Writing proficiently in any language requires knowing about much more than grammar, lexis, regist... more Writing proficiently in any language requires knowing about much more than grammar, lexis, register, genres, audience and rhetorical situation. It also requires that writers call upon implicit sociocultural and contextual inferences made via indexes. Indexes convey a wide range of sociocultural information about social background, professional and cultural identity, affective and epistemological positioning, gender and ethnicity. The ways in which this information is indexed, however, can vary significantly from one language to another, making indexicality a significant concern for international writers as they negotiate their positions through writing. This paper describes a novel method in writing research, indexical analysis, which is used to identify how French politeness norms are indexed in application letters written in English by first-language (L1) French students. It was found that although their writing was considered grammatically correct, divergences in terms of where a...
International audienceDans cet ouvrage, le sujet du réel a été soumis à une réflexion collective ... more International audienceDans cet ouvrage, le sujet du réel a été soumis à une réflexion collective et pluridisciplinaire ramenée aux domaines de l’enseignement, de la formation, des apprentissages, de la pédagogie et de la didactique, à la croisée de plusieurs champs disciplinaires : les mathématiques, l’informatique, le français, la sociologie, l’éducation physique et sportive, la philosophie, les sciences du langage, la physique. Le thème de l’ouvrage amène les chercheurs à examiner la place du réel dans leurs recherches en éducation, leur manière de « poser » le réel, de l’observer, et de le questionner dans une variété de situations éducatives. La présente étude adopte une architecture circulaire qui s’ouvre avec une exploration du réel de l’énumération en didactique des mathématiques et se clôt, selon un mouvement rotatoire, sur le concept des nombres irréels. Le regard porté sur le réel se décline selon trois types de réflexion – médiation, codification et conceptualisation – et...
The process-oriented aspects of Writing for Academic Purposes are well-established within decades... more The process-oriented aspects of Writing for Academic Purposes are well-established within decades of research in applied linguistics, North American rhetoric and composition pedagogy. Various approaches to teaching process writing include increasing students' integral genre awareness (Swales & Feak 1994, 2000; Johns 1997); fostering an appreciation of writing genres as an ongoing, rhetorical process (Elbow & Belanoff 1989a; Freedman & Medway 1994; Hyland & Richards 2003); and an insistance upon dialogue as a means for developing discoursal competence (Harris 1986; Elbow & Belanoff 1989b). However, the approach also relies heavily on the learning and teaching conditions characteristic of Anglo-Saxon communities, raising issues of compatibility when used in cross-cultural contexts. For example, some of the approach's underlying assumptions are based on evaluations of time, perceived social relationships, and human communication as facilitating cooperation. It is argued that su...
This paper examines student-authored texts written before and after a guided peer review process ... more This paper examines student-authored texts written before and after a guided peer review process involving U.S. and French students working in English. Students worked on a common set of business-writing assignments, exchanged collaboratively written drafts via email, reviewed overseas partners' drafts and communicated about their reviews via Skype. Texts were analyzed for organizational and sentence-level effectiveness in order to determine whether or how students had increased their awareness of "voice" and its importance to rhetorical context as a result of these intercultural exchanges. Reflective surveys of students revealed changes in attitudinal factors such as confidence and sense of self as writer. Additional, contextualizing sources of information included final course portfolios (for U.S. students) and reflective emails and in-person dialogues (with French students). This research suggests that the intercultural peer review is a strong tool for helping stude...
Le discours scientifique attire depuis longtemps l'interet des chercheurs de multiples discip... more Le discours scientifique attire depuis longtemps l'interet des chercheurs de multiples disciplines et a ete soumis a des analyses portant sur de nombreux aspects: grammaticaux, rhetoriques, linguistiques, ou socio-communautaires. Pourtant, jusqu'a recemment (e.g., Huckin 1997, 1999; Swales 1999), ces memes chercheurs se sont peu interesses au " silence textuel ", autrement dit l'effacement de l'auteur accompagne par une absence d'indicateurs linguistiques et discursifs dans le texte. Des etudes ont demontre que les traces du silence textuel sont identifiables dans des disciplines ayant recours a des travaux effectues sur le terrain, telle la geologie, ou la majeure partie des resultats sont passes sous silence (Dressen 1998, Dressen & Swales 2000). Comme la plupart des resultats de terrain apparaissent en forme d'image dans l'article de recherche, cet aspect visuel permet donc et meme souvent oblige la suppression de beaucoup de details du trava...
Writing proficiently in any language requires knowing about much more than grammar, lexis, regist... more Writing proficiently in any language requires knowing about much more than grammar, lexis, register, genres, audience and rhetorical situation. It also requires that writers call upon implicit sociocultural and contextual inferences made via indexes. Indexes convey a wide range of sociocultural information about social background, professional and cultural identity, affective and epistemological positioning, gender and ethnicity. The ways in which this information is indexed, however, can vary significantly from one language to another, making indexicality a significant concern for international writers as they negotiate their positions through writing. This paper describes a novel method in writing research, indexical analysis, which is used to identify how French politeness norms are indexed in application letters written in English by first-language (L1) French students. It was found that although their writing was considered grammatically correct, divergences in terms of where a...
International audienceDans cet ouvrage, le sujet du réel a été soumis à une réflexion collective ... more International audienceDans cet ouvrage, le sujet du réel a été soumis à une réflexion collective et pluridisciplinaire ramenée aux domaines de l’enseignement, de la formation, des apprentissages, de la pédagogie et de la didactique, à la croisée de plusieurs champs disciplinaires : les mathématiques, l’informatique, le français, la sociologie, l’éducation physique et sportive, la philosophie, les sciences du langage, la physique. Le thème de l’ouvrage amène les chercheurs à examiner la place du réel dans leurs recherches en éducation, leur manière de « poser » le réel, de l’observer, et de le questionner dans une variété de situations éducatives. La présente étude adopte une architecture circulaire qui s’ouvre avec une exploration du réel de l’énumération en didactique des mathématiques et se clôt, selon un mouvement rotatoire, sur le concept des nombres irréels. Le regard porté sur le réel se décline selon trois types de réflexion – médiation, codification et conceptualisation – et...
The process-oriented aspects of Writing for Academic Purposes are well-established within decades... more The process-oriented aspects of Writing for Academic Purposes are well-established within decades of research in applied linguistics, North American rhetoric and composition pedagogy. Various approaches to teaching process writing include increasing students' integral genre awareness (Swales & Feak 1994, 2000; Johns 1997); fostering an appreciation of writing genres as an ongoing, rhetorical process (Elbow & Belanoff 1989a; Freedman & Medway 1994; Hyland & Richards 2003); and an insistance upon dialogue as a means for developing discoursal competence (Harris 1986; Elbow & Belanoff 1989b). However, the approach also relies heavily on the learning and teaching conditions characteristic of Anglo-Saxon communities, raising issues of compatibility when used in cross-cultural contexts. For example, some of the approach's underlying assumptions are based on evaluations of time, perceived social relationships, and human communication as facilitating cooperation. It is argued that su...
This paper examines student-authored texts written before and after a guided peer review process ... more This paper examines student-authored texts written before and after a guided peer review process involving U.S. and French students working in English. Students worked on a common set of business-writing assignments, exchanged collaboratively written drafts via email, reviewed overseas partners' drafts and communicated about their reviews via Skype. Texts were analyzed for organizational and sentence-level effectiveness in order to determine whether or how students had increased their awareness of "voice" and its importance to rhetorical context as a result of these intercultural exchanges. Reflective surveys of students revealed changes in attitudinal factors such as confidence and sense of self as writer. Additional, contextualizing sources of information included final course portfolios (for U.S. students) and reflective emails and in-person dialogues (with French students). This research suggests that the intercultural peer review is a strong tool for helping stude...
Le discours scientifique attire depuis longtemps l'interet des chercheurs de multiples discip... more Le discours scientifique attire depuis longtemps l'interet des chercheurs de multiples disciplines et a ete soumis a des analyses portant sur de nombreux aspects: grammaticaux, rhetoriques, linguistiques, ou socio-communautaires. Pourtant, jusqu'a recemment (e.g., Huckin 1997, 1999; Swales 1999), ces memes chercheurs se sont peu interesses au " silence textuel ", autrement dit l'effacement de l'auteur accompagne par une absence d'indicateurs linguistiques et discursifs dans le texte. Des etudes ont demontre que les traces du silence textuel sont identifiables dans des disciplines ayant recours a des travaux effectues sur le terrain, telle la geologie, ou la majeure partie des resultats sont passes sous silence (Dressen 1998, Dressen & Swales 2000). Comme la plupart des resultats de terrain apparaissent en forme d'image dans l'article de recherche, cet aspect visuel permet donc et meme souvent oblige la suppression de beaucoup de details du trava...
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