Academic literacy used to be considered a complex set of skills that develop automatically as a by-product of academic socialization. Since the Bologna Reform with its shorter degree programmes, however, it has been realized that these skills need to be fostered actively. Simultaneously, writing skills development at all levels of education has been faced with the challenge of increasingly multilingual and multicultural groups of pupils and students. This book addresses the questions of how both academic and professional writing skills can be fostered under these conditions and how the development of writing skills can be measured.

Susanne Göpferich is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Imke Neumann is a post-doctoral writing researcher and instructor at the University of Giessen/Germany. Their research focuses on the development of plurilingual skills including translation competence and academic literacy.