Reading and Writing in the Subject Areas: Targeted, Discipline-based Interactive Resources for 1st Year UG Students (original) (raw)

'WE KNOW WHAT TO SAY, WE KNOW WHAT TO WRITE, BUT WE DON'T KNOW HOW': THE CHALLENGES OF BECOMING ACADEMICALLY LITERATE IN A NEW LINGUISTIC AND SOCIO-CULTURAL SPACE

Historically, some languages and discourses which were initially localised subsequently became regionally or even globally dominant. Currently, English is the dominant global language in all domains, including the academic. Thus academics and scholars from non-English backgrounds are at a disadvantage: they have to adhere to academic literacy conventions in a language in which they may not be completely proficient. This article discusses findings from a study of challenges experienced by a group of postgraduate students from Rwanda whose main languages are Kinyarwanda and French, but whose studies and research at a South African university were in English. Data were collected through questionnaires administered to 21 students and through interviews with four of these students and with three lecturers/research supervisors. Assignment tasks and lecturers' feedback on assignments and research work were also analysed. The findings suggest that, besides the challenges of studying and researching through the medium of English, these students' previous academic 'ways with words' differ from those expected by their lecturers and research supervisors. This article offers a critical discussion of these differences and

[2013] The typicality of academic discourse and its relevance for constructs of academic literacy

Journal for Language Teaching, 2013

Constructs of academic literacy are used both for test and course design. While the discussion is relevant to both, the focus of this article will be on test design. Constructs of academic literacy necessarily depend on definitions that assume that academic discourse is typically different from other kinds of discourse. The more deliberate their dependence, the easier it is to examine such constructs critically, and to improve existing constructs. If we improve our understanding of what makes academic discourse unique, we can therefore potentially improve our test designs. Two perspectives on the typicality of academic discourse are surveyed: Weideman’s (2009) notion of material lingual spheres, and Halliday’s (1978) idea of fields of discourse. These perspectives help us to conceptualise the uniqueness of a discourse type by identifying both the conditions for creating texts and the way that social roles influence the content of what gets expressed in a certain sphere of discourse. Halliday’s notion of nominalisation takes another step in this direction, but may, like other supposedly unique characteristics, fall short of identifying the unique analytical mode that qualifies academic endeavour. The paper argues that when we acknowledge the primacy of the logical or analytical mode in academic discourse, we have a potentially productive perspective: first, on how the various genres and rhetorical modes in academic discourse serve that analytical end; second, on how to define the ability to handle that discourse competently; and third, to suggest how such definitions or constructs of academic literacy may be operationalised or modified. Keywords: academic discourse; academic literacy; language testing; material lingual spheres; test constructs