This article describes an innovative interdisciplinary collaboration between English faculty and an organizational behavior (OB) professor to scaffold case analysis writing in an upper-level OB course at an English-medium university in the Middle East. Case analysis writing is challenging for students as an academic genre or type of writing because they do not always know when to report on the case, when to explain OB concepts, and when to go beyond reporting or explaining by using analysis in support of claims. Combining the English faculty’s linguistic knowledge with the OB professor’s disciplinary knowledge, we developed visual support materials to make the valued features of case analysis writing explicit for students. We describe two sets of instructional materials that we used to help students meet genre expectations. We provide evidence from multiple data sources, including on-going analysis of student writing, that points to the effectiveness of our innovative interdisciplinary collaboration. Our findings provide evidence of the benefits of distributed responsibilities in teaching and assessing university students’ communication skills in disciplinary contexts, particularly for L2 learners.

This study reports on student writing outcomes from a two-year interdisciplinary collaboration between applied linguists (the authors) and an organizational behavior (OB) professor. We used an ethnographic language-focused approach to make explicit the linguistic features of the case analysis genre at an American university in the Middle East. We analyzed 33 student case analyses to examine how effectively students applied two heuristics from our scaffolding materials: the semantic wave heuristic for writing analytical paragraphs that move from abstract to concrete and back to abstract knowledge; and the I know, I see, I conclude heuristic for making explicit the logical connections between disciplinary knowledge and case information to produce conclusions. Students integrated the focal linguistic features with varying degrees of effectiveness. Most students met genre expectations by making abstract claims about the case at the beginning and at the end of their analysis paragraphs, integrating OB knowledge with information about the case, thus creating effective waves between disciplinary and case knowledge. However, our analysis reveals differences in the quality of students' logical reasoning between high-, mid-, and low-rated texts. We discuss how these differences can inform linguistically responsive disciplinary writing instruction.

Abstract. The K-12 student population in many English-dominant countries is becoming increasingly diverse. In the United States, the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) has increased significantly over the past two decades. This increase leads educators to consider the professional preparation of English/literacy teachers to work with ELLs, especially in the area of writing instruction. Yet this student population is consistently ignored when content standards are conceptualized. This was the case with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English Language Arts, which were designed for a general student population, and provide little guidance for English/literacy teachers who have ELLs in their classrooms. This article highlights key concepts that students, and English/literacy teachers, would need to know in the area of writing. We then conceptualize what the CCSS are missing in regards to the English/literacy teacher knowledge base for teaching writing to ELLs.

The WAC Clearinghouse supports teachers of writing across the disciplines. Hosted by Colorado State University, and supported by the Colorado State University Open Press, it brings together scholarly journals and book series as well as resources for teachers who use writing in their courses. This book is available in digital formats for free download at wac.colostate.edu.