Common terms used in writing for academic purposes: discourse community and summary writing

Writing for Academic Purposes requires a specific terminology. Consequently, students should be aware of the meaning and proper use of such common terms as discourse community and summary writing.

According to Swales (1990, as cited inPintos & Crimi, 2010 ), a discourse community consists of a minimum group of expert members and a large number of apprentice members gathered together with a common purpose in order to exchange information among its participants making use of a specific terminology and genre. For instance, the term is currently used in different fields of study as a mean of communication among people who share the same language, beliefs, practices, education, goals, and professional initiations and judgments.

Reid (1994, as cited in Pintos & Crimi, 2010) defines a summary as a short clear description of the main ideas of a text. It is written for various purposes and it does not include details or repetition of words. Writing academic summaries requires following paragraph organization and thinking about audiences, the purpose of the paper and respecting the authors’ views. 

All in all, following academic requisites is considered essential in order to form part of a discourse community. Moreover, this allows the writer to produce different kind of texts, among them, academic summaries.

Reference

Kelly-Kleese, C (2004). UCL community college review: community college scholarship

and discourse. Community College Review. Retrieved October 2007 from

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_mOHC2/is_1_32/ai_n6361541.

Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y. (2010). Unit 1: building up a community of teachers and prospective researchers. Retrieved August 2010, from

http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=7214

Pintos, V., & Crimi,Y.,( 2010). Unit 3: academic writing. Retrieved September 2010, from

http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=7392