Academic writing: From student learning to teacher learning

Abstract

This paper reports on the Writing University Project carried out at the Department of English Language and Literature, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia in collaboration with the British Council Macedonia. It aims to show that by creating a 4-year writing syllabus, the participants in the project, improved their skills as teachers and to certain extent changed their beliefs about writing as an activity embedded in culture, while at the same time catering to the needs of the students. The first part of the paper expounds on the perceived goals of the project and delineates the process of creating teaching materials for the writing course. The second section focuses on peer-review, and the final section deals with the effects of the project in terms of teacher development.