7.6 Conclusion

Academic writing is a prose style functional for construing and communicating non-commonsensical knowledge. As such, it is essential for academic/disciplinary work and also highly prized by the academic community. It has certain discursive features — such as technicality, density, abstraction, formality, objectivity, and rigor — that make it academic and distinct from other varieties of writing. Its shape and form vary across genres, disciplines, and contexts. Learning the linguistic (and other semiotic) resources that are significant and effective for realizing and instantiating these shapes and forms should be a key goal of academic writing instruction. According to Myhill (2009), writing is a process of designing meaning that involves "moving along the trajectories from speech patterns to writing patterns, from declaration to elaboration, and from translation and transformation" (p. 412). Navigating this process requires that students develop a repertoire of linguistic resources, for the process cannot be set in motion without the very grammatical tools that are functional for construing markers of advanced literacy such as generalization, abstraction, interpretation, density, elaboration, objectivity, authority, hierarchy, flow, and rigor. Students need support in developing and using these linguistic resources. This development work requires experience, practice, and motivation, as well as opportunities to interact and negotiate meaning in authentic contexts for which academic writing is functional (Schleppegrell, 2004). An SFL-informed genre pedagogy offers a potentially powerful heuristic for supporting students' academic writing development in the context of building knowledge and developing disciplinary habits of mind.(https://www.daowen.com)