This mixed-methods case study develops a monolingual-multilingual continuum that depicts how multilingual students draw on their linguistic repertoire as a resource when undertaking assessments in journalism education. Guided by Hult and Hornberger's heuristic for considering language planning and policy as a resource, the central question the…

Background: Scholars have identified the benefits of using African languages and bilingual approaches in South African education; at the same time, the dominance of language ideologies and systemic constraints work against the full implementation of bilingual education. Objectives: This article tracks the early responses of the pre-service and…

The recent shift in the field of applied language studies has shown that multilingualism has benefits when used for academic purposes. The study aimed to find out students' perceptions about the use of translanguaging to understand academic concepts. The study used five first-year South African medical students at a South African university who…

This paper provides a critical reflection on the academic writing ability of English second-language students in a South African university. Acquiring proficiency in academic writing is one of the essential skills that students at the tertiary level are expected to acquire. One challenge that has emerged after the outbreak of COVID-19 is that…

Recently a novel instrument -- the Core Academic Language Instrument (CALS-I) -- aimed at testing a constellation of school-relevant English language skills was developed and validated for use in the United States (Uccelli, Barr, Dobbs, Galloway, Meneses and Sánchez, 2015. Core Academic Language Skills: An expanded operational construct and a…

This article explores the pedagogical practices used by high school teachers in integrating disciplinary and language knowledge in a multilingual context where English is the medium of instruction. Specifically, we explored the way high school teachers implement the English Across the Curriculum (EAC) strategy in their content subjects. EAC is an…

The purpose of this study is to seek blended learning as an intervention programme in first year's students' English language academic writing. The 21st century's focus on technology presents an ideal opportunity to use the digital platform as a space for students to learn. This is believed to work well particularly with students who might be…

Often, at universities, it is assumed that students will automatically find their 'voice' after a period of exposure to the academic field. What is not understood fully are the struggles that students with different levels of preparedness have in finding and asserting their academic voice, particularly in the academic writing genres necessary for…

In the study reported on in this article, we explored the preparation practices used to prepare student teachers to use English language skills in disciplinary content teaching. Despite studies which emphasise generic academic literacy where language is a subset of this field discourse, there is a dearth of research studies on the use of English…

This paper aims to explore student experiences resulting from collaborative teaching and learning of academic literacy and content knowledge, for multiple objectives at a South African University of Technology. Using the qualitative research approach, undergraduate students who attended the Communication Skills course were randomly selected. Data…

This article reports on the extensive reading (ER) component of a reading intervention programme to improve first-year students' reading proficiency. To make the intervention more practical and to accelerate improvement, an ER component was included in the programme. Two groups of first-year students (high-risk and low-risk) were required to read…

There have been a number of studies on reading interventions to improve students' reading proficiency, yet the majority of these interventions are undertaken with the assumption that students' reading challenges are obvious and generic in nature. The interventions do not take into consideration the diversity in students' reading backgrounds and…

South African higher education institutions, in line with international practice and as a result of the "social turn", are progressing towards mainstream academic literacy support for students. This shift has a political dimension in South Africa where, historically, disadvantage has had racial dimensions, in its departure from…

This edited volume brings together large-scale research as well as case studies from a range of geographical contexts and represents a variety of educational settings involving second language learners and users. Its aim is to explore the interrelated issues of psychology and technology use in second language learning settings as well as in more…

This article draws on research conducted at a tertiary institution in South Africa as part of the redesigning of an English for Educational Development (EED) course to include an e-learning online discussion component. The subject material used was based on HIV/AIDS topics that students had to debate within an online discussion forum. Framed by…