Academic Writing at the University in Mozambique
Submitted by:
Conceição Siopa
Abstract:
This presentation intends to show preliminary results of a project on Academic Writing, developed at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique. Starting in 2016, its primary objective was to reformulate Portuguese language programs and teaching methods in Teaching Portuguese, Linguistics, Literature and Translation graduations at the university. The teachers involved in the teaching of these Portuguese language subjects were all involved in this project, in a line of action research in order to study and select teaching materials and methodologies able to lead students to build knowledge and to develop their competence of writing academic texts. They also intend to collect information that would obtain data on how this teaching and learning process took place and to what extent it was successful. Thus, after two years of this project implementation, this presentation will show, on one hand, how teachers-researchers have experienced this process, and even how it contributed to the development of their current research. On the other hand, we will show the effects of this didactic action, through the testimony of teachers-supervisors of final papers students have to do to culminate their studies, in order to understand if these teachers indicate differences and / or changes in the way students write and in which aspects and dimensions of writing is visible such a change. Methodologically, we will carry out a content analysis of the teachers' written statements about the didactic experience and its effect in its current research. We will also analyze the responses given to a questionnaire survey applied to the teachers who were not involved in the experience but are now (two years later) responsible for guiding these students through their final written work. It is expected that the conclusions will allow the evaluation of the impact that academic writing projects based on genre pedagogy have on the academic community, both in the academic development of students involved and in the process of teacher training. We will also try to unveil dimensions that could allow the discovery of a work area and a teaching field for the Production of Written Texts in Higher Education.
References
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Hyland, K. (2007). Genre pedagogy: Language, literacy and L2 writing instruction. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(3), 148–164.
Pereira, L. Á., & Cardoso, I. (2013). A Sequência de ensino como dispositivo didático para a aprendizagem da escrita num contexto de formação de professores. In Reflexão sobre a escrita: O ensino de diferentes géneros de textos (pp. 33–65). Aveiro: UA Editora.
Siopa, C., & Pereira, L. Á. (2017). Escrever português como segunda língua: perceções e experiências de aprendizagem de estudantes universitários. Indagatio Didactica, 9(4), 351–366.