Engaging students through writing: A collaborative journey
Abstract
Access to and success in South African higher education present several challenges, particularly on an academic literacy front. Yet, higher education institutions are expected to ensure that students make a success of their studies. A plausible response to this challenge is to change the approach to academic literacy and writing within the disciplines. The paper discusses how the current practices at the writing centre of the University of the Free State aim to address students’ subject-specific writing needs in collaboration with disciplinary academics. The data from two collaborative initiatives demonstrates positive perceptions of the writing interventions, as well as a possible impact on students’ writing performance. There is, however, a need to investigate, by means of further detailed case studies, the impact of a more collaborative writing-intensive approach to writing on student performance within the disciplines. The impact of a more collaborative writing-intensive approach to writing on student performance within the disciplines needs to be investigated by means of further detailed case studies.
References
Archer, Arlene. 2008. “Investigating the effect of writing centre interventions on student writing.” South African Journal of Higher Education 22 (2): 210-226.
Bailey, Kathleen M. 1996. Voices from the language classroom: Qualitative research in second language education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bean, John C. 2011. Engaging ideas: The professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
Boughey, Chrissie. 2002. “‘Naming’ students’ problems: an analysis of language-related discourses at a South African university.” Teaching in Higher Education 7 (3): 295-307.
Britton, James. 1972. Writing to learn and learning to write. DOCUMENT RESUME CS 200 145: 31.
Burke, Penny J. 2008. “Writing, power and voice: Access to and participation in higher education.” Changing English 15 (2): 199-210.
Clarence, Sherran. 2012. “Making inter-disciplinary spaces for talk about and change in student writing and literacy development.” Teaching in Higher Education 17 (2): 127-137.
Condon, William, and Carol Rutz. 2012. “A taxonomy of writing across the curriculum programs: Evolving to serve broader agendas.” College Composition and Communication 64 (2): 357-382.
Dannels, Deanna P., and Amy L. Housley Gaffney. 2009. “Communication across the curriculum and in the disciplines: A call for scholarly cross-curricular advocacy.” Communication Education 58 (1): 124-153.
Department of Higher Education and Training. 2014. White Paper on Post-School Education and Training: Building an expanded, effective and integrated post-school system. Pretoria: DHET.
Gee, James P. 1990. Social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses. Basingstoke: Falmer.
Hutchings, Cathy. 2006. “Reaching students: lessons from a writing centre.” Higher Education Research & Development 25 (3): 247-261.
Lea, Mary R., and Brian V. Street. 2006. “The ‘academic literacies’ model: Theory and applications.” Theory into practice 45 (4): 368-377.
Lillis, Theresa M. 2001. Student writing: Access, regulation, desire. London: Routledge.
Lillis, Theresa, and Joan Turner. 2001. “Student writing in Higher Education: contemporary confusion, traditional concerns.” Teaching in Higher Education 6 (1): 57-68.
Pica, Teresa, Richard Young, and Catherine Doughty. 1987. “The impact of interaction on comprehension.” Tesol Quarterly 21 (4): 737-758.
Thesen, Lucia, and Ermien Van Pletzen. 2006. Academic literacy and the languages of change. London: Continuum.
Wilson-Strydom, Merridy. 2012. “Using the NBTs to inform institutional understandings of ‘under-preparedness’: Implications for admissions criteria.” South African Journal of Higher Education 26 (1): 136-151.
Copyright (c) 2017 Laura Maria Drennan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This journal is an open access journal, and the authors and journal should be properly acknowledged, when works are cited.
Authors, copyright holders, may use the publishers version for teaching purposes, in books, theses, dissertations, conferences and conference papers.
A copy of the authors' publishers version may also be hosted on the following websites:
- Non-commercial personal homepage or blog.
- Institutional webpage.
- Authors Institutional Repository.
The following notice should accompany such a posting on the website: This is an electronic version of an article published in SAJHE, Volume XXX, number XXX, pages XXX “XXX", DOI. Authors should also supply a hyperlink to the original paper or indicate where the original paper (http://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/SAJHE) may be found.
Authors publishers version, affiliated with the Stellenbosch University will be automatically deposited in the University Institutional Repository SUNScholar.
Articles as a whole, may not be re-published with another journal.
The following license applies:
Attribution CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
