Endorsing cultural relevance whilst scaffolding academic literacies in a particular English for Pharmacy course

Abstract

In this article, the writer investigates theexperience of a group of learners who weregiven academic language support in the context of a topic that was culturally relevantto them. These multicultural learners were registered for their first year of study fora South African Pharmacy degree. The scaffolding of reading and writing texts on thetopic of traditional healing systems was included in the English for Pharmacy course,although this was not a topic covered in any of learners’ content subjects. Supporteddeconstruction as well as reconstruction of texts about the indigenous healingtherapies of Africa and China, for example, was included in the English course, withthe aim of facilitating learner access to and success in the mastery of scientific textualconventions. The learners of the case study brought individual cultural identities toa higher educational environment that often did not acknowledge diverse culturalroots. Thus, a culturally relevant topic was included in the English learning situationto motivate the learners in the negotiation of meaning via scientific language patternsthat were appropriate to the context of their pharmacy studies. The learners weresupported in the negotiation of culturally familiar meaning via complex Englishtextual patterns that were also used in degree specific subjects such as: Pharmacology,Pharmacy Practice and Anatomy and Physiology. The research described in this articlefollowed a phenomenological approach that entailed qualitative data collected fromthe learners who wrote reflection papers, took part in informal interviews and wrote ascientific report on the topic of traditional healing.