Undergraduate dissertations in Spanish and English: challenges of, and an attempt to improve, academic literacy in initial teacher education

Abstract

In this paper we explore the process of undergraduate dissertation writing in Spanish, and in English as a second language, by students of Education, and the development of academic literacy that this entails. To this end, analyses are done both on initial drafts, on which supervisors provided guidance, and on final versions of six dissertation texts written by students of Education specialising in Early Years or in Primary Education —with English as a Foreign Language. The difficulties identified do not correspond to the expectation that the process should be more complex if the work is written in a foreign language rather than in the students’ mother tongue. Rather, they seem to arise from the lack of explicit knowledge of the relevant genres. We then report on two academic writing workshops, one in English and the other in Spanish, developed by faculty members to support students in the composition process of each section of the dissertation, based on Rose & Martin’s (2012) “Reading to Learn” pedagogy, an evidenced-based approach to improving academic literacy through genre pedagogy. We conclude with an overview of the students’ views of the workshops in terms of 1) their usefulness; 2) how effective the approach used in the sessions was; and 3) the degree of preparation and confidence they felt they had reached upon completion of the workshop sessions.