DAVID R. RUSSELL English Department of Iowa State University, U. S. A. I
was fortunate to attend, as a visitor from the U. S., the first European
Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW) conference in
2001 at Groningen. I was struck by the similarities in the challenges
higher education faces on both sides of the Atlantic in terms of
developing students' academic writing, and students' learning through
writing. It is indeed an international 'problem. ' But I was equally
struck by the profound differences in responding to these challenges -
among - tions, institutions, disciplines, and even within disciplines.
The essays in this - traordinary volume address a growing demand for
help with academic writing, on the part of students and academic staff
alike. And they do so in ways that bring fresh approaches, not only to
Europeans, who have only recently begun to study academic writing, but
also to researchers and academic staff in the U. S., where we have a c-
tury-old tradition of attention to the problem - but are much in need of
these fresh approaches. Academic writing has become a 'problem' in
higher education - all around the world - because higher education sits
smack between two contradictory pressures. On one end, far more students
(and far more diverse students) come streaming into higher education -
bringing in a far greater diversity of linguistic resources (often
interpreted as 'standards are falling, ' as Frank, Haacke & Tente point
out).
