Ong's ( 1982) framework of the distinctions between the thought processes of essentially oral and literate cultures has provided a good basis from which to understand the difficulties experienced by African second-language (ASL) students in relation to academic essay writing. Furthennore, the framework may also suggest reasons for the differences evident across the ASL and AFL language groups, compared with the English first-language, Afrikaans second-language and European foreign-language groups. In particular, the ASL students in this study appeared to rely on features central to oral thought, including features of additive, redundant and participatory thought, while consistently relating the conceptual ideas! principles of Natural Selection to items <close to the human life-world' (i.e. the peppered moth example), In contrast, English first-language students tended to consistently impose subordinative. analytical, and objective thought to the ideas and principles of the essay topic. These students did not rely on the example to explain the process of natural selection but, instead, devoted a large portion of their essays to describing and defining the abstract theoretical principles of variation, competition and inheritance. In this context, it would appear that there are three main areas in which mediation can take place with regard to the academic writing of underprepared students~ namely linguistic competence, academic writing conventions, and the specific epistemic assumptions of university knowledge.
This study has made use of different levels of language analyses in an attempt to gain insight into the cognitive processes common to underprepared students. The findings indicate that these language levels do not exist independently of one another and that any attempt at solving problems specific to underpreparedness requires attention to the language system as
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a whole. While academic support programmes that are based purely on improving linguistic competence have proven nol to be a comprehensive form of mediation required at a tertiary level, the present study has indicated that some of the most fundamental difficulties ASL students present with in academic essay writing, stem from incompetence with the English second-language. Furthermore, while many of the difficulties identified may occur in other second-language groups (for example, African foreign-language), the extent of the problems that ASL students experience seem to be more pervasive and far-reaching. An effective teaching strategy requires that learners are exposed to the target language not only at sentence level, but rather develop an understanding of how genres are organised at discourse level (Moyo. 1995). Effective mediation and intervention with regard to the academic writing of underprepared students, therefore, needs to be directed at the
development of cohesion and coherence within students' essays. As Wessels (1993a, 1994b) points out. this type of mediation is best combined with content- or subject-based
programmes, so that students feel they are getting something worthwhile out of their efforts. Particular attention needs to be given to the grammatical structures that affect the readability and comprehensibility of students' writing and this may be achieved by
discussing relevant examples taken from their own essays (Hubbard, 1989; Moyo, 1995).
By making the categories of the five-way framework explicit to students, a better understanding of the English cohesive system is possible and students would become
competent and familiar with the second-language. This automation of the syntactic rules of the English language would facilitate second-language students, because the mind would not be preoccupied with achieving linguistic correctness, thus allowing for more time to be spent on the development of meaning within the text (Widdowson, 1983). This kind of intervention places more responsibility on the lecturer/teacher and requires that diversified
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teaching methods be adopted. In particular, lecturers need to be able to employ various techniques and approaches depending on the kinds of language assistance that students need (Dreyer, 1995). Difficulties with topic or theme development may be overcome using an intervention system that teaches students to track their own essays. Topical structure analysis (Lautamatti. 1987) allows students to graphically represent and track each of the central themes or topics of a text by looking at sentence sequencing and the building of meaning across sentences. Furthermore, as was outlined in an earlier study (Sear, 1998), a system of continuous assessment may provide part of the solution to the difficulties ESL students exhibit under examination conditions, by eradicating some of the confounding variables that impact on student performance.
The second fonn of mediation that should take place involves an explication of the implicit rules or conventions that characterise academic writing. As Hubbard (1996) points out, students appear to experience difficulty with general academic terms in text because writers frequently assume that these tenns are known/common to readers. Students need to be taught what the expectations are when confronted with terms such as "discuss", "describe",
"explain", or "illustrate". As Craig argues, if open universities are going to accommodate a changed society, "we are compelled to make explicit the usually implicit rules of the game to those who come with different rules" (1989: 171). Furthermore, intervention is required to assist students in the norms of distanced writing, where they are taught to present arguments and information in an objective, analytical manner, as opposed to presenting a personal, subjective opinion on a particular topic. Learners need to be encouraged to revise and 'backloop' on their written texts to "discover what in their texts does not conform to L2 discourse conventions" (Moyo. 1995: 171).
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Craig (1988) claims that epistemic cognition is mostly neglected in academic support programmes, yet «this is probably the most important area for improving those skills, knowledge and competencies demanded by the tasks typically encountered at university level" (1988: 5), She proposes that a detailed, specific analysis be undertaken in all courses and disciplines, which attempts to "make explicit the contentless processes underlying the content of the disciplines/courses taught at university" (Ibid). This type of mediation has already been implemented within the Psychology I course, in the form of re-structured module texts, specific tasks to guide students' engagement, as well as the two, previously mentioned, core texts, namely the Conceptual dictionary and A guide to learning.
Adopted in conjunction with subject-specific material, and with the added assistance of tutors or first-order mediators, students will be given the benefit oflearning and
constructing relevant subject knowledge, while simultaneously gaining a broader
understanding of the way in which knowledge and meaning is created at a university level.
Furthennore~ the input that students receive from lecturers and tutors is also a vital means of mediation and tutors need to be trained in ways to provoke new levels of thought (cognition) in students. As Aristotle proposed "it is in the answers to questions that our knowledge consists" .
Possibilities for future research in the area of underpreparedness are limitless and may concentrate in one ofa number offocus areas. However, the present study indicates two particular possibilities for further research~ first, where the same analyses could be
conducted on the term essays/assignments of the same set of students, to investigate whether any differences occur in the difficulties exhibited by underprepared students.
Second, where specific intervention programmes could be implemented to guide students in
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the conventions of academic writing and the way in which cohesion and coherence is achieved in written discourse, investigations could explore whether such programmes may improve the relatively poor performance of African second-language students.
Finally, while Shakespeare may have regarded reading and writing as natural products of the mind, it is important to remember that they are. in fact, cultural inventions that have to be learned and mastered with the help of others. In this regard, we have a social responsibility to ensure that those people who have been intentionally disadvantaged in this area, receive the appropriate mediation and assistance to reverse the situation.
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