Academic Literacy and the Languages of Change

(Paperback, NIPPOD)

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Description

This book is an analysis of student literacy in an academic setting, and how this has changed due to political, economic and social factors. The contributors, who are all engaged in academic literacy work at a South African university, use the theoretical tradition of New Literacy Studies as developed by theorists such as James Gee, Brian Street and Gnnther Kress, and apply this to a case study of one university in the changing context of South Africa.

Academic Literacy and the Languages of Change will be of interest to postgraduates and academics researching sociolinguistics, or language and education.

Reviews

This book is a stimulating collection of research-based papers that focus on academic literacy work in a particular settinga South African university ten years after the democratic elections of 1994. The contributors identify and analyse issues emerging from their teaching and integral to students' creation and recreation of texts in the real world' setting of the University of Cape Town. Together the papers form a carefully worked tapestry in which place' and space', `boundaries' and `boundary crossing' are threads that signify both change and continuities in the history and politics shaping the evolving identities of students, teachers and the institution...In the issues it raises and the questions it can provoke this is a book of potential value to every teacher and administrator in higher education...' ~ Mary Scott, English Academy Review, 2007 -- Mary Scott
"[C]hapters offer future directions for both research and pedagogy...readers would be foolish to ignore the relevance of this book to fundamental questions about the function and goals of higher education globally" Theresa Lillis, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2007 -- Theresa Lillis, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2007 * Journal of Sociolinguistics *

Author Bio

Lucia Thesen is Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town. Ermien van Pletzen is Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town, and a Mandela Fellow at the W. E. B. du Bois Institute, Harvard University.