Drop ins & One-on-one Consultations

In an ideal context in which university policy aligns with pedagogic effectiveness, post-entry English and academic language (PEAL) consultations provide opportunities for personalised support to be delivered in a manner that allows for diagnosis of individual students’ academic strengths and weaknesses. Advice can then be tailored accordingly. This contributes to students “learning to learn”, as well as assisting in the transition into higher education (Wingate, 2007). Chanock (2007, p. A1), stated it perfectly when arguing that one on one consultations, “allow us to understand students’ good reasons for bad writing”, which can lead to more detailed, tailored feedback. In contrast, one-on-one consultations are resource intensive (e.g. human, financial, time). Thus, there needs to be commitment from decision makers to provide resources to deliver one-on-one consultations in an equitable manner so that, at a minimum, students who require the support are given the chance to receive it. A related limitation is that it is difficult to provide sufficient availability of advisors, as well as time during consultations. Thus, sustainability and scalability remain key concerns (Arkoudis et al., 2018).