DIVISION of ARTS
Writing in the Social Sciences
Essays on Writing in the Disciplines
Writing in the Disciplines Links
This Site is Sponsored by
© 2000, the Ministry of Advanced Education, Training and Technology
The site is authored by
W.F. Garrett-Petts,
Site Began Development: September, '98
the Ministry of Advanced Education
for the Province of British Columbia and designed in cooperation with The Centre
for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology
English & Modern Languages,
University College of the Cariboo
Site Last Updated: February, 2001
elcome to the Writing in the Disciplines Web Site. What does it mean to be literate
within academic contexts? One of the most difficult tasks any college or university student must confront
is learning how to write well in a variety of academic styles and voices. The demands of writing
a history paper or a sociology paper are, as most students quickly discover, very different from those
of writing an English essay or a business report.
The Writing in the Disciplines Site was created as a resource for both students and their instructors. It is designed to help you find your own "academic" voice and help you enter the conversation of disciplines. On site you'll find advice drawn from UCC's Writing your 'self' into the Disciplines video series ©1996,1999--a series of nine 30-minute videos produced with the aim of helping students increase their understanding of discipline-specific writing. In addition, you'll find interactive exercises, examples of student writing (with commentary), essays and reports on genre theory, and links to valuable resources on writing in the disciplines.
The overarching goal of this site is to aid you in reflecting upon the academic texts, roles, and contexts you'll encounter as a writer. Noted educator Howard Gardner writes in The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand (Simon & Schuster, 1999) that
the disciplines inhere not primarily in the specific facts and concepts that make up textbook glossaries and indexes, compendia of national standards, and, all too often, weekly tests. Rather the disciplines inhere in the ways of thinking, developed by their practitioners, that allow those practitioners to make sense of the world in quite specific and largely nonintuitive ways. (155)
Thank you for visiting the Writing in the Disciplines Web Site on the UCC server.
Submissions suitable for publication on this site and/or relevant links are welcome! Questions or comments about this website should be directed to:
petts@tru.ca
This Locally Initiated Curriculum (LIC) Project was funded by the BC Ministry of Advanced
Education, Training and Technology. LIC Projects are designed to meet local needs, but may be applicable to
similar teaching and learning situations. Toward that end, students should feel free to access this site at
any time, and teachers may use this site to support their own courses. That said, for copyright reasons, this
site may not be reproduced in any form without permission of the Centre for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology.
Material from other sources included on this site may not be reproduced without permission from the copyright owners.
For more information on Locally Initiated Curriculum, please contact:
Curriculum Development Team
Centre for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology
6th Floor, 1483 Douglas Street
Victoria, BC Canada V8W 3K4
Telephone: 250-413-4409
Fax: 250-413-4403
Email: curriculum@ctt.bc.ca
Web: http://www.ctt.bc.ca/curric