Junior lecturers are entry-level academic staff who, despite their junior position and lack of experience, are often given the responsibility of developing student tutors. This frequently leads to insecurity about how best to approach the task. In response to this, a collaborative mentorship programme was developed in order to provide an enabling context in which junior lecturers could explore various aspects of tutor development. This article reports on participants' responses to the programme, in terms of the personal and pedagogical shifts experienced. It locates the mentorship programme within the context of some of the key challenges in the South African higher education sector. Action research was used to explore how the programme affected junior lecturers' perceptions of themselves in the context of their disciplines and their understanding of innovative tutor development. In order to understand their responses fully, it was also necessary to consider the ways in which the junior lecturers initially perceived themselves in their departments and within the university as a whole. An analysis of the identity shifts among staff suggests that a collaborative mentorship programme of this nature is an effective form of staff development which could be of mutual benefit to staff in similar contexts.

This article explores the use of Systemic Functional Grammar in a module for University students entitled Analysing Media Texts. This module aims at assisting students to produce their own texts and to help them develop an understanding of the linguistic choices they make. Students are introduced to the key principles of CDA and to Halliday's SFG to provide them with tools to assist them to understand the social and constructed nature of discourses, especially those typically found in media texts. This article follows on (Clarence-Fincham 2000), which focuses on students' interpretation of media texts, their ability to read with greater understanding and to apply key concepts that they had learnt to their analyses. The students demonstrated clearly that they had developed an understanding of CDA, acquired the basic metalanguage necessary for Hallidayan analysis and some of them could produce much more rigorous textual analyses than before. This article focuses on the engagement and high level of motivation students showed when asked to produce their own texts. Examples of the texts are given of texts produced and analysed by the students. Students reported that choosing and constructing their own texts had been both beneficial and enjoyable. However, students were able to produce fine-tuned linguistic analysis in the time allottedsome of them still resorted to extremely mechanistic analyses which took no explicit account of the purpose or function of the language and still less of the significance of the linguistic choices made.

It has frequently been claimed that Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) is apowerful linguistic tool which facilitates analytical and interpretative skills and provides aflexible, yet structured set of analytical tools with which to interpret texts. With this claim asa backdrop, this article asks whether SFG is, in fact an appropriate analytical approach forunder-graduate students and whether it can facilitate their ability to analyse texts. Its contextis a second level course, Analysing Media Texts, offered at Natal University. Broadly framedby critical discourse analysis, it traces the development of a thirteen week module and,using student analyses for illustrative purposes, identifies pedagogical challenges anddifficulties that need to be confronted before any strong claims can be made. It is concludedthat, on the evidence of students' responses to texts analysed during this course, it is not yetpossible to make strong claims about the benefits of SFG. There is enough positiveevidence, however, to pursue the possibility that with innovative curriculum development andthe careful scaffolding and integration of concepts, SFG will be clearly shown to have anextremely important role to play.

Daar is dikwels beweer dat Halliday se Sistemies-Funksionele Grammatika (SFG) 'n kragtige linguistiese middel is wat analitiese en interpreterende vaardighede bevorder en 'n plooibare, dog gestruktureere stel analitiese gereedskap verskaf waarmee tekste gei"nterpreteer kan word. Met die bewering as agtergrond vra hierdie artikel of SFG inderdaad 'n toepas like analitiese benadering vir voorgraadse studente is en of dit hulle vermoe om tekste te ontleed, bevorder. Die konteks is 'n tweedejaarskursus, Analysing Media Texts, wat aan die Universiteit van Natal aangebied word. Breedweg omraam deur kritiese diskoersanalise, speur die artikel die ontwikkeling van 'n module van dertien weke na, met gebruik van studenteontledings ter illustrasie en identifiseer pedagogiese uitdagings en probleme wat aangespreek moet word voordat enige sterk aansprake gemaak kan word. Daar word tot die slotsom gekom, op grond van die studente se reaksies op tekste wat gedurende hierdie kursus ontleed is, dat dit nog nie moontlik is om sterk aansprake oor die voordele van SFG te maak nie. Daar is egter genoeg positiewe bewyse om die moontlikheid op te volg dat met vernuwende kurrikulumontwikkeling en die versigtige ondersteuning en integrering van konsepte duidelik bewys sal kan word dat SFG 'n uiters belangrike rol te speel het.

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