In teaching L2 writing to academically bound learners, what has become of smaller impor¬tance, however, is the language tools (., the grammar and vocabulary that L2 writers must have to construct academic text, which in turn can be orga¬nized into a coherent written academic discourse). | 18 CHAPTER 2 those written discourse genres and formats common in the academy in English-speaking environments. WRITING REQUIREMENTS IN THE UNIVERSITY Undergraduate students in . colleges and universities are required to take general education courses in such disciplines as the sciences history philosophy psychology and sociology prior to their studies in their chosen majors. One implication of this structure in . college education is that the greatest demand on students language skills occurs during the first 2 years of their academic careers when they are expected to read large amounts of diverse types academic text write many short and long assignments and take numerous tests and exams. In the academy in English-speaking countries the purpose of written assignments and of examinations and testing is to require students to display their knowledge and familiarity with the course material. Examinations vary in types and formats ranging from multiple-choice tests to lengthy term papers including essay tests and short essay-like responses. Outside multiple-choice tests a great deal of writing is expected in most undergraduate courses and it is not unusual for students to have to produce up to a dozen written assignments per term Horowitz 1986a . Even some multiple-choice tests such as the TOEFL ACT or SAT incorporate an essay component designed to measure test takers writing proficiencies. It is important to note that practically all writing assignments necessitate more than one writing task such as exposition in the introduction followed by cause effect or comparison contrast rhetorical structures and possibly back to exposition in the conclusion. For instance most types of writing assignments can include summaries of published works or syntheses of multiple sources of information or data. In this case the writing tasks would include synthesis or analysis of information paraphrasing and restatement skills. Beginning in the early 1980s several studies undertook
