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Teaching writing in Colombian higher education
Elizabeth Narváez-Cardona
Presenting general tendencies of
academic reading and writing practices in 17 Colombian
universities in order to envision
the challenges for the field on
academic writing in the
Colombian case
The goal
1. Presenting a brief overview of the Colombian
field on academic writing in Spanish.
2. Describing an inter-institutional research project conducted between 2008 and 2011, in
which I participated along with other 17 research
groups from different public and private
universities.
3. Presenting general tendencies emerging from
the data.
4. Proposing the challenges for the Colombian
field on academic writing.
Presentation
Brief overview of the Colombian field on academic writing in Spanish
An inter-institutional research project 2008-2011
This project aimed at describing and
analyzing reading and writing practices of
17 undergraduate programs in order to
propose an orientation for public policy
guideline.
Stage 1: Collecting documents of institutional
policies and composition course syllabi.
Stage 2: Describing the writing experiences of
3,700 undergraduate students of different
disciplinary fields. The surveyees had achieved 50%
of their degree program requirements.
Stage 3: Conducting three debate groups with
faculty, students and researchers separately.
Stage 4: Defining, describing, and analyzing
“outstanding teaching practices on writing” (20 case
studies) according to initial information appointed
by the students surveyed.
Stage 5: Proposing an orientation for public policy
guideline.
General tendencies emerging from the
data…
Institutional policies on writing
The most overt institutional policy is to offer one or two
freshman composition courses in
Spanish writing as requirements
of undergraduate programs.
Composition syllabi
415 composition syllabi on writing in Spanish were gathered during 2008 and 2009.
The tendency is that these are mandatory
freshman courses (core cycle) for most of the
undergraduate programs (80%).
Less than 10% of these courses are located after
the second year (professional cycle), and fourth
year (complementary cycle).
Most of these courses have targeted
students of different disciplinary fields,
but the strongest tendency is in Education
and Humanities.
The departments or programs leading
these courses are specialized in
linguistics, language sciences, or
communication studies.
Composition syllabi
50% of these courses aim at improving writing skills for university levels
40% teaching reading for university levels
29.9% aims at teaching how to read and to write disciplinary texts.
Composition syllabi
0,0% 10,0% 20,0% 30,0% 40,0% 50,0% 60,0%
Preparing students for higher education writing
Preparing students for higher education reading
Understanding disciplinary texts
Critical thinking
Writing professional texts
Understanding features of written spanish
Developing metacognitive strategies
Strategies for oral presentations
Learning formal features of the language
Supporting research processes
Others
Overcoming shortcomings of prior schooling levels
Students’ perspectives: The survey
The most common texts written by the students to accomplish their university commitments
regardless their disciplinary affiliations were:
slides for oral presentations (83, 68%)
tests (80, 18%)
reports (77, 66%)
class notes (66, 87%)
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Students’ perspectives: The survey
The overall findings indicate that the students surveyed had written mostly to accomplish their assignments (86, 26%), rather than writing to participate in other institutional settings, such as writing for study groups, academic events, or publishing projects.
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AGRICULTURA CIENCIAS CIENCIASSOCIALES,
EDUCACIÓNCOMERCIAL Y
DERECHO
EDUCACIÓN HUMANIDADES YARTES
INGENIERÍA,INDUSTRIA Y
CONSTRUCCIÓN
SALUD YSERVICIOSSOCIALES
SERVICIOS
A.CLUB DE LA LECTURA B.SEMILLERO DE INVESTIGACION C.GRUPO DE ESTUDIO
D.CURSO EXTRA CURRICULAR E.CONCURSO F.EVENTO ACADEMICO
G.ASIGNATURA H.OTRA
A comparative analysis among disciplinary fields reveals different
outcomes.
Writing in study groups is most frequent in sciences (42, 56%) than in
humanities (20, 08%), or writing for academic events is frequent in health sciences (35, 68%), agriculture (34, 09%), and sciences (33, 88%).
Cases studies The cases documented by this
project were initiatives undertaken
since about three years ago.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
1 año
2 años
3 años
4 años
5 años
7 años
10 años
The experiences have been part of
courses taught after the 3th year of
the programs
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Not Recognizable
Core cycle (The first two years)
Professional and complementarycycle (after the third year of the
program)
Cases studies The university teachers who led the experiences hold
different disciplinary backgrounds:
Education Social sciences
Business Engineering
Medicine Arts
Psychology
These professors had taught writing embedded in disciplinary contents and used drafts, feedback, teacher-
student conferences, and peer review.
The goal of student writing was to address audiences other than the instructors.
The most common text written by the students were the oral communications.
The challenges for the Colombian field on academic
writing in Spanish…
At least in the participating universities,
systematic endeavors to educating writers
are concentrated in freshman courses
Recently are undertaken in disciplinary courses, after the second year, mainly
because of the good will of their instructors
instead of as part of clear institutional and curricular expectations.
Further research programs:
Longitudinal studies to track the writing
developments of students and their transfer processes given the actual curriculum
conditions of the Colombian universities.
Documenting life-histories of disciplinary teachers who were appointed as the leaders of
outstanding experiences to understand why
and how they undertake these experiences in
an educational context in which movements as
writing across the curriculum (WAC) or writing
in the disciplines (WID) are barely emerging.
