Supporting the development of academic literacy in first year Education and Early Childhood Studies

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Supporting the development of academic
literacy in first year Education and Early
Childhood Studies students

• Amanda French
• Karen Clarke
• Wolverhampton University

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Background to project

• This paper draws on a project which is part of
  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

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• 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).

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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?

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• The paper takes as its starting point the idea
  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).

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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)

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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

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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)

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Stage One initial diagnosis

• Within the first four weeks of attending
  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

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Common errors

• 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/its confusion
• There/their
• Use of abbreviations

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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.)

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Missing/misplaced apostrophes-

• This 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.

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Missing/misplaced capitals

• This included not using capitals for proper nouns
  but also using them unnecessarily for important
  words e.g. education and theoretical

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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).

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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

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Sentence structure issues

• This section includes the following errors
• Long sentences
• Fragments
• Using note form often hyphenating instead of
  punctuating correctly
• Using conversational style

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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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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).

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• 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.

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• Those students who achieved a medium initial
  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.

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Conclusions

• The initial diagnostic results were broadly in
  line 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.

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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

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Next Stage

• The next stage of the project is to introduce a
  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

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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.