This is the first of two articles on the Developing Students’ Learning through Mathematical Writing project at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) funded by the Maths Stats & OR Network (MSOR Network). This project aims to evaluate the Mathematical Writing (MW) course at QMUL and the postgraduate course for teaching assistants which prepares post graduate teaching assistants (PGTAs) for tutoring and marking on the MW course. The evaluation is being carried out by the staff of the Thinking Writing (TW) initiative which works with academics at QMUL to explore ways of helping students learn through writing and become better writers. In this short piece we give a brief introduction to the issues we are exploring in the evaluation; the later article will provide a fuller account and make suggestions for the development of the mathematical writing approach in future years.
