Overview

This book provides a comprehensive description of the situational and linguistic characteristics of undergraduate student writing, considering both assignment type and discipline. Drawing on a corpus of more than 900 undergraduate student assignments from four disciplinary groups (Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Life Sciences), the book combines corpus-based analyses of linguistic features with analyses of communicative purposes and text characteristics.

Title and Approach

Variation in University Writing takes a new approach to register variation by grouping assignments by their communicative purpose (to argue, to explain, to compare, to describe, to narrate a personal event, to give a procedural recount, to give personal advice, and to propose), rather than register categories.

Analysis and Audience

A multidimensional analysis provides a detailed description of the linguistic patterns of undergraduate writing. The findings presented in this book will be of interest to teachers of writing, instructors of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), and researchers of university writing.