Learn How to Write Essay

The synoptic approach is dominant in the Western cultural traditions of higher education. Our attitudes to written text reflect this preference, with value usually only placed on final polished drafts of writing. Rarely is any great value attached to the preliminary stages of exploring an academic topic, for example, summaries of readings that will eventually contribute to the final essay. It is usually not until more advanced study that the dynamic nature of the process is respected, and its products valued through, for example, abstracts, annotated bibliographies, research proposals, and so on.

Phenomenography favours a dynamic approach, with its subject being an ongoing active process of relating the person to the context. Students need to be systematically helped to reflect on, and change, their understanding of the nature of the task in the context in which the task is undertaken. This understanding is dynamic. Given a similar task in a different context, they may well exhibit a different understanding of the task, and consequently approach the task in a different way with different outcomes.

Whilst the theoretical approaches are very different in their choice of subject to study, they are unanimous in defining the location of study: they both require that the only valid way to conduct themselves is by firmly placing their research within the authentic and diverse contexts of university study. Both process and product can only be meaningfully understood with their authentic context, just as neither can be understood isolated from the other.

In learning how to write essays, students need to be able to analyse authentic contextualised examples of writing, so as to reflect on the processes necessary for achieving those products. This involves making explicit the normally implicit ways that writers approach their work, and bringing to conscious awareness the way that written texts are mirrors of the interaction between the writer and the cultural domain.

In conclusion, this study has shown the value of integrating a process and a product approach to the teaching of writing, and the importance of ensuring that the teaching of academic literacy occurs within the disciplinary contexts that students are engaged in for their university degrees. Where writing instruction continues to be typically a peripheral conce
in universities, the aim can only be to teach students to think for the mere sake of thinking, and to write for the mere sake of writing. The exercise is devoid of purpose and therefore meaning. By contrast, where writing development is seen as a fundamental part of learning a new discipline, the learner is learning how to think something, and how to write something.

Combining a phenomenographic and a systemic functional linguistic perspective on student writing provides an opportunity to develop a coherent understanding of the relationships amongst the learner, the learner’s cultural milieu, and the most prized products of that milieu. Such a holistic view provides a sound basis for the development of programmes to induct new students into the writing demands of university studies.