Student use of imperatives in their academic writing: How research can be pedagogically applied

This paper is a contribution to the “Research into Practice” genre recently established by the journal in order to highlight the pedagogical applications of EAP research. The research in question is taken from a recently published paper (Neiderhiser et al., 2016) analyzing senior undergraduate and graduate student use of imperatives in their academic papers. Much of the paper consists of a sequence of tasks (to be done in class, online, or for homework) derived from the 2016 study, along with a rationale for the pedagogical decisions made. The sequence opens with rhetorical consciousness-raising activities, moves on to various kinds of micro-analyses to be carried out by the students, and closes with some editing tasks.