Improving second language writing across the disciplines: Resources for content teachers

This paper summarizes the steps taken in a Hong Kong higher education institution to develop a teaching and learning project to improve academic writing in English across all disciplines. Key features of academic writing that could be easily transferred to content teachers were developed as a series of writing instruction modules. The modules were trialled with two consecutive cohorts of the same subject but with different degrees of student interaction. Qualitative analysis of students' writing indicated that some of the key language features taught had been implemented in their texts while quantitative analysis of the survey results indicated that better content-integrated writing instruction resulted in larger increases in confidence levels.