academic literacy essay

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Published: 15 March 2022

A review of academic literacy research development: from 2002 to 2019

Dongying Li ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6835-5129 1

Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education volume 7 , Article number: 5 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Academic literacy as an embodiment of higher-order language and thinking skills within the academic community bears huge significance for language socialization, resource distribution and even power disposition within the larger sociocultural context. However, although the notion of academic literacy has been initiated for more than twenty years, there still lacks a clear definition and operationalization of the construct. The study conducted a systematic review of academic literacy research based on 94 systematically selected research papers on academic literacy from 2002 to 2019 from multiple databases. These papers were then coded respectively in terms of their research methods, types (interventionistic or descriptive), settings and research focus. Findings demonstrate (1) the multidimensionality of academic literacy construct; (2) a growing number of mixed methods interventionistic studies in recent years; and (3) a gradual expansion of academic literacy research in ESL and EFL settings. These findings can inform the design and implementation of future academic literacy research and practices.

Introduction

Academic literacy as an embodiment of higher order thinking and learning not only serves as a prerequisite for knowledge production and communication within the disciplines but also bears huge significance for individual language and cognitive development (Flowerdew, 2013 ; Moje, 2015 ). Recent researches on academic literacy gradually moved from regarding literacy as discrete, transferrable skills to literacy as a social practice, closely associated with disciplinary epistemology and identity (Gee, 2015 ). The view of literacy learning as both a textual and contextual practice is largely driven by the changing educational goal under the development of twenty-first century knowledge economy, which requires learners to be active co-constructors of knowledge rather than passive recipients (Gebhard, 2004 ). Academic literacy development in this sense is considered as a powerful tool for knowledge generation, communication and transformation.

However, up-till-now, there still seems to lack a clear definition and operationalization of the academic literacy construct that can guide effective pedagogy (Wingate, 2018 ). This can possibly lead to a peril of regarding academic literacy as an umbrella term, with few specifications on the potential of the construct to afford actual teaching and learning practices. In this sense, a systematic review in terms of how the construct was defined, operationalized and approached in actual research settings can embody huge potential in bridging the gap between theory and practice.

Based on these concerns, the study conducts a critical review of academic literacy research over the past twenty years in terms of the construct of the academic literacy, their methods, approaches, settings and keywords. A mixed methods approach is adopted to combine qualitative coding with quantitative analysis to investigate diachronic changes. Results of the study can enrich the understandings of the construct of academic literacy and its relations to actual pedagogical practices while shedding light on future directions of research.

Literature review

Academic literacy as a set of literacy skills specialized for content learning is closely associated with individual higher order thinking and advanced language skill development (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008 ). Recent researches suggest that the development of the advanced literacy skills can only be achieved via students’ active engagement in authentic and purposeful disciplinary learning activities, imbued with meaning, value and emotions (Moje et al., 2008 ). Therefore, contrary to the ‘autonomous model’ of literacy development which views literacy as a set of discrete, transferrable reading and writing skills, academic literacy development is viewed as participation, socialization and transformation achieved via individual’s expanding involvement in authentic and meaningful disciplinary learning inquiries (Duff, 2010 ; Russell, 2009 ). Academic literacy development in this sense is viewed as a powerful mediation for individual socialization into the academic community, which is in turn closely related to issues of power disposition, resource distribution and social justice (Broom, 2004 ). In this sense, academic literacy development is by no means only a cognitive issue but situated social and cultural practices widely shaped by power, structure and ideology (Lillis & Scott, 2007 ; Wenger, 1998 ).

The view of literacy learning as a social practice is typically reflected in genre and the ‘academic literacies’ model. Genre, as a series of typified, recurring social actions serves as a powerful semiotic tool for individuals to act together meaningfully and purposefully (Fang & Coatoam, 2013 ). Academic literacy development in this sense is viewed as individual’s gradual appropriation of the shared cultural values and communicative repertoires within the disciplines. These routinized practices of knowing, doing and being not only serve to guarantee the hidden quality of disciplinary knowledge production but also entail a frame of action for academic community functioning (Fisher, 2019 ; Wenger, 1998 ). Therefore, academic literacy development empowers individual thinking and learning in pursuit of effective community practices.

Complementary to the genre approach, the ‘academic literacies’ model “views student writing and learning as issues at the level of epistemology and identities rather than skill or socialization” from the lens of critical literacy, power and ideology (Lea & Street, 1998 , p. 159). Drawing from ‘New Literacies’, the ‘academic literacies’ model approaches literacy development within the power of social discourse with the hope to open up possibilities for innovations and change (Lea & Street, 2006 ). Academic literacy development in this sense is regarded as a powerful tool for access, communication and identification within the academic community, and is therefore closely associated with issues of social justice and equality (Gee, 2015 ).

The notion of genre and ‘academic literacies’ share multiple resemblances with English for Academic Purposes (EAP), which according to Charles ( 2013 , p. 137) ‘is concerned with researching and teaching the English needed by those who use the language to perform academic tasks’. As can be seen, both approaches regard literacy learning as highly purposeful and contextual, driven by the practical need to ‘foregrounding the tacit nature of academic conventions’ (Lillis & Tuck, 2016 , p. 36). However, while EAP is more text-driven, ‘academic literacies’ are more practice-oriented (Lillis & Tuck, 2016 ). That is rather than focusing on the ‘normative’ descriptions of the academic discourse, the ‘academic literacies’ model lays more emphasis on learner agency, personal experiences and sociocultural diversity, regarded as a valuable source for individual learning and the transformation of community practices (Lillis & Tuck, 2016 ). This view of literacy learning as meaningful social participation and transformation is now gradually adopted in the approach of critical EAP (Charles, 2013 ).

In sum, all these approaches regard academic literacy development as multi-dimensional, encompassing both linguistic, cognitive and sociocultural practices (Cumming, 2013 ). However, up-till-now, there still seems to lack a clear definition and operationalization of the academic literacy construct that can guide concrete pedagogies. Short and Fitzsimmons ( 2007 , p. 2) provided a tentative definition of academic literacy from the following aspects:

Includes reading, writing, and oral discourse for school Varies from subject to subject Requires knowledge of multiple genres of text, purposes for text use, and text media Is influenced by students’ literacies in contexts outside of school Is influenced by students’ personal, social, and cultural experiences.

This definition has specified the main features of academic literacy as both a cognitive and sociocultural construct; however, more elaborations may be needed to further operationalize the construct in real educational and research settings. Drawing from this, Allison and Harklau ( 2010 ) and Fang ( 2012 ) specified three general approaches to academic literacy research, namely: the language, cognitive (disciplinary) and the sociocultural approach, which will be further elaborated in the following.

The language-based approach is mainly text-driven and lays special emphasis on the acquisition of language structures, skills and functions characteristic of content learning (Allison & Harklau, 2010 , p. 134; Uccelli et al., 2014 ), and highlights explicit instruction on academic language features and discourse structures (Hyland, 2008 ). This notion is widely influenced by Systemic Functional Linguistics which specifies the intricate connections between text and context, or linguistic choices and text meaning-making potential under specific communicative intentions and purposes (Halliday, 2000 ). This approach often highlights explicit consciousness-raising activities in text deconstruction as embodied in the genre pedagogy, facilitated by corpus-linguistic research tools to unveil structures and patterns of academic language use (Charles, 2013 ).

One typical example is data driven learning (DDL) or ‘any use of a language corpus by second or foreign language learners’ (Anthony, 2017 , p. 163). This approach encourages ‘inductive, self-directed’ language learning under the guidance of the teacher to examine and explore language use in real academic settings. These inquiry-based learning processes not only make language learning meaningful and purposeful but also help form more strategic and autonomous learners (Anthony, 2017 ).

In sum, the language approach intends to unveil the linguistic and rhetorical structure of academic discourse to make it accessible and available for reflection. However, academic literacy development entails more than the acquisition of academic language skills but also the use of academic language as tool for content learning and scientific reasoning (Bailey et al., 2007 ), which is closely connected to individual cognitive development, knowledge construction and communication within the disciplines (Fang, 2012 ).

Therefore, the cognitive or disciplinary-based approach views academic literacy development as higher order thinking and learning in academic socialization in pursuit of deep, contextualized meaning (Granville & Dison, 2005 ). This notion highlights the cognitive functions of academic literacy as deeply related to disciplinary epistemologies and identities, widely shaped by disciplinary-specific ways of knowing, doing and thinking (Moje, 2015 ). Just as mentioned by Shanahan ( 2012 , p. 70), ‘approaching a text with a particular point of view affects how individuals read and learn from texts’, academic literacy development is an integrated language and cognitive endeavor.

One typical example in this approach is the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) initiated by Chamot and O’Malley ( 1987 ), proposing the development of a curriculum that integrates mainstream content subject learning, academic language development and learning strategy instruction. This approach embeds language learning within an authentic, purposeful content learning environment, facilitated by strategy training. Another example is the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP model) developed by Echevarría et al. ( 2013 ). Sheltered instruction, according to Short et al. ( 2011 , p. 364) refers to ‘a subject class such as mathematics, science, or history taught through English wherein many or all of the students are second language learners’. This approach integrates language and content learning and highlights language learning for subject matter learning purposes (Allison & Harklau, 2010 ). To make it more specifically, the SIOP model promotes the use of instructional scaffolding to make content comprehensible while advancing students’ skills in a new language (Echevarría et al., 2013 , p. 18). Over the decade, this notion integrating language and cognitive development within the disciplines has gradually gained its prominence in bilingual and multilingual education (Goldenberg, 2010 ).

Complementary to the language and cognitive approach, the sociocultural approach contends literacy learning as a social issue, widely shaped by power, structure and ideology (Gee, 2015 ; Lea & Street, 2006 ). This approach highlights the role of learner agency and identity in transforming individual/community learning practices (Lillis & Scott, 2007 ). Academic literacy in this sense is viewed as a sociocultural construct imbued with meaning, value and emotions as a gateway for social access, power distribution and meaning reconstruction (Moje et al., 2008 ).

However, despite the various approaches to academic literacy teaching and learning, up-till-now, there still seems to be a paucity of research that can integrate these dimensions into effective intervention and research practices. Current researches on academic literacy development either take an interventionistic or descriptive approach. The former usually takes place within a concrete educational setting under the intention to uncover effective community teaching and learning practices (Engestrom, 1999 ). The later, on the contrary, often takes a more naturalistic or ethnographic approach with the hope to provide an in-depth account of individual/community learning practices (Lillis & Scott, 2007 ). These descriptions are often aligned to larger sociocultural contexts and the transformative role of learner agency in collective, object-oriented activities (Engeström, 1987 ; Wenger, 1998 ).

These different approaches to academic literacy development are influenced by the varying epistemological stances of the researcher and specific research purposes. However, all these approaches have pointed to a common conception of academic literacy as a multidimensional construct, widely shaped by the sociocultural and historical contexts. This complex and dynamic nature of literacy learning not only enables the constant innovation and expansion of academic literacy construct but also opens up the possibilities to challenge the preconceived notions of relevant research and pedagogical practices.

Based on these concerns, the study intends to conduct a critical review of the twenty years’ development of academic literacy research in terms of their definition of the academic literacy construct, research approaches, methodologies, settings and keywords with the hope to uncover possible developmental trends in interaction. Critical reflections are drawn from this systematic review to shed light on possible future research directions.

Through this review, we intended the address the following three research questions:

What is the construct of academic literacy in different approaches of academic literacy research?

What are the possible patterns of change in term of academic literacy research methods, approaches and settings over the past twenty years?

What are the main focuses of research within each approach of academic literacy development?

Methodology

The study adopts mixed methods to provide a systematic review of academic literacy research over the past twenty years. The rationale for choosing a mixed method is to integrate qualitative text analysis on the features of academic literacy research with quantitative corpus analysis applied on the initial coding results to unveil possible developmental trends.

Inclusion criteria

To locate academic literacy studies over the past twenty years, the researcher conducted a keyword search of ‘academic literacy’ within a wide range of databases within the realm of linguistic and education. For quality control, only peer-reviewed articles from the Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science) were selected. This initial selection criteria yielded 127 papers containing a keyword of ‘academic literacy’ from a range of high-quality journals in linguistics and education from a series of databases, including: Social Science Premium Collection, ERIC (U.S. Dept. of Education), ERIC (ProQuest), Taylor & Francis Online—Journals, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, Informa—Taylor & Francis (CrossRef), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science), ScienceDirect Journals (Elsevier), ScienceDirect (Elsevier B.V.), Elsevier (CrossRef), ProQuest Education Journals, Sage Journals (Sage Publications), International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, JSTOR Archival Journals, Wiley Online Library etc. Among these results, papers from Journal of Second Language Writing, Language and Education, English for Specific Purposes, Teaching in Higher Education, Journal of English for Academic Purposes and Higher Education Research & Development are among the most frequent.

Based on these initial results, the study conducted a second-round detailed sample selection. The researcher manually excluded the irrelevant papers which are either review articles, papers written in languages other than English or not directly related to literacy learning in educational settings. After the second round of data selection, a final database of 94 high-quality papers on academic literacy research within the time span between 2002 and 2019 were generated. However, considering the time of observation in this study, only researches conducted before October 2019 were included, which leads to a slight decrease in the total number of researches accounted in that year.

Coding procedure

Coding of the study was conducted from multiple perspectives. Firstly, the study specified three different approaches to academic literacy study based on their different understandings and conceptualizations of the construct (Allison & Harklau, 2010 ). Based on this initial classification, the study then conducted a new round of coding on the definitions of academic literacy, research methods, settings within each approach to look for possible interactions. Finally, a quantitative keywords frequency analysis was conducted in respective approaches to reveal the possible similarities and differences in their research focus. Specific coding criteria are specified as the following.

Firstly, drawing from Allison and Harklau ( 2010 ), the study classified all the researches in the database into three broad categories: language, disciplinary and sociocultural. While the language approach mainly focuses on the development of general or disciplinary-specific academic language features (Hyland, 2008 ), the disciplinary approach views academic literacy development as deeply embedded in the inquiry of disciplinary-specific values, cultures and epistemologies and can only be achieved via individual’s active engagement in disciplinary learning and inquiry practices (Moje, 2015 ). The sociocultural approach, largely influenced by the ‘academic literacies’ model (Lea & Street, 1998 ) contends that academic literacy development entails more than individual socialization into the academic community but is also closely related to issues as power, identity and epistemology (Gee, 2015 ; Lillis, 2008 ).

Based on this initial coding, the study then identified the research methods in all studies within each approach as either quantitative, qualitative or mixed method. Drawing from Creswell ( 2014 ), quantitative research is defined as ‘an approach for testing objective theories by examining the relationship among variables’ (p. 3) and is often quantified or numbered using specific statistical procedures. The use of this approach in academic literacy studies are often closely associated with corpus-driven text analysis, developmental studies, academic language assessment or large-scale intervention studies. This approach is particularly useful in unveiling the possible developmental effects of effective interventions but may fall short to account for the process of development which are often highly idiosyncratic and contextual. The use of qualitative methods can to some extent address this concern, as they often intend to explore deep contextualized meanings that individuals or groups ascribe to a social problem (Creswell, 2014 ). Drawing from the notion of literacy learning as a social practice, qualitative methods and especially linguistic ethnographies are highly encouraged in early academic literacy studies for their potential to provide detailed descriptions of a phenomenon through prolonged engagement (Lillis, 2008 ). In complementary, the use of mixed methods integrates both quantitative and qualitative data to ‘provide a more complete understanding of a research problem than either approach alone’ (Creswell, 2014 , p. 3). This approach embodies huge potentialities in academic literacy research as it can align teaching and learning processes with possible developmental outcomes, which not only preserves the contextualized and practice-oriented nature of academic literacy research but also makes their results generalizable.

Secondly, the study classified all the researches into two types: interventionistic and descriptive. The former entails an intentional pedagogical intervention with an aim to improve individual and community learning practices. The latter, however, tends to adopt a more naturalistic approach under an intention to unveil the complex and dynamic interactions between academic literacy development and the wider sociocultural context. These two approaches complement each other in academic literacy researches in real educational settings, serving distinct purposes.

Thirdly, for a closer inspection of the context of research, the study specifies three general research settings: English as a native language (ENL), English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) (Kirkpatrick, 2007 ). According to Kirkpatrick ( 2007 , p. 27), ‘ENL is spoken in countries where English is the primary language of the great majority of the population’ where ‘English is spoken and used as a native language’. ESL in contrast, ‘is spoken in countries where English is an important and usually official language, but not the main language of the country’ (Kirkpatrick, 2007 , p. 27). These are also countries that are previously colonized by the English-speaking countries, often with a diverse linguistic landscape and complicated language policies (Broom, 2004 ). Therefore, language choices in these countries are often closely connected to issues as power, identity and justice. Academic literacy development in this respect serves both to guarantee social resource distribution and to empower individuals to change. Finally, ‘EFL occurs in countries where English is not actually used or spoken very much in the normal course of daily life’ (Kirkpatrick, 2007 , p. 27). Within these settings, for example in China, English language education used to serve only for its own purposes (Wen, 2019 ). However, dramatic changes have been going on these days in pursuit of a language-content integrated curriculum to achieve advanced literacy and cognitive skills development. (Zhang & Li, 2019 ; Zhang & Sun, 2014 ).

Finally, the study conducted detailed keywords analysis in terms of their frequency within each approach (language, disciplinary and sociocultural). Based on these, the researcher then merged the raw frequencies of similar constructs for example: testing and assessment, teaching and pedagogy to get a better representation of the results. This analysis reveals the focus of research within each approach and helps promote further operationalization of the academic literacy construct.

The coding was conducted by two independent coders, with coder one in charge of the coding of all data, and coder two responsible for 30% of the coding of the total data. Coder one, also the main researcher trained coder two in terms of the coding procedures in detail with ample practices until the threshold of intercoder reliability was reached. Coder two then coded the remaining 30% of the data independently with an interrater reliability of over 80%. The coding was done on an excel worksheet which makes data access and retrieval readily available. The statistical software R was used for keywords frequency analysis.

Data analyses in the study mainly involve three parts: (1) specifying the construct and operationalization of the academic literacy research; (2) investigating the dynamic interactions among research approaches, methods and settings; (3) identifying the focus of research within each approach through keywords analysis. The following parts deal with these questions respectively.

Definition and operationalization of the academic literacy construct

The study extracted all the explicit definitions of academic literacy within each approach (language, disciplinary and sociocultural) and conducted detailed thematic analysis recategorizing them into different themes (see Table 1 ).

Table 1 shows that the definitions of academic literacy vary with respect to the different conceptualizations and epistemologies of academic literacy development within each approach. For instance, the language-based approach mainly defines academic literacy from two aspects: (1) language use in academic settings; and (2) language competence required for academic study (Baumann & Graves, 2010 ; Sebolai, 2016 ). The former takes a relatively narrow view of academic literacy development as learners’ gradual appropriation of the linguistic and rhetorical features of the academic discourse (Schleppegrell, 2013 ; Uccelli et al., 2014 ). The latter in complementary specifies academic literacy development for content learning purposes, entailing the kind of competence students need to possess for academic study (Kabelo & Sebolai, 2016 ). Academic language learning in this sense does not serve for its own sake but is considered as a tool for content learning and cognitive development. Overall, the language-based approach to academic literacy development lays much emphasis on the acquisition of academic language features which serves as a prerequisite for learners to examine and explore the meaning-making potential of the academic language (Schleppegrell, 2013 ).

The disciplinary-based approach on the other hand focuses on an integrated development of advanced language and cognitive skills within the disciplines, with language learning closely intertwined with the appropriation of disciplinary-specific values, cultures and practices. In this sense, academic literacy development is viewed as a dynamic process of higher-order language socialization in pursuit of deep, collaborative contextual meaning (Lea & Street, 2006 ). During this process, academic literacy development goes hand in hand with cognitive development and knowledge production within the disciplines, along with learners’ gradually expanding involvement with the disciplinary-specific ways of doing knowing and thinking (Granville & Dison, 2005 ). Other researches within this approach regard academic literacy development as more than language socialization but widely shaped and constrained by issues of power, epistemology and identity (Lea & Street, 1998 ). This definition is also widely used in the sociocultural approach, regarding academic literacy development as a sociocultural enterprise, widely related to the identification, reification and transformation of the social practices (Wenger, 1998 ).

The sociocultural approach also known as the ‘academic literacies’ model views literacy learning at the level of power struggle, structure reconstruction and social justice (Gee, 2015 ). Academic literacy development in this sense is not only a shared repertoire for individual access to social communities but also a tool for emancipation and transformation, which is object-oriented, practice-driven and value-laden (Lillis & Scott, 2007 ).

Academic literacy research approaches, methods and settings

The study also analyzed changes in the approaches, methods and settings of academic literacy research over the past twenty years. Table 2 and Fig. 1 in the following present the number of quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods studies within the language-based, disciplinary-based and sociocultural approach respectively.

Methods approach interaction in academic literacy studies

Table 2 and Fig. 1 show that the research methods chosen tend to vary with the approaches. To begin with, the number of qualitative studies generally surpassed the quantitative ones in both the disciplinary and the sociocultural approach, especially in the latter where qualitative studies dominated. However, their numbers tended to decrease in the past five years giving way to the rising mixed method researches. This was particularly evident in the growing number of mixed-methods language and disciplinary studies observed after 2015, which can also be an indication of the emergence of more robust designs in relevant educational researches. Finally, while the sociocultural approach was mainly featured by qualitative research, research methods in the language approach were more evenly distributed, which can possibly be accounted by its relatively longer research tradition and more well-established research practices.

In addition, the study also specified changes in the number of descriptive and intervention studies each year (see Table 2 , Fig. 2 ). Results showed that: (1) generally there were more qualitative researches in both the intervention and descriptive approach compared to the quantitative ones, although their numbers decreased in the past five years, especially in terms of the number of qualitative intervention studies; (2) a growing number of mixed-methods intervention studies were perceived in recent years. The findings echoed Scammacca et al.’s ( 2016 ) a century progress of reading intervention studies, indicating the emergence of more ‘standard, structured and standardized group interventions’ with ‘more robust design’ compared to the previous ‘individualized intervention case studies’ (p. 780). This developmental trend can indicate a possible methodological shift towards more large-scale intervention studies in the future based on recursive and reflective pedagogical practices. For more detailed descriptions of the methods-approach interaction, the study further investigated changes in the number of descriptive and intervention studies within each approach (see Table 3 , Fig. 3 ).

Diachronic changes in academic literacy research methods

Methods-approach interaction in academic literacy studies

Table 3 suggests that while the sociocultural approach tended to be more descriptive, the language and disciplinary approaches were more likely to interventionist. Another developmental trend was a dramatic decrease in descriptive language studies after 2015, giving way to an evident increase in intervention studies. This phenomenon entails an intricate connection among academic literacy development, education and pedagogy, indicating that language socialization does not come naturally, and well-designed, explicit pedagogical interventions are often in need.

Furthermore, the study tracked diachronic changes in the settings of academic literacy research. Results show that among the 94 selected academic literacy researches, 81 take place in a higher education context, accounting for about 86% of the total. Only 10 out of the 13 remaining researches take place in secondary school settings and 3 in elementary school settings. These results suggest that up-till-now, discussions on academic literacy development are mainly restricted to higher education settings, closely linked to the learning of advanced language and thinking skills. However, future researches may also need to attend to academic literacy development in secondary or primary school settings, especially in face of the growing disciplinary learning demands for adolescents (Dyhaylongsod et al., 2015 ).

Finally, the study recorded the specific countries where academic literacy studies take place, among which South Africa stands as the highest with 22 studies amounting to 20.95% of the total, followed by the United States (17.14%), United Kingdom (12.38%), Australia (11.43%) and China (9.64%). These results suggest that academic literacy research most often take place in ENL or ESL settings with relatively long traditions of literacy teaching and learning, and prominent demands for academic literacy development within subject areas. In the meantime, the study attributes the high number of academic literacy research in the South African context to its complex linguistic realities and historical legacies, where literacy development is closely associated with issues of power, identity and equality (Broom, 2004 ; Lea & Street, 2006 ). Based on this, the study specified the approaches of academic literacy research within the ENL, ESL and EFL settings respectively (see Table 4 , Fig. 4 ).

Academic literacy research settings

Table 4 shows that while the ENL settings dominated most of the academic literacy researches, relevant studies in ESL and EFL settings gradually increased in recent years, indicating an expanding influence of the academic literacy construct in different educational settings. Another pattern was the observation of more balanced research approaches or more evenly distributed language, disciplinary and sociocultural researches in all three settings. This phenomenon suggests that there seems to be an increasing flexibility in academic literacy research in recent years under the intention to address specific contextual issues. All these developmental trends reinforce the notion of academic literacy as a multi-dimensional construct (Cumming, 2013 ).

Focus of academic literacy research

To investigate the focus of academic literacy research within each approach, the study conducted detailed keywords analysis in all studies (see Fig. 5 ). Results show that academic literacy development is a situated educational practice, closely linked to issues as content learning, teacher education, assessment and pedagogy. Another feature that stands out is the frequent appearance of ‘writing’ and its related practices, such as: academic writing, student writing etc. This phenomenon suggests that compared to reading, writing seems to share a greater emphasis in academic literacy research. This can possibly be accounted by the intricate connections among writing, language and content learning and the gradual shift of focus from learning to write to writing to learn in higher education settings (Prain & Hand, 2016 ).

Keywords analysis of academic literacy research

From Fig. 5 , it can be seen that different approaches share common and distinct research focuses. For instance, the disciplinary approach is mainly featured by content learning and the development of subject-matter knowledge and skills, with a close relation to situated educational practices as genre and pedagogy, disciplinary-specific teaching and learning, reading interventions and teacher education. The language approach on the other hand tends to be more text-oriented, focusing on the development of advanced cognitive and academic language skills, widely influenced by the notions of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and genre pedagogy. In addition, assessment and testing are also a key issue in the language-based approach, indicating that language testing practices today are still largely text-oriented, focusing on the acquisition of specific academic language skills. Finally, keywords analysis results in the sociocultural approach revealed its deeply held assumptions of academic literacy development as a situated, complex sociocultural practice. One emerging feature is its growing attention to multilingualism, multiculturalism and international students. In an era of rapid globalization and academic exchange, academic literacy development has gradually become a global issue as is manifested in a rapid expansion of international students in ENL countries (Caplan & Stevens, 2017 ). These students, however, often face double barriers in language and content learning, especially in terms of advanced literacy skills development required for content learning and inquiry (Okuda & Anderson, 2018 ). In this sense, more attentions are needed for the implementation and innovation of effective community learning practices.

Data analysis results in the study reveal that: (1) academic literacy development is a multidimensional construct (Cumming, 2013 ); (2) there is a growing number of mixed-methods intervention studies in recent years especially within the language approach; (3) a gradual expansion of academic literacy research in ESL and EFL settings is perceived with increasing attention to international and multilingual students. The following parts of the discussion and conclusion will provide detailed analyses on these aspects.

Definition and keywords analysis of the academic literacy studies reveal that academic literacy is a multidimensional construct, embodying both textual and contextual practices and bears huge significance for individual language and cognitive development. Drawing from this, future researches may need to cross the boundaries to integrate the language, disciplinary and sociocultural aspects of academic literacy development within a holistic view of literacy teaching and learning. In this respect, academic literacy development can widely draw from various research domains as language acquisition, language socialization, genre and pedagogy and critical literacy (Duff, 2010 ; Gee, 2015 ; Hyland, 2008 ; Lea & Street, 2006 ; Russell, 2009 ). Future researches may need to pay more attention to these multiple aspects which closely intertwine and mutually shape one another to serve for the innovation and design of effective practices.

Data analysis in the study also demonstrated the intricate connections between literacy learning and pedagogical interventions. The development of academic literacy does not come naturally, but often calls for explicit instruction and interventions to address situated learning needs (Shanahan, 2012 ). It is hoped that in the future larger-scale interventions with more rigorous designs are necessary in pursuit of more effective pedagogical practices (Scammacca et al., 2016 ). This assumption, however, are not in contradiction to the dynamic and contextual nature of academic literacy development, as more sophisticated designs can generally provide more detailed account of the practice-driven and contextualized learning processes which are often cyclical and recursive in nature.

Lastly, results of the study revealed a growing trend of academic literacy research in EFL settings especially with respect to English language learners and international students. Compared to the ENL and ESL settings, academic literacy research in EFL settings, although a relatively recent issue, embodies huge potentialities. Drawn by the demand to promote higher-order thinking and learning and the need to innovate traditional form-focused, skilled-based EFL pedagogy, the notion of academic literacy development as a disciplinary-based, socioculturally constructed, dynamic academic socialization process offers a sensible option for pedagogical innovation and curriculum development in these contexts. In this sense, the notion of academic literacy as a multidimensional construct has provided a possible solution to the long-standing problems concerning the efficacy the efficiency of EFL education, the alignment of language and content learning as well as the challenges in curriculum design and material development in EFL settings (Wen, 2019 ).

Conclusion and implication

Results of the study suggest a relatively straight-forward agenda for the development of effective academic literacy pedagogies. Firstly, the study revealed an intricate connection between academic literacy development and disciplinary-specific knowledge construction and inquiry activities. Academic literacy development is by no means only a textual issue, but agentive scaffolded learning activities that are meaningful, purposeful and authentic. Literacy activities such as reading and writing in this sense are often object-oriented to serve for real knowledge production and communicative needs. Therefore, effective academic literacy instruction often aligns language development with content learning within meaningful disciplinary and social inquiries.

Secondly, in an era of rapid globalization and communication, the development of academic literacy often takes a critical role in resource distribution and power reconstruction. This has also led to an increasing attention to academic literacy development of international students in multilingual contexts, who often face multiple challenges in learning disciplinary literacy. However, contrary to the traditional ‘deficit model’ seeking for a remediation for their relatively ‘disadvantaged’ language background, the notion of academic literacy highlighted the role of teacher and learner agency in the development of new pedagogical practices. These innovative approaches often acknowledge and build on students’ diverse language and cultural backgrounds to make literacy learning a cognitively meaningful and culturally valuable practice.

The study can shed light on future research from both an empirical and pedagogical perspective. From an empirical perspective, future research may need to pay more attention to the multidimensionality of the construct of academic literacy. As revealed in the current study, academic literacy development embodies multiple dimensions as language learning, cognitive development and social transformation. Future research may need to transcend the epistemological boundaries to seek for a more integrated definition of academic literacy in which language, cognitive and social development mutually transform one another. From a pedagogical perspective, an activity-based, integrated pedagogy should be proposed in academic literacy development. In the case, students generally use language to engage in authentic communication and practices relating not only to the advancement of disciplinary knowledge but also for the betterment of society. As it is through these practices that students’ engagement in complex meaning making and higher order thinking are ensured, and the internalization of language knowledge and transformation of social practices gradually occur.

The study also bears some limitations. Although it seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the general trend, method and focus of academic literacy research for nearly two decades, it does not go deeper into specific studies of their findings and implications. Future studies can possibly narrow down their scope of investigation to delve deeper and provide a more thorough analysis of specific research findings.

Availability of data and materials

The studies reviewed can be referred from the reference citations in the supplementary materials.

Abbreviations

Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach

Data driven learning

English for Academic Purposes

English as a native language

English as a second language

Systemic Functional Linguistics

Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the original manuscript.

The study was supported by the start up research funding for young scholars in Nanjing Normal University (No. 184080H202A135).

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Li, D. A review of academic literacy research development: from 2002 to 2019. Asian. J. Second. Foreign. Lang. Educ. 7 , 5 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-022-00130-z

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Academic literacy
Academic language
Cognitive development
Intervention
Sociocultural context

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Wed 18 Sep 2024 to 29 Nov 2024
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Academic Literacy: An Introduction (Online)

There are no time-tabled sessions on this course. Using a specially designed virtual learning environment this online course guides students through weekly pathways of directed readings and learning activities. Students interact with their tutor and the other course participants through tutor-guided, text-based forum discussions. There are no ‘live-time’ video meetings meaning you can study flexibly in your own time under the direct tuition of an expert. For further information please click here

Studying at undergraduate level is an exciting and rewarding experience, but if you are new to higher education, or have not studied for some time, you may find it useful to brush up your reading, note-making and essay-writing skills, and to revisit the basic rules of punctuation and grammar. The course will teach you to:

improve your time management and organisational skills;
think critically about following instructions and assignment criteria;
identify and evaluate reliable sources;
use different reading techniques appropriately;
make notes effectively;
present a logical argument in an academic essay, taking account of your reader(s) and purpose(s);
plan and produce accurately referenced assignments.

This interactive course has been designed to provide you with the foundations of academic literacy, regardless of your discipline. Common issues in studying, academic writing and referencing are addressed, and you are provided with the opportunity to practise academic literacy skills through a range of activities.

This course does not teach English as a second language.

If English is not your first language then you will need one of the following qualifications: TOEFL 600, Computer Based TOEFL 250, Internet Based TOEFL 100, Cambridge CPE (grade C or above), or IELTS 7. Alternatively, you will need to explain why you believe your fluency in English is sufficient.

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1. Essential Course Information

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Course objectives
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Directing your research
Assessing your sources
Doing research on print-based materials
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Managing your learning
Prioritising tasks
The importance of planning
The context of an essay
Approaches to study: interpreting and following instructions
First assignment: Essay plan

4. How to approach your assignments

Referencing your work
Writing for an audience
Referencing systems
Quotations and paraphrasing
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5. Structuring your essay

Essay types and structures
What is the question?
Complying with instructions
Understanding a title
Critical thinking based on wide research
Writing your own title
Text features
Second assignment

6. Presenting an argument

The importance of an argument
Starting your research
Using and creating glossaries of specialised terms
Logical progression: presenting a logical argument
Personal Action Plan (PAP)

7. Academic register, objectivity and intelligibility

What underpins an effective essay?
Punctuation
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8. Refining essays

Developing an effective essay
What makes an introduction work?
Revisiting thesis statements
Improving paragraphs
Writing effective conclusions
Reviewing your final draft
Third assignment

9. Reflective learning

The role of reflective learning
The Reflective Cycle
Reflective Forum discussions
Reviewing your Personal Action Plan (PAP)

10. Reviewing your work

Getting ready to submit
Engaging with your audience
Reviewing, editing and proofreading your assignment
Proofreading after editing
What are your tutors looking for?
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The course is non-subject specific and draws on material from many subject disciplines. Each unit will require up to ten hours of study time. The duration of the course is ten weeks.

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Albert Weideman

Foundations of applied linguistics.

What is academic literacy?

Academic literacy can be defined as the ability to:.

Components of academic literacy

interpret and use metaphor and idiom, and perceive connotation, word play and ambiguity;
understand relations between different parts of a text;
be aware of the logical development of (an academic) text, via introductions to conclusions, and know how to use language that serves to make the different parts of a text hang together;
interpret different kinds of text type (genre), and show sensitivity for the meaning that they convey, and the audience that they are aimed at;
interpret, use and produce information presented in graphic or visual format;
make distinctions between essential and non-essential information, fact and opinion, propositions and arguments; distinguish between cause and effect, classify, categorise and handle data that make comparisons;
see sequence and order, do simple numerical estimations and computations that are relevant to academic information, that allow comparisons to be made, and can be applied for the purposes of an argument;
know what counts as evidence for an argument, extrapolate from information by making inferences, and apply the information or its implications to other cases than the one at hand;
understand the communicative function of various ways of expression in academic language (such as defining, providing examples, arguing); and
make meaning (e.g. of an academic text) beyond the level of the sentence.

We are always investigating ways of improving on this widely accepted definition, but it provides a good starting point, offering a rationale for what gets tested. For a further refinement of the above definition of academic literacy see:

In South Africa and elsewhere, tests of academic and quantitative literacy (AQL) are increasingly used for university admission. It is possible to prepare for such tests! Learn more at: NBT AQL preparation.

#AcademicLiteracy Tweet

WHAT IS GENERAL ACADEMIC LITERACY?

Academic literacy is the ability to apply general reading, writing, and critical-thinking skills and strategies to a wide range of different types of courses. Academic literacy can also include other types of literacy required for advanced learning, including quantitative (math) skills, listening, speaking, cross-cultural communication, information literacy, and using technology as a tool for learning. In college, students strengthen their academic literacy by building on their prior experiences and developing more advanced skills and strategies for reading, writing, and learning.

ACADEMIC LITERACY STRATEGIES

A literacy strategy is an action that a student purposefully takes to increase academic success and develop learning skills. Often, the term literacy strategy refers specifically to methods for increasing success in reading or writing.

Here are some examples of general academic literacy strategies for college learning:

previewing a textbook chapter to understand how it is organized
annotating reading assignments (writing notes in the margins of a text)
asking self-quizzing questions while reading
using an informal outline to organize evidence from sources for a research project
using a library database to find credible, trustworthy sources
revising a writing assignment in response to feedback

These methods for learning are general academic literacy strategies because they aren’t limited to a particular type of course or field of study. A student could use and adapt these strategies for reading or writing in many different college courses and for a variety of assignments.

General Academic Literacy Strategies: Questions for Reflection and Writing

What are some general academic literacy strategies that you use for successfully completing your college reading and writing assignments?
What methods for learning have you already developed that work well for reading or writing many different types of courses?
What challenges have you had in adapting general academic literacy strategies to the requirements of specific courses?

WHAT IS DISCIPLINARY LITERACY?

A discipline is an academic or professional field of study. Disciplinary literacy is a term for describing the specialized knowledge and skills that advanced learners and experts develop within a field of study (Shanahan and Shanahan). Each academic or professional field is a community with unique ways of reading, writing, and learning. Experts in a field of study have rules and expectations for how they use written texts to create knowledge and communicate with each other. They also have a shared vocabulary with specialized terms that reflect the types of knowledge that experts produce and write about within the field.

Timothy Shanahan, a nationally recognized expert on literacy, explains why disciplinary literacy is important for reading, writing, and learning:

Disciplinary literacy is based upon the idea that literacy and text are specialized, and even unique, across the disciplines. Historians engage in very different approaches to reading than mathematicians do, for instance. Similarly, even those who know little about math or literature can easily distinguish a science text from a literary one. Fundamentally, because each field of study has its own purposes, its own kinds of evidence, and its own style of critique, each will produce different texts, and reading those different kinds of texts are going to require some different reading strategies.

Understanding the difference between general academic literacy and disciplinary literacy can help college students learn how to identify, develop, and eventually become proficient (or skilled) in the specialized strategies used for reading and writing within an academic or professional field of study.

DISCIPLINARY LITERACY SKILLS

Disciplinary literacy has two components: a) specialized knowledge and b) advanced literacy skills .

Here are some examples of the disciplinary literacy skills that individuals develop as they eventually become experts or professionals within the fields that they select to study:

using unique ways of reading, writing, and critical thinking
conducting research with specialized methods
using learning from reading to develop expertise
adapting writing strategies to meet the expectations of expert readers
applying previous learning to new learning in a field of study
using advanced knowledge to solve problems
contributing to the creation of new knowledge in a field
developing new skills and strategies based on emerging knowledge in a field

DEVELOPING DISCIPLINARY LITERACY KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS AS A COLLEGE STUDENT

In the first college year, students who plan to transfer to a four-year campus (or who start at a university) take general education courses in many different fields of study. Academic success in general education classes requires students to adapt how they read, write, and study to multiple different types of courses as they work toward fulfilling degree requirements. As students progress into higher level courses, they focus more on specialized coursework in their professional programs or major and minor fields of study. Students who are working toward applied technical degrees may start to take more focused coursework in the first year or two of college. As students begin to take multiple courses within the same discipline, they draw from their previous learning in other courses to develop specialized literacy skills and strategies that they apply to new reading, writing, and learning tasks in the same field. This process of developing knowledge and becoming increasingly more skilled in the advanced work of a discipline is how students move from being beginners (or novices) to eventually becoming an expert. The work of developing disciplinary expertise and strengthening specialized literacy skills continues as college graduates move into the workplace or enroll in graduate education programs. Developing disciplinary knowledge and expertise is part of a lifelong learning process.

Disciplinary Literacy: Questions for Reflection and Writing

As a college student, what are some differences that you have noticed in the requirements for writing assignments in different fields of study? What do those differences suggest about the knowledge and skills that professors expect you to develop as a writer in each field of study?
What are some differences that you notice in the types of reading assignments that you complete for different college courses? What do those differences suggest about how experts develop and communicate knowledge within each field of study?
In the courses that you are currently taking, how have you adapted (or changed) your reading, writing, or research strategies based on the requirements and expectations for each field of study?

[Continue to the next section: “Reading for Understanding.” ]

Resources for Further Study

National Council of Teachers of English, “Definition of Literacy in a Digital Age.” NCTE, 7 November 2019.
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. “What Is Disciplinary Literacy?” WDPI, 2012.

Works Cited

Shanahan, Timothy. “Disciplinary Literacy: The Basics.” Shanahan on Literacy, 15 March 2017.

Shanahan, Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan. “What Is Disciplinary Literacy and Why Does It Matter?” Topics in Language Disorders, vol. 32, no. 1, Jan.-Mar. 2012, pp. 7–18.

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How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

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Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

Who is telling the story?
How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

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Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

Ad hominem fallacy
Post hoc fallacy
Appeal to authority fallacy
False cause fallacy
Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

Choosing Essay Topic
Write a College Essay
Write a Diversity Essay
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Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

(AI) Tools

Grammar Checker
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By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

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Caulfield, J. (2023, August 14). How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide. Scribbr. Retrieved April 12, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/literary-analysis/

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4 Identifying and Supporting Academic Literacies

In the previous chapter, we explored the aspects of our educational practices and disciplinary structures that often remain implicit in classroom practice, and considered practices for supporting students by making these more explicit. In this chapter, we will more deeply explore the concept of academic literacies, as well as the support and scaffolding strategies that aid students in acquiring discipline-specific modes of writing, oral communication, and digital communication.

What are Academic Literacies?

The academic literacies model considers student academic communication within its broader social context (Lea, 2016). Academic literacies are the practices that a student (as a novice in their disciplinary community) must learn in order to read literature, interact with other members of the academic community around key shared ideas, and communicate according to the expected conventions of their discipline (Kelly-Laubscher & Van der Merwe, 2014; Wingate, 2018). The academic literacies model challenges several common assumptions about academic writing and communication:

The idea of a shared set of academic skills that can be applied to all discipline s . While it is true that some foundational skills transfer easily to similar disciplines (e.g. humanities), assuming that students can acquire a generic set of “study skills” and academic writing skills that will easily transfer to any area can be problematic. Students may experience confusion and frustration when the “generic” skills they learned differ from the specific conventions expected within their discipline (Wingate 2006, 2018). The academic literacies model acknowledges that students may need to acquire multiple, distinct sets of discipline-specific skills as they interact with courses across disciplines (Kelly-Laubscher & Van der Merwe, 2014; Lea & Street, 1998; McKay & Simpson, 2013).
The idea that students have learning “deficits” that must be remediated before entering their disciplines . Often, when students struggle to meet learning outcomes in an introductory course, an assumption is made that the students are underprepared or are in need of remedial work. For many students, however, who have already moved through preparatory studies, their difficulties may arise from challenges applying generic skills to a new context (Wingate 2006). Student may struggle to understand why practices that previously earned positive feedback no longer satisfy the requirements of their new environment (Lampi & Reynolds, 2018). The academic literacies model assumes that all students are novice members of a new academic community (Lea & Street, 1998). While it is true that for some students, the journey to acquire an academic culture is more challenging because of larger distances between their previous experience and their current academic culture, all students enter their disciplines as novices who are acquiring a new academic “language” as they enter a professional community. Explicitly teaching disciplinary conventions to students supports all learners in a course, and is a natural part of the learning process, rather than a remedial task.
The idea that academic literacies involve only reading and writing . Increasingly, academic and professional communication moves beyond writing, into digital spaces. The academic literacies model acknowledges that communication increasingly extends modalities such as micro-blogging, web-based publication, and video production, and highlights that instruction on how to use these tools in professional contexts is also a part of academic literacies development (Lea, 2016; Richards and Pilcher, 2018).

In summary, academic literacies is a non-deficit approach to considering the development of the range of literacies required in a disciplinary context. It involves providing a structured and scaffolded introduction to the communication tasks in a course. Embedding academic literacies instruction is particularly important at the introductory level, but a well-planned academic literacies program considers how literacies will be developed and taught over the full course of a students’ academic career in their program.

Collaborations for Academic Literacy Development

A common barrier to embedding academic literacy development in courses is faculty uncertainty about the process. Academic literacies work can often feel like it is outside of the scope of of normal teaching responsibilities (Benzie et al., 2017;

Breaking Down a Text

Questions for exploring Textual Meaning and Organization

Questions for Exploring Grammar and Word Choice

The Role of Examples in Academic Literacies Development

The theoretical foundation for academic literacies includes social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978), which holds that learning is social in nature, and that novices to a discipline learn by observing more experienced members of the community. In terms of academic development, this means that novices learn by observing and emulating the examples of instructors and others who are already proficient in the skill being acquired. Examples of proficient work can be a powerful source for socially learning academic literacies. Examples, however, are often underused, often because of fears that providing examples will lead to an increase in plagiarism or other academic integrity violations.

A different perspective on examples is that, rather than contributing to an increase in plagiarism, they may actually reduce academic integrity violations by providing students with a stronger understanding of what is required. Often, academic integrity violations occur when students become convinced that they are unable to successfully achieve a given task; the clear understanding provided by systematically analyzing strong examples can enhance students’ confidence that they have the core abilities needed for success.

Sources for examples may include:

Previous successful student work (anonymized, and used with clear consent from the author).
Instructor written examples (colleagues may find it effective to work in teams to develop these).
Writing from student journals.
Professional writing (particularly at the higher levels of instruction).

It may also be helpful to create examples of writing that does not yet meet professional standards, and allow students to analyze how this writing may be improved.

By providing multiple opportunities for students to analyze the conventions of successful communication within their discipline, paired with strategic practice of important skills, students will begin to develop a stronger understanding of how to meet the professional communication demands of their chosen fields.

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Academic literacy: The importance and impact of writing across the curriculum–a case study

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Desiree Scholtz

Abstract Lecturers’ teaching practices often leave indelible impressions on students’ learning development. Students tend to respond to expectations that lecturers set, which might limit or extend the boundaries of learning. Given that not all students might access higher education with the requisite level of academic readiness to respond to the academic demands of first-year studies, lecturers’ academic literacy requirements and practices contribute to setting the tone for reading and writing in higher education. This article draws on lecturers’ expectations of writing practices for the first-year subjects they teach to explore how academic literacy development for higher education might be supported or limited. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with lecturers to gain insight into writing skills and practices required for their respective subjects. Written summative assessments were analysed to determine whether lecturers’ perspectives of writing aligned with assessment expectations. This study provides support for the contention that lecturers’ play a significant role in nurturing or limiting students’ academic writing development. The findings suggest that academic writing practices that lecturers espouse have ramifications for how students access and articulate knowledge not only at first-year level, but for vertical progression through the years of study. Keywords: Academic literacy; academic writing; lecturer expectations; summative assessments

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Throughout the history of language teaching and learning, the teaching of writing has been the subject of focus for many teachers and applied linguists. As the pendulum swung from an approach to another, teaching writing skills has been either prioritized or neglected. More specifically, with the rise of the communicative movement, different teachers started to direct their practices mostly to speaking and communicative skills. However, with the increased focus on the learner and with the search for a holistic approach to language teaching which integrates all the major skills, the writing component has become an integrative skill that needs to be fit into any language teaching programme. At the university level, writing occupies a major component; every year, several academic writing textbooks are designed and published throughout the world incorporating different approaches and activities, all of which with a unifying purpose of developing academic writing skills among university students. The present essay endeavors to explore some of the main approaches and techniques used in the teaching of academic writing. First, it is initiated by a discussion of the notion of writing and its relevance to language teaching and learning. Then, the second section will be devoted to explore some of the main approaches that have been adopted in the teaching of academic writing. Afterwards, the third section will be concerned with some practical activities that are used in the teaching of academic writing.

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Academic Literacy

Available on the Mahikeng, Potchefstroom and Vanderbijlpark Campuses

Academic literacy refers to the ability to successfully navigate, understand, interpret, and produce texts in the academic environment. Regardless of your field of study, you will be required to read and comprehend academic texts and to display your understanding by producing information in the form of essays, assignments, examination questions and reports in order to successfully complete a degree. Research has proven that a strong correlation exists between academic literacy abilities and overall academic performance. Unfortunately, most students are not fully prepared for what is expected at the level of tertiary education, and this often leads to poor student performance.

In order to support students in acquiring these academic literacy skills the NWU offers two Academic Literacy modules at first-year level. These modules focus on skills such as listening effectively during lectures, reading complex academic literature, responsibly and ethically citing information from relevant academic sources, avoiding plagiarism, and applying academic conventions when producing written texts. Regarding the latter, two French sociologists, Bourdieu and Passeron, claimed in 1994 that academic writing is nobody’s native language. If is for this reason that becoming academically literate is an important aspect of academic acculturation at universities worldwide. The Academic Literacy modules of the NWU offer an opportunity to bridge the gap between high school and university in terms of academic literacy requirements and will put you on the right track towards academic and professional success.

Download TAG information

Why is academic literacy so important.

Academic literacy is essential for survival in the academic realm.
Academic literacy abilities are vital to achieving academic excellence and directly influence your academic performance.
Being academically literate will prepare you for postgraduate studies, which require mastery of academic literacy abilities.
Being academically literate contributes to your employability and success in the professional sphere.
Academic literacy develops complex higher-order thinking abilities such as critical analysis and reflection.
Academic literacy boosts your academic confidence and helps you develop your own academic voice.

Course information

At the beginning of their first academic year students write either the Test for Academic Literacy Levels (TALL – English) or Toets vir Akademiese Geletterdheidsvlakke (TAG – Afrikaans). Depending on their results (level of risk) students are required to register for either Basic Skills in Academic Literacy (ALDE/ALDA 111) and Advanced Skills in Academic Literacy (ALDE/ALDA 122) modules, or for the ALDE/ALDA 122 module only. The introductory Academic Literacy module, ALDE/A 111, addresses basic academic literacy skills in a fragmented way and focuses on skills such as effective listening, reading a text with understanding and text production (paraphrasing, referencing, essay structure). The advanced module, ALDE/A 112/122, builds on the abilities taught in the introductory module and focuses specifically on academic writing. The ALDE/ALDA 122 module is compulsory for all students, and successful completion is a requirement to obtain a degree.

Currently these modules are offered only in English at the Mahikeng Campus, and both English and Afrikaans versions are offered at the Potchefstroom and Vanderbijlpark campuses. Both these support modules are approached in a discipline-specific way in order to ensure learning that is relevant to the content and conventions students are likely to encounter in their field of study.

ALDE 111 is an introductory module for the development of academic literacy skills in a university context. This module is only offered in the first semester. Please note that ALDE 111 is a prerequisite for ALDE 112/122. To pass ALDE 111 a student needs to obtain a module mark of at least 50%.

After completion of this unit, a student should:

demonstrate basic knowledge of learning strategies, academic vocabulary and register as well as the reading and writing of academic texts in order to function effectively in the academic environment;
be able to communicate orally and in writing in an effective and in appropriate manner in an academic environment;
understand, interpret, and evaluate basic academic texts and write appropriate academic genres in a coherent manner by making use of accurate and appropriate academic conventions;
listen, speak, read and write accurately, fluently and appropriately in an ethical framework.

Note that ALDE 111 is compulsory for students in the faculties of Law and Natural Sciences , as it forms part of their curriculum. The students enrolled in the following programmes are, however, exempted from ALDE 111 if they have received the required code for the TALL: Quantitative Risk Management, Financial Mathematics, Data Mining, Acturial Sciences, Information Technology, Urban and Regional Planning.

ALDE 112 / 122

ALDE 112 or ALDE 122 is the advanced module in academic literacy skills and is compulsory for all students (both campus and distance-based) in order to complete their degree successfully. ALDE 112 is offered in the first semester and ALDE 122 in the second. Your TALL-result and/or faculty requirements will determine in which semester you will take this module.

The purpose of the advanced module is to support students in the development of skills to read and write effectively, to do independent research, and to submit work that is academically correct.

After completion of this unit, a student should be able to:

demonstrate fundamental knowledge of appropriate computer programs, apply learning, listening, reading and writing strategies, use academic language register and read and write academic texts, in order to function effectively in the academic environment;
demonstrate effective oral and written communication skills on an individual level and in a group in an ethically responsible and acceptable manner in an academic environment;
demonstrate the ability to find and collect scientific knowledge in a variety of study fields, analyse, interpret, and evaluate texts, and synthesise and propose solutions in appropriate academic genres on an individual level and in a group in a coherent manner by making use of linguistic conventions used in formal language registers.

Engineering students who received the required code will register for ALDE 112 in the first semester. Those students that did not receive the required code will register for ALDE 111 in the first semester and ALDE 122 in the second semester.

Academic Literacy Levels (TALL) Placement Tests

All new first-year NWU students must write a compulsory academic literacy placement test at their campus (TALL if you choose to complete the test in English, and TAG for Afrikaans). The specific date of this test will be communicated with students at the beginning of each year. Note that the test will be written online on the official NWU LMS (eFundi). The placement test serves as a guideline to determine for which academic literacy module(s) a student will be registered. The student may choose to write this test in either English or Afrikaans. The language in which the student writes the test will also be the language of the Academic Literacy module(s) for which the student will be registered, depending on the results of the placement test.

As part of the Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages, the subject group Academic Literacy is furthermore a partner of the Inter-Institutional Centre for Language Development and Assessment (ICELDA). ICELDA is responsible for the development and distribution of the TAG and TALL tests all full-time first year students must write. The test as well as the modules in Academic Literacy are offered in the interest of our students. The module is not a repetition of a language course taken at school or a university language course but consists of practice in general academic skills. These skills are crucial to a student’s academic success and future career. (die info is reeds op die page).

TAG/TALL 2024

There are two dates during which TAG and TALL 2024 will be written:

07 to 14 February 2024: Potchefstroom Campus ONLY

It is of utmost importance that you make use of this TAG/TALL opportunity if you are a registered student on the Potchefstroom Campus. You will be added to an eFundi site on which you will have access to the TAG/TALL. Note that Potchefstroom students will receive communication (SMS) regarding the February session in which instructions on how to access the test will be shared.

04 to 13 March 2023

This is for all students registered on the Mahikeng and Vanderbijlpark Campuses, as well as Potchefstroom students who did not write during the February 2024 session. During the March session, TALL will be part of your ALDE/A 111 lesson for week 4 (starting 04 March 2024).

Information regarding TAG/TALL will also be shared via your eFundi site and in class. It is therefore very important to ensure that you register for both ALDE 111 and ALDE 122.

It is very important that every new NWU student registers for both ALDE 111 and ALDE 122 (or ALDA 111 and ALDA 122 if you wish to complete the module in Afrikaans). YOU CAN ONLY WRITE TAG/TALL ONCE!

Frequently Asked Questions

I obtained distinctions in school, why is this module necessary for me.

There is no correlation between the results of the TAG/TALL and your matric results in language (or other) subjects. The test of academic literacy tests whether a student can cope with the language requirements of an academic context. Language subjects in school have the sole objective of developing language proficiency.

I have already completed the TAG/ TALL / academic literacy module elsewhere; what should I do?

You must submit proof thereof to the Academic Literacy Administration office. They will provide you with a letter that will state that you do not have to write the test or register for ALDE/A 111.

May I write the TAG/TALL more than once?

No, the TAG/TALL can only be written once by a student who is a first-year for the first time this year.

May I complete ALDE 122 if I was registered for ALDE 111, but I did not pass the module?

No, ALDE 111 is a prerequisite for ALDE 122.

Contact details for more information

Enquiries can be directed at:

Mahikeng Campus

Ms. Daisy Motsaathebe

Administrator

E-mail: [email protected]

or [email protected]

Tel: +27 18 389 2638

Potchefstroom Campus

Ms. Karien Seymore

Senior Administrative Assistant

E-mail: [email protected]

Tel: +27 18 299 1045 / +27 18 285 2612

Building: F4-108A,

Vanderbijlpark Campus

Ms. Theresa Louw

E-mail: [email protected]

[email protected]

Tel: +27 16 910 3509

Building: 7-203

Interesting links

https://tophat.com/glossary/a/academic-literacy/

https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/opinion/why-academic-literacy-is-crucial-for-students-16905003

https://www.lifehack.org/322588/how-writing-makes-people-smarter-supported-science

Academic Literacies Provision for International Students pp 67–88 Cite as

Creating Impact and Quality: The Role of Academic Literacies Practitioners

Lia Blaj-Ward 2
First Online: 13 September 2022

102 Accesses

This chapter adopts a practitioner viewpoint. It opens with a note on wellbeing and positive design as a reminder of the potential of academic literacies provision to support overall personal and professional growth and development for life beyond the campus walls. The chapter draws on Motta and Bennett’s (Pedagogies of care, care-full epistemological practice and ‘other’ caring subjectivities in enabling education. Teaching in Higher Education , 23(5): 631–646. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2018.1465911 , 2018) discussion of care-full practice and pedagogies of care to problematise quality assurance which leads to an instrumental higher education audit culture focused on measurable outcomes and transactional approaches. Three published studies from Australia, the UK and China, respectively, are included as illustrative examples of how generating and evaluating impact can be integrated in a variety of settings. To support impact evaluation, a five-level framework used in the context of staff learning and development is adapted specifically for student learning of academic literacies. The chapter discusses how generating scholarship helps practitioners explore and understand their practice with a view to enhancing its impact, as well as how collaborative scholarship can contribute to staff development.

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Blaj-Ward, L. (2022). Creating Impact and Quality: The Role of Academic Literacies Practitioners. In: Academic Literacies Provision for International Students. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11503-5_4

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Abstract This essay is a narrative about the author’s literacy journey and the fantastic literacy sponsors who guided her during her journey with literacy. It describes the hardships the author faced as a young child, from losing her mother to finding solace through reading. The author explains how she struggled with grammar and writing as a teenager but overcame her “fear of the red pen” with the guidance of an incredible high school teacher, Mrs. V. Finally, she discusses her literacy journey as an adult and the literacy sponsors who guided her, illustrating how, with their help, she realized that her dream of furthering her academic career was not out of reach.

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Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access ).
Student authors waive FERPA rights for only the publication of the author submitted works. Specifically: Students of Indiana University East voluntarily agree to submit their own works to The Journal of Student Research at Indiana University East , with full understanding of FERPA rights and in recognition that for this one, specific instance they understand that The Journal of Student Research at Indiana University East is Public and Open Access. Additionally, the Journal is viewable via the Internet and searchable via Indiana University, Google, and Google-Scholar search engines.

Jerrica Miles, Indiana University East Student

Jerrica Miles is a sophomore and Honors student from Washington, Indiana. She is majoring in Sustainability Studies with a minor in Environmental Studies. After graduating with her B.A. in Sustainability Studies, she plans to obtain her Master’s in Environmental Studies. After completing her education, she intends to find a career that will allow her to implement sustainable actions that positively impact the planet.

Brandt, D. (2020). Sponsors of literacy. In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.), Writing about writing for Indiana University East (pp. 244-46). (4th ed.) Bedford / St. Martin’s, Macmillan Learning. (Original work published 1998)

Mellix, B. (2020). From outside, in. In In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.), Writing about writing for Indiana University East (pp. 244–266). (4th ed). Bedford / St. Martin’s. (Original work published 1987)

Wardle, E., & Downs, D. (Eds). (2020). Writing about writing for Indiana University East (4th ed.). Bedford / St. Martin’s.

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A review of academic literacy research development: from 2002 to 2019

Introduction

Literature review

Methodology

Inclusion criteria

Coding procedure

Definition and operationalization of the academic literacy construct

Academic literacy research approaches, methods and settings

Focus of academic literacy research

Conclusion and implication

Availability of data and materials

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

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Academic Literacy: An Introduction (Online)

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WHAT IS GENERAL ACADEMIC LITERACY?

ACADEMIC LITERACY STRATEGIES

WHAT IS DISCIPLINARY LITERACY?

DISCIPLINARY LITERACY SKILLS

DEVELOPING DISCIPLINARY LITERACY KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS AS A COLLEGE STUDENT

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