Different text genres help doctoral students adapt their writing to reach new readers

Different text genres help doctoral students adapt their writing to reach new readers Lisa Lock Scientific Editor Andrew Zinin Chief Editor An academic abstract, a blog post and a public outreach article all place different demands on the writer. Readers' prior knowledge varies, as does the purpose of the text and what needs explaining. Mastering one kind of text therefore does not automatically mean being able to write another. Researchers need to be able to write for both colleagues and people outside academia. But how do they learn to write for new audiences? A study from Chalmers shows how working with different text genres simultaneously can help doctoral students learn to adapt their writing to new contexts. "We cannot teach every writing task that a doctoral student will encounter. Teaching therefore needs to help them understand how to approach an unfamiliar text type by developing rhetorical agility," says Peter Wingrove, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Communication and Learning in Science at Chalmers and lead author of the article published in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes. The same research, different ways of writing In the study, the researchers trialed a teaching approach in which eight doctoral students worked with three different text genres during a single workshop. Participants first analyzed an academic abstract and discussed its intended audience, purpose and structure. They then worked in groups to turn a research blog post into an academic abstract and compared different ways of presenting the content. Finally, they wrote an abstract of their own research and reworked it into a short popular science article. Participants were given examples to study, but no step-by-step guidance on how to complete the final task. The researchers analyzed participants' texts, recorded group discussions and conducted interviews about how they had approached the tasks. Explaining can take more space The analysis showed how participants transferred both language and structure to the new writing task. Some placed key findings early in the text. Others used storytelling or questions to engage the reader. Participants also made different choices about technical terms in consideration of the new audience. The interviews and group discussions also revealed how participants reasoned about their choices: which existing knowledge they could draw on, what needed to change and what they needed to learn more about. The researchers term the approach "Multi-Genre Pedagogy." Its aim is to develop flexible writing skills and a deeper awareness of genres by allowing participants to compare and move between different texts. "Making research accessible can mean developing ideas in greater detail and explaining things that specialists take for granted. It is about understanding what readers need to follow the discussion," says Raffaella Negretti, professor at Chalmers and co-author of the study. More information Peter Wingrove et al., Taking the high road: how multi-genre pedagogy promotes genre knowledge and high-road transfer among academic and non-academic genres, Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2026.101795 Provided by Chalmers University of Technology