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This article discusses a Design for Learning project in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, where academic and personal support for students was interwoven in their first semester. Staff of the Academic Language and Learning Unit (ALLU) worked with discipline staff to develop their students' capabilities across a range of disciplines, while the Faculty's First Year Coordinator organised dedicated tutors to identify and support students who struggled to engage with their first semester's work. ALLU staff, consulting with subject coordinators, designed extra tutorials focussing on the subjects' readings for four weeks, and working towards the first marked assignment. Using ALLU's design, subject tutors showed students what is characteristic of thinking at university; how that is embodied in the structures and styles of academic texts; and how sources are used. Feedback from students, tutors, and coordinators was mainly favourable, and a comparison of students' entrance scores and first semester marks with those of previous cohorts found that As and Bs rose in most subject groups, while Ds and Fails decreased, despite lower entrance scores overall. The article situates this initiative within the movement towards "embedding" development of students' academic literacies into their disciplines' curricula. It looks at the educational advantages of this method, as well as some difficulties of acceptance, ownership, and organisation. It focusses, in particular, on the benefits of involving ALLU staff, with their expertise in Applied Linguistics, in designing activities to focus both students and subject lecturers on the particular discourses used in their discipline subjects. (Contains 1 table and 5 figures.)

Bhattacharyya (1997) finds that universities must scramble to accommodate students who are Deaf-blind "because of limited literature regarding post secondary education for Deaf-blind students and the fact they have not yet experienced serving this unique population." Many Australian universities employ Academic Language and Learning (ALL) tutors whom any students may consult to develop their academic skills and in particular, their writing. The literature offers little guidance to students with Deaf-blindness, or to tutors, on how to make this work for students with a dual sensory impairment. This paper focuses on a supportive collaboration between an ALL tutor, a B.A. student with Deaf-blindness, and her interpreter.

Over the last decade, in both Australia and Britain, universities have been under increasing pressure to make themselves accountable for the extent to which they cultivate in their students transferable skills and "attributes" that will prepare them for the rapidly-changing world of employment. The Government's "Striving for Quality" document begins by pointing out that "Australia is actively positioning itself within an international "knowledge-based economy," which has placed new demands on higher education." The Government has questioned the effectiveness of higher education in this regard, in view of the Nielsen survey on employer satisfaction with graduates conducted in 2000. Here, employers reported that graduates often had weaknesses in the areas of "creativity and flair"; oral (and, to a lesser extent, written) communication; "interpersonal skills"; and "understanding of business practice." Much consideration has been given to the question of what role universities should play in the preparation for work; and, concomitantly, to ways of measuring the outcome of their efforts. This article looks at a testing instrument commissioned by the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) and developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). This "Graduate Skills Assessment" (GSA) Test is still at a pilot stage, but the Government has shown some interest in it as a method of quality assurance, and appears to be leaving it open as a policy option in the future. It is timely therefore to look closely at what this test promises and how it works. On its website, ACER has made available a sample set of questions representing the types of questions that might be asked in any iteration of the GSA. It has also posted an example of the assessment report that candidates receive, showing them their score, how it compares to "the distribution of the results for the middle 60% of students from fields of study similar to [theirs]," and what the scores at each level indicate about the candidate's skills in each category. In this article, the authors quote from the sample questions, and from the descriptions of what ACER says can be inferred about a candidate who scores at Level 3 (the highest level). The authors consider to what extent particular sample questions seem able to test what they purport to test, at the level at which they claim to test it. The authors comment only on the ones that are publicly available.

This article examines Anglo-western assumptions about the role of individual views and voices in constructing knowledge, and how these assumptions can disadvantage students from "Confucian-heritage" cultures whose social values around education and authority constrain their self-expression in western classrooms. Lecturers may mistake their good manners for a lack of critical thinking or originality, and read their suggestive style as a failure to take responsibility for their ideas. A challenge for academic skills specialists promoting inclusive practices is to go beyond helping students to acculturate to local conventions, and help lecturers to recognise the varieties of writing that stem from different kinds of intellectual and social engagement with the world. This article advocates respect for students' reticence, together with explicit discussion of local expectations. It suggests a method by which lecturers, skills specialists and students could identify common goals of writers in different educational traditions, and see how these are achieved in the target discourse. (Contains 1 note.)

University students with Learning Difficulties (LD) undergo lengthy, expensive assessment by an educational psychologist to provide a detailed cognitive profile on which to base accommodations to enable each individual to study without disadvantage. However, reports are often hard for students to understand and, without trained LD tutors, this information remains underutilized. We trialed an alternative instrument based on the York Adult Assessment developed in the UK, hoping to enable university staff in disabilities and academic skills units to identify students with dyslexia quickly, easily and at no cost to the student and to recommend a limited range of appropriate accommodations based on the result. The trial produced significant group effects, but unacceptable false negatives; we cannot recommend the instrument, therefore, and the need for a reliable alternative remains. This article considers the problems surrounding the present method of assessment and discusses the methodological problems of devising an alternative. (Contains 2 tables and 3 figures.)

Higher education policy is seeking, in the interest of "quality assurance", to reward teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Academic language and learning (ALL) advisers, who work closely with students to improve their performance in their courses of study, have much to contribute to SoTL. ALL advisers who adopt an "academic literacies" approach share with lecturers in the disciplines an engagement with issues of "-ography" (i.e. writing in and for a discourse community)--including the relationships between epistemology, form, and language--yet, misconceptions about ALL advisers' work can prevent discipline lecturers from consulting them when thinking about questions of teaching and learning in their own field. This paper discusses ALL advisers' access to insights into students' experiences of learning and of being taught, with relevance both for particular disciplines and for academic culture across the disciplines; their contributions to SoTL; the difficulties they encounter in trying to communicate across the borders of the disciplines; and ways of improving this situation in the context of the new emphasis on encouraging improvement in the quality of teaching. (Contains 1 note.)

This paper recounts the process by which a severely reading-disabled adult student taught himself to read and write Ancient Greek, and in so doing, improved his ability to read and write in English. Initially, Keith's reading and writing were slow, difficult and inaccurate, accompanied by visual disturbance. However, motivated by a strong interest in Ancient Greek literature and philosophical ideas, Keith enlisted me (his Faculty's academic skills adviser) to help him learn the language. Working on transliteration focused Keith's attention on the alphabetic principle separately from meaning, while practising translation focused on the formal markers of meaning. Relieved of the stress of performing under pressures of time and others' expectations, Keith made good progress with Greek and, after 6 months, found himself reading more fluently in English, without visual disturbance. This paper seeks to contribute to our knowledge of how adults learn to read, looking at the interplay of motivation, phonological awareness, knowledge of how form conveys meaning, and the learning environment. It both draws upon, and raises questions for, the neuroscientific study of dyslexia.

Trained in a distanced and distancing style of writing, students on the threshold of graduate study in archeology can find oral presentations challenging. Although they worry about presenting themselves ("Will I sound like a competent scholar?") and presenting information ("Will they think I know what I'm talking about?"), their success depends largely on linguistic choices that affect the degree of abstraction in the message itself. Through participant observation, I discovered that effective communication in this setting was related, in part, to choices about oral grammar. I drew on functional grammar and the sociology of scientific discourse to understand my observations, and offered these insights to the honors students planning their presentations.

Compared students' (n=101) interpretations of tutors' written comments on essays with the tutors' intent in three humanities classes at an Australian university. Found almost half the students did not interpret the comments in the way their tutors intended. Concludes that grading comments need to be carefully explained, with discipline-based examples. (DB)

Presents university lectures as modeling the kinds of analysis by which ideas are presented and validated in the humanities and the social sciences. Suggests that students who are alert to this modeling function can use it to inform their general strategies for learning. Contains 28 references. (VWC)

Trained in a distanced and distancing style of writing, students on the threshold of graduate study in archeology can find oral presentations challenging. Although they worry about presenting themselves ('Will I sound like a competent scholar?') and presenting information ('Will they think I know what I'm talking about?'), their success depends largely on linguistic choices that affect the degree of abstraction in the message itself. Through participant observation, I discovered that effective communication in this setting was related, in part, to choices about oral grammar. I drew on functional grammar and the sociology of scientific discourse to understand my observations, and offered these insights to the honors students planning their presentations. Keywords: Academic Oral Genres; Honors Seminar; Systemic Functional Analysis; Archaeology Education

Comments on the arguments raised by Erika Lindemann and Gary Tate on their articles `Freshman Composition: No Place for Literature' and `A Place for Literature in Freshman Composition' appearing in the periodical `College English'. Criticisms on the use of style and imagination in teaching composition; Includes reply by Gary Tate on the teaching of freshmen composition.