Apprenticing students to academic discourse: Using student and teacher feedback to analyse the extent to which a discipline-specific academic literacies program works

Abstract

Concerns among staff in the Linguistics Department at Macquarie University regarding the disparate and at times unsatisfactory level of academic literacy skills of commencing postgraduate applied linguistics students have been increasing. Since staff agreed that students with English as their L1 or as an additional language might benefit from early intervention, an academic literacies course was developed for and made available to those students. The course consisted of a one-week intensive discipline-specific program followed by a 12 week program. The one-week program was offered as a full-time intensive course and the 12 week program was offered on a part-time basis. Attendance in both phases was non-compulsory. This paper reports on the rationale for the choice of key content areas for both phases of the program. The relevance and effectiveness of choices made becomes evident when students’ and teachers’ evaluations of both phases are reviewed. Some of the challenges encountered during the delivery of both phases are discussed. Recommendations regarding changes that could be implemented in the delivery of such programs are also put forward.