This third edition includes a number of updates and minor corrections to the text of the Second Edition; the text has also been streamlined where necessary. These modifications are designed to take account of new insights that have emerged in the specialist literature. The ten years since the second edition have also seen an accelerated globalization of higher education, and with it a further broadening of the academic discourse community writing in English. This in turn has led to increased interest in the standards that should apply in the assessment of written academic English (cf. Jenkins2014: Ch.3). Although we acknowledge the movement towards English as a lingua franca in academic settings (ELFA), we continue to support native speaker English as the target model for advanced learner writers. There is as yet insufficient strong evidence that the target norms have changed (cf. for instance Edwards2016). Finally, in response to the widespread use of the internet by student writers, this edition devotes more attention than its predecessors to internet tools (the electronic workbench) and to plagiarism.

July2021    The authors