How many words must we have? Threshold crossing into an academic disciplinary voice in the UAE
Keywords:
Disciplinary literacies, Systemic Functional Linguistics, English for Specific Contexts, Threshold concepts, Genrebased pedagogyAbstract
When students enter higher education, they are confronted with making sense of content but also of the ways that language functions as a meaning-making resource to transmit disciplinary knowledge. In most university contexts, a growing body of research calls for a shift from general skilled-based literacies towards an explicit focus on subject disciplines and their associated epistemological literacies (Hyland, 2017; Tribble, 2017). In this paper, we argue that academic success requires that students cross Threshold Concepts (TC), which are the 'conceptual gateways or portals that lead to a previously inaccessible and initially perhaps troublesome way of thinking about something' (Meyer & Land, 2005, p.373). When English as Medium of Instruction (EMI) is a foreign language for students, it becomes imperative to develop their metalanguage or to assist them in crossing threshold concepts because they are "learning a language, learning through language, learning about language" (Halliday, 1993, p. 113). In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), health sciences' students' English language proficiency is consistently under pressure when writing assignments and tests. Thus, they are often framed in deficit discourses associated with being underachievers, unmotivated, or lacking an academic voice. This paper addresses this issue and focuses on low-proficiency EFL students who displayed little motivation when entering a compulsory one-year General Requirements Department (GRD) program. As a result, this paper highlights how two lecturers, one specializing in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and the other in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) genre-based pedagogies inducted Emirati health sciences into academic writing discourses associated with their career programs.
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