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Teaching Students in Professional Disciplines to Write: A Rhetorical Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2015

Noela Murphy
Noela Murphy*
Affiliation:
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
*
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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Abstract

This paper summarises problems that university students, particularly those in the technically-oriented, professional disciplines, have when they write. Discussion centres on how strategic knowledge of discourse structure enhances what these students understand of processes associated with producing text and learning from it and how these understandings can be utilised to their benefit. The concept of top-level structure and advantages resulting from applying this concpets are discussed. Guidelines for incorporating the teaching of this knowledge into a technical writing course are suggested. Finally, there is a discussion of the relationship between this metacognitive knowledge and changes in student learning.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Educational and Developmental Psychologist , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , May 1993, pp. 27 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Australian Psychological Society 1993

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