The Wikipedia website and academic settings.

Wikipedia: A useful tool to improve academic writing

The article Writing for the World: Wikipedia as an Introduction to Academic Writing (Tardy, 2010) portrays the usefulness of implementing this well-known electronic device as a tool to help students move from writing personal essays to writing academic texts. It focuses on how L2 writing teachers can lead learners to develop academic literacy skills by implementing this collaborative web-based resource as long as they do so within its editing policies and standard.

To compose Wikipedia’s articles, Tardy (2010) states that students “need to develop a good understanding of the website itself, including the general guidelines for contributing, the range of topics covered, and the kind of information that is commonly included in an article” (p. 14). After identifying potential subjects for their own articles, students have to gather information about the selected ones from a wide range of sources; such as blogs, newspapers, corporate-sponsored sites, specific websites or published books. According to Tardy (2010), “once they have located sources, students need to learn to paraphrase and summarize…and students must learn to avoid plagiarism” (p.12). In order to do so, students need to be familiarized with the two different formats of citation on this website: footnotes and general references.

After students have revised and polished their articles as regards content, organization, style and citation, they are ready to tackle the issue of publishing their writing. Taylor (2010) affirms that “Wikipedia provides an excellent opportunity to publish for a global audience” (p.18).  Thus, using Wikipedia as a tool to write formal academic texts can truly provoke students’ potential in writing and give them the additional benefit of raising their awareness about the reliability of this valuable web site as a credible source of information.

To sum up, the use of Wikipedia in academic writing enhances students’ literacy skills. Moreover, Taylor (2010) declares that “ in producing a text for Wikipedia, students gain a real sense of audience and enjoy the satisfaction of seeing their work published on  a high-traffic global website” (p.18).  Producing texts for an audience beyond the teacher gives learners the opportunity to develop many skills of academic research writing through an interesting and manageable experience.

Reference

Tardy, C. M.  (2010). Writing for the world: Wikipedia as an introduction to Academic Writing. English Teaching Forum, 1,   pp. 12 -19, 27.  Retrieved October 2012, from http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/docs/10-48-1-c.pdf

Discourse communities and professional growth.

The importance of discourse communities to acquire academic communicative competences.

To belong to a discourse community in order to grow professionally, members have to be acquainted with some basic criteria. Johns(1990) and Swales (1990) state that a discourse community is composed of a minimum of expert members and a frequently larger number of apprentice members who operate on the basis of implicit and explicit public goals. As part of any community, its members share a common discourse, similar knowledge as well as the same purpose. Participating in a discourse community of a specific discipline is a means to acquire communicative competences. Each member can develop the necessary strategies to become prolific writers to express their knowledge and beliefs.

In discussing the importance of discourse communities in the language teaching world to promote fruitful reflection, it is vital to understand the scope of this practice. “Teacher reflection is considered an important means for developing subject matter, pedagogical, and pedagogical-content knowledge about how to teach” (Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles, & Lopez-Torres, 2003, page 1 ). Thus, if teacher’s reflection is focused on the improvement of classroom practices, it would be a powerful tool to enhance learners’ achievement. Moreover, reflection is also a fundamental factor to create opportunities to share experience and knowledge and also to define and redefine some common teaching practices.

Learning and growing in teaching involve the construction and reconstruction of practical theories and personal practical knowledge (Sanders & McCutcheon, 1986). Hoffman-Kipp et al (2003) assert that teachers should consistently be situated in active learning roles with ample opportunity to discuss new and difficult educational ideas and to apply their learning in their respective classrooms to improve what they do. Discourse communities with their collaborative learning objective contribute towards satisfying teachers’ needs and also they provide the support desired by them.

According to Porter (1992), discourse communities may operate like little ecosystems. As in any ecosystem, members belonging to it will need to be intercommunicated to   make the ecosystem survive. To keep this “discourse ecosystem” alive it is necessary to create and share participatory mechanisms in order to provide information and feedback with the purpose of stressing the participatory and negotiable nature of living and learning in this particular community.

References

Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles, A.J., & Lopez Torres,L.(2003). Beyond reflection: teacher learning           as praxis. Theory into practice, Summer 2003. Retrieved October 2007, from

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_mONQM/is_3_42/ai_108442653

Johns, A. (1995). “Teaching classroom authentic genres: Initiating students into academic cultures and discourses.” In Belcher, D. and Braine, G. (Eds) (1995). Academic writing in second language: Essays on research and pedagogy.(pp.277-292).Norwod,NJ:Ablex.

Porter,J.E.(1992). Audience and rhetoric: An archeological composition of the discourse community. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Sanders, D.P., & McCutcheon, G.(1986).The development of practical theories of teaching. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 2(1), 50-70

Swales, J.M. (1990).Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings.Cambridge,UK : Cambridge University Press.

The Writing Lab &The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. (2012). In-Text Citations:  The Basics. Retrieved from

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resourse/560/02/2012-03-14