First Year Composition (FYC) instructors are often left to puzzle out the larger meaning of the most ubiquitous course in our field for themselves; consequently, goals for the course are frequently selected by the instructor, and are not always most effective for laying a groundwork of lifelong learning and education, or paideia. This lack of clear and unifying goals for the course is illustrated by a piece of 2005 scholarship that points to multiple focuses for FYC, each different in its values and aims. FYC is an important course for students, not only because it is one of only a few writing courses students must take, but also because it is often required as part of a general education core. Because it is such an important course, it is imperative that we identify a unified set of goals for FYC—a set of goals that work toward a larger goal of paideia, or preparation for lifelong learning and citizenship. Some well-received and recently popularized approaches to the course try and fail to meet this criteria of enhancing students' pursuit of paideia, namely goals of teaching course-specific genres and general writing skills. Rather than continuing in these problematic to FYC, we must adopt a rhetorical paideia focus and seek to achieve the goals of rhetorical paideia in our courses. We must help students gain insights, through their development as writers, into their world (phronesis) and themselves (self knowledge), and FYC is the vehicle through which we can accomplish these goals.

Many law students are required to take first-year writing courses. With the increased emphasis in legal education on practical skills training (Sullivan et al. 2007), legal writing scholars have begun exploring how these writing courses equip students with practical skills (Felsenburg and Graham 2010; Cauthen 2010). However, these scholars have not explored how summer internships serve as opportunities for students to practice the skills they gained in the classroom. Following the lead of writing studies scholars who examine the transition from classroom and workplace writing (Russell and Fisher 2009; Devitt 2004, Wardle 2004; Winsor 1990), this study explores how the genres students learned in legal writing classroom prepared them for internship writing. This study reports results from interviews of eight students who completed 15 internships during the 2014 and 2015 summers. The main findings indicate that students who performed well in the legal writing course eventually served in litigation-based internships. These students perceived a high rate of transfer from classroom to workplace writing. By contrast, students who struggled learning the legal writing classroom genres eventually accepted non-litigation internships where their writing tasks bore little resemblance to those of the classroom. Tellingly, both groups of students were not trained or mentored on how to write during internships because they were expected to be strong writers already. Therefore, these findings suggest that legal writing scholars need to better prepare students who are not pursuing litigation careers or who accept non-litigation internships. This support is vital because students' future internship and career options were deeply connected to their performance in the legal writing course.

Academic writing is generally regarded as the most important communication medium through which people in the tertiary academic context choose to communicate their ideas. It is also well known that it is sometimes an arduous process for students to become accustomed to the requirements (the conventions and conditions) that hold for the production of appropriate written texts in this context. The initial impetus for the current study was provided by what appeared to be a significant problem that some supervisors at the University of Pretoria identified in terms of the academic writing ability of their postgraduate students. This study therefore investigates postgraduate academic writing with regard to a number of such issues, and does so within the broader confines of academic literacy. The ultimate purpose of this investigation is to discover how writing interventions may be designed that offer appropriate assistance to students who experience difficulty with their writing. The study commences with an attempt to find support for treating 'academic discourse' as a potentially productive area of academic enquiry. It therefore presents an account on the nature of a 'discourse community', and attempts to ascertain whether there are any grounds on which 'academic discourse' may be regarded as a unique type of discourse used for specific communicative functions in the tertiary academic environment. It further discusses critically some of the traditional features of academic texts. The research then proposes thirteen design principles that serve as injunctions that should be considered in the development of writing courses, and proceeds to a critical discussion of the most important approaches in the teaching and learning of writing. What is evident from this discussion is that none of the historical approaches will, on their own, enable one to design justifiable writing courses. As a result, an eclectic approach is required in order to integrate the strengths of these approaches into a strategy for writing course design that is theoretically and practically justifiable. Subsequently, the critical interpretation of the literature in the first part of the study is used in the design of a framework for writing course design in tertiary education. This framework consists of six focuses that stand in a relationship of dynamic interaction towards a description of the context in which tertiary students write. Thus, relevant aspects concerning the writer, text, reader, institutional context and one's approach to writing are all essential elements that should be carefully considered in terms of their potential influence on the eventual design of materials that will constitute a writing course. The rest of the study consists of an application of the proposed framework that addresses firstly, the perceptions of supervisors at the University about the academic literacy ability of their postgraduate students, as well as their requirements for academic writing. It then proceeds to an investigation of a specific group of students' (from the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences) perceptions about their own academic literacy ability and a determination of their perceptions and expectations of academic writing at university. Because the information that was collected (by means of questionnaires) in both cases mentioned above is mainly perceptual in nature, it was considered essential to determine the academic literacy ability of students in the study group by means of a reliable testing instrument. A written text that these same students produced was further analysed in order to establish possible writing difficulties they experienced. In addition, it was important to confirm certain findings from the supervisor questionnaire, and more specific information had to be collected on particular writing issues that could inform discipline specific writing course design (this was accomplished through focus group interviews with supervisors of the School of Agricultural and Food Sciences). A combination of all the prominent findings of the empirical work mentioned above, as well as insights gained in the literature survey, is then used to make justifiable suggestions for the design of writing course materials for students in the study group. Finally, a number of issues were identified that could not be addressed by this study and, therefore, suggestions are made for future research that may investigate these matters. / Thesis (DPhil ( Linguistics))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Unit for Academic Literacy / DPhil / Unrestricted

Over the past years, there has been a consistent call from Government and industry for South African tertiary institutions to deliver more graduates in the fields of science and technology. This, however, is no mean feat for universities, as the pool of prospective candidates delivers very few students with the necessary academic literacy abilities, and very few students who passed mathematics and science at the right levels to succeed in science higher education. This puts tertiary institutions under mounting pressure to accept students who are under-prepared and to support these students appropriately. The plight of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) institutions like the University of South Africa (UNISA) is even more desperate, as they are often left with those students who are either unable to gain entrance into, or to afford the study fees of, residential universities. These students are often in greater need for face-to-face interaction than are their counterparts at residential universities, yet they generally receive very little of this. The intervention examined and critiqued in this study is an attempt at raising the academic literacy levels of first-year students at UNISA in the fields of science and technology by means of a 60-hour face-to-face workshop programme. As its foundation, it uses the principles of collaborative learning and authentic material design. It also treats academic literacy abilities as interdependent and holistic. This study starts with a broad overview of the context. This is followed by a review of the literature. This review focuses on concepts such as collaborative learning, academic literacy, English for academic purposes, English for specific purposes and English for science and technology. Thereafter, a needs analysis is done in which students’ Test for Academic Literacy Levels (TALL) pre-test results, as well as a sample of their assignments, are examined. In addition, the workshops in this intervention programme are analysed individually. To determine the effectiveness of the academic literacy intervention, students’ pre- and post-TALL results are scrutinised, and a feedback questionnaire filled in at the end of the year is analysed. Subsequently, recommendations are made as to how the workshop programme could be improved. Findings show that the academic literacy intervention did improve students’ academic literacy levels significantly, though the improvement is not enough to elevate students from being considered at-risk. However, with fine-tuning the existing programme, the possibility exists that students’ academic literacy levels might be further improved. This calls for a careful examination of the areas in which students’ performance did not improve significantly. Student feedback indicated a positive attitude towards the entire intervention programme, as well as a marked preference for collaborative learning and face-to-face interaction. In the redevelopment of the current workshop programme, such preferences would have to receive attention, so as to integrate students’ wants, together with what they lack and what they need, in subsequent interventions. In conclusion, the limitations of this study are discussed, and recommendations are made for future research, as the current study must be seen as only the beginning of a process of action research that could lead to a sustainable intervention programme in future. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Unit for Academic Literacy / Afrikaans / unrestricted