An analysis of the textual practices of undergraduate and postgraduate novice writers in law.

Autor/inn/en	Bangeni, Bongi; Greenbaum, Lesley
Titel	An analysis of the textual practices of undergraduate and postgraduate novice writers in law.
Quelle	In: Per linguam, 29 (2013) 2, S. 72-84 PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Beigaben	Anhang
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; gedruckt; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0259-2312; 2224-0012
DOI	10.5785/29-2-147
Schlagwörter	Empirische Forschung; Ausdrucksfähigkeit; Schriftlicher Ausdruck; Schreiben; Rechtswissenschaft; Südafrika (Staat)
Abstract	Criticisms in the media and in the law professions about the writing skills of law graduates have drawn attention to the challenges that novice law students experience in acquiring these skills at the foundation level. This research project attempts to understand the nature of these challenges from multiple perspectives: firstly, by sourcing students' understandings of their challenges with legal writing through semi-structured interviews, followed by a close textual analysis of samples of their writing, as well as through feedback from teaching staff. In this paper, the authors present the findings of our textual analysis of their writing. They illustrate how their difficulties with legal writing manifest at the levels of content, concept and lexico-grammar and how the students' struggles with legal concepts had implications for their overall engagement with the content of the subject matter. At the level of content, students exhibited problems with the appropriate presentation of subject matter, achieving precision in their writing and showing evidence of an appreciation of what counts as tacit knowledge within the discipline, while at the lexico-grammatical level they struggled with tense, preposition and article use. The paper concludes by recommending some strategies for responding to these challenges while taking into account their resource implications. (Verlag, adapt.).
Erfasst von	Informationszentrum für Fremdsprachenforschung, Marburg
Update	2022/2