Anneke Butler’s scientific contributions

Lexical units that are identical in form and that are traditionally referred to as either adpositions, adverbs, or particles (based on their morphosyntactic properties), can also be grouped together (based on semantic properties) under the term P-items (see for example Fontaine 2017). Although it is for most linguistic endeavours sufficient to refer to these items as P-items, it is desirable and sometimes even essential in some usage contexts to be able to determine in which one of the subcategories such lexical items should be categorised. In general Afrikaans and Dutch, for example, a lexical item that functions as a verb particle would in some syntactic contexts be written conjunctively with the verb but in other syntactic contexts not, while this is never the case for an identical form of that lexical item functioning as a postposition. Like in Afrikaans and Dutch, the distinction between different P-items is also not always straightforward in English. This article explores different strategies to distinguish between P-items in these three languages and proposes a set of questions as a strategy to identify postpositions in a more systematic way.

Mind mapping or summary mapping has proved to be an effective and powerful tool for meaningful visual summarising in a structured way. However, to determine whether students have reached the set outcomes for summarising in this way, an objective measuring instrument is required. The assessment of summary maps is known to be a problematic activity: (i) students have difficulty to differentiate between essential and non-essential information; (ii) lecturers tend to rely too heavily on rewarding content and not the structure in which the content is presented; (iii) as a result of the interpretative nature of summary maps, there are many levels of subjectivity imbedded in the drawing, teaching and assessment process; (iv) the nature of the summarising activity calls for a need to improve inter-marker reliability; and (v) current assessment practices may result in a wasted opportunity for constructive feedback. In search of a suitable marking rubric, several examples are available in the literature to assess summary mapping. These, however, proved to still have a high level of subjectivity and are not appropriate for North-West University’s foundational academic literacy module. Consequently, an assessment tool for summary maps (the Summary Mapping Assessment Rubric Tool—SMART) was developed that addresses typical difficulties that markers experience. The newly developed tool proves to fulfil our most important and immediate needs with regard to the fair and effective assessment of summary maps. Keywords: academic literacy, summary maps, assessment, rubric, scoring consistency, feedback