Browsing by Author "Paxton, Moragh Isobel Jane"

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    Intertextuality in student writing : the intersection of the academic curriculum and student voices in first year economics assignments
    (2004) Paxton, Moragh Isobel Jane; Bock, Mary; Herrington, Anne
    This is an interpretive qualitative study which uses linguisitic and intertextual analysis to examine student writing in a first year university economics course. The research has investigated the acquisition of the new academic discourse by drawing on Bakhtin's concept of intertextuality to consider new discourses, discourse models and literacy and learning practices that students draw on as they write their essays. Gee's theories of situated meanings and cultural models were used as tools for analysing the ways in which students draw on existing linguistic resources to access new discourses and to make sense of new concepts.
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    It's easy to learn when you using your home language but with English you need to start learning languge before you get to the concept': bilingual concept development in an English medium university in South Africa
    (Taylor & Francis, 2009) Paxton, Moragh Isobel Jane
    This article describes a multilingual glossary project in the economics department at the University of Cape Town which gave multilingual students learning economics through the medium of English, opportunities to discuss new economic concepts in their home languages in order to broaden and enrich understanding of these new concepts. The findings from this project illustrate how important it is that students use a range of languages and discourses to negotiate meaning of unfamiliar terms. The article responds to Mesthrie's (2008) caution regarding the development of multilingual glossaries, dictionaries and textbooks at higher education level in South Africa. It argues that translation of terminology happens inevitably both inside and outside our university classrooms as multilingual university students, in peer learning groups, codeswitch from English to their primary languages in order to better understand new concepts and this could be used as an important resource for building academic registers in African languages.