The paper reports on the findings of the recently finalized a project targeting students from higher education sector titled "Evaluation of teaching and learning delivery modes in Arts and Education subjects", which was supported by Australian Learning and Teaching Council for two years from 2008 to 2009. The research investigated student preferences for the mode of delivery of their teaching and learning [T/L] resources such as study guides, readings, supplementary language & learning materials. In addition to data related to this issue, very interesting data was also collected in relation to student preferences for onscreen versus hardcopy reading. Somewhat overwhelmingly, in all subject areas and age groups, as well as across the range of student backgrounds and levels of digital literacy, the findings indicate a very strong student preference for paper-based or hardcopy reading as against online and onscreen reading. These findings raise a number of important questions connected to the increasingly prevalent provision of student resource materials online in the tertiary sector. In this paper we question the appropriateness of educators and policy makers taking too seriously prevalent rhetorical tropes in the discourse of technology enhanced learning [TEL] such as the "Net.Generation" or "digital natives versus digital immigrants". Such tropes need to be handled cautiously we suggest. For in spite of the appeal of such buzzwords and catch phrases, the digital literacy and/or digital rapport of the present/next generation of university students may not be as strong or advanced as some university managers, policy makers, as well as enthusiastic TEL educators, may like to believe. In conclusion we argue managers, educators and policy makers in Higher Education [HE] should continue to ensure multi-modal forms of T/L resource delivery are provided to guarantee equity of access for an ever increasingly diverse university student cohort.

The paper outlines a model for an English for Academic Purposes [EAP] programme designed to enhance the micro and macro study skills of students in the Arts from non-Western educational backgrounds. This EAP model draws on Jurgen Habermas‟s (1995; 1988) theory of communicative rationality to argue that the contemporary culture of inquiry in Arts‟ subjects reflects the communicative rationality that – according to Habermas -- has constituted the modern, Occidental lifeworld. The emergence of communicative rationality Habermas suggests is socio-culturally and historically specific. In other words, it has largely been absent from the socio-cultural contexts of many non-local entrants into Western universities. Yet, effective and successful participation in the Western academic discourse community, as well as everyday or non-scientific discourse communities, at least partly depends on a non-local student‟s awareness of the historical impacts generated by the developmental trajectory of communicative rationality. Successful participation in the Western academic context also depends on a non-local student‟s growing mastery over the methodologies, again generated by communicative rationality, that underpin this culture of inquiry. The EAP model proposes a practice based on a history of the ideas that form the bases of the Western academic tradition. It suggests that the macro (critical thinking, formal register) and micro-level (word choice, sentence construction) skills expected of students in Arts‟ subjects in Western universities are shaped by broader disciplinary and historical features. The pedagogical framing of this EAP model reflects the principles of situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1990; McLellan, 1995) and addresses the recent research of Duff (2007), Morita (2004) and Zamel and Spack (1998).