Summary of an Academic Article

In her article “Writing for the World: Wikipedia as an Introduction to Academic Writing”, Tardy (2010) describes an assignment that aims at helping English as Second Language (ESL) students to develop their skills of academic writing by creating an article for Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.

Tardy (2010) declares that higher-education writing imposes on students the challenging requirements of academic discourse. A possible means of developing “academic literacy skills [is] through small-scale research projects” (p. 18), such as writing articles for Wikipedia, a web-based encyclopedia that can be modified by any user as long as the site’s guidelines are followed.

Tardy (2010) describes in detail the eight steps that would be necessary to compose a Wikipedia article and she explains the way in which each of them enhances students’ development of academic skills. The steps are the following: 1) examining Wikipedia to understand the website in depth, 2) selecting a topic and collecting information (researching), 3) organizing the compiled information and paraphrasing texts, 4) drafting the article, 5) revising the draft and sharing it with peers to receive feedback on it, 6) formatting full and in-text citations, 7) proofreading and incorporating hyperlinks, and 8) publishing.

Although Wikipedia has a rather “negative reputation in certain academic circles” (Tardy, 2010, p. 13) due to its high popularity and the fact that any reader can edit the articles published on the site, it provides

an excellent forum for students to begin confronting the challenges of academic writing: research, citation, generic conventions, and style. Acquainting students with Wikipedia […] has the additional benefit of raising their awareness about the credibility and reliability of information that they may locate as Wikipedia users. (Tardy, 2010, p. 13)

According to Tardy (2010), as Wikipedia demands that students report sources so as to avoid plagiarism, in the assignment process students learn to cite sources adequately. Moreover, the author emphasizes that, as Wikipedia articles are aimed at a global audience, ESL students can explore their personal interests and write about topics which are not dealt with in Wikipedia’s English edition. This allows them to draw on their cultural and personal resources, and to write from a well-informed position.

In conclusion, Tardy (2010) states that composing articles for Wikipedia does not only introduce ESL students to the varied skills of academic writing in a personalised and exploratory way, but also creates a high sense of satisfaction of seeing their articles published on a globally well-known forum.

References

Tardy, C. M. (2010). Writing for the world: Wikipedia as an introduction to Academic Writing. English Teaching Forum, 1, pp. 12-19, 27