First-year university writing: a corpus-based study with implications for pedagogy

First-Year University Writing offers a rare corpus-based analysis of incoming college student writing compared with expert academic writing. Based on repeating rhetorical and linguistic features in over 19,000 student essays, the book reveals specific discourse features in first-year writing that do not match expectations of more advanced academic argumentation. The book demonstrates how these findings can be used to improve students' writing awareness and to make clearer connections between writing and language expectations in pedagogy and assessment.