Learning to Learn: the Next Step. Teaching Adults How to Read and Write Academic Discourse

DOCUMENT RESUME ED 476 315 CE 084 178 AUTHOR McCormack, Robin TITLE Learning To Learn: The Next Step. Teaching Adults How To Read and Write Academic Discourse. INSTITUTION Victoria Univ. of Tech., Melbourne (Australia). SPONS AGENCY Adult, Community, and Further Education Board, Melbourne (Australia). ISBN ISBN-1-876768-49-5 PUB DATE 2002-00-00 NOTE 442p.; For a related document, see CE 084 177. AVAILABLE FROM Language Australia, GPO Box 372F, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia ($60 Australian in a package with CE 084 177). Fax: 613 9612 2601; Web site: http://languageaustralia.com.au/. PUB TYPE Guides Classroom Teacher (052) EDRS PRICE EDRS Price MF01/PC18 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Academic Discourse; Adult Education; Adult Students; Developed Nations; *Discourse Modes; Expository Writing; Foreign Countries; Information Skills; *Instruction; *Learning Strategies; Persuasive Discourse; Reading Skills; Scholarly Communication; Scholarship; Student Writing Models; Teaching Guides; *Teaching Methods; Writing (Composition); Writing Skills IDENTIFIERS *Australia ABSTRACT This text tries to explain what students need to learn to read and write in tertiary academic settings in Australia and to suggest some ways of teaching them. An introduction maps out what this textcontains and summarizes the main features of the approach used to teach adults how to read and write academic discourse. The next section describes the 6 themes containing the 21 units of the return to study course grouped under these themes. These themes and units are written to help an imaginary teacher teach the course. Each theme is related to the one before it and builds on it. At the beginning of each theme, an introduction explains why the issues in the theme are focused on. Within each theme, a unit may contain outline, main ideas, activity guide, followup activities,' student handouts, teacher reflections, and overhead transparencies. The themes (and number of units) are as follows: reading academic discourse: discerning patternsin text (4 units); expository writing: representing a domain of reality (3); learning about universities (3); argumentative writing: participating in a community of inquiry (6); stylistics: shaping your meanings (3); and so what: reflections on academic discourse. A 64-item bibliography is appended.(YLB) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. earning toearn:the next step Teaching adults how to read and write academic discourse U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION , CENTER (ERIC) jgrhis document has been reproduced as eceived from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Robin McCormack Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS EEN GRANTED BY "d-' TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1 BESTCOPYAVAILABLE 2 Learning to Learn: the next step Teaching adults how to read and write academic discourse Robin McCormack ISBN: I 876768 49 5 Layout by Clint Smith Cover design by Gabrielle Markus First published in 2002. © Copyright Victoria University Published by Language Australia for Victoria University This work is copyright.Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be addressed to: Language Australia Ltd. The National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia GPO Box 372F Melbourne VIC 3001 The publication of this book was supported by a grant from Adult Community and Further Education (ACFE); the views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Victoria University,ACFE or Language Australia Ltd. 3 Learning to Learn Learning to Learn: the next step Teaching adults how to read and write academic discourse Contents Foreword Editors' preface iii Introduction What's in this publication? 3 Overview of the program 4 Map of this publication 5 Background to this publication 7 Themes in academic discourse: course units 19 Description of the themes and units 21 Summarya look-back across the course 26 Theme I Reading academic discourse 27 Theme 2 Expository writing 91 Theme 3 Learning about universities 185 Theme 4Argumentative writing 209 Theme 5 Stylistics 349 Theme 6 So what: reflections on academic discourse 403 Bibliography 443 Key ideas underpinning the course (Published as separate booklet) the next step Foreword This text has been many years in the making. Historically Learning to Learn: the next stepteaching adults how to read and write academic discourse is a sequel to Learning to Learn: helping adults understand the culture, context and conventions of knowledgea guide for teachers (1991). Both arose from an effort to respond to requests for information on a Return to Study course that Geri Pancini and I taught for many years at Footscray College of TAFE. In the early years we would simply invite people to 'sit in' the course and learn by experience. Many did. Later, we ran workshops where we presented our materials and strategies to other 'second chance' educators. Finally, after being involved in a nationwide professional development exercise, it became clear we would have to shift our medium of communication from face-to-face oral to written language. However, the radical limitations of written language quickly manifested themselves: it took the whole of Learning to Learn: helping adults understand the culture, context and conventions of knowledge a guide for teachers (1991) just to describe the first five sessions of a 25- plus session course; and the fluency, dialogue, body language, performance and multi-modality of speech was largely lost to the deadened hand of the spiritless letter of literacy. Learning to Learn: the next stepteaching adults how to read and write academic discourse was intended somehow to describe the other 20 sessions of the courseclearly a quixotic task. It was originally drafted by myself in 1994. However, for both personal and ideological reasons I lost confidence that there was a real readership for such a text: first, the VET agenda of defining adult capacities in relation to national industries supposedly capturable in lists of competencies was starting to kick in; and, secondly, I was becoming personally paralysed by a sense that what we were doing was assimilationist and did not fully acknowledge the prior culture and lifeworlds of our second chance students. Without this sense of a readership I lost confidence in the text and its relevance. In order to find a place, a context, a 'zone of contact', where I could work my way through these issues ideologically and pedagogically, I took up a position at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education in the Northern Territory. Here, my work has taken a more emphatic turn back to ancient rhetoric as a political culture and pedagogic practice intended to constitute communities by articulating a common ground that can at once acknowledge difference whilst finding a point of understanding and reconciliation. Peter Moraitis continued to believe that the drafted text had a relevance and potential readership, so he and Patsy Lisle assumed responsibility for it and redirected it towards an audience defined by the Diploma of Liberal Arts course developed at VUT but delivered in a number of Victorian universities, TAFE institutes and community providers. My wish for this text is that it does provide you, as an educator, with some the next step 5 activities, some strategies, some ways of approaching academic discourse and assisting your students to enter into the worlds of academic discourse. But I also hope that it provokes you into taking upa more reflective stance on academic discourse, its meanings, its uses and effects in a post-modern, post-colonial worldand communicating the need for reflexivity to your students. This text is a product from the community of inquiry and practice that circulated around the Language Development Centre, Footscray College of TAFE over more than a decade. It is this practical work that provided that context and meanings that have been so inadequately captured in this text. Robin McCormack December 2001 6 ii Learning to Learn Editors' Preface During the 1980s and early 1990s Rob McCormack and Geri Pancini, working at the (then) Footscray TAFE College, developed a return to study course for mature age adults in Melbourne's western suburbs. An aim of the course was to prepare adults for successful tertiary study in the humanities and social sciences. Rob and Geri had both worked in universities during the influx of mature aged adults into universities in the 1970s. They were aware of the rich experience adult students brought to their studies as well as the difficulties they experienced in participating in the humanities disciplines. This book is based on the return to study course which they put together to meet this need. Describing the course as 'put together' may perhaps suggest that the work involved just photocopying some articles, inviting a few speakers, correcting bad grammar, and having some lively discussion about what uni might be like. However, developing this particular course involved very much more than that. Rob and Geri explored contemporary developments in a range of research fields, including the most recent work in sociolinguistics, literary theory, rhetoric, epistemology and learning theory. This research was disciplined by a number of very practical questions: What were the demands of an Arts degree that students needed to understand and learn to do? What stood in the way of students being able to do these things? What could teachers do to help students meet these demands? How could students link up their identities outside the course with who they needed to become in an Arts course? The Return to Study course that emerged was a practical working out of these questions.

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