Browsing by Author "Pfeiffer, Verbra Frances"

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    Ethno-linguistically diverse South African students' writing
    (Stellenbosch University, 2019) Pfeiffer, Verbra Frances; Van Der Walt, Christa
    One of the major challenges for designers of academic literacy programmes is to accommodate culturally and linguistically diverse student groups. This longitudinal study was conducted with pre-service teachers at Stellenbosch University to determine their understanding of the importance of good writing and ways in which they can use translanguaging to assist them in their writing. This study has also been viewed against the backdrop of multilingualism in South Africa, with the notion of socio-cognitive processes and its influence on the students’ ability to write. The aim of this study was to explore what students regard as good writing and to identify the kinds of strategies that multilingual students use when they write extended texts. When pondering on the holistic view of the findings, this study endorses the use of home languages in the educational practice of academic writing, but with particular caveats. The findings reveal that academic writing entails more than mere grammatical correctness on a surface level, but also involves taking cognisance of the second language learners’ background and way of implementing mental structures derived from their home language.
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    Exploration of self-expression to improve L2 writing skills
    (Stellenbosch University, 2016) Pfeiffer, Verbra Frances; Sivasubramaniam, Sivakumar
    This article focuses on and explores the issue of teaching students to write with some level of fluency. In light of this, it investigates the use of expressive writing which can develop as the mainstay approach to help students improve their academic writing skills. Teaching students to write with confidence is always a daunting undertaking for any teacher, even more so when they are at a tertiary level. This study was conducted over a semester where a qualitative methodology was used to study autobiographical writing, journal entries and personal-response writing. Our results show that students’ writing improved over a continuum of writing tasks of an evolutionary/daily living nature, through which we explored their self-expression. The study is predicated on the dynamics and fall-outs of L2 writing at a tertiary setting in Cape Town. The data provided by the fourteen participants featured in our study were meant to identify the kinds of strategies that could assist L2 students with English Language writing tasks. By the same token, the study was meant to offer useful insights into the educational practice and prevalence of writing for self-expression.