What is Academic Discipline

The purpose of the present study was to popularize the conscious initiation of novice scholars and postgraduate students into the writing conventions of their disciplines. In so doing, the study proposes the integration of writing courses into the disciplinary syllabus so that the students study writing developmentally throughout their stay in the faculty. A questionnaire, and an interview, were used to collect data from the study participants, who were lecturers and teaching assistants in different Sudanese higher education institutions. Data analysis revealed that the participants highly value the proposal to teach academic writing as a discipline-specific skill. It also showed significant differences in the participants' perceptions of explicit instruction of academic writing based on their disciplinary affiliation in favour of hard science specialists. However, the participants' research profiles did not show statistically different perceptions.