L'écriture académique : ce que les étudiants en pensent

The data which will be studied in this contribution arose from a Master's degree course in languages and French literatures. Our course aimed to support students in thesis writing, seeking to acculture the students (Pollet) in the discursive peculiarities of this aspect of research in training (Reuter). During the course, we studied the aspects of this form of writing (« indications of of scientificity ») that need to be acquired by confirmed or young researchers: we consider phenomena such as enonciative care (Reuter, Vanhulle), modalisations (Bronckart), argumentation (Amossy, Plantin), discursive polyphony (Boch, Grossmann, Rinck)… At the end of the course, the students draft their own discursive analysis of a thesis. The analysis is at the same time descriptive (what indicators does the thesis contain that have been studied in the course?) and normative (does the thesis respect the standards seen in the course?). We shall study analyses drafted by the students under this focus : what reveal these works of the representations which the students built up themselves about the academic writing? The method of collecting data is very simple : we’ve studied the works of our students. In 68 works received, we shall identify the standards which the students track down, implicitly or explicitly, concerning the writing of the thesis. We shall confront the conceptions of the students with those emanating from researchers who work about academic literacies (Boch, Crinon, Delcambre, Grossmann, Guigue, Pollet, Rinck). The analysis, always current, shows in particular that the representations of the students and the experts do not coincide in every case: the writing has to remain neutral, the student cannot take a stand, he cannot discuss his sources... Certain student conceptions should be answered and reveal levels of literacy differentiated. Furthermore, these erroneous representations could represent an obstacle when the students will draft their own thesis. The questions are : what is the origin of these representations? How to lead all the students towards a more expert and more scientific knowledge of the academic writing