The main purpose of this study is to identify the professional writing needs of undergraduate students studying social work in the University of Botswana. In order to do this, it seeks to analyse the types of texts produced by social workers in their professional setting, to find out what relationship exists between the writing done by professional social workers and the writing taught in the dedicated English Language Support unit at the University of Botswana, and to explore the similarities and differences between the documents written by the students and those produced by professional social workers. It also examines current approaches to teaching writing in the University, with the aim of identifying the writing needs of social work students and exploring how these can be effectively addressed.
I have taught social work and public administration undergraduates in the Faculty of Social Sciences since 2007. As an ESP lecturer, I am expected to teach these students content and skills that are relevant to their different contexts both as students and as professionals after graduation. My own observations as a teacher, together with my concerns about writing skills development and appropriate language use, have motivated me to carry out an investigation into this aspect of the students’ course. My intuition suggests that departmental teaching in this area is not as relevant as it could be to the students’ needs, and it is my own experience that has motivated me to research the target professional situation, the current pedagogic situation and the relationship between them.
The research method for this study combines two major research tools in qualitative inquiry: text analysis and interviews. In this summary, I focus on the text analysis findings.
A number of documents were collected from professional social workers. These ranged from relatively informal documents, handwritten during interviews with clients, to more formal reports addressed to senior staff that might form the basis for decisions concerning clients. These documents were analysed using a ‘new rhetoric’ approach to genre. I investigated not only the texts themselves but also the contexts in which they were produced and used, using a combination of interview and observation techniques. I found that both formal and informal documents are written following a set format which reflects the precise institutional function of the text, but that experienced social workers are able to manipulate the format creatively to communicate information about their clients.
Academic texts produced by social work students were also examined. Students are asked to write reports, but these reports are long and, unlike those produced by professionals, which focus on the essentials and tell the client's story, they describe what the students have done and achieved. This discrepancy raises questions about the extent to which students are being prepared for professional writing, and about what further support they may need once they begin to practise as social workers. In interviews, students indicated that their academic writing varies according to the preferences of individual lecturers rather than the requirements of the work situation, and that they need additional training before they engage in fieldwork.
