Academic writing and the art of the possible
Over the last thirty years the demographic profile of Australian universities has changed significantly to include increasing numbers not only of international students, but also of local students whose first language is other than English, mature age 'second chance' students, VET artic...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik, FSSK, UKM
2004
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3115/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3115/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3115/1/1.pdf |
| Summary: | Over the last thirty years the demographic profile of Australian universities has changed
significantly to include increasing numbers not only of international students, but also of local
students whose first language is other than English, mature age 'second chance' students, VET
articulants, and students from migrant, indigenous, rural, or lower socio-economic backgrounds.
Such a change has coincided with an institutional shift towards a corporatised and vocationalised
higher education environment. This paper addresses the challenge of supporting the learning
needs, particularly the literacy learning needs, of the new demographic within a changed
environment. It addresses three concerns: firstly, that traditional approaches to literacy support
are inadequate and inappropriate to the needs of non-traditional students; secondly, that a
vocationalised curriculum does not address basic literacy; and, thirdly, that corporatisated higher
education privileges economy, efficiency, and standardisation over contingent learning support
needs. The paper considers how these concerns might be negotiated by offering the case of a
literacy support program that engages with a vocational/corporate discourse to create new
possibilities for meeting students' literacy support needs. |
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