Book Review of Macnaught, L. (2024). Writing with students: New perspectives on collaborative writing in EAP contexts. Bloomsbury.

Abstract

I found Lucy Macnaught’s Writing with Students when I was searching for newly published books in academic writing pedagogy. As a teacher of academic literacy working with first-year students, I was drawn to the central idea of the book: how teachers co-construct text with students without recommending alternative wording (e.g., vocabulary, phrases). This idea may resonate with those who hold the view that teachers play an active role in text construction by guiding students to be aware of the choices they make in their writing. The book can be divided into three sections. The first lays the theoretical foundations of various writing pedagogies that underpin the book. The second, possibly the most relevant to practitioners, discusses what teachers and students do during joint construction. The final section is research oriented and would be of interest to classroom discourse analysts from the Systemic Functional Linguistics/Semiotics traditions.