Academic Writing Vs Workplace Writing

Transfer or transition, as noted, is a key issue for TPW classes; students must adapt their academic writing skills to a new rhetorical situation, writing in the workplace. There is little doubt about the differences between academic and workplace writing—multiple studies in TPW have characterized these differences and promoted pedagogies to support students in the transition process. In one example, Flower and Ackerman (1994) described the difference between academic and workplace writing as “writer-based prose” vs. “reader-based prose.” Writer-based prose is the text produced in unfamiliar writing situations when the writer is not sure who the reader is or what is expected. The writer turns to the familiar, a type of writing he or she already …show more content…
Case studies are instructor/textbook-developed scenarios that ask students to place themselves in realistic situations drawn from typical workplace writing problems—writing role-plays, in other words. Client projects, rather than made-up scenarios, require students to participate in actual workplaces, to produce writing that may be used to solve problems, make decisions, or provide information—whatever the client needs from the writing. Blakeslee concluded that not only do client projects facilitate transition better but they also expose students to the culture of the workplace and introduce them “ to the genres that both arise from and support those cultures and activities” (p. 189). Client-based projects work better than scenarios because of students’ exposure to the actual workplace culture, not just to the genre. In other words, it is not the act of writing in the particular genre that produces skill in that genre, but doing so in a context that provides a greater measure of authenticity. Actually being in the workplace culture is the factor that develops the crucial skill of rhetorical …show more content…
410). The key difference is the purpose of the writing activity—in the classroom, learning is the primary function of the activity; in the workplace, learning is secondary to the purpose of the writing within the organization. Learning genres in an apprenticeship is effective because of the contextualized nature of the learning. Learning is facilitated because students see their task as authentic—there are consequences that go beyond a grade. Freedman and Adam recognized that the transition from academia to workplace can never be perfectly executed, that there will always be the disjuncture cited so often in the literature. Ultimately, however, we can prepare students not so much by teaching them genres but by teaching them “new ways to learn such genres” (p. 419). The emphasis, once again, is placed less on learning specific writing skills and more on learning how to negotiate an unfamiliar writing