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This Integrative Chapter outlines how one person's practice reflects the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) principles. It opens with a brief discussion of this career and how the purpose of it of late has been to address the needs of those involved in the TEYL community of practice. The Integrative Chapter then briefly discusses Boyer's work on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and, within this discussion, highlights his four functions of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, which are: The Scholarship of Discovery The Scholarship of Integration The Scholarship of Application The Scholarship of Teaching (Boyer, 1990) These four functions of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning create the background against which are presented aspects of this practice and publications to illustrate how they fit within each of these functions. Additionally, within each function, there are descriptions of the publications submitted, and, where relevant, the overlapping and linked work on the Masters in Teaching English to Young Learners. Discussion further illustrates how this practice particularly focuses on addressing the needs of those in the TEYL community of practice, including young learners, teachers, teacher trainers, teaching associations and publishers. Within the Integrative Chapter is shown the way in which, within the spirit of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, this career has tried to address gaps in the provision of continuing professional development courses for those involved in Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) and for other professional needs within the field of TEYL and the wider TEYL community of practice.

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Using a range of complementary methods (miscue analysis, interviews, and questionnaires), this thesis aims to explore the reading processes of some Korean primary school students in English. The questionnaire was collected from 78 Korean primary school students in Seoul. Of those students, 12 were selected to provide miscue data. Interview data was collected from the miscue participants as well as six adult participants (three state school teachers, one private lesson teacher, one parent, one member of staff at a children's bookshop). Established miscue analysis techniques were adapted to accommodate the research context of Korean primary school students; participants were asked to read the same text twice without any significant pause, and, after the second oral reading, were asked to translate what they read in English into Korean. Data analysis was carried out quantitatively as well as qualitatively. The number of miscues were counted and categorised into five types: substitutions, insertions, omissions, repetitions, and reformulations. In the qualitative analysis, translation and interview data were used to provide more information about reading processes. The analysis shows that more than thirty percent of miscues, mostly substitution miscues, were repeated across the two oral readings. They also show that a lot of non-word substitutions were produced and that most of the real-word substitutions produced were based on graphophonic cues, rather than syntactic or semantic cues. The translation data suggest that many students experience difficulty in using syntactic cues. The mismatches between miscue and translation data show that the students' difficulties in decoding do not necessarily reflect difficulties in reading comprehension, or vice versa. The analysis of the interview transcripts show that many students consider reading to be an oral activity and associate reading difficulties mainly with pronunciation and vocabulary. The results suggest that they approach reading in English in a disconnected way, failing to integrate cues from different levels. The discussion suggests that miscue analysis can perform a helpful role in allowing researchers to gain a greater understanding of readers' expectations of reading. It is also suggested, however, that Goodman's 'window' metaphor for miscue analysis may be misleading and that miscue data should be used with a degree of caution, without the assumption that it can serve as a transparency that will reveal all aspects of reading processes.

Government guidelines in Austria specify that first and second year primary school pupils (age 6-8 years old) should receive their first teaching of a foreign language integrated into the syllabus subjects. The present study, embedded in the theoretical framework of social constructivist learning and socio-cultural language learning theories, investigated the actual classroom practices of Austrian primary school teachers during the integration of English into the lessons. The main research question ‘How is English as a foreign language taught in the first two years of Austrian primary schools?' required consideration of both the context and the participants and aligned three perspectives: context, teachers and pupils. From the contextual perspective, government legislation and guidance, teacher training institutions, and school management are significant. They influence some aspects of the individual teachers’ competences and attitudes, which in turn affect her or his teaching goals, lesson planning, time allocated to English and other subjects, and choice of classroom activities. The other key participants are the children themselves and their perspective on English learning in the classroom. Setting out to observe foreign language teaching/learning in Austrian primary schools, the study actually identified a number of disparities in processes and perceptions, and raised questions about how English integration is translated into effective classroom practice. Set in the framework of qualitative mixed methods study design, with data drawn from a combination of case study ethnographic classroom observations, a small scale survey, interviews with academics and teachers, pupil picture questionnaires, documentary evidence and innovative qualitative data elicitation methods adapted to young children, the findings of this study reveal that there is a mismatch between government expectations, teacher training, school policies, and actual teaching practice.

Thesis (M.ED.) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / This study was intended to investigate how teacher discourse moves influence comprehensibility of language content by the English First Additional Language (EFAL) learner and promote active participation by the learner in classroom interaction. The research is a Case Study which was conducted at a primary school in the Greater Sekhukhune District in Limpopo Province The Qualitative research approach was applied in the Case Study since the research is concerned with experience as it is lived ‘or felt’ or ‘undergone’ by participants. the key concern of this research is understanding the phenomenon of interest, from the participants’ perspectives, not the researcher’s. The situation in most Black schools is that first of all, teachers who teach English First Additional Language (EFAL) are not first speakers of English themselves. Secondly, learners have a problem of acquiring information through English as an additional language hence the question of comprehensibility of English language content. Teachers and especially learners are de-motivated as they lose interest in what goes on in Englishclassroom interaction due to the comprehensibility of English First Additional Language content As participant observer the researcher in this study concludes that the use of discourse moves by the teacher in classroom interaction enables the learner to comprehend the language content. Also that the teacher’s code-switching and code-mixing into the learners’ home language develops not only comprehensibility of EFAL language content but most of all promotes active learner participation in classroom interaction. This in turn helps the teacher to achieve the desired learning outcomes.

Motivated primarily by a cognitive approach, with consideration of interactional processes from a sociocultural perspective, the present study examined the use of linguistic assistance and peer interaction to facilitate second language (L2) writing of young ESL learners. A total of 257 Year 5 children (age 10) from twelve intact classes (from six different schools) took part in this eight-week intervention-based study. Using a quasi-experimental design, the classes were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups or the control group. Pretests, interim tests, immediate posttests and delayed posttests were administered. As the study concerned both the processes and products of L2 development, peer interaction and children's written production were taken as the two primary sources of data for this study. For the written production, four criteria were used to rate learners’ writings: Quality of ideas, Story shape and structure, Vocabulary and spelling and Implicit grammar. Partial correlation was employed to examine if there were any statistical relationships between treatment and learners’ written performance while controlling for prior attainment. Results show that the provision of enhanced and basic linguistic assistance may have a positive influence on only certain aspects of L2 writing, while opportunities for peer interaction does not appear to have an impact on learners’ L2 performance. For peer interaction, a subset of 60 learners were selected from the two treatment groups which received basic and enhanced linguistic assistance, to compare their dialogic performance. Based on quantitative analyses of their recorded interactions, the findings suggest that the provision of varying degrees of linguistic assistance may affect, not the content of peer discussions, but how peer assistance is given during task. The results also show that through the provision of linguistic assistance, peer interaction mediates the participants’ performance on Quality of ideas, Story shape and structure and Implicit grammar in their subsequent individual writing.

Thesis (M.Ed. (Language Education)) --University of Limpopo, 2011 / This dissertation investigates the challenges that history learners in rural black schools are faced with during examinations with the use of English as a language of learning and teaching. The aim of the research is to investigate whether English, which is used as a language of learning and teaching in schools, is a barrier to the learning and teaching of history. It is believed that the use of English has implications on the results that learners obtain during summative assessment. The literature revealed that any language of learning and teaching, which is not the mother tongue of learners, has an impact on the process of learning. Assessment, which determines whether the learning outcomes have been attained or not, is affected by factors such as the type of assessment, for example, formative or summative, the purpose of assessment and the rules and regulations that go along with assessment. In order to gain a greater insight and comprehensive understanding of the research problem, that is, the challenges that are faced by learners during summative assessment, both the qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. A case study design was adopted. The research techniques employed were interviews, document analyses and observations. The findings indicated that the environment in which the learners are learning second language has impact on the learners’ language proficiency. They further indicate that assessment in itself poses challenge to learners, in addition to the challenges caused by the language barriers. It was also indicated that the educators and the learners prefer to use English as the language of learning and teaching, despite all the challenges they face when they use English. The important findings were discussed with the aim of arriving at conclusions, shortcomings recommendations.

Thesis (M.ED.) -- University of Limpopo, 2011 / This study investigated the effects of English Language Proficiency on Performance and Competence of Learners in the Rural Secondary Schools at Koloti circuit. The primary aim of this study was to establish whether English Language Proficiency had an effect on learners’ competence and performance in English as a Second Language and to establish the root cause of the problem of poor language proficiency. The background to this study was outlined, which was followed by an intensive literature review on the topic. The study followed a case study design which utilized 39 learners from the sampled schools in Koloti Circuit. Data was collected from diagnostic tests which were written by learners, questionnaires which were distributed to learners and parents, and interviews which were conducted with teachers and learners. The study showed that learners have serious deficiencies in reading, listening, speaking and writing skills which affect their competence and performance. The study also showed that this deficiency is attributed to teachers who need intensive in-service training in these skills. This study was based on Krashen’s and Cummin’s theories of second language learning.