This report is the third in a three part series of reports on academic writing you will do this semester. It is a continuation, extension, and synthesis of all the previous reports you have completed. That is, you have already critically examined a range of sources of academic reading to explore what academic reading consists of in your field, what it means to read as a major in your field, what it means to write in your field, and what it means to study written communication in your field.
For this third report, you will revisit all of the data you have collected, the various texts you have read, and the reports you have written over the semester and write a 4-6 page analytical report exploring the question: what is academic writing?
Re-examine the various methods that you have been practicing in this course to help you find and gather data. Look back at your course notes, the readings from the textbook, WebBoard discussions, drafts, reader responses, and so forth.. Look again at the data that illustrates the kinds of reading and writing you do/have done/will do as a student in a particular field. Re-interview/revisit your professors to follow-up on additional question you may have formulated since your previous interviews. Go to the journals, books/textbooks, websites that represent learning, teaching, and research in your field to look again what they have to say about written communication and disciplinary specific written communication practices.
Use the research questions for this assignment (What is academic writing? What does it mean to talk about and study academic writing in your field/discipline?) and the textbook chapters on writing in the disciplines to help you construct your analysis questions.
Provide parenthetical citations of published reference and data sources
in the text of your final draft and a list of references or works cited (depending
on the citation format you use). Provide specific examples from all of the data
you have accumulated over the semester to illustrate your observations and to
support your claims.