Abstract:
Although several interventions have been in place to address the writing difficulties of
students, research reveals that student writing is still one of the major challenges
experienced by English Second Language (ESL) students worldwide; specifically, in the
context of higher education institutions. As such, writing centres have been deemed as
facilitators that are paramount for the transition of first-year students’ high school literacies
to the academic writing conventions of higher learning. The primary purpose of this study
was to examine the efficiency of the Reading and Writing Centre (RWC) as a supporting
structure of the University of Limpopo (UL) through a case study of services rendered to
first entering dietetics students. The study was guided by Vygostsky’ zone of proximal
development and scaffolding theories to determine how the knowledgeable other can
support the less knowledgeable students in developing their academic writing skills. An
analysis of students’ assignments for the first semester and the second semester was
conducted. The study also used semi-structured interviews to allow the current
researcher to gain a detailed description on the challenges confronted by the dietetics
students, and whether RWC is efficient in improving the academic writing skills of the
dietetics students. The research established that academic writing appeared to be
difficult for first-year entering dietetics students in the first semester prior to the assistance
from RWC, and relied on the centre for the transition of the academic writing demands of
higher learning. The study further discovered that although the students still committed
slight grammatical mistakes, they showed improvement from the assistance they
obtained from the feedback received from the RWC, ultimately signifying that the centre
played a pivotal in scaffolding first-year students who came to higher learning
underprepared for the academic writing conventions.
