What's in Academic Literacy Mentoring

Although the term 'mentoring' originates from Greek mythology, others place the origins of its use in the practice of mentoring much earlier, and suggest that its roots lie in the earliest cave-dwelling days of mankind. Furthermore, the phenomenon of mentoring developed not only in western culture, but also has a long history in many other cultures including the Chinese and the Native American Indian. This thesis examines mentoring of academic literacy from a humanistic-caring-moral viewpoint as a pedagogy that relates to the student as a unique individual, working on his cognitive-academic literacy development. The significance of the study is located in the perception that literacy in general and in higher education in particular, has high importance at many levels - individual, academic, social and economic. Still, in academia the prevalent opinion today is that students worldwide do not know how to write. The lack of literacy knowledge is also evident in the world of economics. Thus, mentoring of academic literacy can be a pedagogical approach which might show itself as a way to obtain better results of performing academic literacy.