Abstract:
Conventional laboratory report writing skills present an enormous challenge to first
entering science students including the Bachelor of Science (BSc) students at Sefako
Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMHSU). First entering students are expected
to meet essential tertiary discourse requirements and standards consistent with their
scientific community. The purpose of this study was to explore how content lecturers
in cognate departments assess laboratory report writing skills of first entering BSc
students. The research design was exploratory and a mixed approach was used.
Students sat for a criterion-referenced test and interviews were conducted with content
lecturers to collect data; quantitative basic statistical interrogation of the basic data
points and post interview analysis were performed. Some of the key findings of this
exploration was that most first entering BSc students are in a dire situation regarding
the laboratory report writing genre; they are unable to communicate comprehensive
and intelligible information in the written laboratory reports. Thus, content lecturers
and English language lecturers from the Department of Language Proficiency (DLP)
need to strategically collaborate in order to improve the performance of first entering
BSc students.
