The Academic Writing Challenges of Undergraduate Students:

A South African Case Study

Introduction

This has increased the demand for academic development programmes as a viable
strategy to enhance the academic writing skills and other soft skills required by
students . This article discusses the academic writing challenges of undergraduate
students in Cape Peninsula University of Technology , South Africa. The article is
written against the backdrop of discrepant narratives about why university of
technology students struggle with academic writing and the increasing pressures on
South African universities to transform and "to standardise and systematise the
teaching and learning context by introducing quality assurance measures" .

The Context of Higher Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa

The shifting vision of South African universities is attributed to the government‘s

envisions to redress the ills of the apartheid era, democratise the education system
through the promotion of racial and gender parity, and the development of skills that
are responsive to needs of the new South Africa . The government’s meddling in the
way South African universities are managed has resulted in the irruption of infamous
educational policies and curriculum documents aimed at restructuring schools and
universities as well as fostering the social changes promised by the new political
dispensation . The pressure on South African universities to transform and to perform
has had far reaching implications for teaching and learning in general and for
student literacy practices such as academic writing. African universities privilege
middle-class literacy practices, the landscapes of South African universities have
changed drastically over the years .

Today, universities like CPUT now have to deal with a contingent of students from
previously marginalised and under-privileged communities who are often not
intellectual and emotionally prepared for higher education. This academic
unpreparedness has affected their literacy practices and their overall academic
development .

Student Writing in Higher Education

Representing academic writing in this article as a literacy practice suggests that writing is linked
“with what individuals as socially situated actors do, both at the level of context of a specific
situation and at the level of context of culture” . This justifies why academic writing is at the
centre of the scholarship of teaching and learning in universities. Academic writing as a literacy
practice is not simply about conforming to a set of conventions or disciplinary rules but it is also a
cultural and social practice, which involves using different cognitive abilities to negotiate power,
authority and identity within the landscape of universities . This model claims, student writing is
based on “relatively homogeneous norms, values and cultural practices” and it is a “transparent
medium of representation is probably more appropriate for advanced students” .

This article is framed around around academic literacies model because university students are
expected to use academic writing to access university culture, understand disciplinary discourses
and negotiate power relations as well as construct their individual identities, new generic and
discipline specific knowledge . To this end academic writing is a literacy practice because it
provides “the link between students’ entry into disciplinary communities and their acquisition of
the formal conventions associated with the academy...”. In the context of CPUT, Academic
writing and other literacy practices have been taught through mandatory courses such as
Communication Skills and Academic Literacy. The location of the offerings within mainstream
curricula suggests that literacy practices play an important role in the cognitive development of
students.

Needless to mention that the “language of academia is a very specialized discourse which
presents a problem for all students whether they are first or second language speakers” of
English . Effective academic writing provides an uncharacteristic space for students to negotiate
and articulate these multiple discourses that shape higher education . It is critical not only for
socialising students into discipline-specific writing but also for their cognitive development.

Methods of Data Collection

These methods were used to gain access to the multiple realities and subjective meanings about
academic writing at CPUT . Here, one-on-one interviews were conducted with twenty 2nd year
students in the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the end of 2012 academic year. The
interview questions were developed from the three main research questions listed in section 2.
The questions were framed around student writing skills, writing assignments, interactions with
Communication lecturers and so on.

Additionally, two Communication course reflections were facilitated with approximately 150 1st
year students registered for the IT programme in the Faculty of Informatics and Design.
Academic writing experiences and other relevant topics taught in the course. In the interviews
and reflections students were asked to comment on their academic writing strengths and
weaknesses as well as on ways to improve their writing skills.

The Academic Writing Challenges of CPUT Undergraduate Students

The student composition of CPUT is very diverse in terms of race, linguistic background and
cognitive development. However, the dominant academic discourse seems to privilege students
from middle-class backgrounds. Here, students struggle to cope with institutional literacy
expectations because the medium of instruction is English, which is not necessarily the native
language of many students. Nonetheless, these students are expected to think and write using
middle class literacy practices .

For example, to be proficient in academic writing, students are expected to be a critical and
analytical thinker. They are expected to apply myriad human skills and organise their thoughts in
a methodical manner, while applying specific discipline instructions and conventions. The lecturer
always says my essay is just my opinions or I am copying from other people. Or my ideas do not
make sense and I am not thinking like a university students.

Given their backgrounds, the institution and academic staff are supposed to find ways to
systematically address these gaps. Maintaining high standards of academic writing in higher
education is not negotiable but this should be negotiated against the backdrop of the
demographics of the student body. Yes, the university expects students to produce essays of
good quality but it forgets that many of its students are from poor and under-resourced schools in
rural or peri-urban areas in South Africa. They are English second or third language speakers of
English but they are still expected to write proficiently in English.
These students also come with different literacy experiences but when we are marking their
essays, we want logical organisation of idea and refined use of language. This respondent is a
male Communication lecturer in the Department of Surface Design. His response highlights the
process of socialisation into university culture and understanding of academic discourses as key
challenges for CPUT students. For this respondent, the under resourced schools mentioned in
the quote have failed to prepare students for the challenging world of higher education .

The CPUT’s student body is still dominated by students from rural and peri-urban schools with “a
baggage of experiences, attitudes and skills that are not properly suited to university work” .
Consequently, understanding and applying the highly complex cognitive skills in academic writing
is very challenging to CPUT students from these backgrounds. Here, students are unable to
conceptualise the topic using knowledge from different sources. Inadequate research skills
and/or the lack of meta-cognitive skills to read, interpret and synthesis different texts usually
culminate in papers with a paucity of ideas, which are often devoid of evidence or substantiated
claims .

Also, despite the paucity and superficiality of ideas, most students submit assignments that are
unedited and lack careful organisation. Here, students seem not to understand that academic
writing is a process which involves drafting, revising and redrafting. Marking student essays in
this university is one of my worst nightmares. Students often grapple with or fail to apply the
concept of coherence and cohesion whereby they “select and order ideas to lead to a sound and
well argued conclusion” .

This response suggests that student academic papers are often devoid of transition devices
which enhance coherence and cohesion in academic writing. Thirdly, the papers are usually
fraught with mechanical weaknesses, especially in areas like paragraph and, sentence
construction-grammar and syntax as well as style. For the respondent, sentences are often
truncated and convoluted because these students still grapple with grammatical aspects such as
noun-verb agreement, tenses and spelling. These weaknesses also recur because students
misconstrue academic writing as a product and not a process, which requires drafting, editing
and re-drafting .

Why CPUT Students Challenged by Academic Writing

When writing academic papers, these students often struggle to switch from informal social
media writing style that they now use often to the more restricted and more conservative formal
academic style . Because they spend endless hours on facebook and twitter, they unconsciously
transfer instant messaging style into academic writing. By contrast, students in higher education
are expected to produce “knowledge which is social accountable, reflexive, trans-disciplinary and
problem-oriented” . The interest in technology-based teaching and learning especially in
universities of technology means students develop new writing styles while they deal with the
chaos of the mediated world on a daily basis .

Although the positive influence of social media on student writing cannot be ignored, for this
participant, the use of facebook genre in academic writing shows the maturity levels and
cognitive development of students at CPUT. The way they interpret essay topics and express
their thoughts in academic writing show clearly that they are not yet university students. We
expect our students to demonstrate some high order thinking skills but the quality of their writing
is a sharp contrast of what is expected of university students . For this interviewee, the university
expects its students to possess critical and analytical skills, which they can use to deal with
academic challenges in higher education.
With these skills, students are able to use academic writing to unlock disciplinary discourses and
construct new identities as well as make meanings of their social lives in a university
environment . However, her quotation suggests that CPUT students struggle with academic
writing because they have not been fully socialised into the university space and therefore they
cannot access and interpret the highly specialised discourses of higher education . The
interviews also revealed CPUT students often struggle with academic writing because they do
not receive regular quality feedback on academic papers. While lecturers complained about large
class sizes, students blamed the lack of lecturer attention to student academic writing. 2nd year
male IT student highlight these positions we all teach our students that writing is a process that
involves drafting and redrafting but we do not give them the opportunity to redraft their essays.

These respondents claim that for student writing to improve, there should be regular
feedback through one-on-one interaction between students and lecturers.
Significantly, the second excerpt presupposes the students struggle because of they
are not very proficient in English Language. However, although the role of English
language proficiency cannot be ignored in this case, academic writing is more than
just stringing sentences . It is part of a specialised discourse of higher education,
which involves critical, analytical and reflective thinking skills.

In the reflection exercises, students also mentioned students’ lack the emotional readiness and
intellectual maturity that often enable university students to take control of their learning process.
These deficiencies severely affect the way they approach the whole learning experience and the
way they handle academic tasks including academic writing. So when my Communication
lecturer gives an essay assignment, I always leave it until the last minute. This quote highlights
one of the factors which contribute to the poor quality of student writing at CPUT.

It shows clearly that this student’s does not understand the role of academic writing higher
education, affirming why CPUT undergraduates do not accord writing tasks the respect they
deserve. Naively, these students see academic writing as something for study and teaching skills
rather than the interplay of academic literacies or the process of socialisation into discipline-
specific discourses . Here, they do not understand that “academic writing is designed to be an
enriching learning experience” . This compromises the individual attention that lecturers can give
to students, mentioned in the preceding discussions. Here, writing lecturers do not spend time to
appreciate every piece of student writing as a developmental process.

According to this Communication lecturer in the Department of Surface Design

This respondent’s complaints exude the increasing pressures endured by CPUT academic staff
and these pressures affect the way lecturers assess student writings. However, changing any
literacy as problematic as academic writing, “is clearly an arduous and slow process, and
requires much commitment” . In evaluating student writing, lecturers tend to concentrate on the
mechanic of the writing such as language-syntax, grammar and plagiarism, instead of continually
recognising academic writing as process which “involves negotiating social relationships,
attitudes and values” .

Regional Planning student reflects on her academic writing skills

I have been encountering a lot problem with academic writing. From this excerpt, the issue of
plagiarism seems to have far-reaching implications for the way students write. Although
ownership and originality are important, many academics tend to measure these novice writers
against the works of experienced authors whose credibility as good academic writers span over
several years of practice. Students are not offered the opportunity to navigate the process of
drafting and re-drafting, which is essential for the development of academic writing.

Furthermore, the participants claimed that a University of Technology like CPUT prefers to invest
in courses and programmes that can generate more subsidies for the university. For them, the
university understands the role of academic development courses especially in the development
of writing skills, but it does not offer them the prestige and value that they deserve . They think
Communication is easy and anyone can teach it, therefore it is pointless recruiting more lecturers
with suitable qualifications and experience. But some of these lecturers do not publish and
cannot even teach academic writing.

Although this is not very accurate, inadequacy of qualified Communication and Academic literacy
lecturers accurately reflects the priorities of the university. Using lecturers without the right
qualifications as a strategy to cut the cost of investing in these courses, has had visible negatives
effects on the way the courses are taught and assessed. For example, these lecturers have
tended to ignore the academic writing components embedded in the course outlines, partly
because they are unfamiliar with the theoretical conceptions that underpin student writing in
higher education.

Proposed strategies for addressing the academic writing challenges of CPUT

undergraduate students

Given the increasing access to universities nowadays, academics will continue to deal with
students with very mediocre literacy skills and severe lack of university preparedness. Judging
from the empirical evidence, this article proposes the following as short and long term strategies
to mitigate the academic writing challenges of CPUT undergraduate students. This provides a
unique opportunity to collaboratively redesign these courses to respond to the academic writing
of students.

Programme Review should therefore consider the following proposed strategies

Since several CPUT departments are in the process of recurriculation, Communication and
academic literacy lecturers should be redesign academic development curricula in such a way
that they are more responsive to the needs of students . Because subjects like Communication
are supposed to develop academic writing skills and socialise students into disciplinary
discourses, the contents and teaching strategies should be responsive to the generic and
discipline-specific needs of undergraduate students. They should be able to develop students’
cognitive skills through academic literacies, problem solving and creativity and innovation. As
academic staff members engage in this curricula review processes, they should provide
discursive spaces for valuable collaboration between Communication lecturers and disciplinary
specialists in the new curriculum documents .

Instead of blaming Communication lecturers for the weak academic writing skills of students,
core discipline lecturers should create avenues for Communication lecturers to embed literacy
practices within disciplinary curricula. Academic writing practices cannot be disassociated from
core disciplines because “tacit knowledge is acquired through being socialised into communities
of practice through interaction with the existing members” . For me, academic reading and writing
in the context of universities of technology can develop more easily if embedded in core subjects.
“ In fact “disciplinary specialists are best placed to induct students into the discourses of their
disciplines” and academic writing is best taught within disciplinary spaces” .

The new curriculum documents should create space for intensive academic reading and writing
activities which allow for experimentation with different writing challenges. These activities should
 promote and encourage critical self-reflection on academic writing exercises . The lecturers
mandated to help with the development of the academic skills of students should engage more
with student writing, providing clear instructions and feedback that can guide students to improve
on the quality of their writing . These lecturers should focus more on a continuous developmental
process, which orients students into the academic culture of reading and writing.

Here, lecturers should attempt to re-ignite the culture of reading in students through exposure to
different academic and non-academic texts. This will perhaps revitalise their confidence and
minimise the ethos of ‘writing to pass’ which invariably puts tremendous pressure on students
and ultimately increases the amount of plagiarism in academic writing . Literature on Writing
Centres such as Archer and Leibowitz, Goodman, Hannon & Pakerson espouse the strategic
roles of a Writing Centre in the process of academic development.

Conclusion

In the context of South Africa, increasing access to higher education means

universities have to deal with students with attitudes and skills that are not suitable
for higher education. The data presented in this article suggests that because these
students enter higher education with weak literacy skills, they struggle to cope with
institutional literacy practices and disciplinary discourses including academic
writing. As discussed in the preceding sections, these challenges are consequences
of students’ schooling experiences, literacy backgrounds and the attitudes that they
bring to the university. To address this situation, this article has proposed
redesigning curricula that are responsive to the needs of students, collaboration
between Communication lecturers and disciplinary specialists, students taking
ownership of the learning process and adequate development of services such as the
Writing Centre.

References

Afful, J.B.A. (2007). Academic literacy and communicative skills in the Ghanaian university: A proposal.
Nebula 4
(3): 141-159.

Al-Khasawneh, F.M.S. (2010). Writing for academic purposes: Problems faced by Arab postgraduate students
of the
College of Business, UUM. ESP World, 2 (28).

Appleton, J.V. (1995). Analysing qualitative interview data: Addressing issues of validity and reliability, 22,
993-997.

Archer, A. (2010). Challenges and potentials for writing centres in South African tertiary institutions. South
African Journal of Higher Education. 24 (4): 495-150.

Ashworth, P. Freewood, M & Macdonald, R. (2003). The student lifeworld and the meanings of plagiarism.
Journal
Of Phenomenological Psychology. 34 (2): 257-278. [Link]
 Bacha, N.N. (2002). Developing Learners’ Academic Writing Skills in Higher Education: A Study for
Educational Reform’ Language and Education. 16 (3): 161-177.
[Link]

Bailey, R. (2008). Academic staff perceptions of the role and utility of written feedback on students’ written
work.
Zeitschrift Schreiben. 2-6.

Beard, C. Clegg, S. & Smith, K. (2007). Acknowledging the affective in higher Education. British Educational
Research Journal. 33 (2): 235-252. [Link]

Daly, J.A. (1978). Writing apprehension and writing competency. The Journal of Educational Research. 72 (1):
10-14.
Ehlers, U & Schneckenberg, D. (eds.). (2010). Changing cultures in higher education. Moving ahead to future
Learning. London: Springer. [Link]
Ensor, P. (2004). Contesting discourses in higher education curriculum restructuring in South Africa. Higher
Education. 48(3): 339-359. [Link] Fairclough, N. (1992).
Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity.
Fernsten, L.A. & Reda, M. (2011). Helping students meet the challenges of academic writing. Teaching in
Higher Education, 16(2): 171-182. [Link]
Gambell, T.J. (1987). Education professors’ perceptions of and Attitudes toward student writing. Canadian
Journal Of Education, 12 (4): 495-510. [Link] .
Gizir, S. & Simsek, H. (2005). Communication in an academic context. Higher Education, 50 (2): 197-221.
[Link]
Ivanic, R. (1998). Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ivanic, R. (1999). A framework for thinking about writing, and learning to write. Paper presented Discourses
and Learning Conference, Lancaster University, July 1999.
Jacobs, C. (2007). Towards a critical understanding of the teaching of discipline-specific academic literacies:
making The tacit explicit. Journal of Education, 41: 59-81.
Jansen, J. (1998). Curriculum reform in South Africa: A critical analysis of outcomes-based education.
Cambridge Journal of Education. 28 (3): 321-331. [Link]
Jones, C. Turner, J. & Street, B. (1999). Students writing in the university: Cultural and epistemological
[Link]: Benjamins. .
Kelder, R. (1996). Rethinking literacy studies: From the past to the present. Proceedings of the 1996 World
Conference on Literacy.
Kinsler, K. (1990). Structured peer collaboration: Teaching essay revision to college students needing writing
Remediation. Cognition and Instruction. 7 (4): 303-321. [Link]
Kreber, C. (2003). The scholarship of teaching: A comparison of conceptions held by experts and reguler
academic Staff. Higher Education. 46 (1): 93-121. [Link]
Laker, G. (2006). Plenary presentation. Student retention, Progression & Social Inclusion Conference. 1
September 2006, Bath Spa University.
Lea, M.R. & Stierer, B. (eds). (2000). Student writing in higher education new contexts. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Lea, M.R & Street B.V. (1998). Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies
in Higher Education. 23 (2): 157-172. [Link]
Lea, M.R and Street B.V. (2006). The “academic literacies” model: Theory and applications. Theory into
Practice. 45 (4): 368-377. [Link]
Leibowitz, B. (2004). Becoming academically literate in South Africa: Lessons from student accounts for
Policymakers and dducators. Language and Education. 18 (1): 35-
52[Link]
Leibowitz, B., Goodman, K., Hannon, P. & Parkerson, A. (1997). The role of a writing centre in increasing
access to Academic discourse in a multilingual university. Teaching in Higher Education. 2 (1): 5-19.
[Link]
Lillis, T. (2001). Student writing access, regulation, desire. London: Routledge.
Lillis, T. (2003). Student writing as academic literacies: Drawing on Bakhtin to move from critique to design.
Language and Education. 17(3): 192-207. [Link]
Luke, A. (1991). Literacies as social practices. English Education. 23 (3): 131-147