Core academic literacy principles versus culture-specific practices: a multi-case study of academic achievement

Defining academic literacies research

“…1 This instrumental focus is strongly echoed in research which considers specific courses or teaching initiatives in relation to student achievement or students' acquisition of required linguistic, rhetorical or cognitive structures (Spack, 1997;Newman et al, 2003;Granville and Dison, 2005). Within this instrumental framing the singular and plural forms -academic literacy/ies -are used, even within the same context (of a written research paper or a conference presentation), across a continuum of emphases, key ones being: as a broad descriptor of the writing activities, or textual conventions, associated with academic study in general (for examples see Greenleaf et al, 2001;Bharuthram and McKena, 2006); as a descriptor of the range of the rhetorical practices, discourses and genres in academia bound up with specific disciplines (for example of an analytic framing see Geisler, 1994); for example of a pedagogic framing (see Goodier and Parkinson, 2005); as qualified in some way, for example to refer to a level of competence or 'acquisition' such as 'advanced academic literacy' , used to refer to the writing of doctoral and Master theses generally or in relation to specific disciplines (Journal of English for Academic Purposes, special issue, 2005;Koutsantoni, 2006).…”

Reading for academic purposes: the literacy practices of British, French and Spanish Law and Economics students as background for study abroad

“…Both ‘mainstream’ American students and Latino immigrant students in a US university tended to read the bare minimum, and in a superficial manner, relying mostly on lectures for information. Catalan students in their native Spain, on the contrary, were sophisticated readers who depended on text for information, ‘mistrusting’ lectures (Newman, Trenchs‐Parera & Pujol, 2002, p. 12). And whereas the latter resisted academic writing instruction (as our own French study‐abroad students have been reported to do while in Britain), the former welcomed it.…”

“…Braine (2002), a native of Sri Lanka, summarised research on the question and related his own struggles to develop FL academic literacy. Newman, Trenchs‐Parera and Pujol (2002) showed how a Latino immigrant student in the USA began to succeed academically once she realised that reading tasks requiring extraction of form and detail demanded a bottom‐up approach, not her natural top‐down treatment. Braine (2002), Raymond and Parks (2002) and Ridgway (2003) have all warned how foreign students' native conception of literacy may penalise them, and how important it is for faculties to be explicitly aware of their own and, ideally, of their foreign students' approaches to academic literacy.…”

Foreign Language Reading and Study Abroad: Cross-Cultural and Cross-Linguistic Questions

“…Only Davis and Bistodeau, in 1993, addressed the specific question of FL reading comprehension and strategy use in some form of SA (French graduate students in the United States). Since then, Raymond and Parks (2002), Newman et al (2002), and particularly Kline (1998) and Dewey (2004) have added converging insights from diverse student samples.…”

“…The risk seemed worth taking, however, in light of the stakes at hand and the paucity of existing research. Furthermore, the five studies most closely related to the present investigation (Davis & Bistodeau, 1993;Dewey, 2004;Kline, 1999;Newman et al, 2002;Raymond & Parks, 2002) were either smallscale or case study protocols based on 4 to 21 SA participants.…”