The Purloined Essay: The Use of Student Writing to Assess Academic Literacy

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The Purloined Essay The Use of Student Writing
to Assess Academic Literacy

• Dr Mary McKeever
• Academic Skills Unit
• University of Portsmouth

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Portsmouth University

• A new university, area of high population
  density, poor educational attainment
• Model of assessing academic literacy
• 3 mature students
• One foundation degree student, one social work
  diploma student and one degree student
• Telling cases
• Academic skills, literacy and adult basic
  education in South Africa and in England

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Student writing assessing academic literacy

• ASK university wide, stand alone unit part of
  student services
• Large selection of paper-based and on line
  materials
• Individual and small group sessions
• Assessment Model developed in ASK
• Dialogue between student and tutor

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Academic literacy

• Lea, Street, Stierer, Creme (1998) Accept
  academic literacy as a social practice, accept
  socialization into disciplinary specific
  epistemologies, but to revisit skills approach
  with surface features of language, grammar,
  spelling and punctuation
• Ivanic (1998) effect of separation of time and
  space on student and lecturer
• Writing and identity the exclusion of the
  personal with particular reference to mature
  students

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Assessing academic literacy needs

• Lillis (2001) institutional practice of mystery
  
• Need for explicit teaching of essayist literacy
  and discipline-specific genres
• Dialogue talkback vs. feedback
• Expert/novice teaching, scaffolding, negotiation
  and discussion

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The person and the text

• Linking text to person - breaking down
  separation
• Dialogue about personal educational and literacy
  history
• Familiarity with academic writing genres and
  conventions
• Interpretation and translation

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Case Study 1 Text, Genre and Knowledge

• Laboratory Report Writing
• Reflective Report Writing
• Objective/Personal
• What to include/exclude
• What is taken for granted/considered common
  knowledge in a scientific report

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Shelley final product vs. relation between
writing and learning

• Daughter writes all her assignments
• History of difficulty reading and writing
• Left school with no qualifications
• Dyslexia
• Illiterate
• The purloined letter, mystery cuts both ways

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Matthew

• Marked discrepancy between thinking and writing
• Speech impediment, slow reader, sub vocalization
• Wife edits/helps with writing, use of spell and
  grammar checks
• Long term effects of partial disability on
  education
• Use of written work for assessment academic
  potential vs. performance

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Matthew effects

• Merton (1968) The Matthew Effect in Science
• For unto everyone who hath, shall be given, and
  he shall have abundance but from him that hath
  not shall be taken away even that which he
  hath(Matthew XXV29)
• Disability or setback in early years of schooling
  - profound long term effects - poor literacy
  skills - greatly increased chance of educational
  failure
• Shelley, Matthew early disability, poor
  literacy, educational failure. Mandla taking
  away what he has

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Mandla

• Essay
• Examination
• Failure
• Lack of apprenticeship in writing, no model
  essays, examples of completed examination scripts
• Deep learning and cultural bias

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Essayist Literacy

• I want to appear in my simple, natural and
  everyday dress, without strain or artifice for
  it is myself that I portray (Montaigne 1575)
• Universal vs. specific intellectual
• (One writes) as a universal consciousness, a
  free subject counterpoised to those
  intellectuals who are merely competent instances
  in the service of state or capital technicians,
  magistrates, teachers (Foucault 1984)

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Mysterious Art of Essay Writing

• Tell us what you think but without using I
• Show independent thinking but clearly reference
  all sources and back up everything you say
• I dont know anything about the subject other
  than what Ive read in books so how on earth
  could I write anything which was not someone
  elses idea? (Lea and Street 1998, p. 167)

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Assumptions

• Students have written and know how to write
  essays when they arrive at university
• No explicit teaching essays, critical reviews,
  reports, reflective reports
• Lecturers do not write essays
• Hybrid forms confusion over rhetorical purpose
  especially in occupational /professional training
  
• Students attend lectures, go to seminars but no
  apprenticeship in writing

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Responding to student writing

• Text is not final always in formation
• Interpretation can only be tentative
• Communicative act attempt by students to pick up
  cues and to answer a question in a way that
  they want
• Impossibility of adequate response through
  anonymous marking de-personalised automated
  reply response
• Need for assessment of text and person writing
  it, with unique personal and educational history
  

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Areas that need urgent attention

• How will universities respond to Matthew effect
  adults?
• How and when can/do they learn to write at
  university?
• How can this be best done?
• Is it possible to learn basic writing skills
  while learning to write as a chemist or
  sociologist?

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Academic Literacy Theory Revisited

• Is the academic literacies model based on an
  assumption of basic literacy?
• Struggling with genres, with epistemologies, with
  discipline specific discourses and basic reading
  and writing
• How can you learn/express what you know if you
  have problems with basic reading and writing?
• At what stage of literacy learning can grammar be
  thought of as a surface feature?