The 2009 Symposium on Multilingual Student Writers
One Size Does Not Fit All:
Addressing General and Discipline-Specific Conventions for Academic Writing
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Unit 1 Residential Complex All-Purpose Room
UC
Berkeley Campus
9:00AM - 3:00PM
Guest Speaker:
Randi Reppen
Professor of Applied Linguistics
Northern Arizona University
Description:
What does it mean to teach writing? Writing is definitely not a case of one size fits all. General writing courses like freshman composition are filled with students from a variety of backgrounds and writing abilities who are heading into a range of different disciplines. So, how can these courses balance general composition requirements with students’ need to later master disciplinary writing? During the symposium, we will look at some ways to address both general and specific aspects of writing, including equipping students with tools to help them become autonomous writers. Specifically, we will explore how writing teachers and also students can look at the writing expectations and conventions of various disciplines and use that information to shape writing instruction and the writing that they produce. Information from corpus linguistics will be used to identify characteristics of disciplinary writing.
Speaker Biography:
Randi Reppen is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University where she teaches in the MA TESL and Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics programs. Corpus linguistics is her main area of research. Randi is particularly interested in how to use information from corpus research to inform language teaching and material development. She has recently authored Using Corpora in the Language Classroom (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press).
Session Files:
For information about current and future symposia, please contact
The Symposium Committee
College Writing Programs
University of California, Berkeley
symposium@berkeley.edu
(510) 642-2652
The Symposium Series is sponsored by The College Writing Programs (Undergraduate Division of the College of Letters and Science), Technical Communications (College of Engineering), and Academic Services Centers (Residential and Student Service Programs) at The University of California, Berkeley.
