Embedding the teaching of academic writing into anthropology lectures

Abstract

This paper lends support to the argument that students require a variety of teaching strategies to help them improve their academic writing. The study described here took place in 2014 in the context of embedding the teaching of academic writing into anthropology modules. The strategies implemented were microthemes, peer feedback, annotated bibliographies, and, for the sake of introducing blended learning, word clouds. The findings provide an overview of what aspects of each teaching strategy were helpful and which were problematic. In this regard, differences between the perspectives of the anthropology lecturer and the students were revealed, with the lecturer’s opinion differing from that of the majority of students regarding peer feedback. The findings should be useful to lecturers who wish to help their students with academic writing, and to academic developers who are responsible for showing staff how to embed the teaching of writing into the disciplines.

Keywords:

• Academic writing
• microthemes
• peer feedback
• word clouds
• annotated bibliographies

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the staff of the Anthropology Department at NMMU for their cooperation.