Writing Lessons from Abroad: a Comparative Perspective on the Teaching of Legal Writing

Todd, Adam

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2238861

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Indeed, in the context described in this work, across the qualifications offered by the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Law Faculty, critical analysis and evaluation, research skills (to find, synthesize and evaluate relevant information), and communication and collaboration (using English effectively to inform, analyse, report and persuade in an appropriateoften writtenmedium), are all highlighted as core graduate attributes. Thus, although there are stark differences internationally in the emphasis placed on writing in undergraduate legal education (Todd 2013), there are clear similarities between the English speaking common law countries and the emphasis on written communication in legal education. Learning the law is not simply about memorizing and recalling the contents of 'the law', but about thinking like a lawyerthe ability to process, analyse, and apply the law (Beazley 2004); abilities fundamentally tied to writing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing Academic Writing Analytics for Civil Law Student Self-Assessment

Knight

Shum

Ryan

et al. 2016

Int J Artif Intell Educ

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Research into the teaching and assessment of student writing shows that many students find academic writing a challenge to learn, with legal writing no exception. Improving the availability and quality of timely formative feedback is an important aim. However, the time-consuming nature of assessing writing makes it impractical for instructors to provide rapid, detailed feedback on hundreds of draft texts which might be improved prior to submission. This paper describes the design of a natural language processing (NLP) tool to provide such support. We report progress in the development of a web application called AWA (Academic Writing Analytics), which has been piloted in a Civil Law degree. We describe: the underlying NLP platform and the participatory design process through which the law academic and analytics team tested and refined an existing rhetorical parser for the discipline; the user interface design and evaluation process; and feedback from students, which was broadly positive, but also identifies important issues to address. We discuss how our approach is positioned in relation to concerns regarding automated essay grading, and ways in which AWA might provide more actionable feedback to students. We conclude by considering how this design process addresses the challenge of making explicit to

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%