Academic Summary- Integrative assignment Unit 3- Villegas-Garcia

Developing academic literacy skills through research projects 

In her article “Writing for the World: Wikipedia as an Introduction to Academic Writing”, Tardy (2010) states that academic literacy skills can be developed through small-scale research projects . Throughout the article, Tardy shows how the online encyclopedia Wikipedia helps second language (L2) students to become academic writers by developing academic literacy skills. The author describes the process to write an article step by step, providing the readers with different activities to carry out. According to Tardy C., "The Wikipedia-writing Project described here introduces students to many skills of academic research writing in a manageable and intersting way"  (Tardy 2010, p.18) 

The author starts by defining the term wiki, a collaborative web-based space that can be modified by users. Then, she continues explaining that Wikipedia is one of the most well-known online enciclopedias. This website gives students the opportunity to develop their academic writing skills and also to be aware of the credibility and reliability of the information they may include, once the articles are available to a worldwide audience.

Moreover, Tardy, C. mentions eight steps that should be followed in the writing process. The first one is to examine Wikipedia by analysing the website as regards topics covered, information included and general guidelines for contributing. After this, students select a topic and do their research. Afterwards, they create an outline of the content they are going to develop and move on to the drafting stage. The fifth step has to do with revising, they ask their peers to review their drafts and receive feedback to introduce the necessary changes. Citation is the next step, students focus on how to cite sources in two different formats. After having cited the sources properly, they are ready to move on the polishing stage and finally after registering as Wikipedia users they can publish their articles.

To conclude, even though academic writing presents different challenges for L2 students, small-scale research projects may help them to improve their academic literacy skills and become academic writers. The described project introduces students to different skills developed in academic research writing. According to Tardy C., "in producing a text for Wikipedia, students gain a real sense of audience and enjoy the satisfaction of seeing their work published on a high-traffic global website". (Tardy, 2010. p. 18). 

References

Tardy, C. M. (2010). Writing for the World: Wikipedia as an introduction to Academic writing. English Teaching Fórum, 1 pp. 12-19, 27.