Magister Artium - MA / This study is an investigation into the biliteracy skills (in Arabic and English) employed by Libyan students at the University of the Western Cape to gain their academic success. Nowadays, international students form a significant number in every academic institution. The study attempts to show that there are literacy factors beyond basic editing of written tasks by biliterate students studying outside their country of origin that need to be acknowledged as contributing to their success in completing such tasks. Qualitative research methods - a questionnaire and interviews – were used in order to understand what strategies the participants rely on to first understand, then write their assignments, how they apply their biliteracy skills, and what biliterate resources they draw on in their writing in order to produce a successful assignment. Hornberger’s (1989) Biliteracy Model was adopted as a framework to map students’ responses. This study may serve as a response to the question posed by Hornberger and Link (2012:243): “How should educators engage with students’ linguistic and literacy diversity in order to facilitate successful school experiences and greater academic achievement for students from often minoritized backgrounds?” This study might also be one of a series of research studies exploring, as Creese and Blackledge (2010:113) recommend, “what ‘teachable’ pedagogic resources are available in flexible, concurrent approaches to learning and teaching languages bilingually”. The findings of the research show that the Libyan students in this study used particular strategies whenever they faced academic barriers, and to compensate for their limited competence in English and the academic discourse in the foreign context of UWC. The most significant of these strategies were the use of the first language as a bridge to the second, oral discussions preceding written assignments, drawing on prior knowledge, and moving from reading to writing. Moreover, the findings revealed some of the factors behind the students’ growing confidence in their writing and consequently, succeeding in writing their assignments. These were lecturers’ feedback, oral discussions with a writing coach or friends, and drawing on contextualized content.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Internationalisation or the “process of integrating an international/intercultural dimension into the teaching, research and service functions of a higher education institution” (Knight 1997: 8) has become an important aspect of the domination of higher education institutions. In South Africa as in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Canada, there have been dramatic increases in the numbers of international students. Research shows that the majority of these international students experience various difficulties when the academic culture of the host environment is different from that of the home environment in many respects (Al-Murshidi, 2014; Abukhattala, 2013). The present study employs a social approach to academic literacies (Barton and Hamilton, 2000) to examine the academic reading and writing practices of a group of Libyan students in South Africa (against the backdrop of the home academic culture). Using both quantitative and qualitative methods (Creswell and Plano, 2011), data were collected and analysed to address reading and writing across Libyan and South African academic cultures. The sources of data include Facebook discussions, focus group discussions, questionnaires, documents (such as policies of UWC relevant to my study), and interviews with selected UWC officials. Thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data whereas SPSS was used to analyse quantitative data.