M. Ed. / This study was undertaken to evaluate a writing skills intervention so as to establish whether students’ performance in the subject Tourism Development had improved between a pre- and post test. The researcher, as lecturer of a group of first year students in the subject Tourism Development noticed the lack of (and need for developing) effective writing skills on the part of most of these students. Writing is an integral part of university students’ studies in that it enables them to complete assignments and write tests and examinations. The researcher had, during previous years, noticed that insufficient writing skills affected first year students’ overall academic performance in the subject Tourism Development. This prompted an inquiry into an intervention where writing skills were infused into the teaching methodology of the subject Tourism Development. A mixed method qualitative and quantitative research approach was used to collect and analyse data. The quantitative pre-experimental design served as the dominant data collection and analysis process, which was followed by a separate qualitative descriptive data collection and analysis process. Quantitatively, the existing marks gained for the students’ pre-assignments and first- and second assessments (before and during participation in the writing skills intervention), as well as the marks achieved by the students for their post-assignments and finalassessments (written after receiving writing skills development), were collected for comparison. The mark changes between the pre- and post-assignment marks, as well as between their first-, second- and final assessments were calculated to determine whether any percentage mark changes occurred between the assignments and assessments. Qualitatively, the participant students’, participant tutors’ and lecturer’s experiences of the writing skills intervention were collected from student reflection essays, minutes of a meeting (containing the tutors’ feedback) and the lecturer’s journal, from which applicable themes were derived. The findings indicate a change in the pre- and post assignment scores as well as in the first-, second- and final-assessment scores. The improvement in academic performance in the subject Tourism Development was confirmed and triangulated by the qualitative data. The recommendation was that writing skills development presented within the specific domain, in other words infused within the subject Tourism Development, should become common practice.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:7097 |
| Date | 22 June 2011 |
| Creators | Van der Merwe, Ilze |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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