Masters Degrees (Curriculum Studies)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (Curriculum Studies) by Subject "Academic writing"

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    Reading and writing across the Curriculum: The transfer of literacy practices across subject specific curricula in Grade 8
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-12) Hugo, Carol; Van der Walt, Christa; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Curriculum Studies
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Developing cognitive academic language proficiency is often seen as something that happens in a particular subject. This means that academic language proficiency is assumed to develop in each isolated curriculum, without investigating the possibilities for cross-curricular support. From the perspective of language teaching, the transfer of language proficiency to other subjects is normally just assumed to happen. This study seeks to investigate whether language teaching can support other text-rich subjects, specifically History and Life Orientation (LO) in terms of developing their academic literacies, especially within the framework of the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) curriculum. The purpose of this study is to explore the kind of academic literacy practices that language educators may be able to develop to assist learners in becoming efficient readers and writers of academic texts across subjects. Grade 8 English home language, History and Life Orientation teachers’ experiences of reading and writing across the curriculum are explored to determine if language teaching can support the other subjects in terms of informing their academic literacies. These two subjects are chosen because they are text-rich and require extensive academic literacy development to be successful. The methodological approach for this study is based on a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire administered to the relevant Grade 8 teachers, to measure the perceived affordances for cross-curricular teaching. Qualitative data were collected by analysing the relevant CAPS documents. Considering the diverse linguistic landscape in South Africa, the study finds that most of the teachers did not provide the necessary reinforcements to cater for the linguistic needs of the learners who are not EHL learners. Only 14% of the teachers indicated that they had support programmes in place. Thus, learners are faced with a linguistic challenge that may negatively impact their academic performance. If teachers are to be made aware of the affordances of cross-curricular teaching, ordinary day-to-day teaching can be strengthened if cross-curricular teaching is used.