Academic writing at University

In this introduction of the Special Issue, some key concepts related to the notion of academic writing are discussed. Firstly, the concept of genre is revised and its relationships with the more broad notion of activity system, which allows for a dynamic approach of discourse and its study in university contexts. Secondly, genre classification proposals in higher education are reviewed and discussed focusing on their contributions and limitations. Based on this review, a new proposal for genre organization is presented, which could act as an integrative framework to organize writing activity and genres in discursive spheres making meaning of the students’ writing practices. Thirdly, some recommendations are provided regarding the teaching and learning of writing at university, based on the theoretical perspective developed in previous sections. In the second part of the article, the contributions of the Special Issue are presented. These contributions offer a varied and complementary picture of current trends and perspectives in the field of academic writing in Spanish and Latin-American contexts as well as in Europe. To these contributions it has to be added the review and synthesis of the theoretical discussions, methodological concerns and results of the broadly developed approaches in the USA such as Writing across Curriculum -WAC- and Writing in the Disciplines -WI