Effective learning often takes place in environments that are ‘language-rich’; in which, for example, there is plenty of interaction between people and plenty of interaction and translation, too, between types of language – written, spoken, visual… In such environments writing often functions as more than a finished product or end point in learning; it becomes part of on-going conversations in which meanings are made and transacted.
Conversations with oneself: Using writing, for example, to look at something and then go back and look at it again, whether that’s a landscape on a geography field trip or a concept you encountered at the beginning of a course and now might understand differently. Included here could be forms of journal writing where the student articulates ideas, knowledge, experience, feelings related to study in order to make sense of them; short in-class or homework tasks designed to engage the learner with concepts, processes etc. and to consolidate learning through application, synthesis and rehearsal.
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themselves as learners and communicators,
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the academic conventions and epistemologies they are working within
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how these relate to ‘real world’, employment or professional practices
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the possibilities they have for negotiation and critique.