10th Anniversary Symposium on Writing

Why good academic writers perform poorly in the workplace: Teaching for transfer across contexts of writing

The Regional Writing Centre (RWC) hosted a one-day symposium to celebrate its 10th year of operation. The symposium contested the notion that writing well in an academic context necessarily prepares graduates for the writing they will do in workplace contexts. Too often, it is observed that graduates do not assess the new writing situation, but remain reliant on the values, purposes, conventions and forms, etc., of academic writing. Graduates’ sense of authorship and audience can often be completely off the mark of what the corporate context requires. Our symposium wished to bring academic and industry audiences together to hear and participate in discussions about the differences in their contexts and the impact of that difference and to come away with an understanding of what it is possible for academics to do to best prepare graduates for non-academic contexts, particularly, workplace contexts.