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- Title
The Marriage of Academic and Critical Literacy in Equipping the Namibian ESL Tertiary Student.
- Authors
Smit, Talita C.
- Abstract
From a post-modern perspective one cannot but wonder with Hasan (1996:377) whether the word literacy has not become semantically saturated in the long history of education. It seems that literacy has not only meant different things to different generations but also different things to different people in the same generation. It actually appears as if the word literacy has been honed in such a way that it becomes understandable and interpretable by the larger community of educators. It remains, however, dangerous to widen the scope of meaning to an extent where the word develops such blurred edges that literacy becomes something that can be owned like any other commodity. It appears, furthermore, that even at tertiary institutions, academic literacy programmes are not informed by current research on literacy, but are being diluted into the task-oriented development of only discrete language skills, and thus remain one-dimensional. Hardly any attention is devoted to the concurrent development of critical literacy and students' critical thinking abilities. The findings of a research study conducted with first year tertiary students indicated the positive effects of an intervention programme within the ambit of an existing EAP course. This programme aimed at enhancing the critical thinking abilities of students. The findings of the study and conclusions drawn will be presented in this article.
- Subjects
NAMIBIA; ENGLISH as a foreign language; POSTSECONDARY education; NAMIBIAN students; LITERACY; CRITICAL thinking
- Publication
NAWA Journal of Language & Communication, 2010, Vol 4/5, Issue 2/1, p16
- ISSN
1993-3835
- Publication type
Article