Learning from others

Many undergraduates find academic writing challenging, particularly in the sciences where there may be limited opportunities to develop the requisite skills during a degree. In view of the importance of written communication, it is vital that students are provided with training in extended writing. Megan Bruce and colleagues at Durham University, UK, have devised an approach that uses a searchable database of student texts (a corpus) to support the delivery of English for academic purposes (EAP) workshops as part of a dissertation module.