Peer writing groups

Abstract

This chapter describes different kinds of writing groups and the roles they play in supplementing the feedback cycles between student and supervisors. It proposes that both critique-focused and productivity-focused writing groups provide rich and diverse opportunities for doctoral students to learn key academic practices through participating in authentic scholarly networks of exchange over writing. Critique-focused writing groups can be facilitated by institutional representatives, such as language experts and supervisors, or by peers. Critique-focused groups require significant commitment, since members need to commit to regular participation and invest additional time for reading and reviewing peers' work. Productivity-focused groups are a relatively new, and increasingly popular, model of writing group in which participants get together to write rather than to discuss their writing. For supervisors whose students belong to productivity-focused writing groups, the main benefit is that their candidates are generating text.