About the Unit for Academic Literacy

The Unit for Academic Literacy (UAL) is a key research, teaching and learning entity similar to other academic departments in the Faculty of Humanities. It is responsible for academic literacy facilitation, writing centre support, and corporate translation and editing through the Language Unit. The Unit is also responsible for the provision of English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL) through short courses offered by the University of Pretoria Centre for Language Learning (UPCLL).

Our philosophy in the UAL is to transform students into critical and analytical thinkers, readers and writers. Therefore, we approach academic literacy as a cognitive process or a mode of reasoning, and we strive to equip our students with intellectually empowering academic literacy competencies. We want our students to master the different ways knowledge is constructed, shared and contested in their respective disciplines and at university level. Through our customised academic literacy modules offered in the different faculties, we focus on developing critical and logical reasoning, problem-solving, creativity and argumentation as well as conceptual and analytical thinking. We also understand that students at universities such as UP, where English is still the language of tuition, require a certain level of English proficiency to communicate ideas effectively to different audiences. Our modules also equip students with essential academic reading and writing principles and study techniques (sentence skills, paragraph construction, text organisation, coherence and cohesion). In addition, some of our modules also cover discipline-specific writing genres and workplace literacies (teamwork, technical report writing, digital literacies, global awareness and intercultural competence and so on) as well as other general communication and basic research skills. These competencies constitute some of the 21st-century graduate attributes needed for a rapidly changing, competitive, digitally driven South African economy and global markets. We are equally very committed to promoting multilingualism and curriculum transformation/decolonisation. We are gradually embedding ways of being, knowing and doing from the African continent, as well as multilingual pedagogies in our curricula and classroom practices.      

Significantly, our academic literacy interventions are embedded in internationally recognised best practices in curriculum design, classroom pedagogies and assessments. These practices are underpinned by new and innovative research in academic literacies in South Africa and beyond. This ensures that our academic team is familiar with new research and theoretical, and pedagogical shifts in this field.   At the first-year level, we offer customised academic literacy modules to students in the Faculties of Humanities (HUM), Natural and Agricultural Sciences (NAS), Economic and Management Sciences (EMS), Health Sciences (HS), Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology (EBIT), Law, and Theology. Our postgraduate offerings include generic as well as subject-specific interventions, provided through two honours modules in Applied Linguistics (ALL 710 and ALL 720) and academic writing workshops at master's level. We provide such workshops in the Faculties of Humanities, Health Sciences and Economic and Management Sciences.

Our staff conduct innovative, funded research and publish consistently in local and internationally accredited journals indexed in databases such as SCOPUS, IBSS and WoS. Our research foci include academic and professional literacies, writing centre interventions, curriculum transformation/ decolonisation, multilingual pedagogies, subtitling in higher education, the use of ICTs in promoting scientific and academic literacy, and career narratives. We also supervise master's and doctoral students, and our coursework master's programme in Applied Linguistics is set to begin in 2025. This UAL initiative seeks to address existing postgraduate supervision challenges in the Unit.

The Humanities Writing Centre provides additional individual academic writing support for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Faculty of Humanities and students from other faculties registered for academic literacy modules. This is done through one-on-one consultations with highly trained writing consultants, all masters and doctoral students. In fact, the centre has grown into a research hub that conducts research and supervises postgraduate students on different topics related to writing centre practices, including multilingualism in writing centres. 

The UAL is also involved in testing academic literacy proficiency to identify students who require more academic literacy support. Only first-year students in the Health Sciences, EMS and NAS are tested at the undergraduate level using the Test of Academic Literacy Levels (TALL). The academic literacy abilities of postgraduate students are tested only upon special request using the Test of Advanced Academic Literacy Levels (TALPS).

Furthermore, the UAL offers non-curricular short courses in Business Writing and Report Writing via CE@UP. These courses generate third-stream income for the Unit and Faculty while providing skills and useful reference materials in various media to delegates from various occupational backgrounds, which will assist them in succeeding in today's highly competitive workplace.  

Regarding national and international collaborations, the UAL is gradually making significant strides in this area. We have a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Academic Literacy and Science Communication at Sefako Makgatho University. We always seek opportunities to collaborate with other South African and African universities and those in the global north. Our team collaborates with colleagues at different national and international universities (Michigan State University, University of Botswana, Cape Peninsula University of Technology and the University of Free State etc).   

We continually strive to raise the profile of the Unit for Academic Literacy as a leading centre for teaching, research and consultancy in the field of academic literacies.