摘要：any book that tries to define academic writing bites off more than most can chew.
Chris Thaiss and Terry Myers Zawacki defining academic writing is one part of a larger
goal in their book Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines. Not only do they develop
a definition of academic writing, they also build a developmental model for stages
students move through to enter the academic conversation. I admit to being skeptical
when I read the introduction of the book and saw how ambitious Thaiss and Zawacki
were. If one has read David Russell’s Writing in Academic Disciplines, one knows the
long, slow march academia has taken toward disciplinary specialization. Still, I hear
WAC program directors and faculty reify academic writing without ever being able to
adequately describe it. Instead, the more concrete their description, the more problematic
the definition becomes. Thaiss and Zawacki tackle the challenge of defining academic
writing through a large-scale study involving surveys, case studies, assessment
workshops, focus groups, department rubrics, and writing samples.
