Chapter 6. ‘Yes that’s a good idea’: Peer advice in academic discourse at a UK university

Advising is a common activity in higher education contexts directly related to the development of the students and hence core in the teaching practice and learning experience. Even though this is typically related to (one-to-one) encounters between students and academic staff, students often resort to peers for answers to perceived problems. The aim of this paper is to focus on peer academic talk and to report on the preliminary findings of a project on academic discourse in the UK higher education. The paper focuses on interactions between final year undergraduate (UG) students and postgraduate (PG) students in the context of essay/dissertation writing at a British university. I discuss the ways in which the advisor/advisee identities are enacted in an (a)symmetric dynamic event and close the paper with implications for further research in the area.