(Composition); Writing Instruction

This study examined full-time college faculty members' beliefs about various aspects of faculty work-related writing. Surveys asked about the amount of time faculty spent writing texts related to teaching, research, and services; rhetorical elements faculty believed they attended to when writing the text; the degree of difficulty they experienced writing various genres; and their attitudes'about how well graduate school prepared them to write certain texts, noting implications of those findings for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) graduate writing courses. Results indicate that faculty writing extends well beyond traditional research genres and includes a number of rhetorically complex teaching and service texts that require close attention both to accuracy and clarity of the message and to appropriate levels of formality and the feelings of the audience. The findings suggest that EAP courses preparing doctoral students for academic careers at U.S. or other universities could usefully incorporate some preparation from less frequently discussed texts in the literature, such as peer evaluation reports that are perceived by faculty as particularly difficult or that require attention to the often tricky interactional features of writing. (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document