Blurb:

Academic writing is widely acknowledged to be challenging for students. In this chapter I will focus on the situated nature of academic writing, taking account of discipline-relevant content and intellectual sensibilities. I will also pay attention to Toulmin’s informal logic of argument and Mohan’s knowledge structures that can be used to help analyze the compositional interiority found in a good deal of academic discourse. The pedagogic relevance of this orientation will be illustrated through an analysis of a sample of student writing and tutor comments through the lens of genre, argument, and knowledge structure. It will be argued that just as there is no one finite way of knowing and doing academic literacy, there are no fixed universal templates for academic writing across different disciplines in different teaching–learning contexts; but the concepts of genre, argument, and knowledge structure can be used as criterial considerations to provide insight into how academic writing is construed and enacted.