Beyond 'Baby English': stories of writing and the emergent writer identity of a first-year business studies undergraduate student

Abstract

Despite its contributions to conceptualisation of a writer’s identity in academic writing, Ivanič’s (1998, 2005, 2006) concept of discoursal identity tends to foreground the synchronic development and background the historical development of a student‐writer. Drawing on the increasing number of studies informed by narrative analysis in second language acquisition literature (e.g. Benson & Nunan, 2004; Coffey & Street, 2008), I will examine the stories that appear in my interview with one business studies undergraduate student about his writing experiences before and after university. I will show that the learning trajectory of the student‐writer displays a change from a notion of writing associated with an overemphasis on the surface features, such as syntax and grammar, prior to university, to an awareness of the importance of collaboration in group projects in business studies. Closely related to this changing notion of writing is the changing self‐identification of the student‐writer, as the collaborative nature of business studies group projects allows the student‐writer to move beyond his identification as a poor writer to a competent writer/group member.