Lea, Mary, and Brian Street. “Student Writing in Higher Education: An Academic Literacies Approach.” Studies in Higher Education, vol. 23, no. 2, 1998, pp. 157–172., https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079812331380364.

• identity, institutional power relationships are embedded within writing practices
• **Introduction (157)
• **Academic Literacies (158-59)
  • 3 main perspectives about student writing: the academic literacies is a more like a bigger frame
    • ==academic literacies==: New Literacy Studies, see writing and learning at the level of epistemology and identities rather than skills or socialization. The “identity” sector is related to Berlin’s “expressionistic rhetoric” that the sense of self and voice is what they focus on.
      • ==academic socialization==: into new culture–academy; assuming the academy is relatively homogenous, norms are transferrable
        • ==study skills==: a set of skills, transferrable, correction and fix problems
  • Both “study skills” and “academic socialization” inherit the spirit of Berlin’s “cognitive rhetoric.” They follow the spirit of scientism.
• **The Research (160-161)
  • case studies, not representative samples from generalization
  • “for further systemic study”: system is becoming
  • Differences between staff and students on:
    • [YES] epistemology, authority over knowledge
    • [NO] technical skills, surface linguistic competence, or cultural assimilation
  • students practice: course switching (paralleled with “code switching”)
    • students need to interpret writing requirements, even interpret the tutors’ personal demands.
    • Difficult for students to locate what is “good” in any academic context.
      • My notes: within the ideology, the “ideal text/paper” exists, and it should be able to be learned, and can be generalized. In this manner, the research method was itself a response to the practice within academic institution.
• **Requirements of Student Writing: staff interpretations (162-63)
  • a lecturer: “I know a good essay when I see it but I cannot describe how to write it”
  • the difficulties in practicing pedagogy: teaching writing for the writing’s sake.
  • success student writing: related to a particular way of constructing the world and not to a set of generic writing skills (163)
  • Tutors’ understandings of the technical terms are personally related, not readily to be understood by students.
• **Writing Requirements: student interpretations (163-65)
  • students know the variations of form existed
    • but they don’t know the knowledge of the variations
    • Thus, students are confused on what the tutors want
  • tutors always offer general feedback
  • The problem with the “formalism”: to frame the possibilities of self-expression
• **Writing across Course: “structure and argument” (165-67)
  • from “cognitive rhetoric” perspective: writing has goals and means, the feedback fails to address the goals; they cannot get things done.
    • e.g.: the tutor was not satisfied with students’ writing because it does not follow the disciplinary conventions; But when they give comments, they address the problems to “academic writing” in general.
  • Power relation: hierarchy;
    • tutor interpret student writing
    • students interpret tutor’s comments
    • miscommunication is related to epistemology and authority
  • Response: can writing be writing itself? Can writing pedagogy be isolated? NO!
• **Understandings of Plagiarism (167-68)
• **Student Writing: interpreting feedback (168-70)
  • When feedback is about formalistic topics, it remains to be general.
  • feedback is framed as manifest of power relationships that needs reflection. Feedback cannot be read as a piece of writing itself. Because of power, it is embedded with some pride, arrogance, irresponsibility, and incompetence of writing.
• **Future Directions (170-71)
• a discussion on how it looks when the pedagogy focuses on text (or formalist concerns) while suppressing the self expressiveness.
  • I understand the article in a way that it shows it is almost impossible to talk about writing for the writing sake. Writing is based on context.
  • From the ineffectual tutors’ comments, social elements must be taken into consideration to analyze the power relations between student writers and tutors, and how the institutional writing classroom is mainly for the assessment function.