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The dynamics of building academic writing knowledge
in interaction
Kathrin Kaufhold
Stockholm University, Department of English, SE 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
ARTICLE INFO
Handling Editor: Guangwei Hu
Keywords:
Writing knowledge
Cultural tools
Mediated action
Interaction
Talk around text
Writing group
ABSTRACT
Becoming expert academic writers requires students to develop understanding, awareness and
skills with regards to discipline-specic discourses. To develop such knowledge, talk around
drafts is essential. Various studies traced how students develop knowledge about and of academic
writing, but few explored how such knowledge is invoked and developed in interaction. The study
therefore investigates the dynamics of introducing and using academic writing knowledge when
tackling writing issues in interaction. The interaction is situated in a facilitated writing group – an
important yet under-researched arena for talk around text. The data consist of video-recordings of
group meetings with six postgraduate students who use English as an additional language,
collected over 8 weeks at a Swedish university. To investigate how knowledge was introduced
and used in the group, the study takes a socio-cultural perspective and applies the Vygotskian
notion of cultural tools combined with discourse analytic approaches. The analysis shows how
students draw on complex techniques to negotiate academic writing knowledge. Their interac-
tional text work oscillates between abstract norms and concrete texts. Concepts of academic
writing (e.g. research aim) are partly unpacked frontstage in the group, and partly backstage in
individual notes. The results call for extending genre-pedagogic approaches of learning by
discovery.
1. Introduction
Becoming expert academic writers requires students to develop understanding, awareness and skills with regards to discipline
specic discourses (Dysthe et al., 2011). Various approaches to research academic and research-based writing maintain that such
knowledge comprises linguistic, social and procedural knowledge and recognize thereby that writing is a socially situated practice (e.g.
Beaufort, 2004; Gentil, 2011; Kobayashi & Rinnert, 2012; Tardy et al., 2020). The development of this knowledge has been traced for
instance across social contexts (Kim & Belcher, 2018; Rounsaville, 2017), within EAP courses (Kaufhold, 2017; Negretti & McGrath,
2018), in collaborative student writing (Hakim, 2023), and in writing groups (Mochizuki, 2022). These studies show that students
develop such knowledge by engaging in context-specic literacy practices of reading, writing and discussing texts. Interaction with
teachers, peers and texts is thus central but rarely investigated in detail. In fact, most genre-based studies draw on interviews and texts
without paying close attention to how meaning is negotiated in the turn-by-turn interaction around texts. Similarly, various studies
that identify talk around texts as a powerful means for the development of students as academic writers (Aitchison & Guerin, 2014;
Lillis, 2003) rarely investigate how this talk unfolds.
In contrast, studies that investigate how supervisors or language experts engage in advice-giving around students’ writing apply
E-mail address: kathrin.kaufhold@english.su.se.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of English for Academic Purposes
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101518
Received 30 September 2024; Received in revised form 18 April 2025; Accepted 20 April 2025
Journal of English for Academic Purposes 75 (2025) 101518
1475-1585/© 2025 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ).
discourse (Wingate, 2019; Woodward-Kron, 2007) or conversation analysis approaches (Park, 2012; Skogmyr Marian et al., 2021;
Vehvil¨
ainen, 2009). While these studies discuss the joint construction of meaning and consider epistemic authority in tutor-student
dyads, they generally say little about how students develop academic writing knowledge. To date there are only few studies which
combine an interactional approach with investigating how students generate broader writing or genre-specic knowledge. These
studies focus on collaborative writing, where students produce a joint text (Jansson, 2006; Tardy & Gou, 2021). Yet, little is known
about students’ interaction around their individual writing projects.
A context for interaction around such individual projects are writing groups. These groups provide regular student-led or tutor-
facilitated meetings in which students discuss their individual writing projects often in the form of research-based writing at
doctoral or master’s level (Aitchison & Guerin, 2014; Haas, 2011). In discussions on shared drafts, participants draw on their prior
knowledge of academic writing conventions and experiences against which the requirements of the current writing projects are
assessed (Mochizuki, 2022). Considering the intrinsic dialogic nature of writing groups where students draw on their own experiences
and knowledge when discussing each other’s writing (Kaufhold & Yencken, 2021), these groups provide an insightful case for
investigating the dynamics of building academic writing knowledge in interaction.
The aim of this paper is therefore to explore the dynamics of introducing and using writing knowledge such as meta-knowledge
about academic writing or normative expectations when tackling writing issues in writing group interaction. The data derive from
recordings of a facilitated writing group for master’s students using English as their additional language. To investigate the collective
development of knowledge in the interaction of the group, the study takes a socio-cultural perspective and draws on the notion of
cultural tools. Cultural tools objectify culturally developed knowledge as they are interpreted and used in interaction (Wittek et al.,
2017). For instance, the concept topic sentence can become a cultural tool when used in the group interaction to solve a specic writing
problem. Writing problem in this context denotes an issue raised in the group and introduced as a question, puzzle or mistake in the
drafts or the writing process. The study thus investigates the following research question:
•How do writing group participants mobilize academic writing knowledge when identifying and negotiating writing problems in
their own or other students’ texts?
2. The development of academic writing knowledge in interaction
Collaboration and interaction about texts and writing play a crucial role for connecting prior experiences and knowledge of ac-
ademic writing with novel requirements posed by current writing projects in order to advance as an academic writer (Kaufhold, 2017;
Kim & Belcher, 2018; Lillis, 2003; Tardy, 2006). As part of the regular curriculum, there is often little time allocated for such inter-
actional learning activities, for example in supervision meetings, writing consultations, or in-class peer review activities.
Writing groups, like the group which is at the centre of this study, provide an additional arena for regular, informal discussions on
ongoing writing projects such as master’s theses or doctoral dissertations (Aitchison & Guerin, 2014; Haas, 2011; Thesen, 2024). These
discussions allow students to negotiate writing conventions in their diverse research elds (Kaufhold & Yencken, 2021) and consol-
idate their academic voices (Mochizuki & Stareld, 2021). Most importantly for the development of students as academic writers, such
interaction provides opportunities for verbalizing assumptions about academic writing and reecting collaboratively on implications
for their own writing (ibid.). Writing groups thus provide an arena for exploring the cognitive and social aspects of writing knowledge.
Despite its importance, interaction around writing for learning and building academic writing knowledge has rarely been studied in
detail. While there are a number of studies that investigate conversational or pragmatic patterns in supervisor/tutor-student inter-
action around drafts (e.g. Bj¨
orkman, 2018; Park, 2012; Skogmyr Marian et al., 2021; Vehvil¨
ainen, 2009), studies with a focus on
academic writing pedagogy predominantly draw on interviews and textual analysis. Exceptions, albeit in the context of
supervisor-student interaction, are for example Eriksson’s (2015) and Lymer et al.’s (2024) ethnomethodologically informed studies
on the dynamics of socializing students into discipline-specic discourses by connecting general feedback to concrete textual instances
and jointly building aspects of what can be described as discipline-specic academic writing knowledge.
Further related research derives from collaborative writing studies, and investigates student interaction in small groups when
producing a single text (e.g. Cao et al., 2025; Hakim, 2023; Tardy & Gou; 2021). These studies extend research in second language (L2)
writing which demonstrated that language related interaction around writing tasks can facilitate language learning (Swain & Lapkin,
1998), and investigate how students also develop other dimensions of knowledge relevant for the joint writing of a text. For instance,
Hakim (2023) focused on students’ development of specic genre knowledge while discussing a written assignment task. With a
somewhat broader interest in students’ sense making of tutor feedback, Jansson (2006) analysed small group interaction in collab-
orative L2 writing over time. She demonstrates how students collectively unpack the tutor’s comments and draw on their developing
knowledge about institutional requirements to accomplish their discipline-specic writing task. These studies provide insights into
what knowledge is verbalized and negotiated when the group identies and discusses a shared writing problem.
In the context of writing groups, where students discuss their individual research-based projects, Mochizuki and Stareld (2021)
integrate some interactional data and show how writers construct their voice by negotiating different types of advice in interaction.
The writing group serves thus to advance the students’ understanding of the rhetorical situation of thesis writing. Kaufhold and
Yencken (2021) add a normative perspective to dialogic interaction. They identify dialogic patterns in the way students negotiate
normative prior knowledge in relation to their current writing drafts and develop more nuanced understandings of writing conven-
tions. Thus, the studies that apply interactional analysis to investigate talk around writing touch on different aspects of mobilizing
prior academic writing knowledge to solve writing problems. The ethnomethodological studies focus on the discursive activities to
solve writing problems; the studies on collaborative writing trace emerging genre knowledge or a broader understanding of task
K. Kaufhold
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2
requirements in small groups; and the studies on students’ deliberations on individual projects in writing groups focus on broader,
normative questions of negotiating and adapting prior writing knowledge.
To gain insights into how students mobilize academic writing knowledge to solve writing problems, the current study combines the
discursive approach with the interest in developing academic writing knowledge. It builds on the above studies’ shared grounding in a
Vygotskyan socio-cultural perspective on learning. Specically, the study employs a mediated action approach and the concept of
cultural tools (S¨
alj¨
o, 2019) as a heuristic to allow a focused analysis. The mediated action approach departs from the premise that
“instead of acting in a direct, unmediated way in the social and physical world, our contact with the world is indirect or mediated by
signs” (Wertsch, 2007, p. 178). Signs can by physical or symbolic, such as a piece of graph paper, a gesture or a theoretical concept.
They do not represent meaning directly but they provide meaning potentials as they have been created in specic contexts and are
connected to specic social practices. When used, signs become tools that mediate understanding and problem solving. For instance, a
teacher can introduce the concept of topic sentence in relation to a student’s text, and the pair can use it to reect on organizing the text
in discipline-specic ways. Thus, cultural tools can act as an “interface between individual minds and the cultural memory” (S¨
alj¨
o,
2019, p. 25).
In writing studies, the Vygotskyan concept of tools has been applied to various entities. For instance, Russell and Ya˜
nez (2003)
distinguish material, external tools (e.g. books, computers, internet) and secondary, internal tools (e.g. language, scripts, genres). In
addition, they identify writing as “an essential tool of learning” (2003, p. 342). They apply a specic development of mediation in the
form of activity theory (AT) and emphasize the meaning potentials of tools in specic contexts rather than the tool use. Mochizuki and
Stareld (2021) take a similar approach. They understand texts and writing group interaction as tools to develop thesis writing. In
contrast to the present study, they categorize rules and conventions that affect writing separately from tools. These studies focus
primarily on the contradictions in tool and rule use between what is expected for a specic assignment or doctoral thesis and other
activities in other social domains. Students need to come to terms with these contradictions to develop as academic writers.
The present study departs from a shared understanding of the mediating power of tools to aid distributed, cognitive activity.
However, for this study a wider understanding of cultural tools (after S¨
alj¨
o, 2019) is appropriate as it seeks to investigate how the
writing group participants develop and explore the meaning potentials of aspects of their prior academic writing knowledge. Following
Wittek et al.’s (2017) understanding of Vygotsky’s (1980) perspective on tools, writing practices are seen to comprise tools such as
theories, concepts, procedures, instructions and norms (e.g. accepted ways of arguing). When used, these tools “mediate and reshape
both the activity and the learning and thinking at a personal level” (Wittek et al., 2017, p. 84). This means that students need to unpack
and discuss these concepts and explore them in the light of specic rhetorical situations to be able to use them meaningfully. This
conceptualization of cultural tools provides thus a useful lens for examining the development of academic writing knowledge in
interaction.
3. Methods, participants and context
The data consist of video-recordings of writing group meetings collected over 8 weeks at a Swedish university. The writing group
was organized by the university’s writing centre and had therefore two facilitators, a member of the writing centre staff and a
researcher with experience in teaching academic writing. The latter is the author of this article with permission of the former. While
the former organized the group and had the rst contact with the student participants, the facilitation of the group was shared equally.
The group comprised four female and two male students from European and Asian countries. The students were enrolled in master’s
programmes at humanities, social sciences and natural sciences departments. All of them were users of English as an additional
language and they prepared for or were in the process of completing their master’s thesis. The data were collected as part of a broader
study aiming at investigating the interactional dynamics in talk around writing at universities in multilingual settings (see Kaufhold &
Yencken, 2021).
Students had been informed about the study, the data collection, the use of the data and the right to withdraw at any time prior to
them signing up for the group. All students agreed to being recorded. The rst meeting served to get to know each other and establish
the students’ aims for their participation in the writing group. It also provided an opportunity for questions and explanations of the
study. Due to its constitutive nature, the rst meeting was not recorded. For each session, students were invited to submit drafts of
about two pages. These drafts were printed out for the students to read during the session and discuss in turn. The students and fa-
cilitators also brought their laptops to make notes or search for resources. Each session started with students formulating what they
wanted to focus on when discussing their drafts. Due to the voluntary nature of the group, participation varied for each session.
For this paper, the analysis includes four meetings of 8 h in total with three to six students present. The analysis proceeded in two
stages. First, the recordings were transcribed verbatim. These transcripts were used to identify conversational episodes in which
writing problems at different levels were discussed, which required students to draw on different dimensions of their prior academic
writing knowledge. The episodes were therefore categorized according to the following levels: 1) sentence level issues such as
questions about spelling or style; 2) text level issues such as questions about argument structure; and 3) process level issues dealing
K. Kaufhold
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with how to revise drafts or use referencing software.
Second, episodes from the categories established in the rst stage were selected for a more ne-grained analysis. The analysis
combined Linell’s (1998) analytic approach to talk-in-interaction with an analysis of cultural tools (S¨
alj¨
o, 1991; Wittek et al., 2017),
connecting “the collective, and collaborative, development and negotiation of meaning” (Linell, 1998, p. 74) with the use of tools to
accomplish this negotiation. To do so, I returned to the video recordings and added further detail to the transcripts of the selected
episodes, such as overlaps, pauses, stress and gestures that occurred in association with speech and added further emphasis (Goodwin,
2000). Applying Linell’s approach, I trace how a writing problem was introduced and discussed. Specically, I noted how the problem
was connected to academic writing knowledge at the three levels (sentence, text, process) in the form of explicit or implicit concepts
that were used as tools, such as asking for the difference between aims and objectives or implying a grammar rule in relation to a
grammar issue. Linell further suggests that the co-accomplishment of discursive activities is often indicated by repetitions of others’ or
one’s own words or the use of semantically similar words, reciprocal feedback and complementing overlaps. These discursive elements
were noted. To ensure anonymity, participants are identied by number (student-participants: P1 to P6; facilitators: F1, F2). The
transcripts in the article contain key gestures to explain the analysis while still ensuring readability. For transcription conventions, see
Appendix A.
4. Results and discussion
This section begins by providing an overview of the conversational episodes that were identied in the rst stage of the analysis
(see Table 1). For contextualization, general traits of the episodes in each category (sentence level, text level, process level) are briey
introduced. Subsequently I discuss a telling example from each category to show how the participants mobilized their knowledge and
employed concepts and conventions as tools to solve writing problems.
The most frequently discussed writing problems referred to sentence level issues often revolving around questions of grammar or
word choice, where students drew on their formal linguistic knowledge. Especially at the beginning or end of the sessions, peers raised
various text level issues. If these were simply raised by one student, not further discussed and followed by a similar issue, they were
counted as one instance. For instance, students might note a range of grammatical issues at the sentence level. Of special interest to this
study are the occasions when raising a sentence level issue was followed by discussions in which students drew on different linguistic
rules or conventions that might apply (see Section 4.1).
Text level issues usually referred to the argument and information structure presented in a student’s draft. These episodes often
involved text-structuring concepts, such as eliciting topics or topic sentences for a sequence of paragraphs. Most relevant for this article
are instances in this category where students referred to their meta-knowledge of concepts associated with research-based writing at
the text level, such as incorporating voice or formulating research aims (see Section 4.2). The process level generally entailed episodes
in which participants exchanged experiences of dealing with revisions or using reference software. The exchanges are often moderated
by the facilitators who follow up a comment by a student and invite the group to share similar experiences (see Section 4.3). The
ensuing accounts include evaluations of what should be done and thus draw on procedural knowledge combined with ideas about
academic writing conventions.
4.1. Episode 1: academic style at the sentence level
The excerpt from the rst episode provides an example of the negotiation of writing problems at the sentence level. In this example,
a peer (P3) and the writer (P1) negotiate the problem by implicitly introducing competing norms related to academic style, namely the
need for formality and variation in lexical choices.
Table 1
Overview of conversational episodes based on types of knowledge mobilized.
Level Type of knowledge Episodes
Sentence level (incl. clusters with lists of similar
problems)
Normative formal linguistic knowledge (e.g. spelling rules, translation conventions, style) 19
Text level Conceptual knowledge about textual structure and rhetorical situation (e.g. voice, topic
sentence)
14
Process Experience of writing (e.g. revision, transcription, reference software use) 7
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Excerpt 1. Getting more academic
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In the excerpt, P3 identies a problem with academic style, while strongly mitigating the claims (“since you asked”, “I would
personally”, “I’m just a newbie”). “I don’t know” (lines 7, 9) serves as an additional epistemic hedge that reduces P3’s commitment to
the evaluation (Weatherall, 2011). By suggesting that a specic expression (“let’s say”) does not sound very “academic”, he introduces
an implicit norm of what academic writing should look like. The reason provided for this evaluation is a feeling (line 5), which is likely
to be related to a generally vague concept of formality in academic writing where features of informal writing including the use of rst
person personal pronouns (“us”) and contractions (“let’s”) should be avoided (Larsson et al., 2023). P1 reacts by introducing a
competing norm, that of variation in academic texts (lines 13–15) before she hesitantly agrees (“I don’t know”, “I think”, lines 17–19).
The excerpt shows that the identication of the writing problem and the use of cultural tools to solve the problem is a co-
accomplishment. More specically, the students jointly construct the use of the phrase as a problem in relation to academic writing
norms in that P3 motivates raising the problem based on P1’s initial request for the feedback at the sentence level and that both
students repeat the key term “academic” (lines 3, 6, 18). The relevance of both norms is acknowledged through the backchannelling
(lines 6, 16) and the reciprocal agreement (16, 17).
In the excerpt the students use their prior knowledge and normative expectations introduced as universally applicable norms to
discuss P1’s text. The norms that are invoked both frame the discussion about academic style as a potential writing problem.
Importantly, the students begin to unpack the norms by relating them to the specic expression “let’s say”, by providing alternative
formulations, juxtaposing different norms, and motivating discursive choices. The meaning and usefulness of these norms is jointly
negotiated. Thus, the norms can be understood as tools (Wittek et al., 2017) in that they mediate socio-cultural knowledge about
appropriate academic writing while being applied to a concrete instance of academic writing. At the same time, the excerpt dem-
onstrates the students’ uncertainty about these norms and how to apply them, which is expressed in their frequent epistemic hedging
(lines 7, 9, 17–18) as well as the direction of their gaze to the facilitators. The latter needs to be read as an indirect request for
arbitrating, which is in line with the frequent overreliance on the facilitators as feedback givers (Wilmot, 2018). After a short clari-
cation (omitted in the transcript), F2 rejects the idea of universal norms (line 27).
The episode illustrates how students enlist various, partly competing, normative sets of knowledge about academic writing as tools
to make sense of their writing. In this example, the norms that students draw on are formulated as rather vague ideas. In other episodes,
participants refer to specic grammatical rules that still require negotiation in relation to specic texts (e.g. the use of media as
countable/noncountable noun). Throughout, students oscillate between a generic norm of what should be done and the specic
rhetorical situation of their draft with its specic needs and constraints.
4.2. Episode 2: formulating aims, objectives and research questions
The second episode relates to a text level issue of formulating aims and objectives in relation to research questions. These concepts
are central to research-based writing in social sciences disciplines but rarely well dened (Gong et al., 2024). They can be conceived of
as tools when they are being unpacked and used as part of the planning and writing of research-based texts (cf. Blåsj¨
o & Christensson,
2018). The episode illustrates how students in the social sciences (P2, P5, P6) and in the humanities (P1) attempt to develop un-
derstandings of what the terms mean from the perspective of their disciplines and for their specic research-based writing.
P2 initiates the episode by stating that she has a question “about my aims and objectives” and presents it as a writing problem
identied by her supervisor: “according to my supervisor, they are too similar”. She develops the issue further by explaining how she
tried to change her text and reformulates her question: “what do you see as an objective”. In contrast to Episode 1, the other par-
ticipants do not have access to her draft and have to rely on P2’s explanations. P5 responds rst and evaluates the issue as being also
relevant for her. Since P2 seeks advice to remedy the problem rather than an evaluation of its relevance (see Vehvil¨
ainen, 2009), P2
continues to develop what the problem is as shown in Excerpt 2 (lines 1–4).
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Excerpt 2. Aims and objectives
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While P2 reformulates the problem, P5 and P4’s backchannelling signal continued acknowledgement (lines 2, 3). P2 arrives at the
question of how to formulate the objectives (lines 3–4). As “discursive activities” (Linell, 1998, p. 14), the participants work towards
establishing a shared understanding and expression of what the problem is (cf. Eriksson, 2015) that the supervisor identied.
After a further attempt to exemplify, P6 interrupts. P6 provides abstract denitions of the terms (lines 5–10) and hypothetical
examples (lines 12–18) to unpack their meaning potential. The students navigate between abstract terms and somewhat more concrete
examples. In addition, P2 begins to write in her notebook when P6 presents the denitions. As the only one who has access to the
concrete text, P2 presumably uses these notes as an additional stage for unpacking and “externalizing” her conceptualization (Wittek
et al., 2017) of what constitutes an aim and an objective for her specic thesis. P2’s introduction of an additional term, namely the
research questions in relation to the objectives (lines 19–21), further indicates her individual unpacking in her notebook. P6 agrees
with a stance of hesitation (“should”, “somehow”) which contrasts with the factual presentation of the initial denitions. While P2
expresses a request for conrmation (line 21, “right” with the rising intonation of a question), she does not wait for the full answer but
starts writing, presumably noting down her new insight.
Thus, the students jointly alternate between the abstract concepts and specic examples frontstage. P2 can also relate to her specic
text, and seems to add another level of unpacking in her notes and outside the view of others backstage. While we see some back-
channelling as in Episode 1, the co-accomplishment is only partial as the insights are developed on different stages. This partiality is
further evident in the nal part of the episode. In lines 25–26, P1, a humanities student who does not include objectives in her thesis,
introduces a divergent understanding of the function of research questions. P1 marks the difference by using the contrasting
conjunction “but” and the singular form “question”. P2 acknowledges this statement but does not engage in further discussion. Instead,
she closes down the episode (“I know”) and continues with her notetaking.
In this episode, the students draw on different sets of metaknowledge about research-based writing in their disciplines and open up
different aspects of the meaning potential of the terms in how they relate to each other and to specic theses. While especially the social
science students P2 and P6 negotiate the meaning of objectives in relation to aims and research questions and “enter into a basic form
of intersubjectivity” (Wertsch, 2007, p. 187), the humanities student P1 introduces a somewhat deviating function of an overarching
research question. The interaction reveals the problematic nature of the abstract concepts in: the absent supervisor’s feedback; the
initial struggle to formulate what the problem is; P6’s hesitating stance; and P1’s challenge from a different disciplinary perspective.
Nevertheless, for P2 the discussion seems to provide some clarication of the problem.
4.3. Episode 3: ow in the writing
Episode 3 exemplies another important aspect of writing groups, namely the opportunity to discuss experiences of the writing
process (Chihota & Thesen, 2013). In the episode, the students and the facilitators jointly develop ideas about achieving a ow in the
text and the writing process by drawing on normative and experiential knowledge. Since the entire episode is rather extensive due to
the participants sharing experiences, two shorter excerpts are included for the focal analysis.
The conversation emerges after F1’s invitation to suggest topics for discussion. P1 takes the oor and explains the x-signs in her
draft submitted for this session. She states:
There I have this like x x x things, which is like missing a word. Cause sometimes when I’m writing […] I don’t remember the
word in any language so like not in [language A], [language B] or English. So then I just need to put like x x x or something so
that later-on I can check […] so that I can continue writing and not just [get] stuck with the one word. (P1)
F2 follows and invites further experiences: “Does something similar happen when you write”. In response, P6 states: “My problem is
more like avoiding certain structures that are most comfortable for me in terms of structuring sentences”. Excerpt 3a begins when P6
co-constructs this issue with F2 and characterizes it as a matter of achieving text ow (line 8).
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Excerpt 3a. Avoiding repetitiveness
Excerpt 3a: Avoiding repetitiveness
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
P6: when you have uh four or five of those ((refers to sentence
structures)) in the same paragraph (F2: mm) then it becomes a bit
((rotating movement with both hands))
F2: repetitive
P6: yeah yeah (.) so that's a challenge for me to ok I present this
one in this way↑ and then you can refer back uh with a this or a
that (F2: mm) or these but then you (.) if you want to make a
nice flowing text you should come up with another way of
presenting the argument and (F2: mm) ((front hand palms and
thumbs next to each other moving up and down)) connecting the
sentences
F1: mm
F2: maybe it's a little bit about finding variety.
P6: yeah in language too[ls
F2: [aha yeah but still keeping uh some kind of
(.) umm uh coherence
P6: exactly because either that
F2: or cohesion
P6: either this uh repeat- repetitiveness ((pointing)) um occurs in
my writing often↑ or either very very long sentences
F2: mhm (2.0) .h yeah
P6 describes what he sees as a problem in his texts (lines 1–7), demonstrates it and adds further emphasis by supplementing
gestures. While F1 acknowledges the problem through backchanneling, F2 provides the central characteristic: “repetitive”. From line
7, P6 begins to formulate a hypothetical solution starting with a conditional clause (“if”). F2 contributes to this solution from line 13 b y
providing a range of technical terms. Similar to Episode 1, variety is introduced as a relevant criterion for academic writing. While P6
agrees and expands, F2 starts to qualify his statement and adds further technical terms (“coherence”, “cohesion”) derived from applied
linguistics and writing pedagogy (Tardy & Swales, 2007). P6 acknowledges F2’s turns indicating some co-accomplishment before he
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returns to the problem discussed. Indeed, the technical terms are not further unpacked at this stage by any of the participants, but they
can be connected to the idea of a logical ow of the text.
After the marked silence (line 11), F2 seems to close the episode. The extension by P1 with another example of her text editing
practice is omitted here and Excerpt 3b presents the nal part of the episode.
Excerpt 3b. Flow of the writing process
Excerpt 3b: Flow of the writing process
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
F2: and I was gonna say that actually I mean I have problems with
both of the things ((points at both Ps)) that you mentioned
before as well. I do sometimes put little ((points to text))
blank spaces in my text or x x x (P1: yeah) if there’s an idea
that needs to be elaborated (P6: mm) that (.) kind of feels like
uh you know you don't want to completely destroy the flow of the
you know your writing (P1: yeah) process so--
P1: I also sometimes I have like ((draws line in air with right
index finger)) highlighted sentences which means like ok I like
this but I need to rewrite it and you know make it better (2.5)
or ask somebody if they understand what I mean
P6: yeah and the it's also that its almost never looks finished
((laughter)) the text so--
In this concluding part, F2 combines the accounts of the students in relation to personal writing experience (lines 48–49) and
thereby denes the topic of the entire episode as an issue of the “ow of the […] writing process” (lines 53–54). P1 reframes the
account of her experiences accordingly and P6 elicits laughter with which the participants collectively close the episode.
This nal excerpt illustrates in a nutshell the various discursive devices that create co-accomplishment including: backchanneling
(lines 51, 52); the sharing of personal writing experiences that the three participants nd challenging and the introduction of these
experiences as additions (“I also”, “it’s also”); explicit reference to other’s experience (by F2); and the concluding joint laughter (line
60). In addition, the antonymic terms “ow” and “stuck” recure throughout the episode with the culmination in F2’s topic
identication.
The discussion relating to writing processes elicits various concrete problem-solution accounts that present experiential knowledge.
For instance, to avoid getting stuck, placeholders are introduced as in P1’s draft; to avoid repetition, lexical or syntactical variation
needs to be included. The experiential process knowledge is discussed in relation to normative formal knowledge that is invoked
through the language of obligations (“should” line 8, “make it better” line 57) or evaluations (“challenge” line 5, “very, very long” line
20, “problems” line 48). These normative evaluations together with F2’s introduction of technical terms (cohesion, coherence) point to
ideals of academic writing such as variation and clarity. The sharing of experiences is centrally framed by the idea of ow in the writing
process, the meaning of which is also developed by the three main participants throughout the episode. It becomes a tool for the sense-
making of writing practices, identifying solutions to writing problems and importantly recognizing similarities across personal writing
practices.
K. Kaufhold
Journal of English for Academic Purposes 75 (2025) 101518
10
5. Discussion and conclusion
In this article, I analysed how writing group participants mobilize academic writing knowledge when identifying and negotiating
writing problems in their drafts. The participants introduced a range of problems at the sentence level, which has repeatedly been
identied as a preferred topic of peer-feedback giving for students writing in an additional language (e.g. Yu & Hu, 2017). In discussing
this type of feedback, students predominantly drew on their normative knowledge of academic writing and referred to specic lan-
guage rules or ideas of academic conventions, which they introduced as “evaluative yardsticks” (Vehvil¨
ainen, 2009, p. 178). The
analysis reveals how the students apply these seemingly generic norms to concrete rhetorical situations and, in this process, begin to
negotiate and use these norms as tools to dene and (begin to) solve concrete instances of writing problems.
Discussions around text level issues were at times initiated by students who introduced concepts that expressed some meta-
knowledge of research-based writing. Beyond this indication of their awareness of research-based genres (cf. Gentil, 2011), the
detailed analysis of Episode 2 (Section 4.2) shows how the writing group context is used to collaboratively make sense of the supervisor
comment that raised the question in the rst place, similar to the sense making in the collaborative writing situations studied by
Jansson (2006). More importantly, the episode demonstrates the diverse meaning potentials of such writing concepts across disciplines
(here in the social sciences vs humanities) and from project to project. In fact, the unpacking of the concepts was only partially
completed in the group, while the application to the specic project seemed to happen backstage in P2’s note taking. The analysis
highlights that the exact meaning of such concepts for a specic project can only be fully evaluated in the iterative process of drafting
and discussing a text (see Lymer et al., 2024).
Interactions around writing processes involved sharing experiential knowledge and connecting it to problem solving strategies. In
addition to the advice-giving or -seeking patterns described in Sections 4.1 and 4.2., which can also be found in tutor-student dyads
(Park, 2012; Wingate, 2019), writing groups provide a unique and desired space for sharing and reecting (Chihota & Thesen, 2013).
Such interaction is essential for learning as students can re-evaluate their experiences in ways that are signicant for the development
of procedural aspects of academic writing knowledge.
The study is based on a limited set of data of one writing group at a specic time in the participants’ completion of their master’s
thesis. Another group and another time in their writing project might have generated a different ratio of discussions across the three
levels. For instance, more advanced writers might have engaged more with writing problems at the text level instead of the sentence
level (cf. Aitchison & Guerin, 2014). Nevertheless, the analysis yields rich insights into the dynamics of jointly mobilizing previous
academic writing knowledge and developing this knowledge in relation to participants’ individual texts.
Applying the notion of cultural tools (S¨
alj¨
o, 1991) as an analytic lens and tracing the negotiation of meaning in communication
(Linell, 1998) provides insights into the dynamic nature of academic writing knowledge. Rather than relying on student interviews and
texts as most previous studies, the analysis follows the negotiation of such knowledge as it happens in interaction. It reveals how
students not only test tacit assumptions about their own writing projects (Chihota & Thesen, 2013) or refer to specic dimensions of
writing knowledge (Hakim, 2023), but also employ complex techniques to verify different types of writing knowledge. For instance,
participants oscillate between abstract norms and concrete situated texts, which has been shown to be an important aspect of textual
work in supervisor-student interaction (Lymer et al., 2024). In addition, the study provides interactional evidence to interview studies
that report on students using writing groups as sounding boards for their development as academic writers (Wilmot & McKenna, 2018).
While jointly exploring the meaning potentials of normative, conceptual meta-knowledge frontstage, students might extent these
reections in text-specic ways backstage.
The analysis reveals on the one hand how students selectively accept information on meta-knowledge from peers. In contrast to
supervisor-student dyads where supervisors are “attributed the role of the quality controller, information source, and expert in
practically all aspects of the thesis work” (Vehvil¨
ainen, 2009, p. 178), peers are only partially accepted in these roles and are often
hesitant to claim these roles. Nevertheless, students who are more experienced in some aspects of academic writing can formulate
questions that turn out to be relevant for others (as P2 in Episode 2) or might take on temporal expert roles (as P6 in Episode 2, lines
5–18). On the other hand, the instances of discursive co-accomplishment make collaborative reection and awareness raising
observable. Through repetition and reformulations, participants jointly verbalize and develop an understanding of writing problems
and possible solutions, for example related to style or achieving ow.
Taken together, the study highlights the challenges for students who try to apply their prior experiences and (often) normative
writing knowledge to the writing of their current thesis projects. Here the role of the facilitators as more experienced writers and
moderators comes to the fore. To help writers navigate various meaning potentials, facilitators can lift individual experiential
knowledge to a more abstract level as observed in Episode 3. Metalanguage (e.g. ow of the writing process), if contextualized, makes
it possible to strategically introduce and use it as an explicit cultural tool (Wittek et al., 2017). Alternatively, facilitators can
contextualize and situate what students introduce as normative, seemingly generally applicable knowledge, as indicated in Episode 1
(also see Kaufhold & Yencken, 2021). Contextualizing knowledge about conventions unpacks these conventions and uses them as
cultural tools to solve specic writing problems.
For the support of postgraduate writers, the ndings indicate that the ultimate aim should not be to teach about academic writing
and apply this knowledge, but rather to facilitate techniques to identify, formulate and solve writing problems. Knowledge about
writing concepts and conventions is useful but should not become a straightjacket (Dysthe et al., 2011). The insight that such
knowledge not only needs to be appropriated for different genres and disciplines but that it also provides various meaning potentials
that need to be unpacked and made useful when encountering specic writing problems can further extend genre-pedagogic ap-
proaches of learning by discovery.
K. Kaufhold
Journal of English for Academic Purposes 75 (2025) 101518
11
Funding source
The open access publication is nanced through the Bibsam open access agreement.
Declaration of competing interest
The author declares that she has no known competing nancial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
inuence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Daniel Egil Yencken with whom I collected the data that I am analysing in this study (see Kaufhold & Yencken,
2021) as well as the study participants. In addition, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and helpful
suggestions, which enabled me to improve the article.
Appendix A. Transcript notations
what marked stress
: sound stretches
↑rising intonation
can talk noticeably quieter than surrounding talk
*probably ×with laughing voice
‘let us’quote
[ overlapping speech
cel- cut off
cel– turn left incomplete
(2.5) pause length in tenths of seconds
(.) micro pause
(P: yeah) listener support item
((laughs)) meta comment
[…] omission in transcript
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Kathrin Kaufhold is Associate Professor of Applied English Linguistics at Stockholm University. Her research interests include academic writing across languages,
institutional communication and qualitative research methods. She is co-editor of Language Perceptions and Practices in Multilingual Universities (2020, Palgrave Mac-
millan, with Kuteeva and Hynninen) and Language and the Knowledge Economy: Multilingual Scholarly Publishing in Europe (2025, Routledge, with Josep Soler).
K. Kaufhold
Journal of English for Academic Purposes 75 (2025) 101518
13
