7th Call - Shika Evelyn Ahadzie

Project Title: Investigating the Enculturation of University Students into the Academic Discourse Community and the Impact this Process has on their Academic Writing

Principal Investigator: Dr. Sika Evelyn Ahadzie(Language Centre,University of Ghana)

Email Address: sahadzie@ug.edu.gh

Award Amount: GHC 4,851.00

Project Status: On-going

 Summary:

This study has a twofold objective: first, to create a database of the diverse processes of students’ academic enculturation or socialization into the academic discourse community, and second, to investigate the impact that these processes have on the students’ development as academic writers. Over the years, in the University of Ghana, a lot of concern and dissatisfaction has been expressed among faculty about two main challenges in students’ ability to function as competent members of the university community, namely challenges in students’ competence in written communication and with their capability in knowledge construction. Attempts to address this situation led to the establishment of the academic writing programme at the Language Centre. Now, several years after the introduction of this programme, these challenges still persist and the result is that the students lack skills in both written communication and also in transmitting discipline-specific knowledge as members of the academic community. The academic writing programme has been through several modifications over the years in response to these concerns, but it still has problems in the areas of teaching and learning. One of the main setbacks lies in the area of assessment and teaching methodology. In assessments of students’ writing, the dominant ‘deficit model’ is upheld. This model basically views students’ writing as ‘good’ or bad’, without taking onto account the social and intellectual factors in each student’s case which may explain why they exhibit such given writing challenges. In brief, the model does not situate the teaching and assessment of language and writing in the academic context of student writers. In the area of teaching also, there is a huge diversity in the methodology of teaching the course because of the vast number of instructors involved. It has been observed that not all instructors adopt creative and pedagogically sound ways of adapting the designated course manual for the optimum benefit of the learners. In addition, difficulties in the area of learning are mainly due to increasing numbers of student enrolment. Large class sizes hinder effective learning of writing. Needless to say, the Centre also lacks the requisite stock of resources and equipment to achieve its potential. This study focuses on the assessment component of academic writing. It will employ different models and approaches to explore the inadequacies of student writing in the academic discourse community from a different perspective than the dominant ‘deficit model’. Rather than engaging in debates about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ writing, writing in academic contexts will be  conceptualized at the level of epistemology, through the use of three interrelated models in a composite ‘academic literacies model’ made up of a study skills model, an academic socialization model and an academic literacy model. (Lea & Street 1998; 1998; Duff 1995). The advantage of the academic literacies model over the deficit model in assessing student writing lies in its interrelatedness with other social and intellectual factors such as student enculturation, the role of faculty, the academic discourse community and knowledge construction. The researcher will employ multiple means of collecting data: questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussions, observations, and video recording of lectures and tutorial sessions. During the interaction with participants (students and faculty) through purposive sampling, the range of languages, genres and modes, representations, identities involved in socialization in the academic contexts will be  investigated. The findings will provide evidence of a link of the connection between student enculturation, as provided by the data base, and their performance as academic writers. An important benefit is that lecturers will be made aware of the nature of this connection and be sensitized on how to support students to improve on their (preferably discipline- based) academic writing.