The document discusses academic literacies and English for Specific Purposes (ESP), comparing two models: Spack's, which promotes student engagement in academic discourse through shared knowledge, and Widdowson's, which views language as a subordinate tool within disciplinary culture. It critiques both models for their limitations—Spack's potential cultural reproduction and Widdowson's marginalization of language teaching. The document also addresses the sociopolitical dimensions of proofreading in academic contexts, emphasizing the need for collaboration among educators and students to navigate cultural norms and responsibilities.

1. ACADEMIC LITERACIES
Vahid Niamadpour

2.  Background:
New Literacy Studies in UK and AUS
Literacy as a verb (Street) and activity
(Hamilton)

3. STREET ET AL., 3 CONCEPTUAL MODELS:
1.Study Skills Approach
more than linguistic Knowledge
Emerged from register analysis
Movement from Lg use towards Lg learning
2.Disciplinary Socialisation
linking Lg, user, & context
Locates EAP at the heart of Uni taching
Homogeneity of disciplines as academic tribes
3.Academic Literacies
Participants’ experiences
institutions as sites of power

4. SPACK’S AND WIDDOWSON’S MODEL
 Spack model: independent of the serviced discipline:
 "To initiate students into the academic discourse community, we do not
have to change our orientation completely, assign tasks we ourselves
cannot master, or limit our assignments to prescribed, rule-,governed
tasks. We can instead draw on our own knowledge and expand the
knowledge and abilities of our students." (Spack 1988: 47)

 Widdowson’s model which is fully mimetic of the serviced discipline:
 "ESP is (or ought logically to be) integrally linked with areas of activity
(academic, vocational, professional) which have already been defined
and which represent the learners' aspirations. The learning of ESP is in
consequence an essentially dependent activity, a parasitic process, and
it follows that the pedagogy of ESP must be dependent too. It has no
purposes of its own; it exists only to service those that have been
specified elsewhere." (Widdowson 1983)

5. PITFALLS (SPACK)
 In the Speck model the concepts of the
humanities culture (teacher’s culture) are
reproduced in the students. "Students can learn
general inquiry strategies, rhetorical principles,
and tasks that can transfer to other course
work".
 It is here that the problem appears in Spack's
argument because, while rhetorical principles
may be transferable because they are at the
analytical level, tasks do not transfer to other
course work because they are at the cultural
level; they are socially constructed.

6. PITFALLS (WIDDOWSON)
 The Widdowson model clearly encourages
parasitism. The ESP teacher is grafted onto the
disciplinary culture, and is not a part of it. Language
is considered to be an independent system
(Bazerman 1988:155). It is a tool, it is neutral and
thus subservient to the disciplinary culture. As a
result, language is marginalised.
 This model has no place for the ESP teacher in the
initiation of the students into their disciplinary culture
because the ESP teacher is squarely outside the
culture. At this end of the ESP spectrum, the
Widdowson model creates an independent, neutral
acultural world with little relevance to the students'
worlds.

8. WHAT THEN…
 The ESP teacher has to be located within the
multidimensional space that is the students'
target culture, facilitating the students to
enter the culture by providing tasks that
resonate with it. This entails co-operation
between all who are involved- content
teachers, language teachers and students.

9. CONTRIBUTORS
 Street et al,.
 Writing in Disciplines
 Johns’ Socioliterate approach
 Ethnography in writing (Paltridge)

10. SOCIOPOLITICAL DYNAMICS OF EAP
(PROOFREADING)
 Introducing Proofreading as sociopolitally
and ethically sensitive.
 Academic literacy (Object of research)
 Academic literacies (research paradigm)

11.  Perceptions of Proofreading
 Commercial dimension of Proofreading

12. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 What are the cultural norms which make
proofreading necessary?
 Why has the practice become a marketable
commodity?
 How openly is it discussed as an issue?
 What are the conceptual conflictssurronding
it as a practice?

13. RESEARCH PROJECT
 Stakeholders’ feeling about proofreading
 Qualitative research method
( 1-to-1 semi-structured interviews)
The students’ anxiety about finding a
proofreader

14. DATA COLLECTION
 Semi-structured interviews with professors
(not lecturers)
 Structuring Qs:
What does proofreading mean for you?
Do you ever proofread your students’ work?
.
.

15. DATA ANALYSIS
 All informants proofread their students’ work.
 They found the errors “irritating”.
 Relegating the part of Editing to disciplinary
experts, leaving the proofreading part to EAP
practitioners.

16. TOLERANCE FOR EFL
 Appreciation of difficulties in language
 Correction to a certain amount leaving the
rest to the students
 Expecting PhD students to reach perfection
in writing

17. ETHICAL SPACE
 Students’ responsibility to deliver a perfectly
proofread essay.
 No wonder they employ external
proofreaders.
 Professors try to shrink the responsibility.

18. CONCLUSION
 There are no easy solutions to the issues.
 We need to draw a line where a subject
specialist operates (as editor?!) and an EAP
practitioner practises (proofreader?)