UDVIKLING AF KOMPETENCE I OPGAVESKRIVNING HOS UNIVERSITETSSTUDERENDE

Abstract

Writing skills in higher education means that the student knows, handles and respects the sources of the field, knows the conventions and formats, is able to present knowledge in a context chosen by the student, can combine elements of tradition with elements of innovation within the field studied, is able to metacommunicate about his own text in his own text and about the texts, theories and methods of the subject matter, and can differentiate between and qualify some sources, and criticize and distance himself from others. The competent academic writer has »taken the
university in« and identified with the conventions and norms of scientific writing, yet is able to distance himself sufficiently from authorities to transform, debate, diffentiate between and critisize them. American and British research has shown that academic writing is best learned within a process-oriented pedagogical setting where the participants write on-the-spot, and comment on their own and other students' work-in-progress. At the Communication Skills Centre, Copenhagen University, academic writing is taught using model-examples and mutual feedback in order to
train the important metacommunicative competence.