BWRITE

Writing is an increasingly important skill for students and scientists. Being the most convenient form of evaluation, writing tasks are increasingly popular in university settings. Within the last decades, writing has also become central for researchers whose performance is often evaluated in terms of publications. Nowadays, most scientists publish their work in English, the current lingua franca of science. However, in the Baltic States, scientists still have the opportunity (and sometimes obligation) to publish research in the local languages, especially in social sciences and humanities. Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian are also (still) relevant in teaching and learning on lower levels of higher education. In this project we keep to the assumption that the way academic texts are written is culture-dependent.

With BWRITE, we have set the ambitious task to measure and map the writing traditions of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian based on the analysis of existing publications covering the past 20-30 years. Our aim is to develop a research method that allows one to determine which features of a text are indicators related to genre, discipline, culture and experience. Furthermore, we aim to provide strong empirical results that will allow writers and instructors of writing to better apply those specific text features for teaching and writing.

This project is funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA Grants and Norway Grants