Abstract
Considering the vast array of academic literacy interventions that are presented both nationally and internationally, and the resources required to present these interventions, it is becoming increasingly important for those who are responsible for these interventions to provide evidence of their impact. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of instruments that are commonly used to assess impact, and to discuss guidelines regarding the use of these instruments, their strengths and their weaknesses. The instruments are divided into two broad categories, namely those that measure the observable improvement in students’ academic literacy abilities between the onset and the completion of an intervention, and those that measure the extent to which these abilities are necessary and applied in students’ content subjects. A conceptual evaluation design is then proposed that could be used in evaluating the impact of a range of academic literacy interventions. Avenues to explore in future include testing the design in the South African context.
Highlights
Due to a variety of reasons, the foremost of which is possibly inadequate secondary education, the implementation of academic literacy interventions in South African universities has become commonplace (Davies 2010: xi; Cliff 2014: 322; Sebolai 2014: 52)
The aim of the current article is to build on the literature surveyed in Fouché (2015), and to propose a conceptual evaluation design that could be used to assess the effectiveness of various academic literacy interventions based on that literature
This study proposes that the adapted version of the Questionnaire on Academic Literacy (Van Dyk 2014) that was suggested in the previous section be modified into a questionnaire that can be given to content-subject and academic literacy lecturers to determine which abilities they believe an academic literacy intervention should address in supporting students to achieve content-subject outcomes
Summary
Paragraph development (topic sentences, main ideas, supporting information) 5. Linking devices (structuring thought with discourse markers, pronouns etc.) 7. Referencing technique Use of source material 17. Integration of source data with text (synthesising)
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