Abstract

Globalisation processes have resulted in increasingly pluralistic societies, a phenomenon with ripple effects in contexts such as universities, which now provide access to heterogeneous student populations with diverse rituals, beliefs, cultures and languages. For this reason, deficit discourses that frame students as underprepared for the demands of tertiary studies are a global phenomenon (Boughey, 2003; Lillis, 2003; Lea & Street, 1998). Furthermore, the different identities, histories and dispositions (Bourdieu, 1990) of students result in hybrid linguistic repertoires, with some repertoires being more powerful than others (Blommaert, 2001; Blommaert, Collins &Slembrouck, 2005; Rampton, 2003). Therefore, having access to the preferred linguistic repertoire - in most cases standard English - is an asset, because this repertoire is more closely aligned than others to tertiary education practices and discourses. As a result, the scholarly community can be daunting for many first-year students whose linguistic identities are not always aligned to institutional values, practices and discourses; students can easily be indexed as under-achieving or incompetent.

Highlights

  • Globalisation processes have resulted in increasingly pluralistic societies, a phenomenon with ripple effects in contexts such as universities, which provide access to heterogeneous student populations with diverse rituals, beliefs, cultures and languages

  • While there are numerous factors that can affect access, redress and throughput in education, this study focuses on writing because studies over the past decade highlight the inability of many South African learners to succeed at universities

  • The goal of this study is to illuminate the writer identities constructed in the Further Education and Training (FET) Phase in relation to the national curriculum and exit question papers for English Additional Language (EAL)

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Summary

University of the Western Cape

Globalisation processes have resulted in increasingly pluralistic societies, a phenomenon with ripple effects in contexts such as universities, which provide access to heterogeneous student populations with diverse rituals, beliefs, cultures and languages. For this reason, deficit discourses that frame students as underprepared for the demands of tertiary studies are a global phenomenon (Boughey, 2003; Lillis, 2003; Lea & Street, 1998). It considers the implications of these elements for strengthening or impeding writer identities in the FET Phase: understanding these intersections enables insights into the mismatches between these writer identities and those required for success at university

THE COMPLICATION
VAN HEERDEN
COMPANY THAT I KEEP
ETHNOGRAPHIC FRAMING
DEMARCATING THE LOCATION

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