Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 25, Issue 2, 2002

This paper outlines some of the recent concerns regarding a perceived decline in literacy standards in Australia, with reference to changing literacy abilities and standards in tertiary education. It presents a summary and critique of the current discussions on changes in literacy expectations and contemporary notions of literacy. It concludes with a summary of three important ‘agents of change’: economic rationalism, multiculturalism and computerisation.

In at least one fundamental respect, our universities are failing to clarify what they expect of students and what students and other stakeholders can expect of them. This failure concerns communication skills. The present paper identifies particular problems of academic literacy and proposes a coordinated institutional approach to their solution. Standards of oral and written communication among those who enter universities are often deplored by academics. Standards of oral and written communication among those who graduate are often deplored by employers. What evidence do we have about actual competencies at various levels of the higher education system? What are the practical implications for curriculum, pedagogy and assessment? How significant are cross-cultural aspects of literacy in academic settings? How distinctive are the literacy demands of different fields of study? Such questions must be explored if universities are serious about devising an appropriate framework of institutional policies to support improved literacy practices. This paper draws in part on a recently completed multi-university research project funded by the Australian Research Council on "Framing Student Literacy". Its theoretical background includes concepts of framing, particularly as developed by Tannen (1993) and MacLachlan and Reid (1994).

In this article we explore the consequences of the social literacies model of understanding students’ academic literacy practices at a South African University. We highlight some of the paradoxes of this model in South Africa in terms of the particular demands of dominant literacy practices and past discriminatory policies which denied access to such practices and which created alternative practices. We include some observations we have made about including alternative literacies in assessment practices in tertiary classrooms.

Work in contrastive rhetoric has often sought to examine the impact of culturally-based writing conventions on text production and has outlined cultural differences in texts in different languages. At the same time, the study of specialised languages has often claimed a degree of uniformity in text construction both at the level of culture and at the level of the discipline. It appears however that approaches which consider just culture or just discipline miss part of the picture. This paper argues that considerations of discipline and culture are complex and interrelated and that this complexity and interrelationship can be seen at several different levels in specialised academic texts.

Australian university students are characterised in some quarters, and by employer groups especially, as lacking a high facility with literacy skills. But what literacy skills do students actually need for tertiary study in Australia today? What expectations do students and teachers have about learning the particular literacy skills needed to acquire, evaluate and convey information in their discipline? And to what extent are traditional notions of the culture of learning in Australian universities as ‘critically active’ reflected in practice? This paper compares course requirements and student reading practices in a selection of units in Business, Engineering, Health Science and Social Science and the findings challenge prevailing ideas of what constitutes ‘tertiary literacy’ in Australian universities.

One of the challenges for English language medium universities today is their increasingly globalised student population, as students from around the globe join the members of existing resident ethnic and linguistic groups who have been accessing tertiary education in increasing numbers. In this context it is of growing importance for university policy makers and program developers to be able to identify and assist students who may be experiencing educational disadvantage associated with language and/or cultural factors. In identifying such students and reporting on their educational outcomes a range of terms are used. In the Australian context the term NESB (Non English Speaking Background) has had wide currency. In North America and the UK terms such students have been referred to more commonly as ethnic minority or ESL/EFL students. These broad categorisations are characterised by either partial or indirect focus on the underlying factors that affect students’ success.

In this paper we will argue that such students’ academic needs and potential difficulties are best understood by focusing on particular parameters of two key dimensions of their life experience: English language acquisition history and cultural experience. Using some contrasting case studies from among the current student population at one university in Australia, we will illustrate how these dimensions enable us to conceptualise the broad range of experiences of university of these NESB students. We will demonstrate that designing support which effectively targets disadvantage of very different kinds entails a more sophisticated analysis of the sources of student difficulty than categorisations based only on years of schooling or length of residence in the country concerned.