Facilitating co-authoring: Reflections of content and language lecturers

Abstract

During a content and language project at a University of Technology (UoT) in Cape Town, South Africa, pairs of language and content lecturers, whose broad definition of integration was ‘the provision of linguistic access to content knowledge’, co-authored ten integrated textbooks. Their intention was to assist first year learners with their academic work. I previously reported on a study during which I identified – and pondered reasons for three types of content and language integration that were evident in these textbooks (Wright 2004). Now, in this article, I draw on findings from subsequent interviews with two pairs of the co-authors who focus on factors that impacted on their attempts to integrate content and language in the textbooks. The article concludes that, in preparation for collaborative partnerships between content and language specialists, attention should be paid to factors that have the potential to affect collaborative efforts to integrate content and language, namely access to the disciplinary discourse, roles and responsibilities, and the manner in which conflict is managed.