Monash Transition to Tertiary Writing Project: part one

The Monash Transition to Tertiary Writing Project seeks to produce a web-based resource for first-year students to facilitate their transition to the kinds of thinking and writing valued at university. The background research on which the project is based centres on three main areas. First is the evidence provided by Year 12 teacher observations about the likely difficulties teachers expect students to experience in making the transition, and also by an analysis of the kinds of texts which are valued at year 12 level. The second area concerns first-year students’ comments about writing their first assignment and how well-prepared they felt themselves to be. The third involves lecturers’ comments written on student assignments and in interview. These three areas yield a number of insights about sources of confusion for students making this transition, which is both a vertical one (school to university) and a lateral one (moving from one discipline specialism to the next). The remainder of the paper outlines the nature of the resource and how it attempts to address these sources of confusion.