Transcript Supporting the development of academic literacy in first

Supporting the development
of academic literacy in first
year Education and Early
Childhood Studies students
Amanda French
Karen Clarke
Wolverhampton University
Background to project
• This paper draws on a project which is part of
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the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and
Learning (CETL) at Wolverhampton University.
The project runs for five years. In this first
stage it examines the writing skills of our first
year cohort in the School of Education.
The next stage will explore ways of embedding
writing skills development for first year
students
• Central to the project is the belief that the
development of academic literacy requires
university lecturers to teach specific
writing skills and to recognise that these
skills are as important to students’
achievement as the acquisition of subject
specific content (Ivanic 1998; Street 1995,
1996).
Research questions
• What writing skills do first year students
need to develop in their first year ?
• What strategies do students use to
develop their writing skills?
• To what extent can tutors use writing
activities in their subject-specific modules
to support the development of academic
writing skills for students?
• The paper takes as its starting point the idea
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that academic literacy can be characterised
through the use of certain privileged discourse
conventions.
These, it can be argued, function to distinguish
and legitimise writing produced within higher
education from other kinds of writing.
(Goodman, Lillis, Maybin, Mercer, 2003).
Markers for academic literacy
• The creation of an authoritative and distinct academic "voice"
(primarily through referencing other research)
• Inclusion of a clearly identifiable aims for the writing ( usually
identified though assessment criteria)
• Conformity to a logical and coherent pattern of organisation
• Evenness of tone and diction appropriate to the academic writing
exercise ( through use of the passive voice and formal English)
• Application of sentence boundaries, an understanding of the rules
governing apostrophes, commas, and other less commonly used
forms of punctuation (if used)
Academic literacy and assessment
The importance of producing an appropriate
form of academic literacy is reflected in
most assessment criteria for higher
education. Wolverhampton is no exception.
The generic assessment criteria for year
one includes the following statements:
Generic assessment criteria
• The work is coherent - there is good
linking of ideas & paragraphs. ( higher
grades)
• Grammar and spelling sound( middle
grades)
• Poor English, poor structure ( lower/fail
grades)
Stage One – initial diagnosis
• Within the first four weeks of attending
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university all students taking core modules were
asked to read a subject specific article.
They were then given a number of questions on
the article which they had to answer under
controlled conditions.
These samples of writing were then analysed for
the following errors:
Common errors
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Lack of clarity /poor expression
Inappropriate/poor use of vocabulary
Missing/misplaced apostrophes
Missing/misplaced commas
Missing/misplaced capitals
Sentence structure
Unnecessary shift in tense
Unnecessary shift in pronoun
Its/it’s confusion
There/their
Use of abbreviations
Lack of clarity /poor
expression
This resulted more often than not from
students having problems in several of the
categories. ( This may mean that in future
we should not include it as a separate
category.)
Missing/misplaced apostrophesThis was the most common problem in otherwise
correct samples of writing
Missing/misplaced commas
This included using commas instead of full-stops
and general inappropriate use as well as not
using them at all in the appropriate place.
Missing/misplaced capitals
This included not using capitals for proper
nouns but also using them unnecessarily
for important words e.g. ‘education’ and
‘theoretical’
Unnecessary shift in pronoun
This included the inappropriate use of
‘you’ but more commonly covered a shift
in the writing from first to third person
narrative form (and often back again
several times).
Use of abbreviations
• This issue may have arisen because
students were writing under pressure but I
have noticed it a lot when marking
students work so feel that it is something
a lot of them are not sure about
Sentence structure issues
• This section includes the following errors:
• Long sentences
• Fragments
• Using note form – often hyphenating
instead of punctuating correctly
• Using conversational style
Analysis of initial diagnosis data
• 149 first year students participated in the
initial writing sample which was used to
diagnose common errors
• Simple feedback criteria went to students
which indicated the common errors that
they had made and put them into the
following categories :
• 32 students went into the ‘generally
sound’ column – this meant there were
very few errors in the initial piece of
writing. (The most common error in this
category was misuse of /or missing
apostrophes). This group included 2
Dutch students and at least 2 second year
part-time students that I could identify.
• 20 students went into the ‘should seek support
from the Learning Centre before handing work
in’ column– this means there was a significant
technical error rate frequently impeding
understanding. Of this group 4 were identified
as having EAL, 2 as Creole transfer and 2 as
self-identified dyslexic, there may, however, be
more students with one or more of these literacy
difficulties.
97 went into the middle category which
indicated that students should ‘ proof read
their work carefully before handing it in’.
At least one self-identified dyslexic student
and several EAL students were included
here. This category covered students who
evidenced a range of consistent technical
errors but whose work was not difficult to
read.
The categories for the initial diagnosis were cross referenced against a
sample of students taken from a core module that employed a
seen exam as its final summative assignment.
The conditions for the production writing for the summative was
therefore the same as that for the initial diagnosis.
This was to see if there was any similarity between the students’ initial
diagnosis category and their final summative mark.
At its crudest this might translate as a poor initial diagnosis and low
final summative mark or vice-versa
• The sample showed that those students
who achieved a low initial diagnosis
usually achieved a final summative mark
below C8.
• This was below average for the module
as a whole ( which was C8).
• Those students who achieved a high
assessment for their initial diagnosis
generally got a higher grade of B11 or
above for their final summative.
• This was above the average for the
module as a whole.
• Those students who achieved a medium initial
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diagnosis had a wider span of final summative
marks ranging from the low Ds up to the top C
grades.
However no student in medium range of
diagnostic assessment achieved higher than
C10.
The wide range of summative marks in this
category was not surprising as these students
had the greatest variation of technical errors.
Conclusions
• The initial diagnostic results were broadly in line
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with the final summative marks.
Students do not, therefore, appear to have
significantly improved their academic writing
skills over the course of the year?
This lack of progress was especially marked for
those students who did badly in the initial
diagnosis.
Outcomes
• We need to identify students who need
support with their writing as early as
possible on the module.
• We need to offer lots of non-assessed
opportunities for writing on modules
• We need to incorporate overt and
embedded discussion and development of
writing skills into modules
Next Stage
• The next stage of the project is to introduce a
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number of interventions designed to develop
first years’ writing skills
These have been developed collaboratively with
all the core module tutors and delivered across
the programme
The usefulness of these interventions for tutors
and students will be monitored and evaluated
References
• Goodman, S. Lillis, T. Maybin, J. Mercer, N. (eds.) (2003) Language,
Literacy and Education: A reader. Trentham Books: The Open
University Press.
• Ivanic. R. (1998) Writing and Identity: the discoursal construction of
identity in academic writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Street, B. (1995) Social Literacies: critical approaches to literacy in
development, ethnography and education. London: Longman.
• Street, B. (1996) ‘Academic Literacies’, in Baker, J. Clay, C. and Fox,
C. (eds.) Challenging Ways of Knowing in English, Mathematics and
Science. London: Falmer Press.