Teaching Referencing as an Introduction to Epistemological Empowerment

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to report on a small-scale research project conducted into how students acquire academic literacy through their writing. Understanding how knowledge is constructed in the various disciplines is the essence of academic literacy. Integrating the ideas of others from sources with one's own ideas, we believe, is the key to knowledge construction in the writing of academic essays. For that reason we focused on problems first year students encounter in the English Language for Academic Purposes (ELAP) course at Rhodes University when they use and acknowledge sources in their academic essays. The investigation on how students understand and incorporate source texts in their own writing showed the difficulties they have in using their own words, and in distinguishing different voices in writing. We found that explicit assistance from lecturers at the draft stage of the writing process can assist students in understanding better how knowledge is constructed at university.

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