This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: An academic abstract, a blog post and a public outreach article all place different demands on the writer. Readers' prior knowledge varies, as does the purpose of the text and what needs explaining.
Mastering one kind of text therefore does not automatically mean being able to write another. Researchers need to be able to write for both colleagues and people outside academia. But how do they learn to write for new audiences?
A study from Chalmers shows how working with different text genres simultaneously can help doctoral students learn to adapt their writing to new contexts. "We cannot teach every writing task that a doctoral student will encounter. Teaching therefore needs to help them understand how to approach an unfamiliar text type by developing rhetorical agility," says Peter Wingrove, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Communication and Learning in Science at Chalmers and lead author of the article published in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes.
In the study, the researchers trialed a teaching approach in which eight doctoral students worked with three different text genres during a single workshop. Participants first analyzed an academic abstract and discussed its intended audience, purpose and structure. They then worked in groups to turn a research blog post into an academic abstract and compared different ways of presenting the content.
Finally, they wrote an abstract of their own research and reworked it into a short popular science article. Participants were given examples to study, but no step-by-step guidance on how to complete the final task. The researchers analyzed participants' texts, recorded group discussions and conducted interviews about how they had approached the tasks.
The analysis showed how participants transferred both language and structure to the new writing task. Some placed key findings early in the text. Others used storytelling or questions to engage the reader.
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