A Proposed 3CC Model for Academic Writing Competence

Abstract

Academic writing plays a crucial role in disseminating scientific knowledge, advancing academic careers and fostering a harmonious academic community. To produce successful academic writing, the competence of writers in this domain is of paramount importance. The success of academic writing is significantly dependent on a writer’s academic writing competence in this specialized form of communication. Despite the recognized importance of academic writing competence, the specific elements or components it should encompass have yet to be rigorously investigated. Based on previous studies and prior exploration into academic writing, this paper attempts to propose a three-core competences (3CC) model for academic writing competence, including conscious competence, cognitive competence and constructive competence. These three competences are interrelated, indicated by conscious competence as a representative of the initial starter, constructive competence as a revelation of the writing process and the final product, and cognitive competence as a bridge and macro-regulator throughout the writing process. Specifically, conscious competence embraces elements as genre awareness, awareness of stance and voice, awareness of disciplinary norms, awareness of cultural values, awareness of putative participants and institutions . Cognitive competence includes writers’ meta-cognition and agency. Constructive competence is composed of linguistic choices, grammatical expression, discursive practice , disciplinary knowledge construction, stance taking and voicing, and recontextualization . It is hoped that this proposed 3CC model could shed lights on enhancing genre-based instruction and academic writing practices.