This paper reports on ongoing research into how an embedded academic support programme, based in a South African university’s writing centre, shapes the academic literacy practices of first-year B.Ed. students. This paper focuses specifically on the peer tutors who implement the programme. Our data collection and analysis methods are informed by socio-cultural theories of literacy and the notion of ‘discursive third space’. The tutors’ discursive reconstructions of the intervention programme are understood to reveal the dynamics of how the intervention functions as third space. Peer tutors were selected purposefully for the study; they needed to have had at least one year of experience tutoring and mentoring in the intervention programme, and five peer tutors agreed to take part. Data was collected using an audio-recorded focus-group interview, and the transcription analysed; data was coded into meaning units within which key themes, patterns, and categories informed by the study’s theoretical frameworks were identified in a recursive process. The analysis reveals that the tutors use the intervention programme as a third space in which they draw on the students’ varied “funds of knowledge and Discourse” ( Moje, Ciechanowski, Kramer, Ellis, Carillo and Collazo 2004) , with three main results evident. Firstly, because the students’ learning is scaffolded, and their skills in navigating between different spaces, Discourses, and funds improved, their epistemological access to dominant Discourses around academic literacy and course content increases. Secondly, the tutorial third space offers potential for reshaping dominant Discourses, and so for decolonial transformation. Thirdly, however, the strain of working in-between competing funds of knowledge can be inhibiting rather than generative, resulting in “post-colonial splitting” (Bhabha 1994). If we are to engage meaningfully with the academic-support access paradox, the insights that the tutorial third space generates have to be taken seriously.
{"title":"In-between access and transformation: Analysing a university writing centre’s academic support programme for education students as third space","authors":"H. Namakula, Maria Prozesky","doi":"10.5842/57-0-809","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5842/57-0-809","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports on ongoing research into how an embedded academic support programme, based in a South African university’s writing centre, shapes the academic literacy practices of first-year B.Ed. students. This paper focuses specifically on the peer tutors who implement the programme. Our data collection and analysis methods are informed by socio-cultural theories of literacy and the notion of ‘discursive third space’. The tutors’ discursive reconstructions of the intervention programme are understood to reveal the dynamics of how the intervention functions as third space. Peer tutors were selected purposefully for the study; they needed to have had at least one year of experience tutoring and mentoring in the intervention programme, and five peer tutors agreed to take part. Data was collected using an audio-recorded focus-group interview, and the transcription analysed; data was coded into meaning units within which key themes, patterns, and categories informed by the study’s theoretical frameworks were identified in a recursive process. The analysis reveals that the tutors use the intervention programme as a third space in which they draw on the students’ varied “funds of knowledge and Discourse” ( Moje, Ciechanowski, Kramer, Ellis, Carillo and Collazo 2004) , with three main results evident. Firstly, because the students’ learning is scaffolded, and their skills in navigating between different spaces, Discourses, and funds improved, their epistemological access to dominant Discourses around academic literacy and course content increases. Secondly, the tutorial third space offers potential for reshaping dominant Discourses, and so for decolonial transformation. Thirdly, however, the strain of working in-between competing funds of knowledge can be inhibiting rather than generative, resulting in “post-colonial splitting” (Bhabha 1994). If we are to engage meaningfully with the academic-support access paradox, the insights that the tutorial third space generates have to be taken seriously.","PeriodicalId":42187,"journal":{"name":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42444706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
“Critical friend” is a term widely used in professional development, teacher education, and evaluation contexts. It is defined by Costa and Kallick (1993) as a trusted person who asks the researcher provocative questions, provides an alternate point of view when needed, and critiques the researcher’s work as a friend rather than an antagonist. This theoretical paper aims to initiate a dialogue on how elaborating on the role of the writing consultant as a critical friend could open up university writing centres as spaces of exploration and empowerment for student writers, aiding them in nurturing their academic thinking and voice. The work of the writing consultant, primarily as a critical friend, would be to exercise active listening and pose questions while offering advice and reassurance on the student writer’s abilities, promoting trust while helping the student writer to develop the tools to reason, and therefore the freedom and confidence to articulate their arguments. I investigate how framing university writing centres as spaces for facilitating trusting dialogues with a critical friend can encourage student writers to think differently about their tasks, assisting them in overcoming hurdles to find their academic voices in order to succeed at university. By embracing the role of critical friends, writing consultants as advocates for the success of student writers’ work provide unusual opportunities to establish supportive relationships that take into account the individual student writer’s academic journey, promoting self-reflection rather than simply directing student writers through the task at hand. Additionally, this engagement as a critical friend has the potential to change perceptions of the nature of the support provided by writing centres, their value, and purpose.
{"title":"Writing centre consultants as critical friends","authors":"Janine E. Carlse","doi":"10.5842/57-0-817","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5842/57-0-817","url":null,"abstract":"“Critical friend” is a term widely used in professional development, teacher education, and evaluation contexts. It is defined by Costa and Kallick (1993) as a trusted person who asks the researcher provocative questions, provides an alternate point of view when needed, and critiques the researcher’s work as a friend rather than an antagonist. This theoretical paper aims to initiate a dialogue on how elaborating on the role of the writing consultant as a critical friend could open up university writing centres as spaces of exploration and empowerment for student writers, aiding them in nurturing their academic thinking and voice. The work of the writing consultant, primarily as a critical friend, would be to exercise active listening and pose questions while offering advice and reassurance on the student writer’s abilities, promoting trust while helping the student writer to develop the tools to reason, and therefore the freedom and confidence to articulate their arguments. I investigate how framing university writing centres as spaces for facilitating trusting dialogues with a critical friend can encourage student writers to think differently about their tasks, assisting them in overcoming hurdles to find their academic voices in order to succeed at university. By embracing the role of critical friends, writing consultants as advocates for the success of student writers’ work provide unusual opportunities to establish supportive relationships that take into account the individual student writer’s academic journey, promoting self-reflection rather than simply directing student writers through the task at hand. Additionally, this engagement as a critical friend has the potential to change perceptions of the nature of the support provided by writing centres, their value, and purpose.","PeriodicalId":42187,"journal":{"name":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47789945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Citation is fundamental in successfully constructing academic discourse. There has been much discussion concerning the considerable difficulties tertiary students experience when writing using sources, especially for those who speak English as an Additional Language. This paper interrogates the predominantly negative discourses that surround plagiarism, involving notions of honesty, integrity, punishment, trust, and deceit. These negative discourses tend to perpetuate hierarchical and impenetrable spaces in higher education. Drawing on our experiences in South African writing centres, and using key concepts from academic literacies, this paper explores ways of addressing plagiarism that can serve to empower students, including developing academic voice through citation, acknowledging “mimicry” as part of writing development, and developing critical thinking.
{"title":"Writing centres as dialogic spaces: Negotiating conflicting discourses around citation and plagiarism","authors":"K. Moxley, Arlene Archer","doi":"10.5842/57-0-808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5842/57-0-808","url":null,"abstract":"Citation is fundamental in successfully constructing academic discourse. There has been much discussion concerning the considerable difficulties tertiary students experience when writing using sources, especially for those who speak English as an Additional Language. This paper interrogates the predominantly negative discourses that surround plagiarism, involving notions of honesty, integrity, punishment, trust, and deceit. These negative discourses tend to perpetuate hierarchical and impenetrable spaces in higher education. Drawing on our experiences in South African writing centres, and using key concepts from academic literacies, this paper explores ways of addressing plagiarism that can serve to empower students, including developing academic voice through citation, acknowledging “mimicry” as part of writing development, and developing critical thinking.","PeriodicalId":42187,"journal":{"name":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44316266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Emure Kadenge, L. Dison, Wacango Kimani, H. Namakula
Writing centres in South African universities have historically been poorly recognised structures in higher education, and have largely been considered as “asides” to the core functions of the university. This lack of acknowledgement has seen writing centres occupying demeaning physical spaces within universities which has had a negative impact on the full potential of writing centre work. This narrative study focuses on the experiences of three postgraduate writing consultants, and reports on the ways that the Writing Centre at the Wits School of Education (WSoE) has exerted agency in order to move from a marginalised position in a school of education to reach students and become more responsive to their needs. While being proactive has yielded many teaching and learning gains at the WSoE, the Writing Centre has also had to contend with various personal and operational tensions such as deficit perceptions from both staff and students, and unrealistic expectations of students that their writing problems will be solved instantly. These challenges, however, have created opportunities for growth of the Writing Centre as it has developed new pathways for consultants in the shift from generic writing consultations to content-specific writing development. The changed model has had implications for the training and pedagogies of writing centre consultants as well as for their identity as students and mentors. This article provides insights into how writing centres can use their agency to occupy more meaningful spaces and places within universities, and enhance academic literacy support whilst simultaneously providing writing consultants with opportunities to grow their scholarship.
{"title":"Negotiating new ways of developing writing in disciplinary spaces: The changing role of writing consultants at the Wits School of Education Writing Centre","authors":"Emure Kadenge, L. Dison, Wacango Kimani, H. Namakula","doi":"10.5842/57-0-816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5842/57-0-816","url":null,"abstract":"Writing centres in South African universities have historically been poorly recognised structures in higher education, and have largely been considered as “asides” to the core functions of the university. This lack of acknowledgement has seen writing centres occupying demeaning physical spaces within universities which has had a negative impact on the full potential of writing centre work. This narrative study focuses on the experiences of three postgraduate writing consultants, and reports on the ways that the Writing Centre at the Wits School of Education (WSoE) has exerted agency in order to move from a marginalised position in a school of education to reach students and become more responsive to their needs. While being proactive has yielded many teaching and learning gains at the WSoE, the Writing Centre has also had to contend with various personal and operational tensions such as deficit perceptions from both staff and students, and unrealistic expectations of students that their writing problems will be solved instantly. These challenges, however, have created opportunities for growth of the Writing Centre as it has developed new pathways for consultants in the shift from generic writing consultations to content-specific writing development. The changed model has had implications for the training and pedagogies of writing centre consultants as well as for their identity as students and mentors. This article provides insights into how writing centres can use their agency to occupy more meaningful spaces and places within universities, and enhance academic literacy support whilst simultaneously providing writing consultants with opportunities to grow their scholarship.","PeriodicalId":42187,"journal":{"name":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47071623","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article critically reflects on how writing centres can address the notion that their primary role is to deal with students struggling with their writing. This critical reflection focuses on the following question: how can writing centres challenge the view that they exist primarily to assist students struggling with or lacking the academic writing skills required at university level? This question is answered from a theoretical framework of writing consultancy as a process of identity change. Presenting the writing consultation as a mentoring process for life-long writing, the article describes the author’s experiences of students who viewed the writing centre as a place for students who lack good writing skills. The article further examines some steps that may be taken to de-stigmatise writing centres, and promote them as places of identity change and empowerment. The article envisages that when the writing consultation is viewed as a mentoring process, writing centres may appeal to the greater university population, even students who are competent writers who would normally never see the need to consult writing centres.
{"title":"Aiming beyond the written, to the writer and writing: The writing consultation as a mentoring process for life-long writing","authors":"Collium Banda","doi":"10.5842/57-0-818","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5842/57-0-818","url":null,"abstract":"This article critically reflects on how writing centres can address the notion that their primary role is to deal with students struggling with their writing. This critical reflection focuses on the following question: how can writing centres challenge the view that they exist primarily to assist students struggling with or lacking the academic writing skills required at university level? This question is answered from a theoretical framework of writing consultancy as a process of identity change. Presenting the writing consultation as a mentoring process for life-long writing, the article describes the author’s experiences of students who viewed the writing centre as a place for students who lack good writing skills. The article further examines some steps that may be taken to de-stigmatise writing centres, and promote them as places of identity change and empowerment. The article envisages that when the writing consultation is viewed as a mentoring process, writing centres may appeal to the greater university population, even students who are competent writers who would normally never see the need to consult writing centres.","PeriodicalId":42187,"journal":{"name":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46673017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For decades, writing centre practitioners have contested and protested against the demeaning characterisations of their pedagogic space. The Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s (CPUT) Writing Centre has endured stigmatisation as a “clinic”, “laboratory”, “fix-it shop”, and “remedial agency for removing students’ deficiencies in composition” (Archer and Parker 2016, Drennan 2017, Moore 1950, North 1984). Although writing centre practitioners and theorists have described these centres as hubs for nurturing and enhancing students’ intellectual and linguistic capacities in order to engage and master disciplinary literacies and genres while contributing to the transformation of educational projects, such a value tends to be misrecognised – by both lecturers and students at CPUT – as focusing on improving grammatical competence. This article contributes to the discourse of redefining the writing centre as a space with unique transformational pedagogies in the context of a university of technology, namely CPUT. Underpinned by the Academic Literacies approach (Lea and Street 1998), this study views the institutional spaces in which our writing centre operates as “constituted in, and as sites of discourse and power”. The research purpose is to determine how the CPUT Writing Centre is viewed by the students who make use of it. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the researchers sought answers to the following two questions: (i) How is the CPUT Writing Centre configured to support learning at a university of technology? and (ii) How do students characterise the CPUT Writing Centre as a learning space with its own unique pedagogy? The article reports on students’ perceptions and assumptions about the Writing Centre as a learning space at a university of technology in the Western Cape (CPUT). It also examines the permutations of a uniquely configured learning space, the impact of its attributive conversations, and the extent to which it is (mis)recognised as a transformative agency.
几十年来，写作中心的从业者一直在争论和抗议他们的教学空间的贬低特征。开普半岛科技大学(CPUT)的写作中心一直被认为是“诊所”、“实验室”、“修理店”和“消除学生作文缺陷的补救机构”(Archer和Parker 2016, Drennan 2017, Moore 1950, North 1984)。尽管写作中心的实践者和理论家将这些中心描述为培养和提高学生的智力和语言能力的中心，以便参与和掌握学科素养和体裁，同时促进教育项目的转型，但这种价值往往被CPUT的讲师和学生误解为专注于提高语法能力。本文旨在以科技大学为背景，探讨如何将写作中心重新定义为一个具有独特转型教学法的空间。在学术素养方法(Lea and Street, 1998)的支持下，本研究将我们的写作中心运作的机构空间视为“构成话语和权力的场所”。研究的目的是确定使用CPUT写作中心的学生是如何看待它的。采用混合方法，研究人员寻求以下两个问题的答案:(i) CPUT写作中心如何配置以支持科技大学的学习?以及(ii)学生如何形容中央理工大学写作中心是一个拥有独特教学法的学习空间?这篇文章报告了学生们对写作中心作为西开普省一所科技大学(CPUT)学习空间的看法和假设。它还研究了一个独特配置的学习空间的排列，其属性对话的影响，以及它被(错误地)视为一个变革机构的程度。
{"title":"“We are not a ‘fix-it shop’”: The writing centre as a uniquely configured learning space","authors":"Puleng Sefalane-Nkohla, Thembinkosi Mtonjeni","doi":"10.5842/57-0-807","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5842/57-0-807","url":null,"abstract":"For decades, writing centre practitioners have contested and protested against the demeaning characterisations of their pedagogic space. The Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s (CPUT) Writing Centre has endured stigmatisation as a “clinic”, “laboratory”, “fix-it shop”, and “remedial agency for removing students’ deficiencies in composition” (Archer and Parker 2016, Drennan 2017, Moore 1950, North 1984). Although writing centre practitioners and theorists have described these centres as hubs for nurturing and enhancing students’ intellectual and linguistic capacities in order to engage and master disciplinary literacies and genres while contributing to the transformation of educational projects, such a value tends to be misrecognised – by both lecturers and students at CPUT – as focusing on improving grammatical competence. This article contributes to the discourse of redefining the writing centre as a space with unique transformational pedagogies in the context of a university of technology, namely CPUT. Underpinned by the Academic Literacies approach (Lea and Street 1998), this study views the institutional spaces in which our writing centre operates as “constituted in, and as sites of discourse and power”. The research purpose is to determine how the CPUT Writing Centre is viewed by the students who make use of it. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the researchers sought answers to the following two questions: (i) How is the CPUT Writing Centre configured to support learning at a university of technology? and (ii) How do students characterise the CPUT Writing Centre as a learning space with its own unique pedagogy? The article reports on students’ perceptions and assumptions about the Writing Centre as a learning space at a university of technology in the Western Cape (CPUT). It also examines the permutations of a uniquely configured learning space, the impact of its attributive conversations, and the extent to which it is (mis)recognised as a transformative agency.","PeriodicalId":42187,"journal":{"name":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46842695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pam Nichols, Z. Erasmus, Nomonde Ntsepo, Lerato Mlahleki, Keanu Mabalane, Khensani Ngobeni, Lew Is Ckool
Listening has long been understood as characteristic of writing centre practice, and as central to writing centre philosophy. This reflective progress report argues that such listening is also the generating culture of a university-wide writing programme of writing intensive courses, and that this culture will only be manifested and sustained if constantly modelled at all levels of the programme. In order to model what we teach, we need to build listening into the processes and structure of the programme as well as into the classrooms. Through letters from the invited co-authors of this paper, a snapshot is provided of the generative power of active listening in the teaching conversations between professor and writing fellows; lecturer, writing fellow and students; and writing fellows as a team as they create their lesson plan. Active listening is understood as a discipline of attentiveness to multiple and simultaneous meanings, and thus as a discipline which is necessary for complex thought and writing. Edward Said (2013) has described this attentiveness to simultaneity as key to a humanist critical literacy, which not only promotes engaged students and teachers but is also a political commitment to developing the citizen scholar. In the Wits Writing Programme, attentiveness to simultaneity represents a principle of teaching and of learning, an aim of writing, and a guiding value of the programme’s construction.
{"title":"Writing within simultaneity: A reflective progress report through letters from the Wits Writing Programme","authors":"Pam Nichols, Z. Erasmus, Nomonde Ntsepo, Lerato Mlahleki, Keanu Mabalane, Khensani Ngobeni, Lew Is Ckool","doi":"10.5842/57-0-814","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5842/57-0-814","url":null,"abstract":"Listening has long been understood as characteristic of writing centre practice, and as central to writing centre philosophy. This reflective progress report argues that such listening is also the generating culture of a university-wide writing programme of writing intensive courses, and that this culture will only be manifested and sustained if constantly modelled at all levels of the programme. In order to model what we teach, we need to build listening into the processes and structure of the programme as well as into the classrooms. Through letters from the invited co-authors of this paper, a snapshot is provided of the generative power of active listening in the teaching conversations between professor and writing fellows; lecturer, writing fellow and students; and writing fellows as a team as they create their lesson plan. Active listening is understood as a discipline of attentiveness to multiple and simultaneous meanings, and thus as a discipline which is necessary for complex thought and writing. Edward Said (2013) has described this attentiveness to simultaneity as key to a humanist critical literacy, which not only promotes engaged students and teachers but is also a political commitment to developing the citizen scholar. In the Wits Writing Programme, attentiveness to simultaneity represents a principle of teaching and of learning, an aim of writing, and a guiding value of the programme’s construction.","PeriodicalId":42187,"journal":{"name":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47513429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A writing center cannot define itself as a space—we’re often kicked out of our spaces. It’s not a pedagogy. We’re always re-articulating our pedagogy. It’s certainly not an academic department. It crosses all disciplines. A writing center does not produce a text—the texts in writing centers are unfinished. And we don’t own the texts our students create; those texts are cross-curricular, cross-linguistic, cross-discursive. (Sunstein 1998: 8–9)
{"title":"Space, place, and power in South African writing centres: Special issue in honour of Sharifa Daniels","authors":"R. Richards, Anne-Mari Lackay, Selene Delport","doi":"10.5842/57-0-804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5842/57-0-804","url":null,"abstract":"A writing center cannot define itself as a space—we’re often kicked out of our spaces. It’s not a pedagogy. We’re always re-articulating our pedagogy. It’s certainly not an academic department. It crosses all disciplines. A writing center does not produce a text—the texts in writing centers are unfinished. And we don’t own the texts our students create; those texts are cross-curricular, cross-linguistic, cross-discursive. (Sunstein 1998: 8–9)","PeriodicalId":42187,"journal":{"name":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42336435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Writing centres are a well-established aspect of student academic support in many universities around the world. As much as there is significant commonality in their espoused ways of working, and theoretical and ontological underpinnings, writing centres work in a diverse range of national and institutional contexts. At times, the pressures from their contexts – both ideological and practical – can work to shape the day-to-day nature of writing centre work that moves away from, rather than towards, their espoused ways of working. This gap between “theory” and “practice” in writing centres is the focus of this paper. The paper argues that acknowledging and characterising the nature of this gap in different writing centre contexts is vital, and needs to be taken on honestly and critically. This may better enable writing centres to act more consciously as a “critical conscience” in university spaces increasingly vulnerable to narrow, uncritical notions of ‘safe’ spaces for student development and growth.
{"title":"Exploring the gap between what we say and what we do: Writing centres, ‘safety’, and ‘risk’ in higher education","authors":"Sherran Clarence","doi":"10.5842/57-0-813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5842/57-0-813","url":null,"abstract":"Writing centres are a well-established aspect of student academic support in many universities around the world. As much as there is significant commonality in their espoused ways of working, and theoretical and ontological underpinnings, writing centres work in a diverse range of national and institutional contexts. At times, the pressures from their contexts – both ideological and practical – can work to shape the day-to-day nature of writing centre work that moves away from, rather than towards, their espoused ways of working. This gap between “theory” and “practice” in writing centres is the focus of this paper. The paper argues that acknowledging and characterising the nature of this gap in different writing centre contexts is vital, and needs to be taken on honestly and critically. This may better enable writing centres to act more consciously as a “critical conscience” in university spaces increasingly vulnerable to narrow, uncritical notions of ‘safe’ spaces for student development and growth.","PeriodicalId":42187,"journal":{"name":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42291879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article considers the remaining hindrances for natural language processing technologies in achieving open and natural (human-like) interaction between humans and computers. Although artificially intelligent (AI) systems have been making great strides in this field, particularly with the development of deep learning architectures that carry surface-level statistical methods to greater levels of sophistication, these systems are yet incapable of deep semantic analysis, reliable translation, and generating rich answers to open-ended questions. I consider how the process may be facilitated from our side, first, by altering some of our existing language conventions (which may occur naturally) if we are to proceed with statistical approaches, and secondly, by considering possibilities in using a formalised artificial language as an auxiliary medium, as it may avoid many of the inherent ambiguities and irregularities that make natural language difficult to process using rule-based methods. As current systems have been predominantly English-based, I argue that a formal auxiliary language would not only be a simpler and more reliable medium for computer processing, but may also offer a more neutral, easy-to-learn lingua franca for uniting people from different linguistic backgrounds with none necessarily having the upper hand.
{"title":"Meeting them halfway: Altering language conventions to facilitate human-robot interaction","authors":"Lize Alberts","doi":"10.5842/56-0-799","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5842/56-0-799","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers the remaining hindrances for natural language processing technologies in achieving open and natural (human-like) interaction between humans and computers. Although artificially intelligent (AI) systems have been making great strides in this field, particularly with the development of deep learning architectures that carry surface-level statistical methods to greater levels of sophistication, these systems are yet incapable of deep semantic analysis, reliable translation, and generating rich answers to open-ended questions. I consider how the process may be facilitated from our side, first, by altering some of our existing language conventions (which may occur naturally) if we are to proceed with statistical approaches, and secondly, by considering possibilities in using a formalised artificial language as an auxiliary medium, as it may avoid many of the inherent ambiguities and irregularities that make natural language difficult to process using rule-based methods. As current systems have been predominantly English-based, I argue that a formal auxiliary language would not only be a simpler and more reliable medium for computer processing, but may also offer a more neutral, easy-to-learn lingua franca for uniting people from different linguistic backgrounds with none necessarily having the upper hand.","PeriodicalId":42187,"journal":{"name":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45898306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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