36.2250, Reviews: Writing with Students: Lucy Macnaught (2024)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2250. Wed Jul 23 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2250, Reviews: Writing with Students: Lucy Macnaught (2024)

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Date: 23-Jul-2025
From: Annita Stell [a.stell at uq.edu.au]
Subject: Lucy Macnaught (2024)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-160

Title: Writing with Students
Subtitle: New Perspectives on Collaborative Writing in EAP Contexts
Series Title: Bloomsbury Studies in Systemic Functional Linguistics
Publication Year: 2024

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
           http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/writing-with-students-9781350297708/

Author(s): Lucy Macnaught

Reviewer: Annita Stell

Please write or copy and paste your review of Writing with Students
here.
SUMMARY
Macnaught’s book titled, Writing with Students: New Perspectives on
Collaborative Writing in EAP context contributes to the field of
English for Academic Purposes (EAP), particularly in Australia, where
the project commenced, by examining how classroom interaction supports
international students’ academic language development. Aimed towards
EAP teachers, researchers and classroom discourse analytics, the book
investigates effective support for academic writing development
through examining classroom discourse with varying degrees of detail.
More specifically, the teacher-student interactions involved during a
form of collaborative writing practice known as joint construction are
examined to build on the growing literature on collaborative writing
and EAP. This book provides valuable insights into how students
respond to teacher guidance during joint construction as part of a
teaching sequence.
Chapter 1, the introduction, provides a comprehensive overview of
research and pedagogical practices in academic writing. Macnaught
begins by addressing the growing demand of teaching academic English
to international students in general before exploring the complex,
evolving nature of academic writing development by introducing an
overview of L2 teaching approaches in a table format. Joint
construction is introduced and operationalized as a text-based
approach to provide a focused lens for examining collaborative
writing. The research project is presented in a narrative format,
which effectively illustrates how the research focus and questions
emerged. Data collection consisted of five transcribed video
recordings of classroom talk from different lessons in an Australian
tertiary context, with each transcript focused on a different essay
question.
Chapter 2, Scaffolding in Writing Development, lays the theoretical
groundwork through the scaffolding metaphor and its associated
pedagogical practices. Macnaught draws on prior research to classify
different types of classroom talk—exploratory, accountable, and
productive—before briefly defining metalanguage as “language about
language” (p. 46). Finally, key analytical tools for classroom
discourse—Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) and
Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE)—are introduced, supported by
clear tables and detailed explanations. The chapter concludes by
returning to the concept of semiotic mediation, which is revisited in
later chapters to examine how signs support the development of higher
mental functions.
Chapters 3 to 5 focus on examining specific aspects of joint
construction from the data. Chapter 3, Student Micro-tasks During
Joint Construction, provides examples of what students do in joint
construction from three main types of microtasks based on “originate,
attend and access.” Chapter 4, Teacher Guidance During Joint
Construction, examines what teachers do before and after student
activities with a focus on academic word development. Chapter 5,
Teacher Organization of Joint Construction Across a Lesson, expands by
analyzing how teachers organize joint construction across an entire
lesson, from planning to coordinating joint construction.  Each
chapter contains clear tables with excerpts from the data sets, along
with considerations for EAP teachers in the summary.
Chapter 6, Creating Classroom Metalanguage with Students, offers an
expansive view of metalanguage by exploring how visual aids and body
movement contribute to shared classroom talk about language. The
definition for metalanguage is broadened to include the paralinguistic
dimension of semiosis. The transcribed video recordings from the data
set are further analyzed to illustrate both the affordances and the
risks associated with this extended definition.
Chapter 7, Behind the Scenes of Classroom Discourse Analysis, steps
back to examine the dataset from a broader social-semiotic
perspective. It revisits the theories introduced in Chapter 2 on
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and connects them to classroom
examples using both SFL and Sydney School Genre-based pedagogy (SFG).
Paralanguage and intonation are analyzed to illustrate how teacher
talk is strategically guided to support student understanding.
Chapter 8, Further Developing Intermediate Units of Analysis, explores
the potential to extend the current unit of analysis by applying SFL's
core principles. It reexamines the findings from Chapter 3 to 5 to
better understand the role of ranking scales for pedagogic activities
with teacher-student interactions, ultimately proposing a more
in-depth unit of analysis to generate new insights.
EVALUATION
Macnaught effectively addresses the interests of both researchers and
teachers by grounding theoretical insights into practical classroom
discourse analysis. The book presents joint construction as a dynamic,
multi-dimensional process, including both verbal and non-verbal
discourse analysis to offer an extended unit of analysis for
understanding joint construction as a specific collaborative activity
among teachers and students. While this narrows the broader concept of
collaboration to a particular classroom practice, the case studies
examined offer a focused and practical lens, drawing on key
theoretical influences such as Halliday (1978), Hyland (2022), Hyland
and Jiang (2021), and Humphrey and Macnaught (2011).
One of the key strengths is its integration of both verbal and
non-verbal discourse analysis at both macro and micro levels across
Chapters 3 to 6. This approach deepens both teachers’ and researchers’
understanding of the potential effects of teacher-student talk during
joint construction. As a practical resource, the book is thoughtfully
designed with diverse readers in mind. Authentic classroom examples,
presented through a combination of figures, tables and descriptive
text, clearly illustrate how teaching talk can support students’ use
of academic language. Macnaught’s use of large table formats is
particularly effective for tracking teacher and/or student activities
during a shared classroom metalanguage episode; this makes the book
especially useful for professional development and/or research design.
The summaries at the end of each chapter also serve as practical
reference points, offering clear guidance for applying these discourse
features in educational and research settings.
One area that could be further developed is the connection between the
scaffolding metaphor from SCT and its linguistic realisation via SFL.
For teachers or early-career researchers still developing familiarity
with these theoretical models, a more detailed explanation of how
scaffolding operates in teacher–student talk would help clarify some
of the examples shown in the discourse analysis chapters. Prior
studies have shown how SFL can be applied through an SCT lens to
investigate interaction (e.g., Sembiante et al., 2021); integrating
these insights more directly could strengthen the theoretical bridge
the book aims to construct.
The book ends with a thoughtful discussion of future research
directions, highlighting its contribution for further study. As
classroom interaction is viewed as a significant factor in EAP
classrooms (Ghajarieh et al., 2019), the call to explore shared
metalanguage in joint construction can be extended to various academic
writing activities to deepen understanding of academic language
development across contexts.
REFERENCES
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social
interpretation of language and meaning. University Park Press.
Hyland, K. (2022). English for specific purposes: What is it and where
is it taking us? ESP Today: Journal of English for Specific Purposes
at Tertiary Level, 10(2), 202–220.
Hyland, K., & Jiang, F. K. (2021). A bibliometric study of EAP
research: Who is doing what, where and when? Journal of English for
Academic Purposes, 49, 100929.
Humphrey, S., & Macnaught, L. (2016). Functional language instruction
and the writing growth of English language learners in the middle
years. TESOL Quarterly, 50(4), 792–816.
Ghajarieh, A., Jalali, N., & Mozaheb, M. (2019). Investigation into
the classroom talk of Iranian EFL novice vs. experienced teachers.
Register Journal, 12(2), 100–125.
Sembiante, S. F., Cavallaro, C. J., & Troyan, F. J. (2021). Language
teacher candidates’ SFL development: A sociocultural perspective.
Language and Education, 35(5), 479–499.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Annita Stell is an academic in the University of Queensland,
Australia. Her research focuses on the impact of mediation,
self-regulation, and collaboration on second language development.



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