4.6 Classroom Observations
4.8.1 The impact of the pedagogy at play on students’ writing practices within the ALUGS module
Nothing can reveal students‟ writing practices than their own written scripts. The impact of the way writing was taught on students‟ writing practices within the ALUGS module was explored through a critical analysis of their written assignment scripts. Thus, the students‟ written scripts constitute the primary data in answering the third critical question. Furthermore, the students‟
perceptions of the impact of the module on their writing practices as well as the AL practitioners‟
perceptions constitute the supporting evidence to corroborate the findings from the written scripts. The following excerpts were taken from the students‟ written assignments:
“During the past few years different approaches had been used to implement the way writing is taught. Genre analysis has a pattern that underpins affective communication and it can be used to inform materials production and teaching said Ken Hyland (1992)” (ASS.SCRT 1).
The above excerpt revealed that this student was struggling with referencing. The sentence structure seemed accurate, except for the incorrectly spelled/used “affective”. A number of factors might have been responsible for this slight error. For instance, the mistake might have occurred as a typographical error, or the inability to proofread the work before submission. But the fact that the tutor circled the mistake corroborated with what students, practitioners and documentary evidence revealed about the focus of the module– that it is focused on language. On the other hand, this student seemed to be confused about appropriate referencing, as she could not reference correctly. In addition to this, another sentence from the same script revealed that this student still struggled with writing appropriately. The student wrote:
“Being implicitly writing results in both ways it either good or bad”.
Given that the focus of the module as well as that of the pedagogy at play was on sentence construction and the like, the above sentence revealed that this student has not been able to acquire the expected discourse. The argument here is that if the module was focusing on the
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construction of accurate sentences and all the teaching practices tended towards the same direction, why then is this student still writing in an unacceptable manner? There seems to be a link between this and what student 1 said in chapter five, that in spite of the tutors‟ efforts to teach them the skills of writing they still continued to make mistakes. Drawing on Mrs Sets‟
earlier statement and the findings from this analysis, it can be argued that the module did not develop the students‟ writing practices.
Admittedly, it appears from the above discussion that there seems to be no record of any form of improvement in the students‟ writing practices as they still struggled with sentence construction and referencing. Arguably, one may be tempted to conclude that the same happened to the other students as well. However, such a conclusion may seem premature, incomplete and biased in the absence of evidence to support such an argument. Accordingly, the following excerpts from another student‟s written assignment script are included. The first sentence in the introduction to the assignment reads: “Genre analysis is the study of the usage of a language in a certain phrase”. Being a tutor within the module, the researcher assumed that this student wanted to paraphrase Hyland‟s (1992) definition of the term “genre analysis”. Hyland‟s original version of the definition was that “genre analysis is the study of how language is used within a specific context” (Hyland, 1992, p. 15). It is evident that this student misappropriated what she was taught in the class. The sentence became meaningless as the student attempted to paraphrase the sentence in her own words. The implication is that whenever writing is taught as a set of skills, it is likely that students either learn through memorization or by acquiring an incomplete discourse.
This therefore is in line with what Gee (2001a) states says about the teaching of literacy as a generic, skills-based and universal module. To him, such modules cannot produce students who have fully acquired the expected discourse, but can only lead to the creation of a pseudo- discourse. The aftermath of such a pedagogical practice can only produce students who will depend on writing consultants and editors for the rest of their future writings.
Another excerpt from the same script also indicated that the student was still making mistakes in her writing practices. The student wrote:
“It is important for learners to create their own work to express their opinions and develop more strategies this is referred to as the guided practice” (ASS.SCRT 2).
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From the above excerpt it is clear that the omission of the punctuation marks rendered the expression faulty. In his comment on that script, the tutor indicated that something was missing, however, he did not point out what was missing. There are two concerns here. First, it is doubtful that students will understand such a vague comment, as it did not specify what was wrong with the sentence. Was it a comma, a full stop, or a colon that was missing in that expression?
Secondly, this confirms what student 1 stated during the interview about her tutor‟s lack of interest in the submission of drafts for corrections and comments before the final draft. If that is the case here, it is then argued that students will continue to repeat the mistakes since there seems to be no provision for talkback from the tutors.
The next section discusses an excerpt from one student‟s conclusion to the same assignment question; the reason being that this forms part of the focus of the module as stipulated in the course pack. In her conclusion to the same assignment, one student wrote:
“The genre analysis approach requires educators and learners to have a positive attitude towards literacy and academic writing. Writing is the skill that none was born with was born with but it something a person acquires. Vocabulary development within the learning institutes enables a person to improve literacy rate which will boost the self confidence as it will contributes to the writing. Communication also include teachers‟ conversations and collaboration. Genre is useful to every individual as it guides a person through language usage and writing academical.” (ASS.SCRT 3).
The ideas that this student included in this concluding part of her essay were not cohesive, and it is an indication that she has not understood the writing of a good conclusion. However, the tutor‟s comment is of concern, as he merely wrote: “Not a good conclusion”. t This kind of comment does not and cannot lead students into the knowledge or understanding of how to write a good conclusion. The student may be forced to ask herself, what then is a good conclusion and how should I have written it? Students seemed not to have significantly improved in their writing practice due to the kind of feedback comments tutors gave them as well as the approach used in teaching them.
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Moving on to the end-text referencing, having being taught the characteristics of end-text referencing, it was expected that students should be able to do proper referencing. The following is the reference page of one of the students:
“Ken Hyland 1990, Genre analysis just another fad
Klos and Mauren, Journal of language teaching, 2013, vol 47
Klos and Mauren, journal of language teaching, 2011, vol 45,”
A critical look at these references proved that this student has not succeeded in mastering the necessary skills as she was expected to. Thus, it can be argued that this student has acquired little in relation to referencing - little, in the sense that she might not have known anything about referencing before her encounter with the ALUGS module. Thus, she might have only succeeded in acquiring part of the discourse. This type of discourse acquisition is what Gee (2001a) refers to as impartial acquisition. Following Gee‟s argument, since there is nothing like impartial acquisition of discourse, such a student can only be described as either an „outsider or a pretender‟. To further explore the impact of the module on students‟ writing practices, the next section considers the students‟ own perspectives of their writing practices.
5.8.2 Students’ perceptions of the impact of the module on their writing