Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing - Volume 37, Issue 2, 2015

Academic literacies of students in higher education

Students’ academic literacies in higher education form a topic of current interest in education policy and research in The Netherlands, as in many other countries. It is therefore remarkable that in the last decades hardly any studies have been published on this topic in Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing, even more so since the (sub)discipline Taalbeheersing (Discourse Studies) was founded around fifty years ago in response to concerns about writing skills of students entering higher education. At present, such concerns have resurfaced on the higher education policy agenda in the Netherlands and Flanders, and the call for a sound scientific foundation of academic literacy teaching and learning practices is stronger than ever. Academic literacies can be studied as a process and as a result, as a condition and as an outcome, and from a social as well as from an individual perspective. The four articles in this special issue of Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing address students’ academic literacies from a variety of perspectives, and focus on issues pertaining to the competencies of students entering and leaving institutions of higher education.

Diagnosis of writing ability and remedial teaching of writing problems of first-year students in the Humanities

First-year students at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam have to take the Diagnostic Test of Writing Skills; this productive test for measuring writing ability is designed to track down students with poor writing skills, mapping out their deficiencies and giving them a specific remedial advice. This article describes the development of this Diagnostic Test: the format, the required minimum level of writing ability, the nature of the texts presented and the related questions, and so on. Next, the results of various empirical studies are reported pertaining to the predictive validity, the concurrent validity and the known group validity. Subsequently it is investigated how many percent of the freshmen fail to attain the minimum level: on average the writing skills of some 20% of the students is not up to the standards. The article concludes with a discussion of the nature of the remedial courses offered to students who fail to pass the test.

It is claimed that various factors related to academic literacy deleteriously affect student throughput. The international trend is to determine the academic literacy levels of prospective or already admitted students. This article reports on such an initiative, where the academic literacy of first-year students at a number of South African universities is annually tested for the assignment of students to appropriate academic language support courses. A construct of academic literacy is introduced as basis for test development. Next, validity considerations are introduced and discussed in relation to the construction of TALL and TAG, respectively English and Afrikaans placement tests for academic literacy. The problem addressed, is whether the Afrikaans test predicts academic success and can be used to support decisions on access. Tests such as TAG (and TALL) are often used for purposes they are not intended for. Empirical data from three case studies at three South African universities is drawn upon to determine its predictive validity. The findings indicate that academic literacy on its own predicts academic success to a very limited extent. Placement tests such as TAG should, consequently, not be used to inform decisions on access, but only for its intended purpose, namely placement.

Difficult, lengthy, serious: First-year students’ assumptions about writing in an academic setting

This study explores assumptions and expectations expressed by novice university students about writing in an academic setting. Knowledge of these notions and beliefs among students at the transition of secondary to higher education may help university teachers to design learning activities that enable academic newcomers to distance themselves from naive or biased renditions of texts and writing, and to come to grips with the intricacies of the discourse practices in their new environment. The data are drawn from a corpus of meta-writing assignments performed by 118 students in their first year at university during the first week of a freshman course in academic communication skills. Our findings confirm and substantiate the presumption that, when expressing their thoughts about writing in an academic setting, novices predominantly convey issues related to ‘surface features’ (e.g. text length) or broad, general characteristics that are not specific for writing in an academic context. When considering ‘deep features’, some novices emphasize their unfamiliarity with, or even anxiety about writing practices in their new environment. A minority articulates quite realistic notions about the instrumentality of texts in academic communities.

The communicative competent professional from a managerial perspective

A qualitative exploration as input for curriculum development

Research indicates that the communicative performance of starting professionals does not always match managers’ expectations, although managers rate communication as important for their professional success. Institutes of higher education have the task of designing educational programmes that prepare students to meet the professional challenges concerning their communication. This article explores what managers themselves define as good professional communication. Their practical definitions of communicative competence were investigated through 44 semi-structured interviews in four professional business contexts (accountancy, communication, legal, and logistics). The research focused on the communicative competence of starting professionals and revealed (1) that communication is inextricably bound with the starting professionals’ work, (2) what specific genres starting professionals use, (3) that the quality requirements managers impose concern both text craftsmanship and contextual awareness and, (4) that managers rate communicative competence as important for organisations and starting professionals themselves. This implies that professional communication should play a prominent role in the curriculum with more focus on strategic communication awareness in relation to professional practically-oriented tasks. This will prepare students more effectively to meet managers’ expectations regarding communication.