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Academic literacy: Five new tests [Introduction]
Abstract
This is a workbook of practice tests of academic and quantitative literacy (AQL) for prospective university students. The workbook comes with answers at the end. This book replaces "Academic literacy: Test your competence" (2014). The front matter and introduction, providing a definition of academic literacy and how tests of academic literacy are constructed, are available here (not the complete book).
... To measure this ability, a theme-based test of academic literacy was used (taken from Weideman, 2018), that assesses as comprehensively as possible the components of academic literacy referred to in the previous section, and is made up of several of the subtests (sections) that measure them, which have been selected from those mentioned in the second column of Table 1: ...
... These numbers provide empirical grounds for the language teacher (in this case, where the instruction is aimed at the development of academic literacy) to emphasize those tasks that enable learners to practice sequencing of information, cohesive ties, and seeing relations between different parts of a text, either by designing appropriate tasks, or using ones from textbooks (cf. Weideman, 2018;2007). In short: diagnostic information supports instructional design, and helps the teacher to identify what should be emphasized in subsequent language teaching. ...
There is currently a great deal of interest in language teachers' competence in assessing language ability. Their competence in this regard, or lack of it, has much to do with their initial training and professional biases. Taking as example the teaching and learning of one specific kind of language, academic discourse, this paper discusses a number of assessment techniques that language teachers could apply to language teaching at school, or in other contexts of language tuition. Its basis is four basic principles of language assessment: reliability, validity, interpretability of results, and efficiency. These four principles are important to all assessments designed by language teachers. Some assessment techniques that have not yet widely been used to their full potential by teachers are described when different formats of language assessment are discussed. In particular, examples of effective and efficient formats of assessment will be given by referring to an analysis of a test of academic literacy administered to senior secondary school students in their pre-university year. Those examples have clear applications in other language learning settings. The paper concludes with a challenge to teachers: to experiment with new assessment designs, and to learn how to interpret the results of assessment in order to plan language instruction more effectively.
... For this reason, it is necessary to provide students with the skills required to understand academic articles by increasing their reading adaptability, helping them think critically, and understanding academic texts. (Hoskins et al., 2007;Round & Campbell, 2013;Weideman, 2018). This situation is also valid for the field of teaching Turkish as a foreign language. ...
Academic literacy covers reading, understanding, and evaluating academic studies that form the basis of science. It is one of the essential qualifications of the 21st century. In the education and training process, teachers are expected to have this skill in particular because teachers with academic qualifications integrate academic literacy skills with their professions according to the necessities of the time to improve themselves and present this to the learners during the teaching process. In this context, this study aims to determine Turkish instructors’ academic competence levels and examine them according to different variables. In the research using the survey model, «The Academic Literacy Scale» prepared by Demir and Deniz (2020) was used as a data collection tool. This scale, which consists of three factors: academic disposition, research process, and information use, consists of 28 items in total. The study determined that academic literacy skills were at a “high” level when the average score of the Turkish instructors from the overall scale was taken into account. When the academic literacy skills of Turkish instructors were examined in terms of various variables, no significant difference was found with the gender variable in the scale. Another divergence was found between the educational status variable and all the sub-dimensions of the scale, like research process, information use, and academic tendency. In addition, the graduated department variable differs with the research process and information use dimensions of the scale. There is also a significant difference between the variable of receiving education to increase academic literacy skills and the research process sub-dimension of the scale. Last but not least, a considerable distinction was discovered between all scale sub-dimensions and the overall scale in relation to the status of having knowledge of scientific research methodologies and having published academic work.
... Lastly, writing improves academic literacy and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) of students who are first language English and English additional language (EAL) speakers (Dinitz & Harrington, 2014). Academic literacy is the ability to handle the demands of academic language at a tertiary level (Weideman, 2018) and CALP refers to students' ability to understand and express, in both oral and written forms, concepts and ideas that are relevant to academic success (Cummins, 2008). English additional language students face additional difficulties and stress in academic writing largely because of a lag in their level of language proficiency (Al Fadda, 2012;Dinitz & Harrington, 2014). ...
Background:
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the subsequent lockdown altered traditional clinical training for speech language pathology students, thus forcing training institutions to implement innovative and responsive clinical training strategies in the midst of the pandemic. As such, a writing-intense programme was piloted in an online clinical training programme with second-year speech language pathology students.
Objectives:
This study explored speech language pathology students' experiences with a writing programme used during an online clinical training programme implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Method:
The study used a qualitative survey design. Purposive convenient sampling was used to recruit 29 second-year speech language pathology students. Online student reflections guided by 10 open-ended questions were used to elicit responses from students. Data were analysed using deductive thematic analysis.
Results:
Findings revealed that the written component of the programme facilitated the acquisition of clinical knowledge and improved clinical processes of writing among students. Feedback that students received on their written tasks improved learning. The clinical component of the course enabled students to learn in a less stressful environment and helped them gain confidence in their knowledge and clinical skills. Connectivity challenges and the lack of motivation from some students negatively impacted the programme.
Conclusion:
Using a writing programme to clinically train students can have positive effects in applying theory to clinical application because it affords students time to consolidate and process theory with practice as the jump from first year to second year can be cognitively taxing. A writing-intense programme can also improve students' writing skills.
... The findings of this study confirm the findings of similar studies (e. g., Chanock 2000) and highlight the importance of research on academic literacy at the tertiary level of higher education. Academic literacy demands cognitive as well as analytical processing, which are essential features of one's academic progress (Weideman 2018). Genre analysis can be the main source for raising students' academic literacy regarding the underlying rules of communication. ...
In a challenging criticism-generating oral defense of a doctoral program, examiners evaluate the PhD dissertation so as to confirm its scholarly merit. The main purpose of this ethnographic study was identifying the examiners’ expectations of the viva which was achieved by using a content analytic approach for analyzing the disputation section of two applied linguistics doctoral defense sessions from two accredited Iranian universities in 2019. Despite the similar shortcomings in terms of innovation, development, sampling and treatment, raised by the examiners, one of the candidates passed with distinction while the other was suggested re-submission. This finding suggests that the outcome of a viva, in an EFL context, not only depends on adherence to the conventions of doctoral research but is also influenced by the strictness of the examiners, the candidates’ language proficiency, and negotiation skills in this confrontational communicative event. Findings provide evidence for factors, namely the examiners’ attributes, the doctoral candidate’s attributes, and the dissertation attributes that determine the success or failure of PhD candidates in displaying their claims of scholarship during their defense sessions.
... Academic literacy denotes the ability to use language that meets the demands of tertiary education; that is, to gather information from various sources, process and interpret that information by analysing it, and produce new information. This new information is generally required to be communicated in writing, expressing one's understanding in a voice which, though formed in collaboration with other's views and opinions, is distinctly one's own (Weideman, 2018). In New Zealand tertiary education, TLAs are instrumental in providing learning support to encourage development of students' academic literacy and essential study skills. ...
Core competencies for the practice of tertiary learning advising in New Zealand
Theoretical and empirical literature is often assigned in undergraduate and graduate management education. Even though the ability to read, interpret, and evaluate scholarly articles is an important skill for students and practitioners, comprehending and applying the information contained in scholarly articles can be challenging for a variety of reasons. To help undergraduate and graduate students develop greater academic literacy, we developed an exercise where students work first independently and then collaboratively to extract information from a journal article and translate findings into understandable, evidence-based practice that can be applied in organizations. We provide resources for instructors who wish to use this method in face-to-face or online classes.
This is a workbook of practice tests of academic and quantitative literacy (AQL) for prospective university students. The workbook comes with answers at the end. This book replaces "Academic literacy: Test your competence" (2014). The front matter and introduction, providing a definition of academic literacy and how tests of academic literacy are constructed, are available here (not the complete book).