Academic Language Is Nobody's First Language | Inside SU's Reading and Writing Labs
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SU Student Success Initiative Series: Episode Five.
Recorded on Friday 25 August 2026.
You can read a paragraph three times and still have no idea what it said. That is not a sign that something is wrong with you. Academic language is its own language, and nobody grew up speaking it. This conversation is about how you learn it, and who at SU can help you.
Jacolette Kloppers hosts the fifth of 15 conversations on Lunch Club, joined by four guests from the SU Language Centre: Angela Govender, Head of Academic and Professional Literacies; Marisca Coetzee, Coordinator of the Reading Lab; Anne-Mari Lackay, Coordinator of Writing Lab Consultations; and writing consultant Rilinde Mandaha.
What we cover in this episode:
- What academic literacies actually are: Govender describes them as tools you build rather than arrive with — understanding an assignment, producing one, critically discussing an idea, using Gen AI tools with judgement. Academic language sits on top: the terms in your field, and how you connect them into meaning. Nobody masters it. You develop it.
- Your home language is an advantage, not a deficit: Students regularly tell Govender their English is not strong enough. Her answer is direct. If you already switch between languages and connect ideas across them at speed, that is a skill. English does not have to be perfect.
- Why reading faster is the wrong goal: Reading speed is the number one thing students bring to the Reading Lab, and Coetzee says it is almost never the real problem. Her rule is blunt: if you are reading and not writing, you cannot call it academic reading.
- Writing while reading: Capturing your thinking forces the mental work comprehension depends on — clarifying, inferring, questioning, evaluating. Thoughts stay abstract until you make them tangible, and only then can you retain them.
- The three voices in your head: Coetzee explains the reading voice, the thinking voice and the distracting voice, and which to manage. The Reading Lab's free lunch-hour workshops cover reader identity, annotation, paraphrasing, and why highlighting a page achieves nothing.
- Academic English as a snob: Coetzee is candid that academic language deliberately excludes and makes readers feel inferior. Her way in is a club metaphor: join a music club and you do music and speak music. If you are serious about study, you speak academic.
- Stamina and screens: Students increasingly want bite-sized chunks or video, and struggle with long, difficult texts. Coetzee's advice on concentration is unfashionable and simple: switch the phone off and put it out of reach.
What a writing consultation is: The Writing Lab, founded in 2001, pairs you with a trained consultant to talk about your own writing. Consultations run 50 minutes, are free, and follow-ups are welcome. You do not need a finished draft — just the brief and a question.
- Code switching: Indicate a language preference when booking and you are matched to a suitable consultant. Mandaha describes what changes when a student hears they may speak isiXhosa or isiZulu: everything they were holding back comes out at once.
- Consultants from outside your discipline: Mandaha has never consulted a student from her own field, and argues that helps. An outsider asks the questions a specialist would assume. Consultants are compasses — you pick the destination, they help you get there.
- What stays private: Lecturers share assignment briefs so consultants can prepare, but what a student says in a consultation is not reported back.
Where to find support:
- Book through the Writing Lab booking system on my.sun.ac.za or the Language Centre website.
- Reading Lab: https://languagecentre.sun.ac.za/reading-lab/
- In person: Writing Lab, 44 Banghoek Road, Stellenbosch; Health Sciences Library, Tygerberg; SU Library Research Commons, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Online via MS Teams.
Anne-Mari Lackay: amlackay@sun.ac.za | Le-Ann Williams: leannw@sun.ac.za | 021 808 2989
Recorded on Friday 25 August 2026.
You can read a paragraph three times and still have no idea what it said. That is not a sign that something is wrong with you. Academic language is its own language, and nobody grew up speaking it. This conversation is about how you learn it, and who at SU can help you.
Jacolette Kloppers hosts the fifth of 15 conversations on Lunch Club, joined by four guests from the SU Language Centre: Angela Govender, Head of Academic and Professional Literacies; Marisca Coetzee, Coordinator of the Reading Lab; Anne-Mari Lackay, Coordinator of Writing Lab Consultations; and writing consultant Rilinde Mandaha.
What we cover in this episode:
- What academic literacies actually are: Govender describes them as tools you build rather than arrive with — understanding an assignment, producing one, critically discussing an idea, using Gen AI tools with judgement. Academic language sits on top: the terms in your field, and how you connect them into meaning. Nobody masters it. You develop it.
- Your home language is an advantage, not a deficit: Students regularly tell Govender their English is not strong enough. Her answer is direct. If you already switch between languages and connect ideas across them at speed, that is a skill. English does not have to be perfect.
- Why reading faster is the wrong goal: Reading speed is the number one thing students bring to the Reading Lab, and Coetzee says it is almost never the real problem. Her rule is blunt: if you are reading and not writing, you cannot call it academic reading.
- Writing while reading: Capturing your thinking forces the mental work comprehension depends on — clarifying, inferring, questioning, evaluating. Thoughts stay abstract until you make them tangible, and only then can you retain them.
- The three voices in your head: Coetzee explains the reading voice, the thinking voice and the distracting voice, and which to manage. The Reading Lab's free lunch-hour workshops cover reader identity, annotation, paraphrasing, and why highlighting a page achieves nothing.
- Academic English as a snob: Coetzee is candid that academic language deliberately excludes and makes readers feel inferior. Her way in is a club metaphor: join a music club and you do music and speak music. If you are serious about study, you speak academic.
- Stamina and screens: Students increasingly want bite-sized chunks or video, and struggle with long, difficult texts. Coetzee's advice on concentration is unfashionable and simple: switch the phone off and put it out of reach.
What a writing consultation is: The Writing Lab, founded in 2001, pairs you with a trained consultant to talk about your own writing. Consultations run 50 minutes, are free, and follow-ups are welcome. You do not need a finished draft — just the brief and a question.
- Code switching: Indicate a language preference when booking and you are matched to a suitable consultant. Mandaha describes what changes when a student hears they may speak isiXhosa or isiZulu: everything they were holding back comes out at once.
- Consultants from outside your discipline: Mandaha has never consulted a student from her own field, and argues that helps. An outsider asks the questions a specialist would assume. Consultants are compasses — you pick the destination, they help you get there.
- What stays private: Lecturers share assignment briefs so consultants can prepare, but what a student says in a consultation is not reported back.
Where to find support:
- Book through the Writing Lab booking system on my.sun.ac.za or the Language Centre website.
- Reading Lab: https://languagecentre.sun.ac.za/reading-lab/
- In person: Writing Lab, 44 Banghoek Road, Stellenbosch; Health Sciences Library, Tygerberg; SU Library Research Commons, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Online via MS Teams.
Anne-Mari Lackay: amlackay@sun.ac.za | Le-Ann Williams: leannw@sun.ac.za | 021 808 2989
