Candidates

Lisa Ganobcsik-Williams

John Harbord

Marion Hartung

Peter Heath

Halyna Kaluzhna

Otto Kruse

Bojana Petric

Lotte Rienecker

Gabriela Ruhmann

Kirsten Schindler

Lawrence Smith

Ester van der Voort

Vera Zegers

As head of the English department of the Language Centre at Maastricht University, I´m responsible for both the logistical and the content side of the teaching of academic writing, from undergraduate level students up to university teaching staff. Last year, our Language Centre hosted the 2006 ICL-HE (Integration of Content and Language in Higher Education) conference during which it once again became very clear that it should be doubted whether “academic writing” as such exists at all and that the teaching of it should rather always be linked to a content subject. In addition, at Maastricht University we realize almost daily that while non-native academic writers may be facing specific problems, academic writing is a skill which cannot be compared or taught in the same way as a “foreign language”. As English as a lingua franca or lingua academica is gaining more and more importance all over Europe and the rest of the world, I see it as an important task for EATAW to continue discussing the challenges of teaching academic writing both in a foreign and the first language of the students.

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