Creating space(s) for voice in English academic writing through memoir writing : a case study of first-year students at an ODL university in South Africa

Abstract

Expressing and developing their own voice in academic writing remains a challenge for first-year university students, particularly in Open Distance e-Learning (ODeL) contexts. Students’ limited linguistic repertoires and the gap between their prior writing skills and lecturers’ expectations tend to result in limited self-efficacy, frustrations and withdrawal from developing their voice which is considered an important component of proficiency in writing and the measurement of academic success. To this end, my study examines how memoir writing can enhance first-year students’ development of voice in academic writing, and the extent to which the written pedagogies in a first-year English module affords them the opportunity to do so. The Sociocultural Theory of writing and the Interactionist Model of academic voice underpin my perceptions of voice in academic writing. Data was collected for this qualitative case study through in-depth interviews, documents and observations, and analysed thematically. The population comprised first-year students registered for an English module at an ODeL university, and the sample was purposively selected. The students participated in a Memoir Writing Project and their work from that, as well as their written assignments from the module, were analysed to gain insight into how their various tasks and memoirs were structured to create space for and develop their academic writing voice. The findings revealed that students lacked exposure to a wide enough variety of writing genres, particularly those belonging to life writing such as memoir. The individual and collaborative writing activities adopted in the Memoir Writing Project enhanced the students’ understanding of what voice and writing as social constructs entail, and showed that voice is a fundamental component which gives writers ownership and authority over the meaning of a text. In addition, the findings revealed that collaborations among students during memoir writing boosted their self-confidence and enhanced critical thinking. An analysis of the memoirs also showed that memoir writing can be useful for therapeutic purposes, as some of the students disclosed past traumas. In the process of writing, they found closure and gained a better understanding of why certain events had taken place. In addition, the findings showed that certain questions in the written assignments in the module adopted prescriptive approaches to writing that demanded only lower-order thinking skills associated with a regurgitation of information. Such questions encourage students to provide fragmented sentences that tend to hinder their development of voice in academic writing. As a result, students are inclined to view the primary purpose of writing as a way of attaining marks rather than a means of developing their voice and their higher-order thinking skills.