Academic writing and tacit knowledge

The genre of academic writing is discipline dependent, so that neither specialists in academic writing nor practising academics in a discipline can, independently of each other, provide students with the necessary help to develop the ability to write in their academic disciplines. Furthermore, the rules are largely tacit, i.e. they are not explicitly expressed, and expressing them explicitly can have serious effects on good disciplinary writing. The problems of introducing students into good academic writing in their disciplines are therefore not simple and it is suggested that, as words constitute the fundamental building blocks of writing, a better understanding of the problems arising in academic writing can come from a deeper understanding of words, including their translation into different languages. It is furthermore suggested that the difficulties arising from the largely tacit nature of academic writing may be overcome by students and tutors discussing students' descriptions of their work.