Academic Writing as Discourse Practice in Australian and Indonesian Universities

 

 Ria Jubhari

 

 

Orally oriented culture has an impact on both oral and written practices of a specific community within the larger scope of the orally oriented community. Similarly, the literate oriented culture impacts the practices of a specific community within the larger scope of the literate oriented community. This impact to some extent characterises those practices. In other words, a tradition of literacy cannot be severed from an oral tradition. This paper discusses academic writing as one aspect of the discourse practices and to what extent the criteria used to identify good academic writing are influenced by the oral and literate traditions in Australia and Indonesia.

 

 The use of language in relation to culture should be assumed to express cultural values which are embedded in the discourse practice of a community. Depending on the context of use of this discourse practice, both orally and literate oriented traditions to some extent have impacts on the discourse practices of a specific community, which belongs to the larger scope of either a literate or oral tradition. It is therefore inevitable that the Australian culture characterizes the academic writing as reflected in the four main aspects that constitute students’ academic writing in Australian universities, namely the topic, well-reasoned argument, evidence and reference, and organization.  Likewise the oral tradition in Indonesia gives colours to the characteristics of academic writing in Indonesian universities as can be seen from  the four important aspects that establish students’ academic writing in Indonesian universities, namely language structure, logic and paragraph development, topic and thesis statement, and quotation and references.

 

 

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Jubhari,, R. (2005, September). Academic writing as discourse practice in Australian and Indonesian universities. Paper presented at 1^st International Seminar on Literacy Education in Developing Countries, Semarang, Indonesia.

 

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