A COURSE IN ACADEMIC WRITING FOR SECONDARY ONE STUDENTS

Abstract

Students entering Secondary One are academically burdened: many find the sharp increase from four to eight subjects difficult to cope with. It is my belief that the largely cognitive and rhetorical difficulties faced by these students could be significantly reduced if they were informed of the the expectations of the academic discourse community right at the outset. My aim therefore is to devise a course in academic writing within the English Department of a Singapore secondary school which would support the writing activities required by the Science, History and Geography departments. I begin by taking note of the different expectations of teachers and students with regard to academic writing and, where appropriate, examine relevant workbooks. The overall objective of this dissertation is to design a course which (a) increases students' awareness of the conventions in academic writing associated with the three subject disciplines (History, Geography and Science); and (b) instructs them on the various ways texts may be organised. We hope that the course, which is procedural (skills- and task-based), will also have the spill-over effect of preparing students for the complexity of academic writing at the higher secondary level, thus making the transition from lower to higher secondary smoother.