MINISTERIO DE MODERNIZACIÓN RESOLUCIÓN N.° 636/MMGC/

Against her view of writing presented above, I wanted to know how Khumbo perceives herself as a writer. Her response points to her changing view of “self as author” as she crossed the threshold.

Geoff: … when you look at your writing abilities how would you describe yourself as a writer?

…

Khumbo: ah it depends maybe because I’m in college but then when I was in secondary yeah I was just above average … but now then coming to college it has been a difference from how I used to write in secondary (school) maybe even as we were in secondary we did not know that where we are going there is academic writing ….

Her response refers to “academic writing” as something which she has “found” in college. This presupposes that the writing she did before was not academic per se. If we are to understand “academic writing” as writing “concerned with learning a subject and demonstrating learning of it” (Ivanič and Satchwell, 2008, p. 102), it indeed follows that the “controlled” writing she did in secondary school (see 6.1.2 above) cannot be regarded as “academic”. This is the case as controlled composition, an offshoot of behaviourism, seems more interested in “the manipulation and imitation of a model” (Paltridge, 2001, p. 55); a model which, according to Khumbo, the teacher provided. Furthermore, her view that evaluation of herself as a writer depends on context can be taken to mean that writing practices are inextricably linked to a context’s discursive practices. A change in context therefore implies changing the “possibilities of selfhood” available and eventually who one can become in that context. This feeds a difference in self evaluation as well. It is not surprising therefore to note that while she feels that her secondary school writing “was good” as “the teachers would say”, her encountering “academic writing” has changed her self evaluation as a writer. There are a number of points worth highlighting here.

To begin with, her feeling that she was a good writer in secondary school is a position which was discursively constructed in interaction with her teachers particularly through their responses to her work. This implies that she perceived herself as a good writer based on the “otherness” of her teachers. This evokes the understanding that “the self is not an essential expression of the individual but is rather a historical and interactional construction subject to work and revision” (De Fina, 2015, p. 352; see also Giddens, 1991; Holsten and Gubrium, 2000). Thus, here Khumbo’s narrative demonstrates that identity emerges from a synthesis of internal self-definition and the external definitions of oneself by others, particularly powerful others (Hyland, 2012a, p. 13; see also Le Page and Tabouret-Keller, 2006); as a construction that is interpreted by other people (Benwell and Stokoe, 2006) and hence evolves through time and space (De Fina, Schiffrin, and Bamberg, 2006). This understanding further alludes to the fundamental Ubuntu principle (I am because you are) as well as to social constructivist perspectives which stipulate that nothing is found per se but only constructed (see Crotty, 2003). Furthermore, her shifting sense of self alludes to how identity forms and changes over time; as a process of identification rather than a static entity (Burgess and Ivanič, 2010, p. 233). Her point that a view of self depends on a context’s discursive practices subtly insinuates that an identity is negotiated and performed through participation in

practices. This evokes the point that participation in or learning of new literacy practices breeds identity (see Lave and Wenger, 1991).

In this vein, in crossing the threshold to university, Khumbo considers herself as an “average writer” as she feels that “I’m yet to learn a lot of things concerning writing here”. This further highlights her shifting sense of herself as a writer.

Geoff: what about in college sorry in secondary school did you also feel that you are an average writer?

Khumbo: in secondary school I was a good writer actually most of the essays I wrote let’s say history essays and social studies essays were marked out of 20 I’d get 18 out of 20 but then in English maybe it was about grammar and the like maybe I’d get 15.

Khumbo’s response here further highlights that a view of oneself as a writer emerges in interaction with a significant other. In awarding her good marks her teachers made her perceive herself as a good writer. What happened in a social space made her perceive herself as a certain type of person; as a good writer. However, realising that she has a “lot to learn” in a new context makes her to lose confidence in her sense of self as a writer. She instead perceives herself as an average writer once again evoking a “processual view of identity” (Burgess and Ivanič, 2010). Such loss of identity and/or confidence in self as novices cross the threshold into higher education has also been reported elsewhere (e.g. Preece, 2006; Gourlay, 2009).

In this regard, unlike Kai who brings to university an autobiographical self which is largely constructed by himself as he defies the construction of self which others seem to confer on him, Khumbo’s shifting autobiographical self (as an average writer) is constructed in interaction with “significant others”. Her shifting sense of self also indexes the emergent nature of identity. In this regard, it is largely her encounter with academic Discourses, with “ways of thinking and using language which exist in the academy” (Hyland, 2009, p. 1), which prompts this revision of her sense of self as a writer. What specifically leads to this?

6.2.2 “What is academic writing anyway?”

Khumbo’s shifting view of herself as a writer can be traced to her “confusion” born out of a lack of clarity regarding academic writing.

Geoff: so what has happened this sounds interesting ,,, you were a good writer in secondary school and then you come here you don’t consider yourself as a good writer anymore can you shed more light on that?

Khumbo: yeah I said earlier on about the confusion to say what is academic writing what is it and when you say academic writing most people they focus on referencing then maybe I don’t know if there is anything else to academic writing apart from referencing … you’d be confused say what is it that is academic writing apart from referencing what else is it that is in academic writing to say what is your point as a writer coz with the point that we were given that academic writing is more like somebody said what you write doesn’t matter what matters is coz a lot of people have written a lot of things on that topic so whatever you wrote that is from of your own point of view is more like its nothing coz you’re just a student and a lot of people have written about a lot of things so you can just go and get what they’ve written and write and reference that’s simple so it was more of a confusion say what is academic writing actually when we came for orientation they’d say here whatever you write you have to write it academically you have to reference you have to do this so I feel that there’s a lot more to academic writing than referencing it’s just that we don’t know ….

She sums up this “confusion” by stating that:

Coz like you’re getting information from a book you’re trying to answer a question by the lecturer and you’re getting information from a book but then what is your point of view how do you understand that something … so as more like your identity as somebody who is writing that essay it’s not in the clear coz it’s more like we’re just told to get something in the copy and then reference so it’s really confusing so we really don’t know what this thing is … this is causing confusion.

This is the confusion I mention earlier (see 6.1.2 above). As someone who comes to university with the understanding that writing is a balancing act between “voice” and “engagement”, Khumbo struggles to accept to be a mere “ventriloquator” of other people’s voices as “somebody said”. She thus refuses to be a mere “animator” but seems keen to position herself as the “author” and “principal” (Goffman, 1981). Failing to do this, she feels, would make her identity “as somebody who is writing that essay not in the clear”. This once again evokes the understanding that academic writing cannot be separated from identity concerns as implicit within this social semiosis are issues of self-representation (Clark and Ivanič, 1997; Lillis, 1997, 2001).

In alluding to the conflicting advice she got from different sources, Khumbo’s point paints a cogent picture of the academy. Considering that novices like her face a “mismatch between social contexts which have defined identities and the new social contexts they are entering” (Ivanič, 1998, p. 12), such conflicting advice points to the academy as a space in which knowledge is constructed not by objective rationality but rather by subjective plausibility (Hyland, 2006). This is the case as her fellow novices who advised her to simply “reference” what more significant others have already written seem to have misunderstood the notion of “referencing” in academic writing.

Such understanding does not sit well with her view that she has to give her understanding (engagement) if her “identity as the one writing is to be in the clear”. From a CoP perspective, this point indicates that novice/expert interaction is not the only route to inducting novices (see Fuller and Unwin, 2004) as novices also get information elsewhere. This poses a challenge as novice/novice interaction can be misleading as illustrated by the response above.

This confusion adversely effected the quality of her first essay (see 6.3.5 below) as she observes that:

Khumbo: … the main problem everybody agreed in class the main problem was with referencing and the academic writing part

Geoff: mhm mhm

Khumbo: we really didn’t understand what it was and everybody said that was the problem and if we’re to fail this essay I think it is based on those problems say academic writing but then all in all it was just a simple question.

Thus, she fears that the conflicting information obtained about the nature of academic writing might have led to an unsatisfactory response to an otherwise “simple” question. This point suggests that novice struggles might not necessarily stem from their lack of ability or intelligence but rather from their lack of understanding of institutional norms guiding academic practices (cf., Ballard and Clanchy, 1988; Ivanič, 1998; Lillis, 2001). Such lack of understanding makes “essayist literacy” to be an “institutional practice of mystery” (Lillis, 2001) for novices like Khumbo.