The schooling system plays a significant role in teaching basic literacy skills such as reading and writing, yet students from al schooling backgrounds find it challenging to uphold an acceptable standard of academic writing in higher education in comparison with their advantaged peers. The fact that universities have adopted English as the medium for teaching and learning purposes makes it difficult for students to demonstrate the ability to write in their own words, as they are second or third language speakers. Student success at institutions of higher learning depends largely on the adequate mastery of reading and writing skills required by the discipline. The article assesses the academic writing skills of final year education students completing their studies at a University of Technology in South Africa. Thisstudy was necessitated by the realisation that students at both undergraduate and post-graduate level are struggling to express themselves through writing in the academic language which is critical for them to succeed at university. The article draws on a writing process skills questionnaire administered to fourth year students and English lecturers in the Department of Education and Communication Sciences. General academic writing conventions such as organisation, development, building an argument, grammar, and spelling were examined through an academic essay. The results highlight the poor writing skills and lack of mastering of academic writing skills of students.

The ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of livelihood, but the higher education sector was hit hardest. The pandemic has exposed the inequalities that still exist in the South African Higher Education sector concerning resources. All universities were expected to shift from traditional face-to-face classes to virtual teaching and learning. Consequently, lecturers were expected to establish WhatsApp (WA) groups in different academic programmes in the institution to communicate course information. The aim of the chapter is to examine how WhatsApp groups can be used by the students to maintain and assert their academic identity as members of a group. This chapter draws from the concept of a discourse community as a sense of belonging and utilising communication to share objectives or goals. The chapter employs a qualitative research technique by drawing from the participatory action research (PAR).

Language is an important tool to enable communication between the host and guests to get the expected services. The chapter aims to address the linguistic gap in a tourism training institution and tourism establishments to respond to the language skills needed by the tourism industry. The Forever Resort Academy course information and job advertisement will be analysed to assess the commitment of the institution to address the language gap. The efforts of tourism businesses and their willingness to address language gaps in the tourism industry were examined through semi-structured interviews with 15 tourism businesses in the Gariep Dam, inclusive of owners and managers. The chapter draws on Halliday's genre theory and Bhatia's interdiscursivity theory in understanding the importance of language for tourism purposes. This chapter encourages tourism training institutions to prepare graduates adequately by focusing more on the language aspect if they wish to produce tourism graduates that can compete in the global tourism market.