We talk of discipline here that is diferent from what we hear from our parents amost everyday or from pastor's sermon evey Sunday. The discipline we are talking here is about field of study. We have engineering disicpline, teaching, medical studies, natural sciences and many more. Writing varies from one discipline to another because each has developed a specialized vocabulary or technical terms, conventions, styles, genres, criteria of judgment, uses for texts, intertextual systems, as well as forums such as conferences and journals. The style of writing like conveying messages, making reports and making presentations is inherent to a particuar discipline which was developed for years. An understanding of the different writing practices will help us understand how a discipline produce knowledge and provide guidance for teaching and learning.
Like for example making engineering reports and business reports.Both reports may use the same microsoft excel graph but they are talking about different matters. The former is highly technical while the other uses common words like capital, asset, expenses and profits.
Sometimes, presentation materials and reports made by an engineer uses animation to explain the mechanism behind an invention or project. Whereas, a teachers report uses much of tables and bar graphs.
Each discipline or academic category has its own style, structure and format when it comes to academic writing. The four general academic categories: Business & Communication, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences.
The Humanities category is further broken down into common rhetorical writing tasks in that discipline: analysis, argument & persuasion, cause & effect, classification, comparison & contrast, definition, description, and narrative
Business and Communication involves in writing letters, memos, press releases, reports and many more.
Social sciences like history, anthroplology, sociology and political science may involve reaserch papers and narratives.
Sceinces and mathematical works has a lot of illustrations to explain matters which are hard to garsp by the mind.
All the informations contained in every academic writing of every discipline will becamo a useful resource material when they go on in depth study of a particular discipline. These writings will become the foundation of future researches.
