Abstract:
Academic literacy interventions are
becoming increasingly important in a
country where the secondary education
system no longer adequately prepares
students for the literacy demands of
higher education. This article investigates
whether there was an improvement
in students’ academic literacy levels
between the onset and completion of
an academic literacy module at a South
African university. This is done by using
a combination of instruments selected
from a proposed evaluation design
for academic literacy interventions,
suggested by Fouché, Van Dyk and
Butler (2016). A pre-test / post-test
design is used, where, firstly, students’
results in a validated and reliable generic
academic literacy test are considered.
Secondly, students’ writing abilities are assessed by means of two instruments:
a rubric and quantitative measures.
Finally, students’ academic literacy marks are correlated to other variables,
and interpreted within the context of the
study, to give additional insight into the
impact of the academic literacy course.
Findings indicate that students showed
an improvement across a wide array of
academic literacy abilities, in particular
their ability to use source material in
their writing assignments, and their
usage of a wider range of academic
vocabulary. However, there were also
areas where students did not display any
improvement. Based on the experience
of implementing various evaluation
instruments, several recommendations
are made on how future researchers
could avoid pitfalls that were encountered
in this study.
