The role of writing centre in enhancing the quality of students' academic writing at a university of technology

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT : The role of a writing centre in enhancing the quality of students' academic writing at auniversity of technology is a research study that determined students' perceptions about awriting centre, as one form of academic literacy support amongst a suite of academicdevelopment and support programmes designed to assist students to acquire epistemologicalaccess. The study was based at the Writing Centre of the Cape Peninsula University ofTechnology (CPUT). Research participants were drawn from students registered in variousfaculties, and in varying levels of academic study i.e. 1st, 2nd, 3rd and fourth-year (B-Tech)level study. They came from diverse linguistic, cultural, social and economic backgrounds.A significant qualification criterion for student participants was that they must have beenexposed to, or experienced the services offered by the Writing Centre either through a oneon-one form of academic consultation, or through an academic literacy workshop. Theempirical methods employed to gather data for this mixed methods study involved a survey inthe form of a questionnaire that collected quantitative data, and a qualitative componentwhich employed content analysis of 20 students' academic essays chosen using the abovecriteria. Overall, the findings from the quantitative study revealed overwhelmingly positiveperceptions of students about the services offered by the Writing Centre, includingperceptions about their own academic writing capabilities. However, these findings were notconsistent with the findings emanating from the qualitative content analysis of students'academic essays. Content analysis revealed, among other things, lexico-grammatical errorspointing to a lack of conceptualisation by student participants of the academic task at hand;lack of presence in text; macro-structural issues (introductions, conclusions, paragraphing,etc.), and micro-structural issues (arrangement of sentences, language usage, grammaticalerrors and plagiarism, etc.). The findings also highlighted issues identified by studentparticipants for improvement such as the need for the employment of additional consultants,and student participants' desire for additional services such as editing and proofreading to beadded to the services currently offered by the Writing Centre.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University