Effectiveness of academic writing activities and instruction in an academic literacy writing course at the University of Botswana

The purpose of this paper is to report on the University of Botswana undergraduate students’ and lecturers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of academic writing activities and instruction given in Communication and Academic Literacy Skills (COM112) academic writing module. Students (n= 46) and lecturers (n=2) who have taught the course were probed through a questionnaire adapted from (Krause, 2001) on their instruction and assessment of the course. Fifteen (n= 12) Students were also interviewed in a focus group. The data obtained indicated that students and lecturers held different perceptions about the effectiveness of the academic writing activities and instruction. These results have implications for classroom pedagogy in that lecturers need to consider the perceptions and needs of students (Nunan, 1989) if they are to fully adopt a learner centred approach to learning and teaching that is suggested by the University of Botswana (UB) Learning and teaching policy (2008)

Reading competency of first-year undergraduate students at University of Botswana: A case study

The ability to read and interpret textbooks and other assigned material is a critical component of success at university level. Therefore, the aims of this study are twofold: to evaluate the reading levels of first-year students when they first enter the university to determine how adequately prepared they are for university reading. It is also to find out if there will be any significant improvement after going through the academic literacy course offered to first-year students. The participants were 51 first-year undergraduate humanities students enrolled in the Communication and Academic Literacy course at the University of Botswana. The data were collected through a reading test adopted from Zulu which was administered at the beginning of the first semester. The same test was administered at the end of the semester after the students had gone through the academic literacy course to see if there was any difference in performance. The findings of this study indicate that there is a mixed and wide variation of students reading competency levels when students first enter the university and that a significant number of first-year entrants are inadequately prepared for university reading