Does writing instruction at university create transferable outcomes?

One objective of post-Bologna university education is to equip students with transferable skills, competences which can be applicable in a number of realms and for a number of purposes as they make their way from university to the workplace (e.g., European Ministers, 2009). Textual and rhetorical skills are just such a competence. It is important then to understand the extent to which these skills as they are taught at university are indeed transferable to other domains.This paper presents the findings of two studies aimed at investigating the relationship betweenthe writing skills taught at university and those required in the workplace. The first study presents a corpus investigation of the rhetorical and lexical features of conference abstracts, and sets the findings against the advice given postgraduate students who are learning to write such abstracts, in order to gain acceptance for their work in their disciplinary community.The second study looks at a specific rhetorical feature, intertextuality, as it is manifested in writing from three domains: journalistic texts, academic writing, and workplace writing of two sorts. The intertextual practices to which students are exposed, in which they are instructed, and which they are called upon to produce in the workplace are thus contrasted.