
Although the writer states her position in relation to the writing assignment,
the sentence is unnecessarily wordy. Beginning the sentence with to begin
with … from the start is tautological. Removing the prepositional phrase and
initial clause allows the writer to begin the sentence with the real topic of
the ­paragraph -​­the assessment task. It does so, without removing her per-
sonal voice. Cutting the sentence in two makes it easier for the reader to
process. Experience is replaced by the more precise opportunity. The largely
puzzling phrase, employing human artifacts and the vague a topic are replaced
by language portraits which makes explicit the nature of the human artifact.
The result is much easier on the reader’s eye.
Our revised version:
This assessment task gave me a first opportunity to use language portraits as a data
collection tool. The data was subsequently analyzed as part of a ­small-​­scale inves-
tigation into language identity.
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 117

Privilege simpler words over harder ones

Leaving aside the complexities involved in deciding what makes one word
simple and another hard, we agree with this injunction – up to a point. While
we do our best to make our writing accessible, our main criterion is appro-
priateness rather than simplicity. We certainly don’t pick difficult words to
demonstrate our erudition or, to put it more simply, to show how clever we
are! Appropriateness can be judged according to a number of criteria. Pre-
cision of meaning is one of these. In our critical appraisal of injunction 1,
we gave an example of how we helped a student improve the readability of
her text by presenting the information in two sentences rather than one and
finding more precise vocabulary. Sometimes the distinction can be subtle:
use of opportunity to rather than experience with, for example. There’s nothing
wrong with experience with, but opportunity is more precise.
The ability to select the word or phrase that most precisely expresses your
meaning requires an extensive vocabulary. You can’t select a word if you
don’t know it exists. It also requires developing an ear for the rhythms and
music of language: the ways words and expressions cluster, collocate and
please the ear, the way sentences are woven together into paragraphs. Devel-
oping a rich vocabulary, as well as an ‘ear’ for language, demands extensive
reading. So, as we say, ‘easy’ words can add clarity and ease the task for the
reader, but precision is just as important.

Treat adverbs and adjectives with caution

This is another piece of advice we agree with – up to a point. In the final stages
of revising your writing, it’s a good idea to scan the manuscript for adverbs
and adjectives. This holds for everything intended for public consumption,
regardless of whether it’s an assignment with an audience of one, or a school
newsletter/magazine article intended for a larger audience. Carefully chosen
adverbs and adjectives can add a distinctive voice to your prose. Poorly chosen
ones will weaken its impact. You should minimize the use of so-called ‘flabby’
modifiers such as ‘nice’, ‘good’, ‘very’, and delete those that add little or noth-
ing to the meaning or impact of your message. (In an earlier draft of this chap-
ter, we had written ruthlessly expunge. We ruthlessly expunged the phrase and
replaced it with delete which, while it lacks the dramatic impact of the original,
is less cliched.) You should also pay particular attention to what are known as
weak ‘ly’ adverbs such as sweetly and angrily. These are often redundant, as in,
She smiled sweetly as the sleeping infant and The crowd shouted angrily at the referee.
Read the following texts aloud. Which sounds better? Why have we left the
adjective insipid in version 2?
118 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

Version 1
Adjectives and adverbs are very fundamental to the beautiful English lan-
guage. They can add extreme subtlety and great power to what you are trying
to say. Used inappropriately, they will honestly weaken your text and proba-
bly lead to insipid prose.
Version 2
Adjectives and adverbs are fundamental to the English language. They can
add subtlety and power to what you are trying to say. Used inappropriately,
they will weaken your text and lead to insipid prose.
We hope you agree that version 2 sounds better. All of the adverbs and ad-
jectives in version 1 are unnecessary – all except insipid which is fundamental
to meaning.

Making connections
Select a 300–500-word piece of your own writing. Make a copy of the
piece. Carry out the following tasks on the copy.

• Underline any words that seem vague or imprecise. Can you find alter-
native words or phrases that more precisely express your ideas?
• Are there any words, phrases, or even sentences that are redundant?
Delete them. (You should try to reduce the piece by 25–30%. If the word
count of the original is 500 words, you should aim to reduce it to 375 or
even 350 words.)
• Underline the adverbs and adjectives. Are any of these superfluous?
Delete them.
• Are there any sentences that contain more than one clause (have more
than one main verb)? Try rewriting them as two sentences, using cohe-
sive devices to maintain coherence.
• Now, and this is the hard part, revise the piece so it reflects your own
personal voice. Ask yourself, would a friend or family member recognize
the piece as having been written by me?
• Now compare the revised version with the original. Which do you pre-
fer? Ask a friend, or several friends to read both versions. Which do they
prefer? Are they able to identify the changes you made?
• Finally, and most importantly, reread your piece. As you do, consider
the following question, which we’ve adapted from Ivanič (1998):
­ What
aspects of your life have led you to write in the way you did? In other
words, how has (and does) your autobiographical identity shape your
writing and reveal your voice?
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 119

Questions from readers

Q: I was interested in what you had to say about modeling your writing on
good authors you admired. When I was in high school, our English teacher
groaned whenever a new Harry Potter book came out. “Now I’m going to
get 30 essays that are imitations of J.K. Rowling  – and not very good at
that”.
A: It’s interesting you should say that. Anne Lamott is a great fan of Isabel
Allende. She says that every time a new Allende book appears she’s happy
and unhappy. Happy because she’ll get to read the latest offering of an au-
thor whose work she loves. Unhappy because half her students will attempt
to write like Allende. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. What Lamott is
getting at is that you should always bear in mind when learning through im-
itation that you are ‘borrowing’ someone else’s voice. Ultimately, you must
return it if you’re to discover your own.
Q: Cat’s journey as a writer really resonated with me. I had the same expe-
rience. I ended up following the writing style of my teachers. But the style
wasn’t mine. I was bored, and my writing was boring. How can I kick off my
training wheels and find my own voice?
A: First, stop copying writers who bore you. In the chapter, we invited you
to identify several writers you admire and identify three to four principles in
their writing you would like to try out. Write a piece in the style of one of
these writers. Write about something that interests you that connects with
your own passions and experiences. Then try rewriting it in your own voice.
Write it as though you’re addressing the person you admire. When you’ve
finished, review each sentence in your piece, ask yourself, what move am I
making here? What effect do I want to have on the reader? To inform? To
convince? To summarize? How is my autobiographical self-reflected in the
sentence?

Summary

In this chapter, we have made a case for voice as an important element

in academic writing. After an introductory overview, the substantive part
of the chapter introduces a brief history of the challenge mounted by
qualitative researchers to the view that academic writing must be objec-
tive and that the author must remain anonymous. In the next section,
we present and discuss three vignettes. Our purpose here was twofold:
120 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

first, to show you ways in which accomplished authors reveal themselves

in their writing, and second, to illustrate the nexus between voice and
identity.
The most transparent way of making your presence felt is through stories
drawn from your own life. These stories can be related to an incident or in-
cidences that illustrate or dramatize a theme you want to develop, a problem
you hope to resolve, or a question you need to answer. You also reveal your-
self in the reactions, beliefs, and feelings you have toward the ideas, events,
or states-of-affairs that form the substance of your text. In writing ourselves
into our work, Canagarajah says:

[A]lthough we cannot speak outside discourses and institutions, we

should not conform to them wholesale. We have to negotiate a position
in the interstices of discourses and institutions to find our own niche
that represents our values and interests favorably. This is how we con-
struct a voice for ourselves.
(Canagarajah,
­ 2004, p. 268)
­

Central to the creation of voice are style, tone, and stance toward your
subject, various linguistic devices such a sentence length, choice of vocab-
ulary, and modifiers such as adjectives and adverbs as well as non-discoursal
devices such as choice of font, subheadings, diagrams, photographs, and
other realia.
Learning to write by apprenticing yourself to accomplished authors you
admire is another strategy you can use to improve as a writer, but there
are dangers. If you only shadow other writers, you will never develop your
own.
Despite the advances that have been made in arguing for alternative rules
such as transparency and subjectivity, risks remain in admitting the personal
into our writing. One may have one’s work tinkered with, manipulated, or
rejected outright. Not even Harry Wolcott, an eminent American anthro-
pologist and educator, could escape having his personal voice silenced by
editors who thought they knew better. He tells of his indignation when a
journal editor changed his text into impersonal third-person language with-
out his permission or even informing him of the changes. He only discovered
the alternations when the piece was published.
He goes on to state that:

Because the researcher’s role is ordinarily an integral part of reporting

qualitative work, I write my descriptive accounts in the first person. I
urge that others do (or in some cases be allowed to do) the same.  …
 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e 121

Recognizing the critical nature of the observer role and the influence
of his or her subjective assessments in qualitative work makes it all the
more important to have readers remain aware of that role, that presence.
Writing in the first person helps authors achieve that purpose.
(Wolcott,
­ 2009, p. 17)
­

The quote illustrates the fact that choice of pronouns isn’t a trivial matter
when it comes to representing the writer’s voice and positioning him/her in
terms of the research enterprise. Critics of those who promote personal voice
argue that it is self-indulgent, and that linguistic markers such as active voice
and personal pronouns are essentially trivial. Harry Wolcott thinks other-
wise, asserting that the “I” is anything but innocuous.

Further readings

Lamott, A. (1995). Bird by bird: Some instructions on writing and life. Doubleday.
This delightful book is a model of clarity. In it, not only does Lamott make the
difficult concept of voice accessible, but her own voice rings clear on every
page.
Nunan, D., & Choi, J. (Eds.). (2010). Language and culture: Reflective narratives and
the emergence of identity. Routledge.
Several of the contributors to this volume are cited in this and other chapters in
the book. We won’t identify particular authors here. All have distinctive voices
and any one of them could serve as models of excellence.

References

Bailey, K. B. (2010). Coat hangers, cowboys, and communication strategies: Seek-

ing an identity as a proficient foreign language learner. In D. Nunan & J. Choi
(Eds.),
­ Language and culture: Reflective narrative and the emergence of identity
(pp. 14–22).
­ ­­ ­ ​­ Routledge.
Bruner, J. (1987). Life as narrative. Social Research, 54(1),
­ 11–32.
­ ​­
Canagarajah, S. (2004). Multilingual writers and the struggle for voice in academic
discourse. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Negotiation of identities in mul-
tilingual contexts (pp. 266–289).
­ ­­ ­ ​­ Multilingual Matters.
Canagarajah, S. (2005). Rhetorizing reflexivity. Journal of Language, Identity and
­ 309–315.
Education, 4(4), ­ ​­ https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327701jlie0404_7
­ ­ ­
Choi, J. (2010). Living on the hyphen. In D. Nunan & J. Choi (Eds.), Language and
culture: Reflective narrative and the emergence of identity (pp. 66–73).
­ ­­ ­ ​­ Routledge.
122 To w a r d a c t i v e v o i c e

Denzin, N. (2014). Interpretive autoethnography. Sage.

Hemingway, E. (1929). A farewell to arms. Penguin.
Holliday, A. (2002). Doing and writing qualitative research (2nd ed.). Sage.
Holman Jones, S. (2010). Am I that name? In D. Nunan  & J. Choi (Eds.), Lan-
guage and culture: Reflective narrative and the emergence of identity (pp. 111–117).
­ ­­ ­ ​­
Routledge.
Ivanič, R. (1998). Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in aca-
demic writing. John Benjamins.
Lamott, A. (1995). Bird by bird: Some instructions on writing and life. Doubleday.
LeCompte, M.,  & Goetz, J. (1982). Problems of reliability and validity in edu-
cational research. Review of Educational Research, 52(2),
­ ­31–60.
​­ https://doi.
­
org/10.3102%2F00346543052001031
­
LeVan, M. (2007). Aesthetics of encounter: Variations on translation in Deleuze.
­ 51–66.
International Journal of Translation, 19(2), ­ ​­
Matsuda, P. K. (2001). Voice in Japanese written discourse: Implications for second
language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10(1–2),
­­ ​­ ­35–53.
​­ https://doi.
­
org/10.1016/S1060-3743(00)00036-9
­ ­­ ​­ ­ ­­ ​­
Matsuda, P.,  & Tardy, C. (2007). Voice in academic writing: The rhetorical con-
struction of author identity in blind manuscript review. English for Specific Pur-
poses, 26, 235–249.
­ ​­
Nelson, C. (2005). Crafting researcher subjectivity in ways that enact the-
ory. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 4(4),
­ ­315–320.
​­ https://doi.
­
org/10.1207/s15327701jlie0404_8
­ ­
Nunan, D., & Choi, J. (2011). Shifting sands: The evolving story of “voice” in qual-
itative research. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teach-
ing and learning (Vol.
­ 3, pp. 222–236).
­ ­ ​­ Routledge.
Richardson, L. (2001). Getting personal: Writing-stories. Qualitative Studies in Edu-
­ 33–38.
cation, 14(1), ­ ​­ https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390010007647
­ ­ ­
Stapleton, P. (2002). Critiquing voice as a viable pedagogical tool in L2 writing:
Returning the spotlight to ideas. Journal of Second Language Writing, 11(3),­
­117–190.
​­
Stewart, K. (2007). Ordinary affects. Duke University Press.
Tardy, C. (2016). Beyond convention: Genre in academic writing. University of Mich-
igan Press.
Wolcott, H. (2009). Writing up qualitative research (3rd ed.). Sage.
Zinsser, W. (2013). Writing to learn. HarperCollins.
 6
Using figurative language

In this chapter, we address the use of figurative language in academic writing.

This phrase refers to the use of language in which words and phrases carry a
meaning which differs from their literal or everyday meaning. They can be
unexpected and creative, or, overused. For some figurative expressions, the
meaning can be derived from their literal origins. In other instances, the re-
lationship between the figurative and the literal is (metaphorically speaking)
lost in time, and it takes an etymologist, a linguist who studies the origins of
words and the way their meanings have been transformed through time to
reveal the relationship.
Types of figurative language discussed in the chapter include similes, meta-
phors, idioms, colloquialisms, clichés, and slang. It isn’t always easy to assign
a phrase to a particular figurative ‘label’. Through extended use and overuse,
similes and metaphors, which begin life as fresh and creative, can become
idioms which can, in turn, become cliches. We focus on similes and meta-
phors more than the other figures of speech because they are more common
in academic writing. You’ll also find idioms and colloquialisms and occasion-
ally clichés and slang. In the hands of an experienced writer, these can give
a chatty, humorous, or ironic tone to the text. Our advice is to treat idioms
and colloquialisms with care and to avoid cliches and slang.

Literal and figurative meanings

There is considerable confusion over terminology in the literature. Some

writers argue that figurative language and figures of speech are synonymous that
both refer to the use of expressions whose meaning can’t be derived from the
literal or dictionary meaning of a word. Others argue that figurative language
is a broader category that includes not only figures of speech but also literary
concepts such as alliteration. We accept this distinction. However, for the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179092-7
124 Using figurative language

purposes of this chapter, we’ll continue to use them interchangeably as liter-

ary devices such as the ones referred to above are not relevant.
Figures of speech are important because they are ubiquitous, that is, they oc-
cur in all types of spoken and written language. In fact, they are so common
that native speakers are often unaware that they are using them. As children,
they encounter whimsical language in nursery rhymes and poems. In the
following rhyme, the prepositional phrase ‘over the moon’ is used literally,
and in children’s books the poem is accompanied by an illustration of a cow
jumping over the moon.

Hey Diddle Diddle!

The cat and the fiddle
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed to see such fun
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

As they get older, they experience the phrase figuratively as in the following
exchange:

How did Kim respond to the examiners’ reports on her thesis?

Oh, she was over the moon.

Hearing it used dozens of times in a range of contexts, highly advanced

users of the language develop an implicit understanding of the sense of the
term. For many second-language speakers however, the situation is very
different. Figurative language presents considerable challenges even to ad-
vanced users of a second language. In the statement, She was over the moon,
knowing the preposition ‘over’ and the noun ‘moon’ is of no help in work-
ing out the meaning of the idiom. In some situations, the context might
help (Harry was over the moon when Sally accepted his proposal of marriage
could only mean one thing.). However, helpful contexts are not always
available.
While it’s true that most native speakers have an acquired ‘common stock
of (usually implicit) knowledge’ when it comes to their home language,
all speakers are challenged when it comes to academic writing. That said,
the lack of implicit knowledge creates particular problems for speakers of
other languages. We’ll say no more on the subject at this point. Later in the
book, we discuss the observation that no one is a native speaker of academic
language.
 Using figurative language 125

Figures of speech deserve your attention because a well-chosen expression

can enliven your writing and give your reader a clearer sense of your voice.
(Can you identify the words in the preceding sentence that are used figu-
ratively?) You also need to be aware of those expressions that weaken your
prose or are inappropriate in academic writing.
As we said in the introduction, figurative language abounds in all forms of
spoken and written language. Academic writing is no exception. In state-
ments such as Data suggest that the economy will shrink in the second quarter, the
word suggest is being used figuratively. Data don’t suggest anything. Nor do
they imply, argue, or indicate because data don’t speak (or write)! The author
of the statement is ascribing a quality or characteristic of human beings to a
non-human entity. The technical term for this type of figurative language is
personification.
The literal meaning of a word or expression is the definition of the word that
is provided in a dictionary. If you look up the word suggest, the definition
will be something like the following: to advance an idea, usually about a course
of action as in, I’m not happy with the results we got in the latest experiment. I
suggest we replicate it. In the example we provided in the previous paragraph,

David’s students’ struggles with figurative language

Some years ago, I developed and taught a thesis writing course to a
group of doctoral students. The courses were compulsory and involved
students from a range of faculties. Regardless of whether they were first
or second-language speakers of English, the majority struggled when
it came to mastering academic English, although the nature of their
problems differed. Native speakers had few problems with figurative
language. The second-language speakers did. In advance of a session
on the topic, I asked students to bring expressions from their current
reading that they didn’t understand, and we would discuss them. In
one seminar, Zena, a second-language student of environmental studies
asked about red herring. “I came across a sentence in an article in which
the author wrote, Johnson’s observation on climate change is a red herring”,
she said.

I know what red means, of course, but not herring. From my dic-
tionary, I learned that it’s a kind of fish. A red fish? It didn’t make
any sense. I asked a first language colleague if she knew what it
126 Using figurative language

meant. She said it refers to a statement that is intended to mis-

lead the reader. Whoever wrote the article is arguing that John-
son’s observation on climate change is misleading. That’s all very
well, but it still doesn’t make any sense, so I asked her where
the expression came from  – what the connection was between a
red fish and misleading. She didn’t have a clue but knew what it
meant.

“That’s the problem with all kinds of figurative expressions”, I told

Zena.

There’s no relationship between the literal meaning of the words

and, in this case the metaphorical meaning. In medieval times,
prison escapees drew smelly, dead fish across their escape path to
mislead police bloodhounds into chasing in the wrong direction.
So that’s how the expression came to be generalised to any at-
tempt to mislead or deceive.

“I like the history lesson, but I don’t think I could ever use expressions
like this in my writing”, said my student.

Well, the good news is that when it comes to writing up your the-
sis, these expressions are best avoided. In this case, a red herring
is a colloquialism – we’ll discuss these another time. It probably
shouldn’t have been used in an academic article.

“But if we’re curious, what are we supposed to do?”

“Google it!” I replied. “There are plenty of free online dictionaries of
English idioms”.

suggest is used figuratively not literally. It is unlikely that this instance of

figurative language will pose problems for second-language students. Others
will.
In discussing the metaphorical use of suggest, we said that the literal, mean-
ing in spoken English is to advance an idea, usually about a course of action. In
the sentence, the word takes the form of a verb. However, like a great many
English content words, it can occupy other word classes. It can be a noun,
as in The suggestion that climate change is a myth is simply ridiculous, and as an
adjective: She was offended by his suggestive offer. Dictionaries usually present
these other literal meanings. Sometimes, if the figurative meaning is widely
used, it will also be included.
 Using figurative language 127

You can select any number of words that fill multiple roles. Here are just a
few that we came up with at random: blue, beat, stream, catch, hit. Blue has the
following literal meanings:

• adjective: (blue, bluer) Blue shirts are mandatory at our school.

• verb: (blue, blued) Moisture rising from the ground blued the atmosphere.
Figurative meanings for blue in some dictionaries include:
• I woke up feeling really blue this morning. (depressed)
­
• The money I received in my great-aunt’s will came out of the blue. (came ­
unexpectedly)
• I shouted at my kid to stop making a noise until I was blue in the face. (make an
effort to do something or change a situation with no success)
• I made a real blue this morning when I asked the boss for a raise. (mistake)
­

The meaning of blue in these statements is figurative because it is not possi-

ble to derive the sense in which the word is used from the literal meaning,
which is an item on the color spectrum.
Notice that in the first exercise above, the statement, I’ll catch you later, can
be taken literally (Later you will be captured by me.) or figuratively (I’ll meet up
with you later.). Many figures of speech can be taken literally as well as figu-
ratively. Second-language learners who are unfamiliar with figurative expres-
sions will have a natural inclination to interpret these literally. This can lead
to mutual confusion and misunderstanding, as in the following exchange.

NS: I’ll see you later.

NNS: What time?
NS: What do you mean?

Here the native speaker is using I’ll see you later figuratively, meaning Good-
bye. The non-native speaker, unaware that this is a common way of bidding
farewell, interprets it literally.

Making connections
In which of the following statements is catch used figuratively? Rewrite
the statements so that the meaning is expressed literally.

• He catches the ball.

• I’ll catch you later.
• It was a spectacular catch.
• She was considered a great catch.
128 Using figurative language

Consult a dictionary. Following the model, we provided above for the

word blue, list the different word classes these words can occupy: beat,
stream, hit.
Write a sentence to illustrate the literal use of the word as a noun, or
verb and/or adjective, depending on the word classes that you have
identified. (Don’t simply appropriate examples from a dictionary. Make
up your own.)
Now find at least one figurative meaning for the word and incorporate it
into a sentence. (In brackets, indicate the literal meaning of the word.)
For example: I have a chemistry quiz tomorrow, so I’m going to have to
hit the books tonight. (hit the books = study)
Come up with three words of your own and repeat the exercise.

A closer look at figures of speech

In this section, we will describe and illustrate the following figures of speech:
simile, metaphor, idiom, colloquialism, cliché, and slang. We don’t want you
to be too concerned about definitional differences, which can be subtle. Our
main concern is that you understand the degree of acceptability of different
figurative expressions in academic writing.

Simile

A simile is a device for comparing one thing with another that it does not
resemble, but which the author believes captures the essence or special fea-
ture of the entity or phenomenon in question. Not all statements involving
“as … as” constructions are similes. “The Bentley is as stately as a Queen” is
a simile. “The Bentley is as stately as a Rolls Royce”, is not. “Buenos Aires is
like a fading rose”, is a simile. “Buenos Aires is like Rome”, is not.
The simile is a popular device among creative writers, particularly poets of a
romantic persuasion. William Wordsworth begins his celebrated poem Daf-
fodils with the following lines:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er dales and hills.
 Using figurative language 129

They are also used to make a point in a humorous or dramatic way, as in, A
woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle is more striking than Women
have no need for men.
When similes that might have been notable when first coined are over-
used, they become cliches (as brave as a lion, as red as a rose, as fast as the
speed of light) or colloquialisms (As angry as a cut snake [Australian Eng-
lish]). We have more to say about cliches and colloquialisms later, where
we make the point that, when it comes to academic writing, they are best
avoided.

Similes in academic writing

Similes are frequently used in academic writing to make difficult or ab-

stract concepts, comprehensible. Here are some examples from a range of
disciplines.

• Both Mitchell and Laplace thought of light as consisting of particles, rather like
cannon balls, that can be slowed down by gravity and made to fall back on the star.
• Falling through the event horizon is a bit like going over Niagara Falls in a canoe.
• It is like burning an encyclopedia. Information is not lost if you keep all the smoke
and ashes, but it is difficult to read.
• The problem of what happens at the beginning of time is a bit like the question
of what happened at the edge of the world, when people thought the world
was flat.
• Energy is rather like money. If you have a positive bank balance, you can distribute
it in various ways.
(Jobs for Editors, 2018)

Metaphor

Metaphors can be categorized in different ways. In literary fiction, up to 15

different types have been identified. These include primary, complex, dead,
creative, extended, absolute, complex, implied, mixed, and root. The most
relevant of these for the purpose of our discussion is the primary metaphor.
These are closely related to similes. While similes make the comparison
between one object or action and another explicit, metaphors go further,
collapsing the object of interest and the comparison. The metaphorical
equivalent of the Bentley example above would be: The Bentley, is the stately
130 Using figurative language

Queen of cars. Here the Bentley is no longer as stately as a Queen, it is a

stately Queen. In addition to primary metaphors, we will look at person-
ification and grammatical metaphor, concepts of particular significance in
academic writing.

Metaphors in academic writing

Metaphors are common in academic writing. Personification is particularly

pervasive – so pervasive that when you research academic articles, you may
not be aware of them.
The aim of the following exercise is to draw your attention to personification
as well as other frequently used expressions in academic writing.
Here are our comments on use of metaphor in the statements:

1. ‘Leverage’ is a verb derived from the noun ‘lever ’. The literal meaning of
leverage is ‘to exert force by means of a lever’. In this statement, there are
two senses in which the term is used metaphorically. In the first place, it is
an instance of personification. (Translanguaging is a teaching method not a
person.) Second, it refers to a mental capacity/skill, not to a physical activity.
2. The literal meaning of ‘unpack’ is to open and remove the contents of a con-
tainer such as a suitcase or a storage box. Here it refers to the researchers’
work in analyzing and interpreting their data.

Making connections
Examine the following statements taken from several empirical studies.
What is the literal meaning of the underlined words? What is the rela-
tionship between the literal and metaphorical meaning?

1. Translanguaging in language education, therefore, recognizes and lev-

erages learners’ entire repertoire for learning.
2. We will now unpack the data presented in the previous section of our
report.
3. In my literature review, I surveyed the terrain covered by the previous
studies into the efficacy of the different vaccines current available.
4. This study employed a conceptual frame borrowed from a range of
theoretical models.
5. In our pilot study, we analyzed the data through the lens of the analyt-
ical procedure described in the methodology section of the paper.
Using figurative language 131

­
132 Using figurative language

the phrase are speeding up. (The example could be made even more chal-
lenging by substituting ‘accelerating’ for ‘speeding up’.) If the message in
version 5 is the same as version 1, what’s the point of creating a version
that is more difficult to process? Basically, version 5 expresses the message
in a more abstract and generalized fashion. The question of whether it is
‘better’ depends on the audience, as we discussed in Chapter 4. According
to Halliday, readers unfamiliar with the subject matter will find sentence
1 easier to process and therefore ‘better’. (For a detailed discussion of this,
and other types of grammatical metaphor, see Devrim, 2015. See also Hal-
liday & Martin, 1993; Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999; Martin, 1992.)

Making connections
Here are two versions of a statement. The first is from Martin (1992).
The second was written by us to make the statement easier to process.
What modifications did we make? Was it easier to process?
Version 1
The enlargement of Australia’s steel-making capacity, and of chemi-
cals, rubber, metal goods, and motor vehicles all owed something to
the demands of war.
Version 2
Wartime demanded that Australia’s steel makers enlarge their capacity
to produce chemicals, rubber, metal goods, and motor vehicles.

In version 1, the processes, to enlarge and to demand, are nominalized, that is

turned into things the enlargement and the demand. We turned them back into
processes and made the necessary adjustments to the rest of the statement.
This adjustment resulted in the grammatical metaphor the demand into an
instance of personification. It also means changing the theme of the state-
ment from enlargement to wartime. Of course, within the content, this change
of theme may make the original paragraph more difficult to process if the
rheme of the preceding sentence is enlargement.

Idioms, colloquialisms, cliches, and slang

In this section, we describe and provide examples of idioms, colloquial-

isms, clichés, and slang. Like similes and metaphors, these have a figurative
 Using figurative language 133

meaning which differs from their literal meaning of the individual words.
Similes and metaphors are widely used and acceptable in academic writing.
Idioms and colloquialisms vary in their degree of acceptability. Colloquial-
isms and slang are best avoided. Some are restricted to a particular speech
community or country, and many are ephemeral, lasting no more than a
generation or two. All four figures of speech are more common in speech
than writing.
Dictionary definitions of ‘idiom’ are not particularly helpful. For example:
“a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible
from those of individual words. (e.g., over the moon, see the light)”. This defi-
nition holds for all figures of speech. The major difference between idioms
and similes/metaphors is their widespread currency. Truly memorable similes
and metaphors are unique. A good example would be the Irish poet Oscar
Wilde’s depiction of the sky as a little tent of blue in his poem The Ballad of
Reading Gaol.

I never saw sad men who looked

With such a wistful eye
Upon the little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky
And at every happy cloud that passed
At such strange freedom by

Well-chosen similes and metaphors have a place in academic writing. When

it comes to idioms, however, you need to exercise caution. Some are accept-
able, some marginally so, and some are unacceptable. The degree of accepta-
bility will depend to a certain extent on the audience, purpose, and genre.
The idiom up in the air might be acceptable in a departmental memo (The ­
health and safety committee was up in the air over whether to ban smoking on
campus.) In an assignment, thesis, or formal report, it would not be. In any of
these genres we’d prefer undecided to up in the air. While the idiom might be
more nuanced, implying perhaps a degree of confusion on the part of com-
mittee members, undecided is unambiguous and perfectly adequate.
In a graduate seminar on figurative language, a group of our highly proficient
L2 students completed the exercise. The idioms they didn’t know were: pull
the wool over someone’s eyes, cross the bridge when you come to it, cut the mus-
tard, and back to the drawing board. Not surprisingly, they were unable to
adjudicate on the acceptability or otherwise of the idioms they didn’t know.
134 Using figurative language

Making connections
Which of the following idioms do you know?

• The research report’s conclusion was extremely vague. One reviewer

had to read between the lines to interpret the findings. Another accused
the author of sitting on the fence.
• According to Denny, psychometric research is not the only game in
town.
• Smith’s (2015) article into political conspiracy theories was an elaborate
attempt at pulling the wool over readers’ eyes.
• Many young researchers investigating child cognitive development look
up to Alice Gopnik’s ground-breaking
​­ work in the area.
• Although the research team cut corners in certain respects, they should
be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the conclusions they
reached.
• The journal editors wanted the best of both worlds.
• I don’t want to be a devil’s advocate but having your article rejected
could be a blessing in disguise.
• I know you can’t judge a book by its cover, but Arnold’s recent work
seems a far cry from his best.
• I doubt that your proposed topic will be acceptable to the research ad-
visory committee, but you can cross that bridge when you come to it.
• A piece of writing that is full of idiomatic expressions just won’t cut the
mustard. The student will certainly be told by her advisor to go back to
the drawing board!
• At the end of the day, the nature of the question should determine re-
search paradigm to be used.

How would you express the above ideas in non-idiomatic English?

Here are two examples:

• A piece of writing that is full of idiomatic expressions just won’t cut the
mustard. (meet the required standards)
• The student will certainly be told by her advisor to go back to the draw-
ing board! (start again from the beginning)

Which of the idioms would you consider to be acceptable in academic

writing? Which would be unacceptable?
 Using figurative language 135

This exercise was designed to demonstrate that idioms vary in their acceptability
in academic writing. Most students deemed these acceptable: reading between the
lines, sitting on the fence, ground breaking, benefit of the doubt, best of both worlds,
and not being hard and fast. It was generally agreed that these should never be
used: cutting the mustard, pulling the wool over someone’s eyes, straight from the horse’s
mouth, and jumping on the bandwagon. This doesn’t mean that colloquialisms will
never appear in formal writing or speech. In his inauguration as President of the
United States, Joe Biden promised the American public that he would “level
with you”. While this idiom would generally be considered unacceptable on
such a formal occasion, it packs a greater punch than the literal phrase “tell you
the truth”. It also shows an attempt by Biden to connect with his audience. We’ll
say a little more about degrees of acceptability later in the chapter.
Like the figures of speech we have already discussed, colloquialisms, clichés,
and slang express meanings that can’t be understood by the words that make
them up. With few exceptions, however, they have no place in academic
writing, but belong to everyday spoken language. Some are only used in cer-
tain speech communities. Others are generational, going out of fashion as
abruptly as they have come in.
The exercise above also shows that the distinction between the different
types of figurative language is not clear cut. Idioms such as cut the mustard,
which we have identified as being unacceptable in academic writing, could
also be classified as colloquial or even slang. Other expressions that could be
classified as either idioms or colloquialisms include hit the books (put in extra
study for an upcoming exam); hit the sack/hit the hay (go to bed); on the ball
(competent and alert); stirring the pot (causing trouble in a mischievous way).
(In our opinion, all of these examples are colloquialisms, even though some
can be found in published lists of idioms.)
Clichés are everyday expressions that that have lost their communicative
impact through overuse. Many began as similes and metaphors: for example,
as quiet as a mouse, as white as a ghost, and as blind as a bat, but have lost their
power over the years. Others entered everyday speech by way of literature.
Shakespeare is the source of numerous present-day clichés such as there’s
method in his madness and a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. They
weren’t clichés when Shakespeare coined them of course, but over the cen-
turies, they have been used thousands of times in speech and writing and
are among the best-known clichés in the English language. Use them in
everyday speech if you wish, but not in your writing. They certainly have no
place in academic writing where their use reveals either lack of thought or
ignorance on the part of the writer.
136 Using figurative language

For those who advise others on the art and craft of writing, clichés are to be
avoided at all costs. In his advice to would-be writers, Stephen King, one
of the most successful authors in the world, had this to say about figurative
writing.

The most common [potential pitfall of figurative writing] is the use of

clichés, similes, metaphors, and images. He ran like a madman, she was
pretty as a summer day, the guy was a hot ticket, Bob fought like a
tiger…don’t waste my time (or anyone’s) with such chestnuts. It makes
you look either lazy or ignorant. Neither description will do your reputa-
tion as a writer much good.
(King,
­ 2000, ­p. 209)

We agree with King on clichés but not about similes and metaphors, with
the caveat that they be well chosen. (King himself is not above using similes,
metaphors, idioms, and even clichés.)
Slang refers to expressions that are extremely informal. As with colloquial-
ism and clichés, they belong almost exclusively to spoken discourse and have
no place in academic writing. Many slang expressions are specific to one va-
riety or dialect of English but not to others. They also tend to last for a single
generation. Some terms survive from one generation to the next, although
their meaning can change. In the East End of London, the locals speak a va-
riety of English known as cockney. It’s an extremely colorful variety in which
figurative language features prominently.

David on speech community slang

In 2012, I published a memoir of growing up a tough, working-class,
minting township in the arid interior of Australia. The memoir took
the form of short stories of critical incidents that had marked my path
from infancy to young adulthood. In it, I tried to capture the colorful
nature of working-class Australian English. The manuscript was ac-
cepted by an American publisher. When it was being prepared for pub-
lication, the editor wrote to me with a list of colloquialisms and slang
expressions she found incomprehensible. “He was flat out, like a lizard
drinking”, she wrote, “What on earth does that mean?”
“It means that the person in question was extremely busy”, I replied.
“But that doesn’t make any sense”.
 Using figurative language 137

“It would if you ever saw a lizard drinking. It makes furious, short, sharp
motions of its head, and it scoops up water with its tongue”. Having to
explain these expressions, sucks all the life out or them, I though. It
was like having to explain the punch line of a joke.
In due course, the book appeared. When I received an advance copy, I
discovered a glossary of terms at the back of the book prefaced by the
following statement:
This glossary provides a ‘translation’ from Australian English to American
English of some of the words that may be unfamiliar to readers in North
America.
Here are a few of the glossed terms, to give you a flavor of Australian
slang.
arse-over-tit –
­ ­​­­ ­​­­ head-over-heels
­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
arvo –
­ afternoon
​­
bushie – a person who lives in the Outback (the ‘Bush’)
dipso – an alcoholic a dipsomaniac, i.e., a drunk
drongo – an idiot, person who doesn’t something foolish
dunny outhouse –
­ outdoor
​­ toilet
esky –
­ an
​­ ice chest
to wag – to skip school
­
(Nunan, ­ ­ ​­
2012, pp. 205–252)

Degrees of acceptability

As we have already indicated, there is no unanimity when it comes to the

acceptability of figurative language in academic writing. Attitudes change
over time and vary from one academic discipline to another. What is unac-
ceptable to one generation is perfectly acceptable to the next. In the course
of this book, we have provided examples of these changes, particularly the
growing acceptance of the author’s personal voice. Using personal pronouns
no longer brings retribution. Attitudes toward the use of figurative language
are also changing.
138 Using figurative language

The following statements have been taken from assignments submitted by

university students. Each contains a figure of speech that would be con-
sidered unacceptable by many academics, although there is no uniformity
of opinion on this. Opinion also varies on the degree of acceptability.
In a workshop on academic writing, a group of graduate students from
a range of disciplines was asked to rate the acceptability of the under-
lined phrases on a scale from 1 – completely acceptable to 5 – completely
unacceptable.

• I found this article to be over the top.

• We were able to delve deeply into our data.
• There was a bunch of theories in the papers we had to review.
• The teacher gave one group of students the third degree.
• Going forward, I want to investigate ways of getting my students up to speed
on their listening.
• To start out, I wasn’t really into working with young kids.
• Coming up with a research problem had me really bamboozled.
• The school had an English only policy. Use of the L1 was a complete no-no.
​­
• I thought the lesson I had developed for my teaching practice as cool, but
when I taught the class, it really backfired.
• The new online support opened a window of opportunity for those students
who were prepared to go the extra mile.
• My supervisor was very critical of my research question. He said that it just
didn’t cut it. I had no idea what he was talking about.

Participants in the workshop completed the task individually and then

worked in groups to compare their ratings and come to a consensus on the
degree of acceptability of each. Although there was consensus on several
items (‘a complete no-no’ was universally deemed a ‘no-no’!), there was
lack of agreement on items such as ‘delve deeply’, ‘going forward, and ‘a
window of opportunity’. Some participants found them acceptable. Others
did not.
Terry Denny, whom you met briefly earlier in the book, is one qualitative
researcher who has developed a distinctive voice by using idioms, colloquial-
isms, and even slang. Here’s an extract from an article he wrote in defense of
storytelling in academic writing. The extract describes his method of doing
fieldwork, which required him to travel around the country, spending his
days interviewing informants and his evenings recording his data on index
cards.
 Using figurative language 139

Making connections
As you read the piece below, underline the instances of figurative
language.

Terry Denny breaks the rules

Rosalie Wax [is] my ideological patron saint. … Successful fieldwork
involves a lot of crazy little things that I learned the hard way; such as
giving precise cleaning instructions to motel and boarding house ser-
vice people, and getting the motel manager’s permission to tape notes,
maps on the wall. I promise swift and permanent injury to anyone who
disturbs my bedspread’s 3 × 5 card matrix… [you need] antidotes for go-
ing native… hit the library early on site …go to the board of education
and check out the last three years of board minutes (they’ll think you’re
nuts) … visit at least three neighbourhood bars and get the bartenders’
view … begin a series of Dutch-treat luncheons  …get out of the ad-
ministrators office as soon as possible [and] set up shop in the open if at
all possible … give your informants a chance to check you out…. It’s
when I’m jiving, lying and exaggerating that the fieldwork gets hard …
The next topic is a bag full of tricks – the act of interviewing … most
books on interviewing techniques are devoted to fact finding, number
crunching … Therein lies the rub … interviewing is the fatal flaw of
many a field study …. Myopia runs a close second. (Denny, 1978/2015,
pp. 48–52)
­ ­ ​­

Denny’s piece is crammed with all manner of figurative expressions: meta-

phors (Rosalie Wax is my ideological patron saint), colloquialisms (going
­ native,
crazy little things, runs a close second), clichés (set
­ up shop, ­number-crunching,
​­
fatal flaw, therein lies the rub – the last item being a Shakespearean creation),
and slang (they’ll think you’re nuts, hit the library, jiving). He flouts a core
principle of this chapter to avoid colloquialisms or at least to treat them
with caution. He does so, not only because it’s become a feature of his own
personal voice but also because it fits the audience, purpose, and context of
the article.
Denny’s chapter was originally delivered as a conference presentation. The
breezy, informal style was appropriate given the context. Adopting the voice
of a storyteller was also appropriate to the topic of the talk. This is not to
say that the paper was insubstantial. On the contrary, it deals with the con-
ceptually challenging issues, defining and teasing out the interrelationships
140 Using figurative language

between ethnology, ethnography, case study, and storytelling and “addressing

issues of validity; of theory contribution, of completeness, of generality, of
replicability” in academic writing. He gets away with it because he’s a master
storyteller and illustrates the truism that if you want to break the rules, you
must master them first. Denny was acutely aware of the tone he wanted to
strike – and strike it well he does.
This is in contrast with the students who produced the sentences we shared
with you earlier. Most were unaware that some were unacceptable, or margin-
ally acceptable at best, otherwise, they wouldn’t have used them. All but one
was first-language speakers of English. Second-language speakers rarely use
colloquialisms or slang. They’re either unaware of their existence, or don’t
know what they mean. ‘Cut it’, the last item on the above list underscores
this point. It was deemed acceptable because it was used by her supervisor
when giving oral feedback on a draft of her research proposal.
To summarize: use figurative language, and idioms – it’s difficult not to – but
be aware of how, when, and why you are doing so. In this book, we deliber-
ately adopted a relatively informal style, evident in our use of contractions
and idioms (e.g. gets away with it, in the paragraph above). We did so because
the book introduces complex and unfamiliar concepts and we wanted it to
be as accessible (reader
­ friendly) as possible. In discussing the Biden example,
it was no accident that we used packed a greater punch rather than the literal
had more impact. However, our advice to you remains avoid colloquialisms
and clichés and do not use slang.

Questions from readers

Q: I’m still not sure about the difference between similes, metaphors, and id-
ioms. Could you elaborate a little more about the distinction between these
figures of speech?
A: As we said earlier in the chapter, there is overlap between the figures of
speech we discuss. All are made up of words that have a literal meaning.
However, the figurative meaning can’t always be determined directly from its
literal meaning (although this is sometimes possible from the context). The
idiom he’s on the ball, which originated in the 18th century, had its origin in
sports involving a ball. These days, the idiom refers to someone who has ini-
tiative and competence and gets things done without being directed to do so.
Idioms are widely used within a given speech community and are generally
more common in spoken rather than written language. This is not always
the case with similes and metaphors. When Wordsworth likens himself to
 Using figurative language 141

a cloud (I wandered lonely as a cloud, that floats on high o’er vales and hills …)
the personification creates a powerful image. However, the expression never
became idiomatic. Nor did Wilde’s metaphorical depiction of the sky as a
‘tent of blue’. Many of Shakespeare’s figures of speech did. The example we
cited earlier: a rose by any other name would smell as sweet is so widely used it’s
now considered a cliché; so common, in fact, that it often goes unfinished:

What are you going to call that fabulous pasta sauce you created last night?
Doesn’t matter. A rose by any other name … (shrug of the shoulders.)

Q: As a second-language speaker, I’m frequently confused by figures of

speech. Some I can figure out, both most I can’t. I’m not sure about using
them in my own writing.
A: If you have any doubts about a particular expression, you can ask your
interlocutors whether the expression you are thinking of makes sense or if
there is a better or more accurate expression in English. Our past students,
who have knowledges of many different languages, sometimes try out figura-
tive language from languages they are more familiar with and ask us if there
is an equivalent in English. We often get into rich discussions comparing
the different characterizations of things. Of course, this kind of negotiation
is not always possible in written work, but you can always try translating
and looking up words online to see whether there are similar expressions.
Longman Publishing and Oxford University Press both publish dictionaries
of idioms. There are also online glossaries of idioms.

Summary

Initially, we had planned to cover the topic of figurative language in

Chapter 1, where we introduced you what we consider the basics of what
every writer of academic English should know about language. However, as
we started drafting the chapter, we realized that the topic was so rich, and
the use of figurative language is so pervasive that it demanded a chapter of its
own. (Just look at the two instances of figurative language in the preceding
sentence!) As a writer it’s useful to know the differences between different
types of figurative language even though particular expressions can migrate
from one type to another. What does matter is to be aware of which expres-
sions are acceptable in academic language, which are marginal, and which
are unacceptable. Similes and metaphors that illustrate a concept or asser-
tion can add life to your prose. If you have a doubt, leave it out, or get a sec-
ond opinion. As we demonstrated in the chapter, idioms occupy a figurative
142 Using figurative language

middle ground. We also said that times change, acceptability is not immuta-
ble. Expressions that are unacceptable to one generation become acceptable
to the next. Audience and purpose are also important as the Biden speech,
and the Denny extract demonstrate.
Figures of speech, particularly idioms and colloquialisms, are often signs of
confusion or lack of thought on the part of the writer. Before submitting
a piece of work, you should scan it for figures of speech. Get rid of clichés
and slang. In relation to other colloquialisms and idiomatic expressions, ask
yourself whether these reflect confusion or uncertainty about what you really
want to say. If so, rephrase them. This is not always an easy process, but it’s
worth the effort. As we have intimated throughout this book, writing is hard
work and, in Clive James’ words, writing clearly is the hardest thing of all.

Further reading

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. The University of Chicago
Press.
This book has been around for many years, and for good reason. It’s a classic. If
you can get hold of a copy, at the very least, read the opening chapter.

References

Denny, T. (1978/2015). Story-telling and educational understanding. Case Study

Evaluation: Past, Present and Future Challenges, 15, ­41–61.
​­
Devrim, D. Y. (2015). Grammatical metaphor: What do we mean? What ex-
actly are we researching? Functional Linguist, 2(3),
­ ­1–15.
​­ https://doi.
­
org/10.1186/s40554-015-0016-7
­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). Introduction to functional grammar. Edward Arnold. Hal-
liday, M. A. K., & Martin, J. R. (1993). Writing science: Literacy and discursive
power. The Falmer Press.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (1999). Construing experience through
meaning: A language-based approach to cognition. Cassell.
Jobs for Editors. (2018, November 12). Similes in writing. https://web.archive.org/
­ ­
web/20220723044330/https://jobsforeditors.com/blog/similes-in-writing.html
­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­
King, S. (2000). On Writing: A memoir of the craft. Hodder & Stoughton.
Martin, J. (1992). English text: System and structure. John Benjamins.
Nunan, D. (2012). When Rupert Murdoch came to tea: A memoir. Wayzgoose Press.
 7
Seeking and providing meaningful
feedback

Getting meaningful feedback is an essential step in improving a piece of

writing. As the author, you will be too close to your writing regardless of
whether it’s an assignment, a piece for a student newsletter, or an article for
a refereed journal. One way we gain distance is to put it aside for a while –
a few days, weeks, or even a few months. We do this when we finish the
first draft of a book and again as we complete successive drafts of individual
chapters. Of course, you won’t have the luxury of abandoning your piece for
weeks or months. However, when working on an assignment, you should
plan to finish the draft leaving enough time to put it aside for a few days at
the very least. If you’re adept at time management, you’ll leave enough time
to get feedback from a ‘critical’ friend.
In this chapter, we discuss some of the practicalities of seeking feedback
on our own work and providing meaningful feedback to others. Questions
addressed in the chapter include: What is feedback? Who should provide
feedback? How should it be provided? At what point in the drafting process
should it be provided?

What is meaningful feedback?

We frame this section by looking at feedback in educational contexts in

general and in academic writing in particular. Let’s begin by considering it
in everyday life where it’s ubiquitous. When we’re in contact with other
people, we constantly monitor and evaluate the signals they send and adjust
our behavior accordingly. Much of the feedback is non-verbal, subconscious
on their part, and barely conscious on ours. How do we interpret the raised
eyebrows on the face of a colleague as we enter a meeting? Did we slap on
too much makeup in a rush to make the meeting on time? Why does our
supervisor purse her lips and pluck at her chin as we present to our seminar

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179092-8
144 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback

group the conclusions we draw from a literature review? Does it signal dis-
agreement or dissatisfaction? At a more conscious level, think of the many
contexts in which the word ‘feedback’ is used:

• Can you adjust your microphone? We’re getting too much feedback out here.
• I think we’re on the right track – the feedback from the focus group was extremely
positive.
• Can you take notes while I rehearse my talk and give me feedback on how I can
improve the presentation?
• My boss gave me several pages of feedback on the draft report, so now I have to
redo it from scratch.

Despite the range of contexts, whether the feedback was verbal or non-
verbal, formal or informal, spoken or written, they have a similar pat-
tern: action > reaction > response. Let’s now look at how this pattern
also plays out in educational contexts. We begin with some examples of
feedback.

1. You applied the wrong statistical procedure to your data.

2. Overall, I really liked the design of your study. Unfortunately, you applied the
wrong statistical procedure to your data.
3. Overall, I really liked the design of your study. Unfortunately, you applied
the wrong statistical procedure to your data. The good news is that you still have
the raw data, so you can rerun the analysis.
4. Overall, I really liked the design of your study. Unfortunately, you applied the
wrong statistical procedure to your data. The good news is that you can rerun
your data. You need ANOVA – analysis of variance – not a whole bunch of t-tests.

While these are concocted examples, they’re representative of the kinds of

feedback that we’ve observed in different settings from classroom observa-
tions to teacher education workshops and student consultations. The first
exemplifies negative feedback. The advisor bluntly informs the student
that there is a basic flaw in his research design. The burden of the second
statement is also to deliver bad news, but the advisor mitigates the news
by providing some positive feedback. In the third example, the bad news is
sandwiched between two pieces of good news. Hyland and Hyland (2001)
refer to this as ‘sugaring the pill’. They point out that, while this could min-
imize the negative effect of the bad news, the student might miss the real
intent of the feedback, which is to deliver bad news. Example 4 demonstrates
the good news, bad news, good news pattern, but also suggests a solution. So,
the aim of all four pieces of feedback is to deliver bad news, but two mitigate
 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback 145

the bad news by giving the student something positive to take away from
the consultation. Example 4 goes one step further by offering the student a
solution.
The standard definition of feedback is to provide information on the per-
formance of a product (In general, your sentences are far too long, and over-
burdened with information which makes them difficult to process.), a procedure
(The ideas in your report are all over the place.), or an individual or group of
individuals (The choir was off-key on the high notes.). This definition is fine as
far as it goes, but for our purposes, it doesn’t go far enough. It’s problematic
for two reasons. In the first place, it fails to distinguish between formative
and summative feedback. Summative feedback is provided at the end of the
instructional process when there are no second chances. The judgment is fi-
nal. The aim of formative feedback is to provide recipients with information
or advice to help them improve the product or process. They get a second
chance. In this chapter, we focus on formative feedback, that is, on advice
or suggestions from teachers, peers, and others intended to help you improve
your writing. The statements would have been improved with the addition of
a suggestion on improving the product or process, for example:

• In general, your sentences are far too long and overburdened with information
which makes them difficult to process. When you revise the essay, try cutting these
longer sentences into two or even three shorter ones.
• The ideas in your report are all over the place. It’s fine as a first draft, when you’re
developing your ideas, but next time use it to sketch out an overall plan to guide
you as you produce a final draft.
• The chorus was off-key on the high notes. In future, the conductor should rehearse
those sections separately.

Another problem with the ‘standard definition’ of feedback is that it isolates

the product, the process, and the person. This might be justified if the focus
is a piece of electrical hardware, or an aspiring Olympic gymnast, but not if
the focus is a piece of academic writing where all three are in play.
Like motherhood, positive feedback is a ‘good thing’! It motivates us to con-
tinue. According to the beautician Mary Kay Ashworth, we value recognition
and praise even more than money and sex! Well, that’s her opinion. As with
negative feedback, it can be helpful to the writer if the statement indicates
why the writing is good. Negative feedback can be dispiriting and therefore
demotivating. Effective feedback will contain positive comments as well as
indicating areas for improvement. As already noted, the best feedback also
146 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback

suggests a solution, or where a solution might be found. Least useful are neg-
ative comments that are vague and imprecise. You’ve probably had a piece
of writing returned with comments such as: I didn’t really get the argument you
were trying to make. Your points need to be better organized. This essay is very
vague. You could do better. You need to put more effort into your writing. If you
receive comments such as these, which provide no indication of the nature
of the problem, or negative feedback with no suggestions on how the piece
might be improved, you have every right to schedule a meeting with your
assessor and ask for further clarification.
The question framing this section contains the adjective ‘meaningful’. You
might think the word is redundant. It should be. While it might be meaning-
ful to the person giving the feedback, this is hardly the point. If it is vague,
fails to pinpoint the aspect(s) of writing needing improvement, and/or
doesn’t include how perceived problems might be addressed, then it will not
be meaningful to the author. For all writers, meaningful feedback will deal
with substantive issues, such as the content, strengths or weaknesses in ar-
gumentation, and so on. But it will also focus on the linguistic issues dealt
with in earlier chapters. (This should come as no surprise, given the subtitle
of this book.)
Sean Wang, one of Julie’s current master’s level students studying to become
a teacher, shares his views on feedback.

Sean’s voice on feedback

When I entered my bachelor’s degree at a university in Australia, I
realized teachers normally will not tell us what they want to see in
our assignments. They release some basic requirements and criteria and
let us think individually. Most teachers in the undergraduate programs
will not let students share their ‘essay plans’ with them. They may lis-
ten to my basic ideas of argument or thesis statement but many times,
the feedback I received from them was “this statement is interesting,
your argument is good, the topic is heated, I think you have a clear
idea, just keep going”. But after I received my grade, I always felt unsat-
isfied. The feedback I received was only a few words, usually a kind of
“summary statement” on my assignment. During the three years of my
undergraduate study, I just got tired of such “useless” feedback. Before
the assignment, they make everything seem like it all looks perfect.
However, after I receive the feedback, I feel like everything needs to
change. It seems to me, the problem is, the feedback is never clear
 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback 147

enough. I have no idea where the specific problem is and how I can
improve next time. I understand each teacher has many assignments to
mark and it is impossible for them to give detailed feedback. However,
from a student’s perspective, it just looks like they are lazy and shirking
their responsibilities.
When I received Julie’s feedback on my essay, I was shocked. The feed-
back was detailed, clear, and simple to understand. She put a lot of
annotations on my paper to let me know where the mistakes were (e.g.,
grammar, spelling, wrong typing, and unclear ideas). At the end of the
feedback, she gave me a long paragraph to summarize. As a student in
Education who is studying to become a teacher, I think this type of
feedback is what I really need.

Another of Julie’s students Francesca Lo Presti reflects on an experience of

receiving meaningful feedback and the impact this had on her to reflect on
what she had written. It is also possible to see how meaningful feedback
isn’t just related to the content or how to improve the work but can have an
affective impact, making students feel valued, inspired about the profession
they are writing about, and these feelings in turn motivate them to take their
studies and writing more seriously.

Francesca’s voice on feedback

In my experience as a university student, I have received much feed-
back on my assignments. Most of them did not have any particular
impact as they would only point out the problem without effectively
helping me understand how I could have done better. I did not receive
feedback for other assignments, which made me feel like I was not even
worth an explanation. After all, I am the student, just a number among
other numbers. There is no time for me, nor anyone else.
Then, one day, I received feedback for one of my assessments, and to
my surprise, this was different. In reading it, it was like my tutor was
speaking to me. A few simple but powerful words made me feel valued
not only as a student but also as a person. I sat back and reflected for a
while. I reread it more than once, and I thought that this time, my tu-
tor had spent some time writing to ME, FOR me, and about MY work.
That is when I thought: WOW! She has read my paper and has given
up her time FOR me to write what she thought about it, in a way that
made me stop and reflect on what I had written myself.
148 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback

This experience was highly impactful for two reasons. First, from mean-
ingful feedback came meaningful reflection of my work and organiza-
tion of thoughts. I was forced to stop and think about what I had written
and appreciate it from another point of view. Second, this feedback was
pouring passion and appreciation for the teaching profession. I could
feel how much dedication and attention my teacher put into her job,
and this awareness impacted my motivation as a student.

Responding to feedback

There are various ways of responding to feedback depending on the nature of

the piece of writing and the purpose of the feedback. If you receive summa-
tive feedback from an unknown assessor, for example, an examiner’s report
on your master’s thesis or a capstone project, you obviously won’t be able to
respond directly. You may complain to your supervisor or advisor that the ex-
aminer has ‘misunderstood me’, which may be your fault because as a writer,
the onus is on you to present your case as clearly and coherently as possible
to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding. You shouldn’t dismiss such
unidirectional feedback out of hand. While you can’t contest the comments
with the author, you can learn from them. External examiners are generally
highly experienced. They put considerable time and effort into their work
and their comments shouldn’t be taken lightly. Once you’ve recovered from
the disappointment of receiving a negative evaluation or a lower grade than
you’d hoped for, take time to reflect on the comments and consider how you
can use at least some of them to improve your writing.
Numerous studies have looked at how students respond to teacher feedback.
There is no space here to provide a detailed overview of this research. What
we’d like to do is return to a piece of research that featured in Chapter 4. In
that chapter, we provided the backstory to a study carried out by Kailin Liu.
The study was written up and co-published by Kailin and her supervisor,
Neomi Storch. Here, we provide a summary of the study because the context
and focus are directly relevant to this chapter. Two research questions were
investigated by the researchers:

• How do L2 learners respond to teacher written feedback given on different

aspects of their writing?
• What individual and contextual factors influence L2 learners’ engagement
with teacher-written feedback? (Liu & Storch, 2021)
 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback 149

The context for the research was an advanced academic writing course for
L2 graduate students at a large Australian university. The focus was student
responses to written feedback on the first draft of one of their assignments. The
data included student drafts, teacher-written feedback, and transcripts of semi-
structured interviews in which students reported their perceptions and feelings
about the feedback and described the changes they made to the draft in light of
the feedback. Four main dimensions which aligned with the assessment criteria
emerged from the data: Language (written corrective feedback (WCF)), Ideas
(development and clarity), Structure (cohesion and coherence), and Citation
conventions. Feedback points were designated as either direct or indirect. (We
describe and give examples of these feedback later in the chapter.)
Most of the teacher’s feedback points focused on WCF in the form of direct
reformulations and indirect suggestions. Incorporation of the feedback into
students’ revised draft was very high (97%). This was the case even when the
feedback was not totally understood or agreed with by the students. Evidence
from the interviews suggested that this was because the teacher was the one
who would be grading the final draft of the assignment. Despite this, the
researchers noted that there were “signs of resistance and an emerging sense
of agency, particularly when responding to ideas and structure compared to
WCF” (p. 18). Reasons students reported resisting suggestions included feel-
ing that the original was clear enough, and that the suggested change did
not reflect the students’ intended meaning. Some students wanted direct
feedback because they were able simply to copy the reformulated sentences.
Others preferred indirect feedback because it stimulated them to process the
feedback more deeply and to come up with their own correction or solution
to the error. This is not to say their solution was the correct one, particularly
when it came to ideas and structures which are more abstract and there may
be more than one solution, in contrast with language (i.e., grammatical and
lexical errors). Liu and Storch argue that if there is follow-up discussion with
the teacher and/or peers of the problem indicated in the feedback a possible
solution to it, this can be a valuable learning opportunity.
Seeking critical feedback from others can also be important. ‘Critical’ is the
operative word. Relative and close friends are notoriously unreliable and are
to be avoided. Having a teacher provide comments on a draft would obvi-
ously be helpful as she will be marking the assignment. However, don’t be
disappointed of your invitation to preview your piece is politely but firmly
rejected. If the teacher accepts your invitation, she will be under a moral ob-
ligation to provide formative feedback to the other students in the class. Peer
feedback, in which you exchange drafts with a fellow student and give each
other comments, can also be helpful for improving the clarity of your work.
In the next section, we’ll provide more details on this procedure.
150 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback

Making connections
Think of a recent situation in which you received feedback.

• What was the context?

• Was it formal or informal, formative or summative?
• Who provided the feedback?
• Was it oral or written?
• Was it to the group or to individuals?
• Was the feedback positive, negative, or both?
• How did you react?
• Did you find it helpful or unhelpful, motivating or demotivating?
• What, if anything did you do as a result of the feedback?

Peer feedback

In our own teaching, we have used a peer feedback procedure successfully.

In the procedure, students form pairs, exchange draft assignments, and give
each other feedback. From the teacher’s point of view, the procedure can be a
time-saving way of students getting feedback on early drafts of their work and
improving the quality of their written work. For it to be successful, a number
of caveats are in order. Participation must be optional. Choice of partner by
those students who volunteer to take part must be by mutual consent. Feed-
back and discussion should focus on those parts of the text that are unclear to
the reader. Critiquing the content, and negative comments are to be avoided,
although it’s acceptable to point out errors of spelling and punctuation. These
caveats were negotiated and agreed to over time by students themselves as
we experimented with the procedure. The Liu and Storch (2021) study deals,
among other issues, with peers as a potential source of feedback.

David’s experience with peer feedback in his classroom

Some years ago, I introduced peer feedback in my undergraduate ac-
ademic writing classes at the University of Hong Kong. Students ini-
tially resisted this form of feedback. When I discussed their reluctance,
several issues emerged. Students didn’t feel that their peers would have
the knowledge to give informed feedback. They didn’t want to be put
in the position of receiving negative feedback or giving it themselves.
They wanted feedback directly from me.
 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback 151

I pointed out that peer feedback was one of the techniques I used to
encourage a more reflective and independent attitude to learning on
their part. It wasn’t my intention that they should criticize each other
or make judgments, but that they could get feedback on parts of their
piece where the ideas were unclear or could be elaborated. I pointed
out that this review process was not a waste of time, but an impor-
tant part of the learning process and of becoming a better writer. I also
stressed the fact that I would certainly be providing detailed feedback
on the final draft of their assignment, but that, given the number of
students in my classes, it wasn’t feasible to provide detailed formative
feedback on initial drafts. I then worked collaboratively with the stu-
dents to develop a peer feedback procedure in the form of a set of non-
judgmental questions to guide the review process. Once the procedure
was implemented, students came to accept its value.

Corrective feedback

In addition to documenting graduate students’ reactions to written feedback,

Liu and Storch (2021) investigated the contextual factors that led to great
engagement by their informants with the feedback. Engagement is impor-
tant. If students are disengaged, it’s unlikely that they will benefit from the
feedback. The literature on corrective feedback indicated that contextual
factors might include:

Liu and Storch found direct versus indirect feedback to be a primary distinction
in the feedback provided by the teacher (Storch) in their study. In direct feed-
back, the teacher reformulates the students’ error. In some cases, the reformu-
lation was accompanied by an explanation, and in others it was not. In indirect
feedback, the teacher indicates the existence of a problem but leaves it to the
learner to figure out what it is. (We prefer the word ‘problem’ to ‘error’, because
occasionally, the issue is not an ‘error’, but something problematic such as an
inappropriate choice of vocabulary. In the Liu and Storch study the indirect
152 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback

feedback was made as a suggestion. Again, in some cases the suggestion was
accompanied by an explanation, and in others was not. According to their
learning styles, students varied in their preference for direct or indirect feed-
back and whether they wanted an explanation for the teacher’s intervention.
In the case of indirect feedback, the teacher can draw attention to the exist-
ence of an error or a problem and then give a suggestion as to the nature of
the problem in the form of an ‘error guide sheet’:
For example:
­sp – spelling
​­
­mc – ​­no main clause
­pl – ​­plural
­ic – incomplete
​­ sentence
­ap – apostrophe
​­
­ca – ​­comparative adjectives
­t – tense
​­
­th – thematization
​­
­co – cohesion
​­
­ch – ​­coherence
­vc – vocabulary
​­ choice
Student’s sentence: The focus of the interview was international students
from China who had experience living in two different geographic.
Direct reformulation: The focus of the interview was international students
from China who had experience living in two different geographic regions.
Reformulation plus explanation: “Geographic is an adjective. Its purpose is to
describe a quality or attribute of a noun. In your sentence, there is no noun”.
(This explanation is wordy. It’s unrealistic to expect teachers to reply at such
length. Also, the writer may be unfamiliar with the distinction between at-
tributive and predicative adjectives. More succinct would be “Incomplete
sentence. The adjective (geographic) needs to be followed by a noun”.)
Indirect: The focus of the interview was international students from China
who had experience living in two different geographic.
Indirect suggestion: The focus of the interview was international students
from China who had experience living in two different geographic. (ic)
­
 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback 153

Some researchers argue that indirect feedback is more effective than direct
feedback because it requires a greater depth of cognitive processing than
when the students is simply given the correct form. In other words, the stu-
dent has to think harder. In the Liu and Storch study, some learners prefer
direct feedback, while others prefer indirect feedback.

Making connections

• If you are currently studying, which strategies do your teachers use

when giving feedback on your writing?
• What kinds of errors do they correct?
• Do you prefer direct or indirect feedback?
• Do you like having explanations of problems of grammar or would you
rather figure out the nature of the problem yourself?
• Do different teachers prefer to give written feedback, oral feedback, or
a combination?
• What could you ask more for?

Here is what Kailin Liu had to say about direct versus indirect feedback.
These comments were made in relation to her classes of secondary school
students, not the graduate students who provided the data for her study with
Neomy Storch.

Kailin’s voice on direct versus indirect feedback

Students tend to react more (and sometimes only) to direct feedback
that gives them the answer and tells them what needs to be fixed in a
succinct manner. Yet, whether and to what degree students understand
the feedback and learn the knowledge involved is often unknown. In
many situations, students do not seem to be asking the ‘why’ of the
feedback or to acquire a new understanding or skill, as they just simply
revise the teacher-highlighted parts strictly as instructed without ex-
amining their writing as a whole. They may also not be able to articu-
late why changes need to be made in a certain way.
As for indirect feedback that are often posed as questions for students
to think about their development of ideas in writing, many seem to
have little engagement with it on their own and they do not really
understand its meaning or what to do with it. This is often observed
through the follow-up individual writing conference, where students
154 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback

seem to be reading and thinking about this feedback for the first time
and then often relying on the teacher to give them the solution to their
development of ideas in writing.
For a comprehensive review of corrective feedback, see Ellis (2010).

­
 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback 155

Making connections
Here are four examples of MS Word corrections, one of which we ac-
cepted and one we rejected. Which would you reject, and which would
you accept? Why?
Example 1
We wrote: There are two things people want more than sex and money …
MS Word suggested: There are two things’ people want more than sex and
money …
Example 2
We wrote: Let’s take a look at these four examples…
MS Word suggested: Let’s look at these four examples…
Example 3
We wrote: What she didn’t know was that the assignment had been dou-
ble marked, and that the second teacher had actually argued for a lower
grade.
MS Word suggested: What she didn’t know was that the assignment had
been double marked, and that the second teacher argued for a lower grade.
Example 4
In an article on research methods, David cited the following sentence
from Donald Freeman (2018, p. 25): The meaning is the substance; it is
what you have to work with, what travels from the situation itself in time and
space to other settings.
MS Word suggested: The meaning is the substance; it is what you must
work with, what travels from the situation itself in time and space to other
settings.

point we are making and strengthens the original teacher’s assessment that
the essay was inadequate. If the sentence had been spoken, the stress would
fall on ‘actually’. Use of past perfect rather than simple past also strengthens
the argument being made, highlighting the relevance of a prior event (a sec-
ond teacher’s assessment) to a more recent past event (the objection of the
student to her grade). Example 4 is another example of a suggested amend-
ment that is perfectly grammatically correct and makes sense. The difference
156 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback

between ‘have to’ and ‘must’ is in the strength of the suggestion. By chang-
ing ‘have to’ to ‘must’, MS Word is suggesting that Freeman is telling the
reader that it is imperative that your work with meaning. However, there is
another interpretation, Freeman might be telling the reader that meaning
is the only resource available. Under this interpretation, ‘to’ belongs to the
prepositional phrase ‘to work with’, not to ‘have’. Given the broader context
of the text from which the sentence is taken, it is clear that this is the inter-
pretation Freeman intended.
Accepting corrective feedback from a machine presents challenges for both
first and second-language writers. While the challenges are more acute for
L2 writers, their first-language counterparts are not above reproach, as Lynne
Truss reminds us in relation to the apostrophe. If L1 writers randomly insert
an apostrophe when it signals plurality rather than possession, they are more
than likely to accept MS Word’s correction (Truss, 2005).
In recent years, online software packages for improving written texts have
become popular. One such tool is Grammarly, which is more sophisticated
than MS Word, being able to do all that Word can do, and more. For exam-
ple, it can provide explanations for corrections and so can function as an in-
structional tool. The package claims to be free, but this is a marketing ‘hook’,
as the free feedback it provides is limited. If you want more detailed feed-
back, you have to pay for it. In addition to ‘correctness’, it offers feedback on
‘clarity’, ‘engagement’, and ‘delivery’. Consider the following paragraph from
a graduate student’s essay.

Identity construction is not stationary, but the culture of a particular

community influences it. It is perceived to be a continuous process, be-
ing influenced by several external factors, such as interaction with the
people. Language change the identities, and the identity shaped by var-
ied languages used daily. The statement states that one can be born in a
particular country, and their character linked to a different culture from
where they were born. Derakhshan (2019) notes that language is not
static, and there exist different languages spoken in the world.

If you are using the free version of Grammarly, the text receives an overall
score of 94. For ‘correctness’, two errors are highlighted, and the following
advice is provided in a side box (see p. 157):
We like the approach taken here. The first error is explained deductively. A
second error is highlighted, and the writer is left to figure how to correct it
inductively. The other characteristics of good writing, ‘clarity’, ‘engagement’,
and ‘delivery’ are vague and subjective, and the writer is provided with
 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback 157

is shaped
It seems that you are missing a verb. Consider changing it.
Learn more.
Linked – Add a missing verb.

vague and subjective feedback: ‘clarity’ receives a ‘very clear’, ‘engagement’,

‘engaging’, and for ‘delivery’, the text is considered to be ‘just right’. The
writer is then informed that there are three other problems with the text.
These are highlighted (see below), but if the writer wants feedback, he/she
will have to pay for the Premium service. Otherwise, they will have to figure
out the problem for themselves. (Other problems are missed. These include
the imprecise ‘stationary’, in sentence 1, which should more accurately be
‘static’ – which the author is clearly aware of as she uses it in the final sen-
tence. More seriously, lack of subject–verb agreement ‘language change’,
which even MS Word picked up, is also missed.)
Tharanga, one of the Julie’s doctoral students recently completed her doc-
toral research into multilingual MOOC students’ online writing practices in
higher education environments. Here is what she had to say about two of her
informants’ experiences with feedback from text editors.

Tharanga’s voice: L2 writers’ experiences with text editors

L2 students bring with them myriad meaning-making resources to self-​
scaffold their writing compared to their L1 counterparts. These included
linguistic resources such as their mother tongue, other languages, meta-
linguistic knowledge (cognate words between mother tongue and L2),
and digital resources, for instance, digital translators (Google Translate),
online dictionaries (monolingual and bilingual), and text editors (MS
Word, Grammarly) to facilitate writing in English. In general, they re-
ported mixed feelings about the usefulness and effectiveness of these tools.
A common practice was to draw on their metalinguistic knowledge of
true cognates or words that have a similar meaning in their L1 and L2.
For example, Gloria, an L1 speaker of Portuguese pursuing doctoral
studies in English in a Brazilian university wrote the word ‘transmite’ in
158 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback

her text. This was immediately underlined by Word’s spellchecker. She

replaced it with ‘transmit’, one of the three options offered. In a stimu-
lated recall interview, she admitted that she frequently juxtaposed Por-
tuguese spelling when writing in English. Mastering the conventions
of English spelling takes years of practice. She and another informant
found the instant feedback, during the course of writing, was extremely
helpful. However, when it comes to false cognates, this feature is not
so helpful. When Bianca, an L1 Spanish speaker wrote ‘ilustration’,
the spellchecker altered it to ‘illustration’. In our interview, when I
asked her why she wrote ‘illustration’, she said she thought it meant
‘enlightenment’ as it does in Spanish.
These examples show that a text editor can be useful in providing im-
mediate feedback during the composing process. However, for multilin-
gual writers whose proficiency is not advanced enough to enable them
to differentiate between true and false cognates, it can lead them astray.

When it comes to feedback on the coherence of written texts, a major dis-

advantage of computer-mediated feedback such as MS Word and software
like Grammarly is that they are confined to sentence-level corrections of
punctuation, spelling, and grammar, and even at this level, the feedback
is by no means infallible as we have seen. Analyzing and correcting prob-
lems beyond the sentence have, at the point of writing this book, been a
challenge for technology. In earlier chapters, we have presented extracts
from students’ writing showing that problems at the discourse level cause far
greater challenges than sentence-level errors. We use the word ‘problems’
rather than ‘errors’ because the individual sentences making up a longer
stretch of discourse such as a paragraph may be error-free but lack coher-
ence. In Chapter 2, we introduced the notion of cohesion. We pointed out
that cohesive devices such as reference, substitution, conjunctions, and lex-
ical cohesion can assist readers in making links between the sentences in a
text, but they don’t create coherence because coherence is an inside-the-
­head factor.

While cohesive devices provide helpful pointers to connectivity, they do

not create the connectivity. So, where is the source of the coherence? If
it does not reside in the language itself, it must reside in the individuals
who process the language – the reader and listener. In other words, while
cohesion resides in language, coherence resides in the person processing
the text.
(Nunan,
­ 2010, p. 115)
­
 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback 159

Making connections
Download the free version of Grammarly and use it to evaluate a para-
graph or two of your own writing.

• How useful is the feedback?

• What did you learn about your writing?
• Would you consider buying the Premium version of the program? Why
or why not?

It would be unwise, arrogant in fact, to dismiss the ability of technologists to

devise programs for providing feedback to writers (and teachers) for dealing
with discourse-level problems. Theme/rheme patterning in which the rheme
of one sentence becomes the theme of the next would be one area where this
might be possible. Of course, if texts adhered relentlessly to this patterning,
the result would be writing that puts readers to sleep. In a meticulous piece
of linguistic scholarship published over 30 years ago, Hoey (1991) showed
the remarkable intricacy in the patterning of authentic written texts. He
demonstrated that while cohesion makes an important contribution, it does
not constitute coherence. This remains a central challenge for technology.

When should feedback be provided?

Timing is an important factor when it comes to the effectiveness of the

feedback. Closing the gap between the occurrence of the error and the
feedback increases the impact it is likely to have. ‘Impact’, of course, is sus-
ceptible to interpretation. It can range from students noticing the error to
incorporating the correction into their productive repertoire. Immediate
feedback is feasible in the case of spoken errors but not for written ones.
The teacher can halt an activity and correct the spoken error – although
opinion is divided as to whether such an intervention should be taken
when the learners are engaged in a communicative task. There is a view
that when the focus is on meaningful communication, the teacher should
make a note of errors as they occur and only provide feedback when the
task has been completed.
One advantage of computer-mediated feedback is that the corrections can be
instantaneous. Both informants in Tharanga’s study named immediate feed-
back as a major advantage of text editing software. However, not all software
160 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback

is equally useful. The feedback will only be potentially useful if the student
notices it. In the case of autocorrect when the software makes the correction
automatically, the student may not even be aware that an error had been
made. For this reason, we favor software that highlights the error and indi-
cates the action to be taken (e.g., ‘delete repeated word’). The writer then has
the opportunity to accept the correction or ignore it. Making an error salient
by underlining or highlighting the word or phrase is one thing. Making the
nature of the error explicit is quite another, as we discussed in the preceding
section. More often than not, Grammarly only provides explicit feedback for
customers who select the Premium subscription option. Their explanations
can demand a level of language proficiency beyond the current capacity of the
learner to comprehend. The feedback can also be presumptuous. (Grammarly
­
once advised David to delete ‘definitely’ from a sentence beginning I definitely
recommend…. on the grounds that it made him seem assertive. “But I am asser-
tive”, he wanted to reply to the program. Unfortunately, there’s just no arguing
with software.)

Questions from readers

Q: My experiences of receiving general feedback at university are like Sean

and Francesca’s experiences. How should I approach my assessors for more
meaningful feedback? What do I say? I am worried I may come across as
pushy and insensitive.
Julie: I am thinking back to some students who have approached me in the
past requesting not necessarily for more meaningful feedback but a discus-
sion concerning a breakdown of their marks against the criteria. They are
understandably anxious and upset when they are emailing me to request an
appointment, but the most effective requests (at least for me) have been the
ones where students have thanked me for the feedback and asked if we could
arrange a time to meet so that they can clarify a few questions and ask other
questions to improve their work in the future. Perhaps what also works for
me is when the tone of the request doesn’t have some kind of hidden anger
but conveys a spirit of genuine desire to learn and improve one’s work. Obvi-
ously, students can question and interrogate what they want to know at the
meeting, but a dialogic stance or attitude is generally the best way forward
not only for students to understand the assessor’s feedback better but also to
build relationships with their teachers.
Q: I’m often overwhelmed with assignment deadlines and find myself pump-
ing out assignments all in the final week of submission which doesn’t leave a
 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback 161

lot of time for polishing the writing, proofreading, or asking others to have a
look. What can I do about this?
Julie: This is a common issue that many students experience. In my own
experience, I found Brian Paltridge’s and Sue Starfied’s (2019) recommen-
dations very helpful. They are writing about thesis and dissertation writing
but I think their advice can be extended to any scholarly writing activity.
The gist of their advice is that you need to see writing as an integral part of
the research process and make writing a habit rather than just think of it as
something to be done. Here is an extract on what they say:

… consider trying out what Murray (2013) calls snacking – that is regular
writing but for defined, shorter periods of time. What causes problems
for many writers, according to Murray, is the idea that they can only
write if and when they have large chunks of time available for what she
calls a writing binge – writing for extended periods of time, often in an at-
tempt to meet a deadline, which can become unproductive and exhaust-
ing. While complex intricate thinking cannot be done in 15-minute
‘snacks’, she suggests that a combination of larger time slots combined
with briefer 30-minute slots may be helpful. Scheduling regular writing
times each week as recommended by Zerubavel has been found by many
writers, both academics and novelists, to help productivity.
(p. 67)
­­

There are many other valuable and practical recommendations on how to

go about thinking about writing and managing your time from Paltridge and
Starfield’s book Thesis and Dissertation Writing in a Second Language. (One of
the chapters from this book can be downloaded from the Routledge Free-
book A Practical Guide to Academic Writing for International Students which can
downloaded from: https://web.archive.org/web/20220728075418/https://www.
­ ­ ­ ­ ­
­ ­ ­­
routledge.com/rsc/downloads/A_Practical_Guide_to_Academic_Writing_for_
International_Students-A_Routledge_FreeBook-_FINAL_VERSION_.pdf)
­​­­ ​­

Summary

Positive feedback is comforting. It reduces insecurity and boosts confidence.

Best of all, it can motivate you to continue improving your writing skills.
Another good thing about positive feedback is that no further action is
required. However, while it might give you a warm, inner glow, the feeling
will be temporary and won’t indicate specific measures you can take to im-
prove the quality of your writing. While no-one enjoys negative feedback,
it has the potential to improve the quality of your writing. This doesn’t
162 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback

mean you have to act on all the negative feedback you receive, but you
shouldn’t dismiss criticisms without carefully considering the suggestions.
We hope this chapter has given you an opportunity to think about the different
ways in which you’re likely to receive feedback on your written work and to
reflect on the type of feedback that works best for you. Do you prefer direct or in-
direct feedback? Do you like to have your teacher provide you with detailed ex-
planation of a grammatical errors, inappropriate word choices, or problems with
the way you develop and link the individual sentences together in a paragraph?
Receiving and thinking about feedback is only the beginning of the process
of improving the clarity and coherence of your writing. The next and more
challenging step is to incorporate the feedback into second and subsequent
drafts of your work. Issues and techniques for revising you work is the subject
of the next chapter.

Further readings

Andrade, M. S., & Evans, N. W. (2013). Principles and practices for response in second
language writing: Developing self-regulated learners. Routledge.
This useful book highlights various practical aspects of responses to L2 writers,
with special emphasis on developing student independence and autonomy.
Zerubavel, E. (1999). The clockwork muse: A practical guide to writing theses, disserta-
tions, and books. Harvard University Press.
The Clockwork Muse provides a way through ‘writer’s block’ via an examination
of the writing practices of successful writers. It challenges the romantic ideal of
the writer dashing off a piece of writing when the ‘muse’ inspires him or her.
Instead, writers are offered a simple yet comprehensive framework that considers
such variables as when to write, for how long, and how often, while keeping
a sense of momentum throughout the entire project. Routines and regularities
facilitate ‘inspiration’.
­

References

Beatty, K. (2010). Teaching and researching computer-assisted language learning. Longman.

Ellis, R. (2010). A framework for investigating oral and written corrective feed-
back.  Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 32(2),
­ ­335–349.
​­ https://doi.
­
org/10.1017/S0272263109990544
­ ­
Freeman, D. (2018). Four approaches to teachers studying their own classrooms. In
D. Xeri & C. Pioquito (Eds.), Research literate: Supporting teacher research in Eng-
lish language teaching (pp. 24–29).
­ ­­ ­ ​­ English Teachers Association of Switzerland.
 Seeking and providing meaningful feedback 163

Hoey, M. (1991) Patterns of lexis in text. Oxford University Press.

Hyland, F.,  & Hyland, K. (2001). Sugaring the pill: Praise and criticism in writ-
ten feedback. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10(3),
­ ­185–212.
​­ https://doi.
­
org/10.1016/S1060-3743%2801%2900038-8
­ ­­ ​­ ­ ​­
Liu, K., & Storch, N. (2021). Second language learners’ engagement with written
feedback [Online-First
­ ​­ Article]. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics. https://
doi.org/10.1075/aral.20029.liu
­ ­
Nunan, D. (2010). What is this thing called language? Palgrave Macmillan.
Truss, L. (2005). Eats, shoots & leaves. Profile Books.
 8
The power of revising

In Chapter 7, we dealt with formative feedback. In this chapter, we look at

ways in which you can use feedback for revising your work for public con-
sumption. We say ‘public consumption’ because, when writing for yourself,
revision may not be necessary. When writing for others, it’s crucial. Despite
its importance, it often gets glossed over or ignored altogether in books on
writing.
This is a relatively short chapter. In it, we draw on and refer you to previous
parts of the book that are relevant to the revision process. There is only one
main section to the chapter. In it, we outline the steps you can take to turn
a first draft into a piece that will be clear and coherent to your reader. We
discuss the challenges involved in revising your work including time pressure
imposed by submission deadlines. We also stress the importance of having
a positive attitude toward this important final step in creating a clear and
coherent piece of writing.

From first to final draft: steps along the way

The poet Robert Graves may have been stretching the truth a little when
he asserted that there is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
His point is that getting to the end of your first draft doesn’t mean that
your journey is complete. You may be entitled to a decent latte or a modest
glass of cooking sherry, but please leave the champagne on ice. The journey
from first draft to your destination, which may be a distinction grade on an
assignment or a publication of one sort or another, will take time and effort.
There will be potholes along the way, but without emotional and intellec-
tual investment, you won’t receive your hoped-for payout. With hard work,
and attention to the issues we have highlighted in this book, you’ll reach
your goal and deserve your glass of fizz. We’re not suggesting that a first draft

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179092-9
 The power of revising 165

doesn’t matter. Quite the opposite. The stronger the foundation, the sounder
will be the building on which it rests.
Revising your work involves massaging the text, and clarifying statements
that, on re-reading, strike you as clumsy or imprecise. You will also need to
prune your work. Cutting sentences, paragraphs, and even entire sections is
a painful but necessary part of the process. Do not be tempted to skip it.
We’ve referred to William Zinsser’s On Writing Well several times in the
course of this book. Now in its umpteenth edition, it’s rightly designated as
“the classic guide to writing nonfiction”. Like many good storytellers, Zinsser
begins his book with an anecdote about being invited to a school in Con-
necticut to address the topic of writing as a vocation. When he arrived at
the school, he discovered a second speaker had been invited, a surgeon who
had recently taken up writing as a diversion from cutting people up. Here’s
an edited version of Zinsser’s story.
Zinsser doesn’t tell us whether or not Dr. Brock’s easy-going approach to
writing resulted in pieces that were publishable. Presumably it did, or he
wouldn’t have been invited to address an audience on writing as a vocation.
Zinsser’s acidic dig at the end on his conversation with the doctor reveals
just what he thought of Brock’s approach to writing. “Letting it all hang
out” is fine for a first draft, but that draft is only a point of departure not a
destination. In the following vignette, David described the steps he follows
to progress from a first to a final draft.

William Zinsser on the hard graft of revising

Dr. Brock was dressed in a bright red jacket, looking vaguely bohemian,
as authors were supposed to look, and the first question went to him.
What was it like to be a writer? He said it was tremendous fun. Coming
home from an arduous day at the hospital, he would go straight to his
yellow pad and write his tensions away. The words just flowed. It was
easy. I then said that writing wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fun. It was hard
and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed. Next Dr. Brock was asked
if it was important to rewrite. Absolutely not, he said. “Let it all hang
out”, he told us. … At the end [of the session] Dr. Brock told me he
was enormously interested in my answers  – it had never occurred to
him that writing could be hard. I told him I was just as interested in
his answers – it had never occurred to me that writing could be easy.
Maybe I should take up surgery one day (Zinsser, 2006, p. 4).
166 The power of revising

David’s voice on knowing when your piece is ready

Before the Covid epidemic had us all housebound, at a conference
somewhere in Asia, I took part in a seminar on ‘Writing for publica-
tion’. From the size of the audience, it seemed that getting published
was a major goal for most of the conference participants. Six of us spoke,
each addressing a different aspect of the writing process. The order of
presentations mirrored what the organizers assumed was the order in
which a piece progressed from bright idea to appearance in print. As
­
‘Professor ­ ­​­­ ​­
Polishing-your-piece’, I was fifth on the panel, sandwiched
in between ‘Dr ­ Feedback’ and ‘Ms ­ ­ ­​­­ ​­
Find-a-publisher’. At the inevita-
ble Q&A session following the presentations, I drew gasps from the
audience when, in answer to the final question posed to me, “When
is a piece polished to perfection?”, I replied “Never”. On leaving the
auditorium, I was approached by the young woman who had posed the
question. She thrust her business card into my hand and requested an
interview. Without waiting for my response, but assuming it would be
yes, she guided me into a side room, sat me in a chair, and fished a
phone from her bag to record our conversation. She asked me to elabo-
rate on the one-word responses I’d given to her question. I replied that
the process of revising a piece could go on ad infinitum, but it would
never be perfect. Sooner or later, you have to say enough’s enough. If
you’re writing a term paper or have a book under contract, someone
else will set the deadline for you. I glanced at her business card and saw
that she was an assistant editor for a prominent educational publisher.
“You of all people should know that”.
She laughed. “I haven’t been in publishing all that long, but I’ve
learned how stubborn authors can be when it comes to submitting
their precious work. Some just can’t let go. What’s your writing pro-
cess? How many drafts do you do? And how do you know when ‘enough
is enough’?”
I tell her that it depends. The last book I’d written The Infidels Next
Door was a factional four-generation account of my maternal forebears.
At the time of writing, I didn’t have a publisher, so wasn’t facing a
deadline. It took seven drafts and consumed six years of my life before
I said enough’s enough and went in search of a publisher. Each draft
focuses on different aspects of the writing process and makes different
demands. The first is qualitatively different from subsequent drafts. For
 The power of revising 167

some writers, staring at a blank screen and winking cursor is enough to

bring on writer’s block. For others it provides an opportunity to draw
on all their creative energy. Before I begin to write, I remind myself
of the purpose or purposes I have for writing as well as my intended
­audience – ​­real or imagined.
As words and sentences emerge and the first draft takes shape, you
begin to discover in detail what you want to say and how you want
to say it. For me, facing a blank screen is liberating – sometimes even
exhilarating. In subsequent drafts, you progressively refine your project.
Regardless of whether it’s a thesis, a novel, or a magazine article, the
aim is the same: to produce a piece of writing that’s clear, coherent,
and true to the purpose and audience. Getting to that point can be a
painful process, as it requires rearranging and deleting pieces of text
that had been so creatively crafted at the first draft stage. When he was
once asked how he had created his astonishing masterpiece, The Pieta,
Michelangelo replied that it was easy. The stature was there all the
time. All he had to do was chip away at the block of marble until it was
revealed. While not an exact analogy, that’s what a writer has to do –
chip away at the first draft, until the story reveals itself. My main task
at the second draft stage is to work on large chunks of text. Then I work
on individual paragraphs, deleting some sentences, and rearranging the
internal structure of others using the devices of cohesion and themati-
zation to improve the readability of the paragraph. When I’m satisfied
that the paragraph says what I want it to say, I hunt through the man-
uscript for figures of speech. Are my metaphors apposite, or clumsy,
mannered, or forced? Do I overuse colloquialisms? (In some cases, the
occasional colloquialism can give the text a friendly tone.) Clichés and
slang tell the reader  – and should tell you  – that you’ve become lazy.
Replace them! Next, I go through the entire manuscript and root out
superfluous phrases and words that have escaped earlier editing stages.
At the word level, I’m particularly harsh on adjectives and adverbs. I
also replace words and phrases that lack precision. (There are times
when I spend the better part of an hour wrestling with a stubborn sen-
tence.) Then, it’s time for a final proof-read, something I’m notoriously
poor at. In this, I’m not alone. Reading for meaning is a natural incli-
nation. Try reading backwards. That will overcome the temptation to
read for meaning. At various points along the way, I seek feedback from
a colleague or fellow writer on bits of the text that I’m not happy with.
168 The power of revising

There comes a time when I give the manuscript a rest. Occasionally,

if I’m not racing against a deadline, it can lie fallow for weeks and
even months in a folder on my desktop. I need a vacation from my
manuscript, and it probably needs one from me. When I return to the
folder and open the file, I’m able to view the text somewhat more dis-
passionately. There are parts that please me, and parts that don’t. Some
paragraphs are particularly egregious. I highlight these and eject them,
an act I could not have performed prior to our temporary separation.
Finally, I send the entire manuscript to one of my critical friends for
comment before giving it a final massage and submitting it to an editor
or publisher.

In the above vignette, David describes the process he uses to take a manu-
script from first to final draft. The process is one of progressively refining the
manuscript. First, he works on larger chunks. In the case of a book, he might
move entire chapters around. If it’s a chapter within a book, or an article,
paragraphs or entire sections might be moved around or even deleted. (In
this book, we moved the chapters on figurative language and voice from the
front to the back half of the book because as the content of these chapters
evolved, we decided they’d be more challenging than we’d anticipated when
planning the book.)
David then works at the level of the paragraph, ensuring that succeeding
sentences flow coherently from the one before. Figurative language is sub-
jected to critical scrutiny before he turns his attention to individual words
and phrases. To tighten up the text, he deletes any that he deems redun-
dant. To enhance coherence, he exchanges words and phrases that lack
precision for ones that capture more explicitly the meanings he wants to
express. Having proof-read the entire piece, he sends it to a colleague who
can be trusted to provide an honest appraisal rather than telling him how
brilliant he is. The 120,000-word manuscript is then ready to be sent off,
hopefully for immediate publication, but more likely for further revision.
Outright rejection is an outside possibility, but he pushes that thought
aside. Has he polished the piece to perfection? Almost certainly not: there’s
no such thing.
In the voice chapter, we introduced you to Annie Lamott and her delightful
book Bird by bird: Some instructions on writing and life. In discussing the revi-
sion process, Annie poses the rhetorical question: How do you know when
you’re done? She answers her own question as follows:
 The power of revising 169

This is a question my students always ask. You just do. I think my students
believe that when a published writer finishes something, she crosses the
last t, pushes back from the desk, yawns, stretches, and smiles. I don’t
know anyone who has ever done this, not even one. What happens
instead is that you’ve gone over something so many times, and you’ve
weeded and pruned and rewritten, and the person who reads your work
for you has given you suggestions that you have mostly taken – and then
finally something inside you just says it’s time to finally just get on to the
next thing. Of course, there will always be more you could do, but you
have to remind yourself that perfection is the voice of the oppressor.
(Lamott,
­ 1994, ­p. 93)
A wise woman, Annie, and an exceptional writer, to boot.

Making connections
Think about the steps that would work for you and create your own
revision template.

• Step 1 Create a first draft

• [Add up to four additional steps]
• Step X Final draft

Now ‘road test’ your template. Write a short piece (4–5 paragraphs,
400–500 words in total) on a topic that interests you or extract several
paragraphs of approximately the same length from something you have
as a first draft. It could be related to your academic study or work, or it
could be a narrative about an incident that occurred at university or
at work. Alternatively, use a draft you’re currently writing for a school
assignment. Don’t worry about style, precision, or clarity; just get your
ideas onto the screen. Now revise the piece, using the template you
created.
Reflect on the exercise. Did you think that your first draft was so good,
that it didn’t really need further revision? Or do you agree with Zins-
ser, who says that when you reflect on a sentence or longer piece of
writing you’ll find that “… it almost always has something wrong with
it. It’s not clear. It’s not logical. It’s verbose. It’s clunky. It’s pretentious.
It’s boring. It’s full of clutter. It lacks rhythm. It can be read in sev-
eral different ways. One sentence doesn’t lead out of the previous sen-
tence. … The point is that clear writing is the result of a lot of tinkering.”
(p. 83-4).
170 The power of revising

Share the first and final drafts with a fellow student or critical friend.
Don’t tell them which version is which. Ask them which one they
prefer. Can they tell you why? (In the spirit of what we said about peer
reviewing in the previous chapter, offer to carry out the same exercise
for your fellow student or friend.)
How effective was the template you created as a guide to revising your
writing? Would you like to adjust the template, adding or deleting steps?

Questions from readers

Q: I was taught in school not to look at the first draft when rewriting, but to
save it and open a new word document and write a different version. Is that
wrong?
A: We think so. What you’ll probably end up with is two first drafts. There’s
little point in doing that. It overlooks the point of rewriting. As we point
out in the chapter, rewriting is a process of progressively refining the initial
draft, not by rewriting it from scratch. The only exception to this statement
is if you realize that your first draft is so ramshackle that you need to toss it
out and start from scratch. However, this should be the exception, not the
rule. If you do want to keep the first draft, copy and save it, and then work on
the copy, making sure you rename it so the two versions don’t get confused.
If a paragraph, or even a sentence within a paragraph can’t be repaired, it
probably reflects the fact that you don’t really know what you want to say.
As we pointed out in Chapter 3, there are two aspects to writing: the final
product and the process of arriving at the final product. That process in-
volves shaping, refining, and, if necessary, rethinking and rewriting parts of
the initial effort. Many of our students dislike the revising process because
it’s hard work. It takes time and effort. As one student said, “I hate revising.
It makes my head hurt”. Often, they’ve left the writing of an assignment to
the last minute and don’t have time to revise and refine it. As we’ve pointed
out numerous times, you, the author, should be doing the hard work, not the
reader. The important thing is to be systematic in making your revisions.
Don’t go through the text making corrections at random or simultaneously
trying to deal with grammar, thematization, paragraph placement, cohesion,
vocabulary choice, typographical errors, and so on. Your revision template is
designed to facilitate this systematicity.
 The power of revising 171

Q: My professor really liked my last assignment. It was an account of an

action research study I carried out last semester. She said that it was good
enough to be published. Can you give me some advice about how I can revise
it for a journal?
A: In relation to your question, you should review the academic conver-
sation between David and Kailin in Chapter  4. Part of the conversation is
devoted to the changes Kailin needed to make to her assignment to make it
suitable for a different audience. She also had to make a compromise on the
purpose of the piece, a compromise that she wasn’t particularly happy with.
Her process was different from the one you will have to go through in that
she co-authored it with her supervisor who guided her along the path from
assignment to journal article.
Given the time and effort involved, you should begin by reflecting on your
motive for taking on the task. At the same time, you need to consider how
the audience and purpose will need to change. Ask yourself: What would
motivate anyone to read this article? What will they get out of it? To answer
these questions, you need to identify publications that might be interested
in taking on your article. If you haven’t published before, we recommend
non-referred journals/magazines. Your teacher should be able to advise you
on these. Alternatively, you can do an online search. Many professional as-
sociations publish newsletters and magazine and are always looking for con-
tributions. Most of these publish an online, open-access format. Once you’ve
identified a potential publication, scan several recent issues. Look at the ta-
ble of contents and read two or three articles. If the magazine has submission
guidelines, estimate how much work might be involved in rewriting to as-
signment. If not, send a 200–300-word abstract to the editor with a covering
note.

Conclusion

Revising is crucial to achieving clarity and coherence in your writing. If you

are writing for a limited audience, such as a university assignment for a lec-
turer, it will be the last step in a process that that will involve reading, dis-
cussing the assignment with fellow students, and then drafting and redrafting
to clarify you own thinking on the topic, and then polishing your effort for
an audience of one. If it’s for public consumption, such as an article in a
refereed journal on non-refereed publication such as a teachers’ newsletter,
it will almost certainly not be the final step in the process. You will have to
172 The power of revising

go through one final step to satisfy the concerns or criticisms of anonymous

reviewers or editors.
All too often, students think of assignment writing as a thankless chore,
forced on them by their teachers to display what they’ve learned and to re-
veal what they haven’t. This may be partly true, but it’s wrong-headed. Writ-
ing assignments is part of the learning process. Recall what we said about
writing as a thinking process. Through producing an initial draft and pro-
gressively refining and adding to your initial effort you will be adding to
your personal stock of knowledge. Embrace the challenge. Enjoy it. See it as
an opportunity to grow as a writer and scholar. You might as well, you have
to do it anyway. In short, it’s important to adopt a positive attitude toward
the challenging and ‘head-hurting’ task of redrafting your assignment. You
should approach the task as a learning opportunity. Pause from time to time
to reflect on the process and ask yourself: What have I learned today about
the writing process and about the content of my essay? What were the prob-
lems? How did I solve them?
In revising your work, you will draw on perspectives we have presented in
this book and on insights contained in the additional readings we have
provided at the end of each chapter. You will bear in mind the purpose
and audience of the piece you are working on as well as the nature of the
writing as process, knowledge of grammar, sensitivity to figurative lan-
guage and vocabulary, technical aspects of discourse such as thematization
and cohesion, emerging sensitivity to your strengths and weaknesses as a
writer, and more. At least, that’s our intention and our hope. In the final
chapter, we will pull together and elaborate on the major themes pre-
sented in the book.

Further readings
Despite its importance, books on academic writing don’t have a lot to say about
the process of revising. While the following books are no exception, they do
have something to say. We’ve included them here because they have a great deal
of sensible things to say about the practicalities of writing. Both guides comple-
ment the themes and perspectives we have presented here.
Crème, P.,  & Lea, M. (2011). Writing at University: A guide for students (3rd ed).
Open University Press.
Morley-Warner,
­ ​­ T. (2008).
­ Academic writing is … – A guide to `writing in a University
context. Sydney University Press.
 The power of revising 173

References

Lamott, A. (­1994). Bird by bird: Some instructions on writing and life. Anchor
books.
Zinsser, W. (­2006). On writing well (­30th ed.). HarperCollins Publishers.
 9
In a nutshell: ten thoughts
to take away

A fundamental problem is representing the n ­ on-​­linear experiential world

in linear form. Resources such as cohesive devices and thematization can
help us solve this problem. As we say, solving problems is at the heart of the
writing problem. Also important is receiving meaningful feedback and using
this in the rewriting process. Through this work, and with the judicious use
of other resources such as figurative language, you will find your own voice
and your identity as a writer will emerge.
Two other themes we highlight in the final chapter are the fact that aca-
demic writing is no one’s native tongue. This leads to the issue of standards,
and who gets to adjudicate on which standards should apply.

Introduction

We began this book with a Clive James’s sentiment that the most compli-
cated thing there is in this world is expressing oneself clearly. A profound
and troubling sentiment presented, paradoxically, with Clive’s trademark
clarity. Sure, he can bamboozle, confuse, and obfuscate when he’s in the
mood, but he does so with a purpose. Troubling, because there are no s­ hort-​
­cuts to clarity and coherence. At some stage on your journey through this
book, you would have come to see James’s point.
Here are ten tangled thoughts for you to take away.

1. Detailed and explicit knowledge of language is fundamental to good writing

2. ­Muddle-​­headed prose is often a result of ­muddle-​­headed thinking
3. Defining your purpose and audience is essential
4. The paradox of representing the world in print (­the challenge of linearity)
5. Standards aren’t set in stone
6. Academic language is no one’s native tongue

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179092-10
 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away 175

Detailed and explicit knowledge of language is fundamental

to good writing

This is the central theme of the book. As the book is about academic writing,
we restricted our focus to those linguistic features most pertinent to written
rather than spoken modes. We also had to circumscribe what we meant by
‘detailed knowledge’. An exhaustive description of all the linguistic features
of written English would have run to many more pages than we had at our
disposal and would have resulted in an audience of exhausted readers. We
restricted our focus to those aspects of grammar, discourse, vocabulary, and
punctuation which we felt would be most useful to you as a writer. For gram-
mar and vocabulary, we presented the basic word classes (nouns, verbs, ad-
jectives, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, and determiners),
the grammatical roles these could take (subject, verb, object, and comple-
ment) and the seven basic clause types constituted by mixing and matching
these roles. At the level of discourse, we looked at cohesion (reference, el-
lipsis, substitution, conjunctions, and lexical cohesion), and thematization.
In putting these grammatical, lexical and discoursal elements to work, we
advocated a functional approach. Such an approach stresses the intimate
and intricate connection between linguistic form and communicative func-
tion. It sees linguistic elements as meaning-making resources. As Halliday,
the ‘father’ of functional grammar said, “Language is what language does”
(Webster, 2003, p.  267). An explicit knowledge of language enables you to
make choices that are not based on intuition. The work of educators and lin-
guists working in this tradition such as Debra Myhill, Beverly Derewianka,
Jim Martin, and others we have cited demonstrate the positive benefits to
writers who have this explicit knowledge. It also provides us with tools to
think and talk about the choices we make as we create our texts. Throughout
the book, we have provided examples of how we have used these tools to
enhance the effectiveness of our own writing, as well as to provide explicit
feedback to our students that goes beyond vague statements such as “This ­
paragraph doesn’t hang together”, or “Your ideas are all over the place”.
Other aspects of language dealt with in the book include figurative language.
We showed how well-chosen metaphors, similes and idioms can enliven your
176 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away

prose. However, colloquialisms should be treated with caution. Our advice

on a figure of speech you’re uncertain about is, leave it out.

Muddle-headed prose is often a result of muddle-headed

thinking

In the course of the book, we presented examples of writing that lacked clar-
ity and coherence. In each instance, we identified the source of the problem,
and indicated ways in which it might be addressed. In doing so, we were
restricted to working with the linguistic resources offered by the English
language. We pointed out that much confused and confusing prose reflects
muddle-headed thinking. This is as true of our own writing as it is of anyone
else’s. More often than not, when we review a paragraph or longer piece that
lacks clarity, we realize that we’re confused about the thread of an argument
we want to pursue, the claim we want to put before the reader, or the land-
scape we want to survey. If we’re confused, how can we present a coherent
argument to our readers? It’s only through a painful and often prolonged pro-
cess of rewriting that what we really want to say becomes transparent. This
notion of writing as a thinking process is another central theme, and one to
which we return later in the chapter. We can’t do your thinking for you. The
most we can do is share with you the resources you can draw on to express
your own meanings.

Defining your purpose and audience is essential

These two factors will have a crucial bearing on your writing. Without clar-
ifying why you’re writing (and there may be more than one purpose), and
for whom, your writing will lack focus. That’s not to say that you will always
begin with purpose and audience clearly articulated. As you begin to write,
these may be vague prospects which only become clear as you draft and re-
draft your piece.
In their guide to dissertation writing, Paltridge and Starfield identify purpose
and audience, but go further, listing six other social and cultural factors that
need to be considered. Here is their complete list:

– the setting of the text

– the focus and perspective of the text
– the purpose/s of the text
– the intended audience for the text, their role and purpose in reading the text
In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away 177

178 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away

the article were accepted, it would strengthen her application for a place in
the doctoral program, a path she planned to pursue once she had completed
the master’s program.
To be accepted for publication, the reviewers argued that the study needed
a conceptual/theoretical framework. This necessitated major revisions and
another change in the purpose of the piece. As Kailin says in her interview,
she had to ‘weave’ her data into the theoretical framework. In the course of
doing this, the strength of her informants’ voices was lost.

The paradox of representing the world in print (the challenge

of linearity)

Another major point in the book concerns the linearity of prose. As lived
time unfolds the external world assails all of our senses. I (David) am work-
ing on an initial draft of this chapter in a coffee shop, waiting to meet my
colleague to discuss the reviews of an article we submitted for publication.
My ears are assailed by myriad sounds, the clutter of cups and plates, the
hiss of the espresso machine, an altercation over a disputed check, piped
music, the irritating whine of a passing motor scooter, conversations at
adjoining tables, the buzzing of my phone informing me of an incoming
text message.
In the experiential world, all of these sounds (and numerous others – I didn’t
report the police siren in the next street or the slammed door) occurred si-
multaneously, but it took me several minutes to represent (re-present) them.
The linearity of language required me to report sequentially events that oc-
curred simultaneously. I had to decide which sounds to include and which
to leave out and the sequence in which to report them. A comprehensive
account of that split second would have to include my other senses: sight
(the shaft of like light with its motes of dancing dust), touch (the roughness
of the tablecloth), taste (the lingering bitterness of the espresso), physical
sensations, etc. And then there’s the interior monologue or self-talk that ac-
companies us as we experience the physical world: irritation in a meeting at
a colleague’s prolixity, and how we should respond to an unfavorable journal
reviewer.
Reducing the physical world to a line of print is one thing. Doing the
same to an abstract argument or some other academic genre is quite an-
other. In the book, we introduced you to the linguistic resources that
enable you to do so. Within the sentence level, these include ways of
 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away 179

introducing two or more pieces of information and indicating the rela-

tionship between them through clause types such as coordination and
subordination. Beyond the sentences, resources include cohesion, and
theme/rheme
­ structuring.

Solving problems is at the heart of the writing process

At the beginning of this chapter, we said that there was a good deal of over-
lap between the ten ‘takeaways’ with which we conclude the book. This
is true of writing as problem-solving. The principle relates particularly to
Chapter 4 on audience and purpose where, in the section on the ‘art and
craft of writing’, we give a detailed example of problem-solving from our own
writing. Hopefully, the example, and many others in the book have been
sufficient to convince you that writing is both an art and a craft. It requires
the skilled deployment of linguistic tools as well as creativity (see Casanave,
2010; Nelson, 2018; Sword, 2012; Tardy, 2016).
As we have mentioned at several points in the book, and summarized in the
preceding section, the basis of the challenge is to represent the non-linear
experiential world in sequential lines of print. This process is reductive. We
are constantly faced with decisions about what to leave out and what to
leave in, and how to stitch the latter together using linguistic resources so
they tell a story that makes sense to the reader.
Of course, solving problems isn’t peculiar to writing a thesis. Daily life con-
stantly confronts us with problems to be solved. Some are relatively trivial
and readily solved. Your three-year-old misplaces her favorite doll and sets
up a wail that wakes the neighbors. It needs to be found before there is
a knock on the door from Welfare Services. You get the child to retrace
her steps, and there’s the doll wedged behind the sofa. Problem solved.
Others are not so easily dealt with. Spending most of the night to finish
an assignment in advance of a looming deadline to find on waking bleary
eyed in the morning that your computer has crashed and the assignment
has disappeared into the ether. Daily life revolves around solving problems.
Plumbers, carpenters and electricians no less than the brain surgeon in the
operating theatre and the barrister in the courtroom face challenges requir-
ing creativity and ingenuity that go well beyond the application of well-
rehearsed routines. The outward manifestation of these problem-solving
practices may seem a world away from the writer’s work but the mental
processes are not so different.
180 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away

Finding your own voice can enhance the power of your

writing

We’ve introduced some challenging concepts and terminology in this

book. Some linguistic terms such as sentences, nouns and verbs, would
have been familiar, others such as clauses and complements, less so. You
had probably heard of them but would be challenged to define them or
find examples in a text. There are many terms that would be known to you
in an everyday sense, but are used to name complex, abstract concepts in
linguistics. These included cohesion, coherence, field, tenor, mode, genre,
identity, and voice.
Most students find the concept of identity and voice particularly challenging.
We looked at the relationship between the concepts and followed Paul Mat-
suda’s defining of voice as a unique configuration of linguistic (discursive)
and non-discursive features. Given the abstract nature of the definition, we
augmented it with examples from texts produced by authors writing across a
range of genres.
We suggested several techniques you can use to further your understand-
ing of voice and to develop your own. One of these was imitating the
style of a writer you admire. However, we also warned against follow-
ing another author’s voice so slavishly that you never find your own. As
Annie Lamott said, you have the writer’s voice on loan, and eventually
have to give it back. William Zinsser voices a similar sentiment when he
says:

… we eventually move beyond our models; we take what we need and

then we shed those skins and become who we are supposed to become.
But nobody will write well unless he gets into his ear and into his metab-
olism a sense of how the language works and what it can be made to do.
(Zinsser,
­ 1989, p. 15)
­

Writing is a method of discovery (writing as a thinking process)

Writing as a method of inquiry is another thread that’s woven into the

fabric of the book. This doesn’t mean we start out with a mind that is
as blank as the screen in front of us. Very often, the opposite is the case.
Our mind is teeming with ideas. However, it’s only by writing that we can
unravel and develop them. As we write, new ideas will percolate into our
consciousness and connections between separate ideas begin to coalesce.
Developing abstract ideas and arguments require the written word. Only
 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away 181

an exceptional few can mentally tease apart an argument that has many
moving parts.
This view of writing has its own purpose and audience. The purpose is to use
writing as an instrument to take an initial idea on a topic and develop it in a
variety of ways such as presenting a coherent argument, solving a problem or
telling a story. As already indicated, new ideas and the relationship between
them will emerge. In this process, we have an audience of one – ourselves.
In some cases, we will remain the sole audience. In others, the piece will be
developed for a wider audience. That audience may be a single individual,
such as your teacher, or multiple individuals.
You can use this approach, not only to produce an entire text, but also
parts of a text. For example, if you run short of ideas in a subsection of an
assignment, you could adopt a procedure recommended in Chapter 3. In
the final substantive section of the chapter is a Making connections box.
The box contains a task for trying out and evaluating writing as a thinking
process. This task would be ideal for generating ideas for your troublesome
subsection.

There is no good writing, only good rewriting

Revising your work is not only desirable, it’s essential if you want to pro-
duce quality writing. The number of drafts you produce will depend on
the amount of time you’re able to allow yourself, and this will depend on
timelines and deadlines set by others. In your case this will most likely be
your teachers. In our case, it’s publishers for books and journal editors for
articles. As an absolute minimum, you need to plan on two drafts. Your
second draft should be guided by feedback from another reader. Ideally,
this would be your teacher, but few teachers have the time to provide in-
dividual feedback. Successive drafts are subject to the law of diminishing
returns.
If you do have the luxury of time, successive drafts should focus on different
aspects of your writing and become more fine-grained as you work from mov-
ing sections and paragraphs around to sentences, and then to words.

Academic language is no one’s native tongue

You may be reassured to know that all writers, regardless of their first lan-
guage, struggle when it comes to mastering academic writing. Years ago, the
182 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away

French sociologists Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Passeron and Monique de

Saint Martin (1994) made this point:

Academic language is a dead language for the great majority of French

people, and is no one’s mother tongue, not even that of children of the
cultivated classes. As such, it is very unequally distant from the lan-
guages actually spoken by the different social classes. To decline to offer
a rational pedagogy is, in this context, to declare that all students are
equal in respect of the demands made by academic language.
(p. 8)
­­

In general, reading and writing are unnatural acts. Unless we have some
form of disability, we all acquire the ability to understand and speak the lan-
guage(s) of the speech community into which we’re born. Learning to speak
is an astonishing feat, achieved without formal instruction. It doesn’t occur
effortlessly and automatically, but with considerable effort and a great deal of
frustration as all parents know. Parents, primary caregivers, and older siblings
play an important social role in supporting, scaffolding and encouraging a
child’s oral language development.
Learning to read and write is another matter. Apart from a few exceptional
children who teach themselves the rudiments of reading, developing basic
literacy requires formal schooling. Many emerge from 12 years of school with
only rudimentary literacy skills. In the United States, over half the popula-
tion of adults are unable to read above the 6th grade level, and 4% remain
functionally illiterate (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2019).
We should add that what counts as ‘being literate’, is constantly changing.
In this digital age, the ability to process the printed word is no longer consid-
ered an adequate way of characterizing literacy. “The evolving and dynamic
nature of communication in the 21st century calls for an expanded under-
standing of what it means to be literate” (Rajendrum, 2021, p. 520).
Academic language, particularly academic writing, is a highly specialized
genre. In this book, we have described the genre as well as its evolution
so that you can appreciate and take seriously the challenge of becoming
adept academic writers. Regardless of your first language, throughout your
schooling, and particularly in your high school years, you will have been in-
creasingly exposed to academic language. Only a minority graduate as skilled
academic writers without explicit instruction. As Bourdieu, Passeron, and
Saint Martin (1994) imply in their statement, “[not] all students are equal
in respect of the demands made by academic language” not even offspring of
the “cultivated class”. All writers, regardless of whether they are functioning
in their first or second language, struggle with academic writing. This is true
 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away 183

of us, it’s true of highly accomplished authors we have introduced to you in

these pages such a Laurel Richardson and William Zinsser who share their
struggles with the written word.
If you’re an L1 speaker of a language other than English, John Flowerdew’s
words will resonate with you. He says:

While there may be discipline-specificity, there will also be some sort of

broad general competence. And of course, the development of such a
general competence is likely to be more challenging for the EAL writer
than the native writer, because the native writer will have likely devel-
oped such general competence in the home, reading media materials,
and during schooling.
(Flowerdew,
­ 2019, pp. 251–252)
­ ­ ​­

Flowerdew’s argument makes sense. The linguistic knowledge acquired by

L1 speakers through everyday social interaction and also more formally
through schooling, provides an initial advantage over L2 speakers. However,
the implication that the ‘native speaker’ represents a homogeneous body of
language users is simply not the case. Even when it comes to everyday, non-
academic language, native speakers can be ranged on a continuum. This is
true of both spoken and written modes. At one end of the continuum, there
are users who struggle to express themselves for a range of linguistic, educa-
tional, and affective reasons. At the other, are those who can speak coher-
ently and convincingly in multiple settings and for a range of purposes, from
entertaining guests at a dinner party, to selling second-hand cars and getting
elected to parliament. The ability to use written language in non-academic
settings also exists on a continuum.
We accept the general proposition that native speakers have an advantage
when it comes to academic writing, but the potential to develop high-level
skills is not evenly distributed. Some show marked improvement over the
course of their studies, while others don’t. Of course, not all native speakers
have the capacity or desire to master one or more discipline-specific genres
that exist in academic and professional writing. In post-colonial countries
where English remains the dominant/official language, high-level literacy
skills are comparatively rare. We’ve already cited data from the United
States, where less than half the population achieve literacy skills beyond
elementary grade level. While those who progress to higher education are
advantaged by the massive amount of implicit knowledge acquired by vir-
tue of their L1 statues, with very few exceptions, those who do gain accept-
ance into graduate programs, are challenged by the demands of academic
writing.
184 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away

We agree that there are no native speakers of academic English, and that ac-
ademic writing belongs to no one as a birthright. We also concur with Flow-
erdew that being born into any speech community confers certain advantages
when it comes to using that language for a range of social and educational
purposes. These advantages relate to tacit knowledge of morphosyntax, core
lexis, and idiomatic expressions acquired through social interaction in every-
day life as well as thousands of hours exposure to formal learning of academic
spoken and written language in school. These provide a baseline advantage
for first-language speakers over speakers of other languages in post-secondary
educational and professional contexts.
That said, as we have argued, the development of advanced literacy skills,
challenges everyone, regardless of their first language. The more you write
and reflect critically on what you produce, the greater the facility you de-
velop. However, every time you sit or stand at your desk to write, you will
be challenged. We certainly are. We found it reassuring to read Debra
Myhill’s statement that writing is never easy. In a similar vein, Bazerman
et  al. (2017) point out that the development and maintenance of high
levels of academic writing (indeed all writing) is a ‘lifespan’ endeavor.
They remind us of the multidimensional nature of this development which
includes linguistic, cognitive, affective, sensorimotor, motivational, and
technological factors. In this endeavor, there is no single path and no sin-
gle endpoint.
The challenges facing first, and second language writers are similar in some
respects and dissimilar in others. However, first-language background is just
one of the factors implicated in and determining the trajectory of each per-
son’s writing development. In addition to the dimensions listed above, per-
sonal interests and abilities are also strongly implicated. Research based on
language portraits and language learning trajectory grids reveal the complex-
ity and uniqueness of each person’s learning histories (Choi, 2022; Choi &
Slaughter, 2020). It supports the fact that, “for writers who write in multi-
ple languages, the aspects of literacy that can be transferred from one lan-
guage context to another are variable, and the transfer is not always direct”
(Bazerman et al., 2017, p. 355). Kramsch and Lam (1999) also highlight the
role that producing written texts can play in shaping second language learn-
ers’ social and cultural identities. Drawing on texts produced by bi/multi-
lingual writers, they state that while such writers face challenges that are
different from L1 writers, the opportunity to write in a second language can
be a source of creativity and innovation. Those who teach L2 writers, “need
to develop both an insider’s and outsider’s view towards English, realizing the
tension between the standardized forms of English and ways in which NNS
 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away 185

see through these forms and test their limits as they develop their ‘textual
identities’” (Kramsch & Lam, 1999, p. 57).

Standards aren’t set in stone

When it comes to academic writing, standards, or ‘rules of the game’ are

constantly being challenged. Rules of the writing game, as well as rules of the
research game vary from discipline to discipline. The hard sciences have gen-
erally been resistant to change, particularly in allowing the personal to creep
into academic discourse. Accepting a subjective voice in scholarly writing
subverted objectivity, a key rule of the positivist research game. As we shall
see later in the section, there have been, and continue to be, members of a
hard science persuasion who are quite prepared to challenge the notion of
objectivity and the primacy of deductive logic.
The debate over ‘standards’ is a long-running one in education in general
and language education in particular. In the debate, the term is used in two
senses: as an adjective (standard English) and as a noun (English standards).
Standard English refers to a variety of English in which all the key features
of the language such as grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and punctuation
have been codified. The need for standardization emerged in the wake of the
invention of the printing press, which made print materials widely available.
In the United Kingdom, the dialect of the educated, ruling class in southern
England became the standard. Access to certain occupations and institu-
tions was restricted to those who possessed the dialect. Globally, there are
numerous standard Englishes: standard American, Australian, Singaporean
etc. Although they are codified, they are not immutable to change.

In her book on World Englishes, Jennifer Jenkins (2009) notes that:

Standard language is the term used for that variety of a language which
is considered to be the norm. It is the variety held up as the optimum for
educational purposes and as a yardstick against which other varieties of
the language are measured.
(p. 33)
­­

Discussions of standard language are bound to arouse controversy. The ob-

vious question arises: considered to be the norm by whom? As we indicated
earlier in relation to standard English, the dialect that was considered the
norm for education and other specialized purposes, was that spoken by the
community holding the greatest wealth and political power. Used as a noun,
the word can also be contentious, particularly in educational contexts. The
186 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away

shibboleths of ‘falling educational standards’ and the imperative to ‘get back

to basics’ are commonly heard from conservative politicians and their back-
ers in the media.
When it comes to language, numerous scales exist to specify standards at
different levels of ability from novice to expert. One widely used scale is the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The
CEFR specifies language performance standards for general and specific pur-
poses. The CEFR for academic and specific purpose writing begins at B2, the
middle range of the generic scale. The self-assessment standard/descriptor
reads:

I can write clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects relating to my

interests. I can write an essay or report, passing on information or giving
reasons in support of or against a particular point of view. I can write
letters highlighting the personal significance of events and experiences.
(Council of Europe, 2001)

Performance-based standards such as these are criticized on numerous

grounds. Terms such as ‘clear’ and ‘detailed’ are vague and imprecise. What
constitutes a ‘wide’ range of subjects? The range of genres is restricted to
essays, reports, informative and argumentative texts, and personal letters. In
addition, genres, as well as linguistic features such as grammar and lexis are
specific to particular academic subjects. As a self-assessment tool, it’s prob-
ably of dubious value to students. (How useful would you find it?) (For a
discussion, see Nunan, 2007, 2015).
As we noted at various points throughout the book, standards are not im-
mutable, but change over time and can vary according to the purpose and
audience for which the text is being written. Early in our careers, we were
admonished for using contractions, first-person pronouns, for admitting
the personal into our writing. These days, such features are increasingly ac-
cepted. While we advised you to treat colloquialism and certain idioms with
caution and to avoid slang, a degree of informality may be acceptable, again
depending on your audience and purpose.
The issue of standards permeates all levels and areas of education. Standards
are promulgated by ministries of education, and there is much handwring-
ing by politicians and the media when they are not achieved. Languages
constantly change. The rate of change is compounded by globalization and
technology. Variation and change are the rule, not the exception. In the case
of English as a major contact language between cultures since the 18th cen-
tury, this variation has been particularly marked and has resulted in pidgins
 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away 187

and creoles in different parts of the world. If there were no variation and
change, we would have fixed standards and immutable rules.

David’s voice: the ‘Gold Standard’

Some years ago, I was invited by the Minister for Education in Sin-
gapore to act as External Advisor to the English Language Institute
of Singapore (ELIS). The Institute was newly established with, the
‘Founding Father’ of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, as its patron.
Singapore was a place I knew well, having visited it for work and pleas-
ure over many years. I had spoken at numerous International Language
Seminars, taught on the master’s program, and served as a member of
the Governing Board of the Regional Language Centre (RELC). I also
had close connections with key institutions of higher education in-
cluding the National University of Singapore, and Nanyang Techno-
logical University. I was delighted to accept the position.
On my first advisory visit, I had a briefing session with the Director of
ELIS. When I asked about ELIS’s mission, she told me that it was to
enhance the English language skills of content teachers in secondary
schools, that is, teachers of science, history and so on, not only English
teachers. There’s far too much use of Singlish (colloquial Singaporean
English) in the classroom. “We have to stamp it out Singlish”, I was
informed.
She looked puzzled when I asked what would count as success as far as
ELIS was concerned. I elaborated.

At the end of the day, you and I will be evaluated by the Singa-
porean Government, which is funding the Institute, on their per-
ception of whether it had succeeded in its mission. What concrete
evidence would convince them that their money had been well
spent?

“Oh,” she replied, “if all subject teachers spoke as clearly, and accu-
rately as newsreaders on Singaporean television. They would have to
speak British English of course, not American English. Singapore is a
Gold Standard country, and British English is the Gold Standard”.
I was tempted to ask her whether Australian English would do, but
discretion prevailed. Besides, I figured that I already knew the answer.
188 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away

Some genres are more resistant to change than others. Legal and academic
language are obvious examples. When it comes to academic language, some of
the reasons for this conservatism has already been spelled out. Conspiracy the-
orists argue that rigid rules, standards, and practices are maintained to restrict
access to higher education to a privileged, educated elite. Having spent most
of our adult lives within the academy, we are not so sure. Neither of our back-
grounds, as different as they are, could be characterized as educated or elitist.
A major source of conservatism in academia stems from the dominant
positivist, paradigm. As we wrote about earlier in the book, this paradigm
evolved over several 100 years. The procedures and principles for developing
and testing knowledge became known as the scientific method. Rules of the
game for researchers working within the paradigm included reliability, va-
lidity, and objectivity. The researcher had to be rendered invisible, a ghostly
presence in the machinery of the method. These rules had to be adhered to
not only in the research process but also in its reporting.
The positivist approach was challenged by scholars working within the nat-
uralistic paradigm. They rejected the rules of objectivity and impersonality
in academic writing. Laurel Richardson is particularly severe on those who
separate the research process from the writing process. The two are insepa-
rable. She writes to discover perspectives and insights that can only emerge
through the writing itself. For her, the static writing model of the positivists
is a product of ‘mechanistic scientism’, ‘quantitative research’ and ‘entombed
scholarship’. Reading this lifeless prose puts her to sleep.
Her struggle to promote an alternative approach to academic writing, to reim-
agine the relationship between research and writing, and to apply standards
other than objectivity and impersonality came at a cost. She faced rejection
from editors, reviewers, and publishers. In the end, however, she prevailed.
Not all scholars of a positivist persuasion are guilty of ‘mechanistic scientism’
and ‘entombed scholarship’. One of our favorite writers on academic re-
search and writing is Peter Medawar, who won a Nobel Prize for medicine.
Although he has been dead for over 30 years, his words continue to resonate.
In his paper Is the scientific paper a fraud?, he challenged the notion that
scientific hypotheses were the product of logico-deductive thinking, stating
that,

scientists should not be ashamed to admit, as many of them are ashamed

to admit, that hypothesis appear in their minds along unchartered by-
ways of thought; that they are imaginative and inspirational in charac-
ter; that they are indeed adventures of the mind.
(Medawar,
­ 1999, ­p. 31)
 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away 189

A good scientist possessed the combined qualities of a free-flowing imagina-

tion and creativity on one hand and skepticism and criticality on the other.
“There is a sense in which he must be free, but another in which his thought
must be very precisely regimented; there is poetry in science, but also a lot of
bookkeeping” (Medawar, 1996, p. 63). His autobiography, published in 1986
just a year before his death, was playfully titled Memoir of a Thinking Radish.
No, there was nothing entombed about Sir Peter’s scholarship and definitely
not a hint of the mechanistic about his writing.
We don’t want to give the impression that proponents of the personal in
academic writing are sweeping all before them. Resistance remains, particu-
larly among those working within a quantitative paradigm. As a graduate
student, Diego Mideros writes of being sanctioned for employing first-person
pronouns.

I prefer to use “I argue that …” However, I was encouraged to avoid the

use of “I” by one of my assessors who comes from a quantitative para-
digm … [so] I managed to do without it in my dissertation. Although it
was an interesting writing exercise, I did feel constrained as I was unable
to express certain ideas more comfortably using “I”, which I strongly see
as part of the language of qualitative research.
(Botelho de Magalhães, Coterall, & Mideros, 2019, p. 10)

Do we believe that ‘anything goes’ when it comes to academic writing? Pre-

sumably, the answer is ‘no’. If it’s ‘yes’, then that’s the end of the conversa-
tion, and of our book. A ‘no’ answer requires the application of some kinds of
standards and the vexed question of ‘whose standards’? The question brings
us back to purpose and audience, which we dealt with earlier in the chap-
ter. The standards applied by anonymous reviewers and the editors of a top
ranked journal will not be the same as those applied to an M.A. student’s
term paper. This, of course, doesn’t solve the ‘standards’ issue – just makes it
more complicated.

Conclusion

In a world where there is increasing multilingual and multimodal complexi-

ties in making meaning and communicating one’s intended meanings, it may
seem odd that we are writing yet another book that focuses on writing and
language. There is indeed growing inclusion of multimodal texts and possi-
bilities to present one’s work through multimedia platforms as forms of as-
sessments in formal educational contexts. Such possibilities also mean there
190 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away

is more than just ‘language’ and ‘writing’ to think about when communicat-
ing meaning through some form of visual media. However, building one’s
linguistic knowledge to write clearly and coherently are not irrelevant even
in the production of multi-modal/-media texts. A great deal of work that
happens behind the scene involves stitching a coherent narrative together,
which often happens through writing, is used to build the final product. The
more knowledge one has about language, the more they have at their dis-
posal to create the representations they wish to create.
As Julie’s process and product dissertation writing experience in Chapter 3
of coming to understand the role that explicit knowledge of language as
tools for meaning-making shows, such metalinguistic awareness not only
transformed the way she came to see writing as a thinking process but also
helped her to realize her sense of power and agency as a writer to write
in ways that made sense to her. Such life changing experiences have an
impact on her pedagogical approaches with her own graduate level stu-
dents. She is guiding her students to develop and explicitly demonstrate
their content knowledge as well as the language and literacy expectations
in relation to the genre, purpose, and audience of their work. Her most
recent international student, named here as XT, who Julie supervised to
develop her 13,500-word capstone research project, created a booklet for
Julie at the end of the semester documenting her own transformational
journey into coming to see writing differently. The booklet includes eight
key versions of her drafts based on the numerous feedback Julie gave on
the content, language, and writing from February to June 2022 and some
personal diary entries on what XT was learning about writing throughout
her journey. On each of the dividers, XT wrote some brief reflection notes
of how she reflects on those different drafts in the present moment. With
her permission, we have included her reflective notes here to show how
powerful learning to write and learning to write clearly and coherently are
for learners who have been well-educated but never experienced writing
as a method of discovery and thinking process. As they experience such a
process they realize how much more they need to improve their knowledge
about language to be able to clearly and coherently communicate their
message (Figure 9.1).
­­
We hope that XT’s journey resonates in some ways with the one you have
taken with us throughout this book. In one of his marvelous TED Talks,
Do schools kill creativity?, Ken Robinson says that the whole propose of ed-
ucation is to turn out university professors. He notes a curious fact about
professors: they live entirely inside their heads. They see bodies as trans-
portation systems for their heads. The sole purpose of the body is to get
 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away 191

­Figure 9.1  XT’s booklet on her experience of coming to think about writing differ-
ently through her capstone writing project.

their heads to meetings. XT’s journey is a reminder that making progress

as writer is not a simple thing, that as our friend Clive James said, writ-
ing clearly is the hardest thing there is. But it tells us more than that. It
requires persistence and dedication, but also creativity and imagination.
Along the way there will be tears of frustration. However, with guidance
and encouragement, it can be an adventure, not solely of the mind, but of
the whole person.

Making connections
Having come this far, you will be aware that throughout our writing
journey, we’ve taken bearings from students. This is consistent with
our ideological commitment to ­learner-​­centeredness. Our students also
helped to keep us honest. It therefore seemed fitting to share with you
diary extracts from one of Julie’s students. As you read the extracts,
consider what it takes to help students develop the kind of transforma-
tion XT experienced, captured in her title as ‘­From heartless to heartful
academic writing transformation’. Knowledge of language and writing are
a given, but they alone cannot sustain the hard work that is required
to develop the writing muscle. As XT states, “­Writing is not a simple
thing, it needs persistence and dedication. 加油! [jiāyóu!: literal trans-
lation: ‘­Add oil’ meaning ‘­Do your best!’] ☺”. Consider what is needed
to persist (­­Table 9.1).
192 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away

­Table 9.1  Diary extracts from XT: from heartless to heartful academic writing
transformation

20 Feb About the first draft… I have to say I’m still stressed when I see it
2022 now. How could I have written every single paragraph without a
topic sentence? Thx Dr Julie for not giving up on me lol.
01 Apr Ok… this time I briefly read the samples that Dr. Julie sent to me. So
2022 I changed the title and research question. I’m now feeling ashamed
reading this omg… Must think carefully before every single word
before writing. Be consistent!
04 Apr From here I stared to write a diary. It’s absolutely an effective way to
2022 reflect myself on my writing. I did the diary after I got feedback from
Dr. Julie and tried to figure out how to improve.
17 Apr This version was still problematic in the methodology and the focus
2022 was still on intercultural communication which we agreed would not
lead to an interesting angle.
25 May My face is exactly the same
2022 as the girl in the meme when
I sent this draft to Dr. Julie.
I must have brought her
some tough time with my
draft. Sorry ☺ From here I
started to think about another
research question about
translanguaging. We began
sharing some memes about
writing in our email.

­Figure 9.2  
Translation of Chinese
text: Tutor, this is my
thesis.
14 Jun Milestone: Dr. Julie and I had a ­face-­​­­to-​­face meeting!! My
2022 methodology still needed improvement; the lit review also needed to
be reorganized. I was happy to know the problems & afraid of what I
should do at the next stage because there are only 8 days left!!! Btw,
after the meeting I went home and slept for 12 hours…
 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away 193

­Table 9.1 (Continued )  Diary extracts from XT: from heartless to heartful

academic writing transformation

18 Jun Dr. Julie emailed me to ask me about the Chinese translation for
2022 “­collective storytelling”. The time I received the email I was like:
“­What is this? I’ve never heard of it before”. Then I jumped out of
my bed and started to search ☺. I also asked my other Chinese
friends what do they think about this word. Dr. Julie is really good
at building relationship with students. This is the first time I met
a teacher who took the initiative to discuss issues outside of the
subject with students. I also feel it is meaningful to pay attention to
nuances in different languages. Thx Dr. Julie for letting me know the
difference ♡
24 Jun Finally! I finished my proposal
2022 by the support of Dr. Julie.
Yah🎉 I have so much to
say and I need 10 mouths
to express my feelings and
gratitude to my supervisor Dr.
Julie. How did I get so lucky
😭 Thank you, my role model
Dr. Julie and then thank you to
myself ♡ (­I cried for 2 minutes
after I saw my mark and cried
for another 2 minutes after
I saw Dr. Julie’s comments.)
Writing is not a simple thing,
it needs persistence and
dedication. 加油! (­jiāyóu: Do
your best!) ☺
­Figure 9.3  
XT’s text message to
About the miserable face ⇒ : her friend during the
Yes that is me in both writing journey telling
March & April… I’ve never her she is crying and
cried for any assignment writing every day.
before. But I can’t stop crying
for this one.
194 In a nutshell: ten thoughts to take away

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 Glossary

abstract noun: a noun that represents an abstract concept or quality (e.g.,

­
complexity) cf. concrete noun
active voice: A sentence or utterance in which the doer of the action is the
subject of the sentence.
Example: The research team – put their study on hold due to lack of funds.
adjective: A major word class whose members modify or define more clearly
a noun or pronoun.
adverb: A class of words that modify or qualify verbs, adjectives, or other
adverbs.
affix: A bound morpheme that is added to the beginning (prefix) or the end
(suffix) of a word.
anaphora (anaphoric reference): Within a text, a cohesive device in which
the second and subsequent references to an entity or event is marked by
a pronoun.
antonym: A word having the opposite meaning of another word.
article: The determiners the, a/an
­ preceding a noun or noun phrase.
background knowledge: The knowledge of the world that the reader or lis-
tener utilizes in interpreting a piece of spoken or written discourse.
bilingualism: The ability to speak two languages fluently.
bound morpheme: A morpheme that does not have its own existence but
must be attached to another morpheme. (See morpheme for more
information.)
198 Glossary

clause: A major grammatical building block containing a main verb. Inde-

pendent clauses can stand alone as a sentence in their own right. Depend-
ent clauses, marked by conjunctions, must be attached to a main verb.
Example: If the procedure goes as planned (dependent clause), we should
have the results by morning (independent clause).
coherence: The extent to which the sentences in a text are perceived by
the readers as ‘hanging together’ and making sense. Coherence is a psy-
cholinguistic rather than a linguistic phenomenon, although linguistic
phenomena such as cohesion and thematization can facilitate the per-
ception of coherence by the reader.
cohesion: Linguistic links existing between clauses and sentences that mark
referential, logical, and lexical relationships.
collocation: A form of lexical cohesion in which two or more words are re-
lated by virtue of belonging to the same semantic field.
compound word: A word which is constructed from other words. Compound
words usually begin life as two disconnected words (data
­ base), then be-
come joined by a hyphen (data-base),
­­ ​­ and then merge into a single word
(database).
­
Computer-mediated
­ ​­ feedback: Feedback on your writing provided by soft-
ware packages such as Grammarly and the MS Word correcting func-
tion. While these can be useful, the feedback needs to be treated with
caution as the advice is sometimes incorrect.
concordancing: A procedure for identifying patterns, regularities, and asso-
ciations between words and word groups in large computerized databases
(corpora).
­
concrete noun: A noun describing a physical entity (the team, the procedure).
Concrete nouns contrast with abstract nouns.
conditional clause: A dependent clause expressing a condition and marked
by a conjunction such as if or unless.
Examples:
If the procedure succeeds, the funding is almost certain to be renewed.
Unless the procedure succeeds, it’s unlikely that the funding will be renewed.
conjunction: A cohesive device that makes explicit the logical relationships
between the ideas in two different sentences or clauses. There are four
 Glossary 199

types of logical relationship in English: additive (marked by conjunc-

tions such as and and also); adversative (marked by words such as but
and however); causal (marked by words such as because); and temporal
(marked by conjunctions such as firstly, then, next, and finally).
connotation: A meaning implied by a word that goes beyond its literal
meaning.
constituent structure: When one linguistic element is made up of lower-
order elements, we say they have a constituent structure. For example,
the constituent structure of the word watched are the morphemes watch
and
­ -ed.
​­
content word: A word that refers to a thing, quality, state action, or event.
(Content words contrast with function words.)
context: The linguistic and experiential environments in which a piece of
language occurs.
coordination: The joining of two different ideas with a coordinating con-
junction. Use of coordination signals that the ideas have the same status
within the discourse. It contrasts with subordination in which the ideas
have unequal status.
culture: The (often implicit) norms and rules and practices that govern the
interactional and personal behavior of groups and individuals.
declarative knowledge: Knowledge that can be stated (or ‘declared’) such as
a grammatical rule.
definite article: The word the which precedes a noun or noun phrase.
demonstrative: The words this, that, these, and those, which indicate the
proximity of objects to the speaker.
descriptive grammar: A grammar that sets out to describe the way people
use language without prescribing what is correct or incorrect.
determiner: Words that modify nouns to limit their meaning. Common de-
terminers in English include articles (a/an,­ ­ the), demonstratives (this,
­
that, these, those), possessives (his,
­ their), and quantifiers (some,
­ much,
many). Determiners are important elements in cohesion.
direct object: An object that is directly affected by the main verb in a sen-
tence. Direct objects contrast with indirect objects. In the sentence “Lyn
­
handed her assignment to the teacher”, “her assignment” is the direct object,
and “the
­ teacher” is the indirect object.
200 Glossary

discourse: Any stretch of spoken or written language viewed within the

communicative context in which it occurred.
discourse analysis: The systematic study of language in context. Discourse
analysis is sometimes contrasted with text analysis, which focuses on
analyzing the formal properties of language.
ellipsis: The omission of clauses, words, or phrases that, strictly speaking, are
required to make an utterance grammatical, but that can be recovered
from the preceding sentence.
existential subject: (also known as empty or dummy subject) Use the there or
it in existential sentences.
Examples:
There will be a seminar on Friday.
It’s surprising how often graduate students apply the wrong procedure to the
analysis of their data.
exophoric reference: Referring expressions such as ‘he’, ‘this’, and ‘here’,
which point to entities and events in the world outside the text.
feedback: Providing information on the performance of a product, proce-
dure, or individual/group of individuals. Summative feedback is provided
at the end of the instructional process. Formative feedback is designed to
help the individual or group improve a product, such as an assignment,
or a procedure such as an oral examination.
figurative language: Expressions whose meanings can’t be deduced from a
literal knowledge of the words that make them up.
field: In systemic-functional linguistics, the subject matter of a text. (See
also ideational meaning.)
first language: An individual’s native tongue.
function word: A ‘grammatical’ rather than ‘content’ word, belonging to one
of the closed word classes such as determiners, prepositions, pronouns,
modals, and conjunctions.
genre: A purposeful, socially constructed oral or written text such as a narra-
tive, a casual conversation, a poem, a recipe, or a description. Each genre
has its own characteristic structure and grammatical forms that reflect its
social purpose.
 Glossary 201

grammar: The study of how words are formed and combined to enable the
communication of meaning.
grammatical metaphor: The process of turning actions into things.
Example: They are constructing a new building next to our school which has
increased the amount of noise in the area considerably. → The construc-
tion of the new building next to our school has increased noise in the
area considerably.
grammar word: A word belonging to a closed grammatical class such as
prepositions or articles. They are also called function words or structural
words.
grapheme: The smallest meaningful unit in the writing system of a language.
homonym: Words that are spelled or sound the same but have different
meanings.
Examples:
‘study’
­ (a room, to examine carefully)
‘Write’,
­ ‘right’
­
hyponym: A word that is the subordinate of a more general word.
Example: ‘physics
­ and ‘chemistry;
­ and hyponyms of ‘science’.
­
ideational meaning: The experiential content or subject matter of a text.
indefinite article: The word a/an­ used before singular count nouns or noun
phrases to refer to an entity that is either unknown or has not previously
been mentioned.
indirect object: A noun phrase that usually comes between the main verb
and direct object in a sentence or utterance.
Example: I gave my boyfriend a really cool t-shirt for his birthday.
inductive reasoning: The process by which a learner arrives at rules and
principles by studying examples and instances. Inductive learning con-
trasts with deductive learning, in which principles, rules, or theories are
applied to understand an example or instance.
instantial relationship/meaning:
­ A meaning or relationship between enti-
ties, events, and states-of-affairs that only make sense within the spoken
or written context in which it occurs.
202 Glossary

interpersonal meaning: That aspect of a written or spoken utterance that

reflects the speaker’s feelings and attitudes toward the topic of the ut-
terance. In systemic-functional linguistics, the term ‘tenor’
­ is also used.
lexicon: All of the words in a language.
lexical: To do with the words in a language.
lexical cohesion: Lexical cohesion occurs when two or more content words
in a text are related. The two major categories of lexical cohesion are
reiteration/repetition and collocation.
Examples:
Reiteration/repetition:
­ The information explosion has greatly facilitated the
development of technology and globalization. In fact, these three fac-
tors, the information explosion, technology, and globalization, are inter-
related and mutually reinforcing.
Collocation: Our garden looks best in spring. By summer, the flowers are past
their best.
lexical density: The ratio of content words to grammar/function words in a
text. Generally speaking, written texts have a higher lexical density than
spoken texts.
lexical relationship: The relationship between content words in a text. (See
also lexical cohesion.)
lexicography: The study of words.
linguistics: The systematic study of language. Linguistics is divided into a
series of ­sub-disciplines,
​­ including phonetics, phonology, morphology,
syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
literacy: The ability to read and write a language.
logical connectives: Conjunctions such as therefore, however, in addition,
firstly, and, and but that mark textual relationships such as causality, tem-
porality, and adversity.
metalinguistic awareness: Developing an awareness and understanding of
language as an abstract phenomenon as well as the ability to ‘step back’
and reflect on the underlying processes of your own language use.
metaphor: Words and phrases used to describe things they do not physically
resemble.
 Glossary 203

modal verb: A closed set of verbs (can, could, have to, may, might, must shall,
should, will, would) that express attitudes such as certainty, permission,
and possibility.
modality: That aspect of a sentence or utterance that reveals the attitude
of the writer or speaker toward the content of what has been said or
written. The most common way of expressing modality is through modal
verbs and adverbs.
mode: One of the three register variables in systemic-functional linguistics.
Mode refers to the means of communication, e.g., written versus spoken
­ ­​­­ ​­
and face-to-face versus Zoom.
morpheme: The smallest meaningful element into which a word can be
analyzed.
Example: The word walked consists of two morphemes: walk which signifies
an action and -ed​­ which signifies the fact that the action took place in
the past. -ed is a bound morpheme. It can’t exist as a meaningful unit in
its own right.
morphology: The study of the internal structure of words.
morphosyntax: The combined study of the internal structure of words
(morphology) and the rules that govern the arrangement of words into
clauses and sentence (syntax).
nominalization: The process of turning verbs into nouns. (See also gram-
matical metaphor.) Nominalization has a number of purposes, including
that of removing the doer of the action. It also allows for a process to be
topicalized.
Example: The home team won which excited the crowd. → The team’s win excited
the crowd.
notions: General concepts expressed through language such as time, dura-
tion, and quantity.
nouns: Probably the largest class of content words in any language, nouns
refer to persons, objects, and entities. There are various ways of classify-
ing nouns, for example, countable (people, planets, movies) versus un-
countable (food, noise, water), and concrete (houses, statues, ant) versus
abstract (enmity, eternity, eccentricity). New nouns are being created as
quickly as new entities are entering our universe.
204 Glossary

object: That part of a sentence or utterance that follows the main verb and
is affected or ‘acted upon’ by the subject.
object complement: A word or phrase that describes or modifies the object
of a sentence.
Example: I used to call her my best friend.
parse: To divide a sentence into its component parts and label these gram-
matically as subject, verb, object, etc.
passive voice: A sentence or utterance in which the result of an action rather
than the performer of the action is made the subject. The passive voice
contrasts with the active voice and has a number of important discourse
functions such as to emphasize or thematize an action or result of an
action or to refer to the result of an action with the doer is unknown.
Example: The book was finally finished. The hotel room was totally trashed.
phoneme: The smallest meaningful unit of sound in a language.
phonetics: The description and analysis of the ways in which speech sounds
are produced, transmitted, and understood by speakers and hearers.
phonology: The description and analysis of the distinctive sounds in a lan-
guage and the relationship between sound and meaning.
phrasal verbs: The phrasal verb consists of two parts, a verb + a preposition
or adverb
Examples: Put up, look after, shut down, carry on, come across
pragmatics: The study of the way language is used in particular contexts to
achieve particular ends.
procedural knowledge: The ability to use knowledge to do things. It is some-
times informally known as ‘how to’ knowledge and contrasts with declar-
ative knowledge which has to do with the ability to declare rules and
principles.
process writing: This term is used in several senses in the book. In the first
place, it describes a method developed is the 1980s as an antidote to the
mechanistic copying of models that was considered to be sterile and dis-
couraged creativity. The process began by guided discussion and brain-
storming to generate topics on the theme of the writing followed by free
writing, teacher conferencing of initial drafts, and progressively shaping
the writing. It was also seen as a several step procedure of initial drafting
 Glossary 205

of ideas, revising and redrafting, incorporating new content that arise

during the writing process, inserting new ideas as a result of feedback,
and then drafting of a final product. The third, and most extensive dis-
cussion, was the notion of writing as a thinking process.
pronominalization: The process of substituting a pronoun for an entire noun
phrase.
Example: I went to the seminar on how to be a better writer last night. It was
better than I expected.
pronoun: A word that substitutes for a noun or a noun phrase.
proposition: A statement about some entity or event.
psycholinguistics: The study of the mental processes underlying language
acquisition and use.
purpose: The reason(s) form why you are writing a piece (whether it be an
assignment, an article, or even a book). Keeping purpose in mind goes
hand-in-hand with audience as you consider the effect you want to have
on the reader.
recount: A genre consisting of a sequence of events initiated by an introduc-
tion and orientation and ending with a comment and conclusion.
reference (cohesive):
­ Those proforms (largely pronouns and demonstra-
tives) in a text that refer to and can only be interpreted with reference to
some other part of the text or to some entity or event in the experiential
world.
register: The kind of language used by discourse communities for particular
communicative purposes. In systemic-functional linguistics, register is
described in terms of field (the subject of the communication), tenor
(the relationship between the interactants), and mode (the means of
communication, e.g., written versus spoken and ­face-to-face
­​­­ ​­ versus
Zoom).
reiteration: A form of lexical cohesion in which the two cohesive items refer
to the same entity or event. Reiteration includes repetition, synonym or
near synonym, superordinate, and general word. In the following exam-
ple, the underlined words refer to the same entity and are therefore an
example of reiteration.
Example: My computer has been playing up ever since I installed that new soft-
ware. The thing has been driving me crazy.
206 Glossary

relative clause: A subordinate clause that modifies or provides additional

information about the subject of a sentence. Relative clauses provide a
level of ‘delicacy’ not possible with coordinate clauses because they can
indicate the relative status of the additional information.
Example: The following statement contains two pieces of information
about the President of the University of Hong Kong. The president of
the University of Hong Kong comes from Shanghai and he is a microbiol-
ogist. Both pieces of information have relatively equal status. (It could
be argued that his place of origin is more important than his academic
discipline because it occurs first, but that’s probably splitting hairs!)
If the author of the statement wants to prioritize place of origin, she
could make it part of the main clause and ‘relativize’ the academic
field:
The president of the University of Hong Kong, who’s a microbiologist, comes
from Shanghai. Or, she could elevate his status, as follows: The presi-
dent of the University of Hong Kong, who comes from Shanghai, is
a microbiologist. By placing either place of origin or academic dis-
cipline at the end of the sentence, the author is giving the informa-
tion the status of ‘new’ (i.e., important information), as this typically
comes at the end of the sentence. (See entries on theme and rheme
below.)
repair: The correction of clarification of a speaker’s utterance either by the
speaker (self-correction) or by someone else (other correction). These
corrections serve to avert communication breakdowns in conversation.
reported speech (or indirect speech): Language used to report what some-
one else said. Reported speech involves a tense shift.
Examples:
I am sorry I missed the seminar. → Jake said that he was sorry he missed the
seminar.
I finished my assignment early. → Jane said that she had finished her assign-
ment early.
I’ll be there at six. → John said that he’d be there at six.
I’ve seen that movie five times. → Wendy said that she had seen the movie
five times.
rheme: (see
­ theme/rheme,
­ below)
 Glossary 207

schema theory: A theory of language processing based on the notion that

past experiences lead to the creation of mental frameworks that help us
make sense of new experiences.
­second-language
​­ acquisition: The psychological and social processes under-
lying the development of proficiency in a second language.
semantic network: A network of words in which individual words belong to
a particular ‘family’ such as ‘the weather’, ‘linguistics’, and ‘education’.
semantics: The study of the formal meanings expressed in language without
reference to the contexts in which the language is used.
sentence: A unit of language containing a subject and a finite verb. Sen-
tences can be simple, containing a single clause, or complex, containing
more than one clause. The basic elements of a sentence are subject,
verb, object, complement, and adverbial.
sociolinguistics: The study of language in its social context.
standards: In the book, we discuss two terms: standard language and lan-
guage standards. All languages come in different varieties: ‘Standard
language’ is that variety considered to be the norm, the yardstick against
which other varieties are to be judged. The term is controversial, as is
the term ‘language standards’ as the questions immediately arise: Con-
sidered to be the norm by whom? and Who is to arbitrate on standards
of acceptability? As we indicate in the book, standards are constantly
changing as is degrees of acceptability.
subject complement: A word or phrase that describes or modified the subject
of a sentence.
Example: I am really tired.
subordinate clause: a clause that is part of another clause. Subordinate
clauses are labeled according to the way they function in relation to the
main clause.
(a) Nominal clauses take on functions associated with noun phrases, e.g.,
subject or object in the main clause.
(b) Adverbial clauses take the function of adverbials.
(c) Relative clauses take an ‘adjectival’ function, as modifiers in a noun
phrase.
(d) Comparative clauses take a modifying function in an adjective phrase,
an adverb phrase, or a noun phrase, following a comparative word or
construction. (Leech, 1992, p. 108.)
208 Glossary

subordination: The process of ‘downgrading’ one clause in a sentence in

order to show that the information it contains is less significant than the
information in the main clause. (See relative clause above.)
substitution: A category of cohesive device in which proforms stand in for
earlier mentioned nouns, verbs, and clauses.
synonym: Two word or phrases having the exact or almost exact meaning
as each other. Some linguists argue that no two words have exactly the
same meaning, that, for example, while run and sprint are very similar,
they have different shades of meaning.
syntax: The study of the rules that govern the formation of grammatical
structures and the ordering of words into sentences. Grammar consists
of syntax and morphology.
systemic-functional
​­ linguistics: A theory that sees language as sets of interre-
lated systems, that stresses its social nature, and that attempts to account
for grammatical features in terms of their communicative functions.
text: The written record of a communicative event which conveys a com-
plete message. Texts may vary from single words (e.g., ‘EXIT’) to books
running to hundreds of pages.
text analysis: The analysis of textual features such as cohesion, text structure,
and information focus. The focus is on formal rather than functional fea-
tures of language, and the analysis generally makes little reference to the
extra-linguistic context that gave rise to the text in the first place.
text structure: Rhetorical patterns within texts such as problem-solution.
­
theme/rheme: In terms of message structure, Halliday divides sentences/
clauses into two. At the beginning of the message, is the theme. The
writer is saying to the reader: I want to tell you something about X. The rest
of the sentence is the rheme. Here the writer is saying: This is what I want
you to know about X. Please pay attention, this is news! This process of giv-
ing prominence to certain elements within a sentence by placing them
at the beginning of the sentence or utterance is known as thematization.
top-down
​­ processing: The use of background knowledge, knowledge of text
structures, etc., to assist in the interpretation of discourse.
topic: The experiential subject of a text, that is, what the text is about.
topicalization: Very closely related to the concept of thematization, topi-
calization is the process of giving prominence to certain elements in a
 Glossary 209

sentence or utterance by shifting them to the beginning. The following

sentences express the same propositional content, but each is topicalized
differently.
Examples:
I will finish this glossary tonight.
This glossary will be finished tonight.
Tonight, I will finish this glossary.
transactional language: Language that is used to obtain goods and services.
This use of language contrasts with interpersonal language where the
purpose is primarily social.
transcription: The written record of a piece of spoken discourse.
verb: A word class denoting actions and states.
­
voice (1): When it comes to grammar there are two forms of voice: active
and passive. Voice enables the speaker or writer to focus on the person
performing the action or the result of the action.
voice (2):
­ Given the focus of this book, the second, and more significant
sense in which voice is use is in terms of the development of your own
voice as a writer. We suggested that you make your voice heard by your
choice of what to write about and how you choose to tell the story.
Your voice will reflect your identity. It will be revealed in the discursive
(linguistic) and non-discursive resources you draw on.
word: A single meaningful unit consisting of one or more morphemes.

Reference

Leech, G. (1992). Introducing English grammar. Penguin.

 Index

abstract 43–44, 58–59, 129, 149, 178, 180 Bailey, K. B. 98, 99, 103
academic conversation 7, 59–60, 73, 81, Bass, R. V. 86
171, 177 Bazerman, C. 184
academic language 5, 141, 181–185, 188; Biden, J. 135, 140, 142
conservatism 188; as native tongue bilingualism 89
181–185 Bourdieu, P. 182
academic writing: defining 4; metaphors in Bowden, T. 56
130–131; personal in 102–103; similes in British National Corpus 21
129; standards 185–189; traditional 94–95; Bruner, J. 97–99
voice in 96–97; see also individual entries Bullock Report 4
active voice 8, 24, 121 Burgess, A. 41
adjectives 23, 113–115, 117–118, 127, 185
adverbs 13, 117–118, 175 Cambridge Teaching Knowledge Test
advice for aspiring authors 115–118 (TKT) 15, 17
affix 16 Canagarajah, S. 111, 120
Aitchison, C. 42 Carrell, P. 46
Amis, M. 94 clause 7, 12–14, 18, 30, 33; coordinating/
antonym 39 subordinating 33, 81; relative 23, 113;
apprenticeship of writing 112–114 types 13
art/craft of writing 81–84 clichés 8, 81, 123, 132–137, 141
Ashworth, M. K. 145 Coffin, C. 71
assessment 147, 155, 189; citation 149; ideas coherence 10, 25, 31, 36–40, 81,
149; language 149; knowledge of language 168, 180
15–16; short sentences 116; structure 149; cohesion 6, 28, 36–40, 45, 46, 180;
see also self-assessment conjunction 38; ellipsis 38; lexical
Atkinson, D. 59–60 cohesion 39–40, 158; reference 37–38;
audiences 4–5; in coursework assignment substitution 39
writing 73–75; defining 176–178; collocation 21, 24, 39, 40
importance of 72, 80; meaning-full self- collocational relationships 39
strategies to sense 75–76; supervisors/ colloquialisms 132–137, 176
mentors/experts as mediators to 78–79; Common European Framework of Reference
tailoring writing to different 85–88; for Languages (CEFR) 186
writing process 7 complement 15, 32
autobiographical self, writer 95, 106, 107 computer-aided instruction (CAI) 154
212 Index

conjunction 38, 41, 115, 131, 158, 175; corrective feedback (WCF) 74, 149; see
see also cohesion also meaningful feedback
Connor, U. 40 field 51, 62, 83, 180; see also mode; tenor
content word 54, 126 figurative language 8, 168, 175; cliches
context 43–44, 124, 139, 143–144; 132–137; colloquialisms 132–137; degrees
linguistic 21; physical 59; secondary 60; of acceptability 137–140; figures of
tertiary 60 speech 128–137; grammatical metaphor
conventional genre 58, 67 131–132; idioms 132–137; literal and
coordination 33, 81, 179 figurative meanings 123–128; metaphors
corrective feedback 57, 74, 151–154, 156; 129–132; simile 128–129; slang 132–137
see also assessment figurative meanings 123–128, 140
coursework assignment writing 73–76 figures of speech 128–137; cliches 132–137;
Craft, M. 86 colloquialisms 132–137; idioms 132–137;
culture 104, 186 metaphors 129–132; simile 128–129;
curriculum 4, 19–20 slang 132–137
first language 140, 156, 181–182, 184
detailed knowledge 10, 175–176 Flowerdew, J. 183–184
Denny, T. 22, 138–140 Forster, E. M. 47, 63
Denzin, N. 67, 106 Foucault, M. 65
Derewianka, B. 14, 175 Freeman, D. 155–156
Dillard, A. 23 functional grammar 6, 12, 14, 15, 24–25,
discourse 6, 39, 42, 51, 54, 59, 100, 104, 29, 175
136, 158–159, 175, 185 function words 54; see also content words
discovery, method of 180–181, 190
genre 7, 55–60, 106, 180, 182, 190
ellipsis 38–40; cohesion 39–40; see also Goetz, J. 96
substitution Good, J. W. 86
Ellis, R. 74 Goodman, K. 60
emergent academic writer 72–73 grammar 3, 12–15, 18, 50, 61, 115, 154, 158,
English: adjectives and adverbs 118; clause 170; definition 12; explicit teaching 19;
types 13; grammar 11; knowledge of functional grammar 6, 12, 14, 15, 24–25,
5–6; non-native speaker of 24; standards 29, 175; grammatical metaphor 54,
185–186 131–132; knowledge of 18, 19, 172;
English Language Institute of Singapore lexical density 54; morphosyntax 11,
(ELIS) 187 184, 203; roles 13; speaking and writing
error guide sheet 152 14; status, within curriculum 19–20;
explanations 55, 62, 151, 152 vocabulary and spelling 6; words 54
explicit knowledge 175–176 Grammarly tool 156–160
expositions 55, 56, 62 Graves, R. 164

Feak, C. B. 42 Halliday, M. 29–30, 36–37, 39, 45, 46, 54,

feedback: computer-mediated 154–159; 131–132, 175
corrective 151–154; critical 149; ‘hard sciences’ 8, 111, 185
formative 145, 149, 151, 164; negative Hasan, R. 37, 39, 45–46
144–145, 162; peer 149–151; positive Heath, S. B. 95
144, 145, 161; responding to 148–150; Hedge, T. 35
summative 145, 148; timing and Hemingway, E. 112, 113–114
effectiveness of 159–160; written Hoey, M. 40, 159
 Index 213

Holliday, A. 99, 111 meaningful feedback: computer-mediated

Holman Jones, S. 99, 100–101, 103, 106 feedback 154–159; corrective feedback
Hyland, F. 144 151–154; described 143–148; peer
Hyland, K. 144 feedback 150–151; responding to feedback
hyponym 39, 201 148–150; seeking and providing 9; timing
and effectiveness of feedback 159–160
identity 92, 95, 97, 99, 103–107, 111, 115, meanings: figurative 123–128; literal 8,
174, 180 123–128
idioms 8, 123, 132–137, 140–142 Medawar, P. 188
inductive reasoning 98, 99 metadiscourse 42
Ivanič, R. 95, 106–107 metalinguistic awareness 190
metalinguistic knowledge 157
James, C. 5, 22, 142, 174, 191 metaphors 123, 129–133, 135, 136, 139,
Jenkins, J. 185 140; academic writing 130–131; figurative
Johns, A. 40 language 129–131; figures of speech
journal article 42, 58, 76–79 128–132; grammatical 131–132; primary
129–130
King, S. 3, 136 Mideros, D. 189
Kramsch, C. 184 mode 51–53, 83, 180; see also field; tenor
Kroll, B. 72 morphosyntax 11, 184, 203
‘move analysis’ technique 109, 110
L2 writers 156; experiences with text editors multiliteracies 19
157; teaching 184 multimodalities 19
Lam, W. S. E. 184 Myhill, D. 12, 19, 20, 175, 184
Lamott, A. 114, 119, 168, 180
A Language for Life report 4 Nanyang Technological University 187
Lawrence, M. 63 narratives 55–57, 64, 67, 68, 99, 102
LeCompte, M. 96 National University of Singapore 187
Lee Kuan Yew 187 Nelson, C. 103, 111
lexis 11, 16, 184; chains 41; cohesion notions 69, 111
39–41; collocations 20–21; density 54; nouns 13, 15, 54, 175, 180
relationship 198; repetition 39, 41; see
also vocabulary object 13, 15, 32, 81, 100, 129, 175
linearity of prose 178–179 Oxford Collocational Dictionary for Students of
linguistics: applied 4, 72; contemporary English 24
51; context 21; European 51; systemic-
functional 7, 29, 50–51 Paltridge, B. 161, 176–177
literacy 4, 11, 19, 182–184, 190 Parker, D. 3
literal meanings 8, 123–128, 130, 131 Passeron, J.-C. 182
Liu, K. 148, 151, 153 passive voice 15, 24, 31, 54, 94, 104, 108
logical connectives 38; see also phrasal verbs 16, 24
conjunction procedures 55, 106, 144, 150
pronoun 104, 121, 175
Martin, J. 55, 132, 175 proposition 5, 35, 57, 99, 183
Matsuda, P. 59–60, 104–105, 180 prose, linearity of 178–179
McCarthy, M. 22, 54 Pullum, J. 3
McKellen, I. 71 punctuation 11–12, 23–24, 50, 61, 104, 175
‘meaningful chunks’ 14 purpose: defining 176–178; writing process 7
214 Index

recounts 41, 55, 57, 62 summarizing 42–45

reference (cohesive) 37–38, 40 Swales, J. M. 42
register analysis 51–55 synonym 39, 41, 61
reiteration/repetition 39 systemic-functional linguistics 29, 50–51
relative clause 23, 113 systemic-functional linguists 56
reports 7, 55, 57, 58, 60, 133
revising 9–10; final draft 164–170; first draft Tardy, C. 58, 60, 67, 95, 104–105, 111
164–170 tenor 51–53, 83, 180; see also field; mode
rewriting 7, 10, 63, 164, 170, 171, 181 TESOL 11, 72
rheme 30, 31, 35, 159 ‘text-forming’ devices 37, 45–46
Richardson, L. 62–64, 67, 69, 74, 88, 94–95, textual coherence, index of 46
183, 188 textual features and voice 103–106
Robinson, K. 190 thematization 6, 10, 14, 29–35, 83, 104,
Rowling, J. K. 119 167
theme/rheme 34–36, 34
Saint Martin, M. 182 ‘transmission’ teaching 20, 87
Second language acquisition 15, 125–126 Truss, L. 24
self-assessment 15, 186
sentences 6–8, 14, 115–116, 180 vocabulary 6, 11, 12, 15, 20–23, 29, 115,
Shakespeare, W. 135, 141 117, 120, 170, 172, 175
Shaw, G. B. 11 voice 72, 83, 85, 92, 94, 96–100, 103–121,
signposting 6, 28, 42–45 138, 168, 180; in academic writing 96–97;
similes 123, 128–129, 136 active voice 8, 24; adverbs and adjectives
simpler words 117 117–118; definition of 97–99; developing
slang 8, 123, 132–137, 140 106–112; passive voice 15, 24, 31, 54, 94,
Socrates 87 104, 108; short sentences 115–116; and
Sokolik, M. 49, 57 simpler words 117; textual features and
speech community slang 136–137 103–106; third voice 73
Standard English 185
standards: academic writing 185–189; Wang, S. 146
performance-based 186 White, E. B. 3, 50, 62
Stapleton, P. 103 Wilde, O. 133, 141
Starfield, S. 161, 176–177 Willis, D. 21
Storch, N. 148–151, 153 Wolcott, H. 120–121
storytelling 99–102 words: class 14; groups 14; simpler 117
structural words see function words Wordsworth, W. 128, 140
Strunk, W. 3, 50, 62 World Englishes 185
subordination 179
substitution 39; see also ellipsis Zinsser, W. 63, 112, 165, 169, 180, 183