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Contrary to Pint‟s earlier disagreement with her colleagues, it seems they all agreed that the module taught them how to write essays. However, it appears that the students were of the opinion that the focus of the ALUGS module was on writing, as there was no reference to reading or any other form of literacy in their responses. The module also privileges writing over other forms of literacy such as reading, and more importantly, the findings also revealed that the teaching of writing within the ALUGS module was on the structure of writing (text-structure).
Thus, the students described the teaching of writing within the ALUGS module structure- oriented. These responses therefore revealed that the teaching of writing within the ALUGS module revolved around the essay type of literacy (academic essay writing) and nothing more.
This approach to the teaching of writing seems to lend itself to the deficit model where writing is being taught as a set of skills such as the teaching of linguistic features of text, spelling, grammar and organization of texts (Lea and Street, 2006).
If writing is being taught this way, it therefore appears that the approach being used within the ALUGS module is the study skills approach. This then reveals that the ALUGS module privileges the autonomous model of literacy. As discussed in chapter two, this approach holds a deficit or remedial view about the teaching and learning of writing. Green, Hammer and Stephens (2005) describe the deficit approach as the one that positions students to be relatively passive in the teaching-learning process, and on the other hand, views knowledge to be transparent and stable. Thus, such approach offers a kind of generic form of literacy. In this view, whatever is learnt from such a generic platform is taken to be relevant to every discipline within the university.
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“I‟m quite comfortable with the ones I have; both lecturer and tutor, they are great” (Simple).
When asked about what she meant by referring to them as being great, she added that:
“I mean we ask questions and they answer you. If you don‟t understand something, they explain it. Sometimes language is a barrier, so they actually stick to a simple language” (Simple).
The implication of these statements by the first student participant, Simple, is that these practitioners to this student seemed competent and masters of what they were teaching. This agrees with Gee‟s position about who teaches academic literacy as being the master of the Discourse they teach, although Gee‟s description of Discourse at this point was more of a discipline rather than a generic module (see chapter three, under section 3.4). As for the second student, Florey, given that she was tutored and lectured by the same person she was indifferent to the question on whom she preferred among the tutors/ lecturers. She stated
“That is a very hard one (question). Okay, I have been tutored by only one tutor and lecturer. I have not experienced being tutored by another tutor, so I‟m not sure about that one (question)” (Florey).
Going by this response, one may be tempted to conclude that the student was indifferent;
however, she later described her perceptions of the lecturer/ tutor in relation to being tutored and as well lectured by the same person. She added:
“To be honest, I don‟t see any difference because when we are in the lectures, the lecturer engaged us and in the lesson he made sure that we participated.
The same activities usually take place in the tutorials except that in the tutorials; the tutors are only summarizing what the lecturer has taught us…
they go on that that has been already taught. They don‟t go deep” (Florey).
The implication from this statement is that this student saw no difference between the lectures and tutorials as the practitioners teach in the e same way. What is interesting from her statement is the fact that the tutorials seem to be repetitions of the lectures as no in-depth teaching took place during the tutorials. Lillis (2003) (see chapter two) however, asserts that a mere surface teaching of academic literacy modules is incapable of making students acquire disciplinary
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discourses as these discourses can only be acquired through in-depth teaching because they are culture-embedded. The third student preferred her tutor to other practitioners due to the manner in which the tutor approached her students. She stated:
“Yeah, Ms (…), when she is teaching me something she is always smiling. She is good” (Pint).
Pint‟s perception of this tutor as being good because of her approach to the students seems to reinforce Gee‟s description of academic literacy as a Discourse with capital „D‟. In this description, Gee (1996, p. 131) posits that Discourse goes beyond language use, but…a socially accepted association among ways of using language, other symbolic expressions, and artifacts, of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing and acting that can be used…(in a) social network”. In this regard, Pint seemed to understand that the teaching of the academic literacy module goes beyond the mere use of either spoken or written language, but includes other non-linguistic features of the module. Hence, she appears to have valued the significance of a smile during the teaching of the module. Understood in this way, it can be said that teaching may be more attractive and interesting to students when lecturers and tutors develop positive attitudes towards students. It seems that the three students acknowledged that their tutors and lecturer were good;
nonetheless, they had other comments about these practitioners.
Apart from describing the AL practitioners as being good it appears that students experienced some level of confusion in their interaction with tutors and lecturers both in tutorials and during lectures. The first level of confusion seems to manifest in the instructions and explanations given to students during lectures and tutorials. The first student, Simple, suggested that there should be some improvements in the teaching of the module. She stated:
“The information given to us during the lecture is sometimes not the same as the information we get at the tutorial. So we end up not knowing which information to take. Having different lecturers and tutors sticking to one thing; even if we are studying with other students from other groups, lecturers must have the same information” (Simple).
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It appears that this student noticed that tutors as well as lecturers were providing them with differing information when teaching the same topics, including explanations as well as answers while solving tutorial questions. This situation was also evident during the classroom observations in Zumbo‟s, Rak‟s, and Ren‟s tutorial classes. It was observed that all the tutors gave different answers to tutorial questions on reading strategies in semester one; details about this will be provided later under the observation section of this chapter. Relevant to this study is the student‟s advice that all lecturers and tutors should keep to the same answers. This begs the question, which of these differing information or instructions are appropriate or correct? This lack of agreement in teaching seems to be due to a lack of mastery of the module or under- preparedness on the part of the practitioners. Admittedly, acquiring academic discourse under these circumstances may be onerous as partial acquisition of discourse is not an option. (Gee, 2001a). As a result, Gee posits that if academic literacy is to be successfully acquired, then the practitioners must be masters of what they teach. It is not until the tutors have full mastery of the ALUGS module, that the acquisition of discourse within the module will be feasible.
Apart from the confusion at instructional level, students also seemed not to understand the comments of the tutors on their written work. Despite recent debates on the role of effective feedback in developing students‟ future writing practices and progress (see Weaver, 2007; Ferris, 2008; and Duncan, 2007), the students still complained that they were confused by h the nature of the feedback their tutors gave them. One of the students (Simple) described the comments she received on her assignment script as incomprehensible. She insisted that:
“Well, with my tutor, the first essay that we wrote, she just took the essays and marked them. She didn‟t correct us in terms of for example with the introduction, she was not specific if we included or excluded. The essays that we wrote, it wasn‟t a draft; it was the actual essay because she gave us marks. So we made a lot of errors because we didn‟t know. Like other tutors, they actually allow you to bring in your essay, they will make corrections and then you will bring the final draft, the one that they will mark. Our tutor didn‟t do all that; she just marked the first draft and gave us marks based on it (Simple).
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From this statement two important issues become evident, particularly for this study, firstly, , this student was of the opinion that her own tutor, unlike other tutors, did not allow her students to produce initial drafts where they could be guided on their errors and omissions and how to improve the essay as a final draft.\ Notably, this student made reference to other tutorial groups where tutors resolved students‟ problems in the first draft and have the assignments handed in as the second draft. This reinforces the notion of chain-process in writing development. Neville (1996) states that one of the challenges that students face in relation to writing is their understanding of writing as a final draft. He argues that teaching students the process of writing exposes them to the nature and complexity of academic writing. In this regard he illustrates that
“an average academic working on an item to be published is likely to produce three or four drafts and often asks colleagues to comment on what has been written” (Neville, 1996, p.40). Contrary to Neville‟s view that the process of writing should b taught, Gee (1996) is of the opinion that academic writing cannot be taught explicitly (through overt instruction), but can only be learnt through the process of apprenticeship (see chapter two, section 2.8.4). The reason being that apprenticeship allows students to see for themselves the processes involved in writing development.
Summarily, it appears that the student participants all perceived that their tutors and lecturers are competent, but that they are not united in the kind of instruction they gave students in the tutorials and lectures. Consequently, students were taught differently in the tutorials and are expected to write the same during assessments. Closely related to these differences in lesson delivery, students have also described tutors‟ written feedback within the ALUGS module as incomprehensible as they are written in language not understood by students. AL practitioners also have their own perceptions about the ALUGS module to that of the students.