CHAPTER 7
Demystifying Academic Writing: Conceptual and Practical Matters
This chapter demystifies academic writing and describes ways of supporting academic writing development through a functional focus on grammar. Specifically, it defines academic writing, identifies its key discursive features, and discusses the challenges these features present to academic learning and disciplinary socialization. It also discusses the role of grammar in writing instruction and describes an approach to contextualized grammar instruction that promotes a deep understanding of how disciplinary experts use language to construct and communicate their knowledge, understanding, and worldviews in discipline- and genre-specific ways.