This case study of a Chinese undergraduate nursing student focuses on her literacy experiences in her nursing major. Although traditional academic writing played some role in her education, the unusual demands of nonacademic, disciplinary documents, particularly nursing care plans (NCPs), played a more significant and more intractable role in her education and in the difficulties she faced. This investigation of features of academic literacy across the curriculum also embeds this student’s experience in broader concerns of the nursing curriculum and nursing regulatory agencies, further complicating the role of disciplinary literacy acquisition.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Adamson, H. D. (1993). Academic competence. New York: Longman.
2.
Benesch, S. (2001). Critical English for academic purposes: Theory, politics and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
3.
Cameron, R. (1998). A language-focused needs analysis for ESL-speaking nursing students in class and clinic. Foreign Language Annals, 31, 203-218.
4.
Casanave, C. (1990). The role of writing in socializing graduate students into an academic discipline in the social sciences. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, CA.
5.
Currie, P. (1993). Entering a disciplinary community: Conceptual activities required to write for one introductory university course. Journal of Second Language Writing, 2, 101-117.
6.
Currie, P. (1998). Staying out of trouble: Apparent plagiarism and academic survival. Journal of Second Language Writing, 7, 1-18.
7.
Fu, D. (1995). My trouble is my English. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
8.
Harklau, L. (1994). ESL versus mainstream classes: Contrasting L2 Learning environments. TESOL Quarterly, 28, 241-272.
9.
Harklau, L. (2000, September). The role of writing in classroom second language acquisition. Paper presented at Symposium on Second Language Writing, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.
10.
Leki, I. (1995). Coping strategies of ESLstudents in writing tasks across the curriculum. TESOL Quarterly, 29, 235-260.
11.
Leki, I. (1999). “Pretty much I screwed up”: Ill-served needs of a permanent resident. In L. Harklau, K. Losey, & M. Siegal (Eds.), Generation 1.5 meets college composition (pp. 17-43). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
12.
Parks, S. (2000). Professional writing and the role of incidental collaboration: Evidence from a medical setting. Journal of Second Language Writing, 9, 101-122.
13.
Parks, S. (2001). Moving from school to the workplace: Disciplinary innovation, border crossings, and the reshaping of a written genre. Applied Linguistics, 22, 405-438.
14.
Parry, K. (1991). Building a vocabulary through academic reading. TESOLQuarterly, 25, 629-653.
15.
Prior, P. (1991). Contextualizing writing and response in a graduate seminar. Written Communication, 8, 267-310.
16.
Riazi, M. (1997). Acquiring disciplinary literacy: Asocial-cognitive analysis of text production and learning among Iranian graduate students of education. Journal of Second Language Writing, 6, 105-137.
17.
Spack, R. (1997). The acquisition of academic literacy in a second language. Written Communication, 14, 3-62.
18.
Sternglass, M. (1997). Time to know them. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
19.
Zamel, V. (1995). Strangers in academia: The experiences of faculty and ESL students across the curriculum. College Composition and Communication, 46, 506-521.
20.
Zamel, V., & Spack, R. (Eds.). (1998). Negotiating academic literacies: Teaching and learning across languages and cultures. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
