Development of discursive skills in a visually impaired undergraduate student

Abstract

In Mexico, higher education academic communities rarely receive students with disabilities, and when they do, they often fail to establish parameters or indicators to assess their academic achievements. Literature on the topic remains scarce. This case study describes the access to academic literacy of a visually impaired student enrolled in a Bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Language and Literature. It reports her academic progress through a linguistic analysis of her discursive productions to assess the outcomes of the inclusion process. The underlying assumption guiding the study of academic literacy development is that “reading and listening to complex language is a primary source of exposure to complex syntax.” The aim of the study was to generate a model for analyzing linguistic development as a means of assessing academic achievement. The methodology employed was qualitative and longitudinal, involving the collection of written texts centered on a narrative task in the second, fifth, and final semesters. The analysis of results reveals a progression from writing with conversational traits to narrative writing that reflects features of her field of specialization, thus indicating her inclusion in the academic domain. Two future lines of action are proposed: the integration of linguists into multidisciplinary teams supporting inclusion, and the study of students’ discursive productions as a means of evaluating their degree of academic inclusion.