Written by: Shanice Pillay

Scholarship students who are furthering their doctoral studies have received a helping hand from the Durban University of Technology’s (DUT) Faculty of Arts and Design.

The workshops have been mentored by Dr Caroline Goodier, a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Linguistics from the University of Reading (UK) and a Doctor of Literature and Philosophy in Applied Linguistics from the University of South Africa.

Goodier explained what the programme is about, and the importance of reading and writing a journal.

“This is a scholarship programme for people who are doing their doctorates and in order to equip them, there’s funding given for the next three years. The reason I chose to focus on reading and writing journal articles is because it was something that students had been requesting,” said Goodier.

The mentoring workshops include other universities such as the University of Zululand (UniZulu) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). The regional workshops took place in Johannesburg where recipients from all universities gathered.

Goodier hopes the number of attendees will increase over the next few workshops.

Masters student in Public Health, Zanele Zidubu, said she found the workshop to be informative and helpful.

“I was able to understand the issues of introduction. I know how to write it, but it was emphasised on much more. I liked the practical part whereby we were able to breakdown the journal, and secondly, the issues of tense which she explained how it needs to be used,” said Zidubu.

PhD in Language Practice for the Blind and Brail Society student, Zaheera Bunting, had a different view.

“When we were invited to this session I thought it would be a more hands on approach, like do something practical and be assessed on it. Concepts were put up and discussed, which doesn’t work for me. When I do my research I will forget this. On the next session I hope it will be different,” said Bunting.

Post Graduate Organiser, Dr Rofus Odebayo, said the workshops were organised primarily to help students.

“We organised this workshop because we realised that post graduate students have been mandated to write articles before they graduated, especially for Masters and PhD students. It is compulsory for them to write articles and they don’t know where to start,” said Odebayo.

*Caption: Students at the ‘How to read and Write a Journal Workshop’