Using a Language-Literature Approach to Teaching Reading and Writing in First-Year English Classes at the University of Botswana

Abstract

The paper contributes to the discussion on how to improve university students' reading and writing skills. Thirty-nine University of Botswana (UB) first-year English
language students were taught English language description and usage and. subsequently, how to read and write literary and non-literacy genres. It was hoped that the grammar component would make them more aware of their language use and that this would, in addition to the issues discussed in the literary and non-literary genres classes, enable them to improve on their reading and writing skills beyond what traditionally obtains in first year classes. In particular, the class of thirty-nine cotaught by the researchers was sufficiently small to enable the lecturers teach better and the students learn more. The project produced limited results, as there was no significant improvement in the students\' reading and writing abilities. Nevertheless, the results were instructive in that they reconfirmed existing problems in students\' writing, especially vagueness and an unwillingness to apply learnt skills across disciplines, and revealed the students\" love for the narrative genre
which many of them imposed on their writing, regardless of the genre they were
supposed to write.

LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research Vol. 5 2008: pp. 140-153