Students’ navigation of the uncharted territories of academic writing

Abstract

Many students enter tertiary education unfamiliar with the 'norms and conventions' of their disciplines. Research into academic literacies has shown that in order to succeed in their studies, students are expected to conform to these norms and conventions, which are often unrecognized or seen as 'common sense' by lecturers. Students have to develop their own 'map' of their programme's expectations in order to make sense of the seemingly mysterious practices they are expected to take on. This study, undertaken at a University of Technology in South Africa, details students' perceptions of their writing difficulties and their attempts to navigate their way through various writing tasks. The findings reveal that students experience a range of difficulties and that the students often feel unsupported in their travails with academic writing.

The first-year augmented programme in Physics: A trend towards improved student performance

“…In all three years the students battled to interpret the questions because of the perceived complexity of the language used. This perception resulted in the students being unable to separate relevant from irrelevant information provided in the question; this finding tallies strongly with reports in the field [55][56][57] which highlight that student responses and incorrect answers are often linked to language difficulties as opposed to subject or content difficulties. It was clear from this part of the study that the language problem facing the students would need to be addressed in conjunction with the physics interventions and that the discrete language module failed.…”

Academic Literacy and Student Diversity: Evaluating a Curriculum-Integrated Inclusive Practice Intervention in the United Kingdom

“…Proponents of academic literacies affirm that the teaching of writing is most effective when it is within the discipline within which the literacy takes place [4,5,33,34,36,37]. In addition, the acquisition of academic literacy is an incremental process that requires frequent feedback on its development [38]. Therefore, academic literacy, an integral part of disciplinary thinking, is possibly more effective when integrated into the disciplinary culture and delivered longitudinally, using an inclusive and sustainable approach integrated into the curriculum.…”

Writing as construct in the Grade 12 Home Language curriculum and examination

“…Dexterity in writing, especially in tertiary contexts, is generally associated with evidence of "originality of thought, the development of ideas, and the soundness of the writer's logic" (Weigle, 2002: 5). It is thus disturbing to note that the writing ability of Grade 12 school-leavers is being questioned, not only at institutions of higher learning (Butler, 2007;Archer, 2008;Van Dyk, Zybrands, Cillié & Coetzee, 2009;Bharuthram & McKenna, 2012), but also in the employment sector (Horn, 2006;Solidarity Research Institute, 2012). In fact, even at postgraduate level some graduates appear to battle to express themselves lucidly and coherently, as recent results of postgraduate literacy testing reveal (Du Plessis, 2012Pot & Weideman, 2014).…”

“…Secondly, not all educators may be equally well equipped to teach or assess writing at HL level. Thirdly, writing is not merely a technical skill, but may also be conceptualised as a social construct (Bharuthram & McKenna, 2012), which makes certain kinds of writing unsuitable for timed examination contexts.…”

“…If creative composition is to be retained as an item in the HL papers, the topics should rather be those to which all examinees can relate in terms of personal experience. Consideration should, however, be given to designing alternative writing tasks that could not only provide a more equitable testing environment, but prepare students for tertiary writing contexts too, a neglected area of academic development (Bharuthram & McKenna, 2012) at school level.…”