Academic summary     

 

This academic summary has the purpose to mention the key points concerning the article ¨Writing for the world: Wikipedia as an introduction to Academic Writing¨. The text was written by Christine M. Tardy, an Assistant Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse at DePaul University in Chicago, and then posted in English Teaching Forum, 1 pp. 12-19, 27. It introduces an approach based on the production of an article for Wikipedia with the objective of developing academic skills.

Firstly, this article starts explaining the difficulties writers are exposed to when they have to handle academic writing as a first experience. Thus, this text mentions among these problems the ability to conduct research, paraphrasing and adopt genre conventions (Tardy, 2010). On account of this, she proposes an approach so that students can succeed with the requirements of academic writing through a task that consists in the creation of an article for Wikipedia. In 2010, Tardy defined Wikipedia as ‘the most well-known wikis’ (p. 13) and highlights that the main purpose of this web tool is to summarize and compile existing knowledge. She also claims that although Wikipedia has become popular, it has been largely criticized and considered a second-rate source.

After defining the term Wikipedia, the Assistant Professor describes the assignment she had designed for her students in detail. She examines the purposes and objectives of the task as well as the skills the students will gradually acquire as they perform it. In the light of this, she lists the eight steps that the students have to follow in order to carry out the assignment successfully. The first step consists of ‘developing a good understanding’ of the tool itself. In other words, investigate the uses of it and its operation. After that, students will gather information and choose a possible topic for their article. When they have fulfilled this task, they will be asked to create an outline that encompasses the sources they have already selected. Then, they will organize the content and produce the first draft. Once finished this step, peer revision is required. The next step is formatting sources, which according to Tardy may be done through two different formats: foot notes or general references. Polishing the article taking into consideration the corrections suggested by a peer is the following step. Finally, the students will be able to publish their articles.

On the whole, the steps presented by the author seem to guide students to develop writing skills, which seems to be a challenge for second language writers. Thus, by following these stages carefully, academic writing will became more interesting and appealing to students. Besides, the fact that Wikipedia is worldwide recognized as a source of information and publishing writings to be read by everyone is a key factor concerning motivation.

References

  

Tardy, C. M. (2010). Writing for the World: Wikipedia as an introduction to Academic writing. Retrieved from English Teaching Forum.