The expression of obligation in student academic writing [New article by Dr Benet Vincent, English]

Students writing in the academy face a number of complex challenges in negotiating disciplinary and genre conventions. One of the most abstract of these is a consideration of reader expectations (Thompson, 2001) in a context where they are writing for a higher status reader. In Levinson’s (1979: 370) terms, students need to understand the ‘constraints on what will count as allowable contributions’, the abstract rules of the language game in which they are involved. These may be obscure to those who are new to university, particularly if they are second language writers, yet are very important. It is therefore interesting to examine the ways that proficient student writers negotiate such challenges and consider the implications for EAP students and practitioners.

Read full article here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1475158519301663?dgcid=author

Assistant Professor Benet Vincent has been working as a Lecturer in Academic English at Coventry for over 4 years. Benet teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate students on the MA in ELT and AL course. He also co-supervises two PhD students who are working in the area of Corpus Linguistics approaches to student EAP genres.

Benet’s main research interests are applications of and approaches to Corpus Linguistics, in particular in EAP but in other areas too. He has published in the areas of Corpus Linguistics, Corpus Stylistics and EAP, including in academic writing.