Supporting undergraduate students with their academic literacies has recently been a major focus in higher education in the UK. This paper explores the value of tutor mediation in the context of academic writing development among undergraduate business studies students in open and distance learning, following the Dynamic Assessment (DA) approach that has been developed within Vygotskian sociocultural theory of learning (Vygotsky, 1978). DA is an assessment approach that blends instruction and assessment. The data, which came from a pilot study of a larger research project, consisted of text-based interaction between a tutor-researcher and two business studies students across various drafts of two assignments in line with the DA approach. This interaction was mediated by computers mainly through emails. The analyses of such interaction suggest that DA can help to identify and respond to the areas that students need the most support in (in this study, managing information flow). Finally, we argue that a learning theory-driven approach such as DA can contribute to undergraduate students' academic writing development by responding to their individual needs.

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In academic writing, referencing sources is more than just a strategy for demonstrating scholarship. In thesis writing, for example, it plays an important role in making the writer’s argument persuasive. This investigation is concerned with the different ways in which thesis writers incorporate and evaluate diverse voices through academic referencing. First, it sets out an analytical framework underpinned by systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 2004), particularly developments in appraisal theory (Martin and White, 2005). The framework provides a dialogic perspective on the linguistic options for referencing academic sources. The discussion then shows how the framework was used to conduct a detailed analysis of one doctoral student’s incorporation of academic sources in a successful Film Studies thesis. The analysis concludes with an illustrative list of referencing strategies used in theses and other types of academic writing. By reporting on how the conventions of referencing can be used in rhetorically effective ways, the research aims to make a contribution to the field of academic writing which is of practical as well as academic value.

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Non native speakers of English wishing to study at tertiary level in English speaking countries are increasingly required to prove their English language competence by taking an internationally recognised test such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the International English Language Testing Systems (IELTS). This article reports on the analysis of a corpus of scripts written in response to a section of the IELTS test requiring students to write a short argument essay. The analysis focuses on the range of argument structures deployed by students, aiming to establish the extent to which particular strategies are associated with the band score awarded for the task. The article also considers possible effects of the design of the test on student responses.