Related Papers
Challenges and potentials for Writing Centres in South African tertiary institutions
Arlene Archer
There are many challenges involved in developing and running Writing Centres in tertiary contexts in South Africa. These challenges include recognizing the role Writing Centres need to play in the redress of basic academic literacies. They also involve emphasizing writing as a mode of learning where higher cognitive functions such as analysis and synthesis are developed through verbal and written language. Academic discourse takes a distinct written form, comprising often unspoken conventions which dictate appropriate uses of lexicogrammatical structures. Each discipline also has its own particular ‘dialect’. Acquiring these ‘foreign’ methods of communication poses a challenge to many students, not only English Additional Language students. One of the main challenges for Writing Centres is to provide access to academic and disciplinary discourses through making explicit how texts work in a critical manner, whilst at the same time inducting students into these discourses. This paper examines some key tensions in Writing Centre practices in the South African context, including debates about decontextualization, skills versus practices, process versus genre approaches to writing, the challenges and opportunities of the one-to-one. It explores how the Writing Centre at the University of Cape Town tries to address some of these challenges, and looks at the potentials for Writing Centres in tertiary institutions.
Writing practices in South African high schools
2019 •
K.D Poelinca
This study explored the reality of the current writing practices at work in the grade 11 English Home Language classroom from a teacher’s perspective. The research site is a well- resourced public school with qualified teachers in central Johannesburg where English is taught as the Home language and is the medium of instruction (LOLT). Ninety-eight grade 11 participants were purposively selected because they all attended the same school since grade eight and received the same teachings of language construction and composition. Qualitative research methodology was employed encapsulating this ethnographic case study where data was collected over a period of three months through observations, unstructured interviews, and a writing activity with the researcher as a permanent, full time English teacher interacting and teaching learners English Home Language daily. Research found a lack in studies that retrieved data through the physical teaching of writing. The study from the perspective of the teacher found critiques against writing approaches suggested in CAPS (2011) confusing and refutable. Each writing approach serves a different purpose and synergy of these approaches works best when equipping learners with the tools to produce good writing. According to Woolfolk (2013), activities and teaching methodology directs and guides learner behaviour. When learners encounter activities that stimulate their curiosity and relates to their interest they are more likely to be motivated to learn (Huitt, 2011). Finally, the study calls for more explicit research regarding the relationship between the teaching of writing and pedagogical knowledge of teachers. The study conformed to all ethical research conditions by first obtaining consent of all participants with the option of declining without penalty.
Journal for Language Teaching
Non-curricular postgraduate writing interventions at South African Universities
2016 •
Brenda Vivian
Action research on the implementation of writing approaches to improve academic writing skills of Namibian foundation programme students
2012 •
Karoline Du Plessis
South African Journal of Higher Education
Investigating the effect of Writing Centre interventions on student writing
2008 •
Arlene Archer
Per Linguam
Supporting the development of postgraduate academic writing skills in South African universities
2017 •
Salome Schulze
Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie
Academic Literacies in a South African Writing Centre: Student Perspectives on Established Practices
Kabinga Shabanza
Through a case study conducted in 2014 and 2015 at the University of X in South Africa, the researchers collected focus group and survey data to develop a better understanding of the kinds of students who use the university’s Writing Centre and their perceptions of the support they receive. The research question at the core of their study asks whether a South African writing centre’s academic literacies practices and philosophy should be adapted or changed to better serve today’s students. The results of the study demonstrate that the vast majority of students who visit the writing centre speak English as an additional language and believe they need more writing support with a focus on lower order concerns than that currently offered through the academic literacies approach at the university. The researchers concluded that the South African undergraduate students at the University of X need differentiated forms of writing support that go beyond the orthodoxies of the current academi...
Teaching writing to Grade 5 English language learners in two Grahamstown East schools, South Africa : a case study
2014 •
Lukas Homateni Julius
Investigating the impact of Writing Centre intervention on student writing at UCT.
Arlene Archer
Writing is one of the main means of assessment in tertiary institutions and helping students with writing could improve their overall academic performance and could ensure that students proceed to graduation. More and more, Academic Development initiatives are being ‘driven to demonstrate their ‘success’ by substantiating the rhetoric of their mission statements with researched evidence of performance’ (Yeld and Visser, 2001, 6). This paper describes in detail one study investigating Writing Centre interventions by looking at improvement in assessed writing in the context of the curriculum. The context-embedded nature of the methodology coheres with an ‘academic literacies’ approach to student writing (Lea and Street, 1998), rather than a skills-based approach. The study was achieved through interviewing forty first year students on their perceptions of the Centre and its influence on their writing; looking at consultants’ comments; looking at grades; comparing independent assessments of the students’ first and final drafts. This multi-faceted approach enabled a holistic and contextualized picture of student writing to emerge.
Changing Academic Landscapes: Principles and Practices of Teaching Writing at the University of Cape Town
2012 •
Arlene Archer
This paper looks at the principles and practices of teaching writing in the Writing Centre at the University of Cape Town (UCT). It outlines some of the context of higher education in South Africa and how writing centres need to contribute to both access and redress of past inequities. In order to critically engage with writing, the UCT Writing Centre takes an “academic literacies” approach, which focuses on contextualized social practices, rather than decontextualized skills. This practice-based approach helps to explore the interdisciplinary nature of the work, as well as the changing representational landscape in higher education. The paper explores some of the impact the Writing Centre has had on student writing, and argues that the Centre contributes to higher education transformation through the mentoring of postgraduate students as future academics.
