Abstract not available

Abstract not available

In Australian schools in the late nineties approximately one quarter of all students are from a language background other than English. Although many of these students are fluent in English in informal conversational contexts, there is evidence that such students are not always able to control the more academic registers of English associated with school learning and literacy. A major challenge for teachers is therefore to integrate subject learning with English language learning, and to find ways to support the language development of students concurrent with the construction of curriculum knowledge. This study addresses that challenge. Drawing on data from two classrooms of nine and ten year olds in the curriculum area of science, the study explores how the discourse of the classroom can be enabling of language development. It does not attempt to make claims about what might be common to all classrooms, but rather points to those practices which are shown to be supportive of second language learning. The aim therefore is not to suggest what is common to all classroom discourse but what its potential can be for second language development. The study takes as a basic principle the notion that language development interacts dynamically with the socio-cultural context in which it occurs, and cannot be fully understood without taking account of this context. Although the analysis draws on systemic functional linguistics it does not purport to be a study 'in' linguistics, but rather, through a theorisation of practice, seeks to contribute to a theorisation of second language pedagogy in the mainstream classroom. To this end, the analysis is also informed by a neo-Vygotskian approach to learning and teaching, by second language acquisition (SLA) research, and by critically conceived notions of minority education. A number of conclusions are drawn from the study. First, it shows how, through a process of recontextualisation of student talk, the teachers jointly construct with the students aspects of the science register. It concludes that when teachers encourage the dialogic function of discourse to develop, (that is, when knowledge is seen as co-constructed between teacher and learners, rather than transmitted from teacher to learners), this also leads to the kind of teacher-student talk which is most enabling of second language development. The study demonstrates that even apparently minor changes in interactional patterns can have quite major effects on the progress of the discourse as a whole, and can make the difference between discourse which is likely to constrain or facilitate language development and learning. The thesis also shows how the discourse incorporates a range of interactional patterns, each of which tend to be used for distinct pedagogical purposes, and thus how the role of the teachers correspondingly changes at different phases of the teaching and learning cycle. The study concludes that a reconceptualisation of pedagogy is required which foregrounds the relationship between teaching and learning and the nature of teacher mediation in the teaching and learning process. The study identifies other significant factors for language development in the classrooms examined: the language knowledge of the teachers, the explicitness of the discourse, (including explicitness about language and about the social aspects of participating in the class), the sequence of teaching and learning activities, and the importance of the intertextual links, the 'dynamic' context, which were the result of this sequence. Finally, the study points to the value of approaching SLA research and pedagogy with a model of language which goes beyond a description of its phonology, morphology and syntax, one which allows for the study of discourse and for the study of language development in terms of socio-linguistic competence, and for the value of a socio-cultural and classroom-based approach to research into second language learning and pedagogy.

The study revolves around the delivery of an ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) program on conflict management in the workplace to a small group of adult learners studying in a private educational institution in Sydney, Australia. The program was of four days???? duration, and was delivered over a four-week period. It involved both in-class and out-of-class tasks, and required learners to analyse their own discourse practices, those of other learners, and those of the speech community in which they were living. The program had two principle objectives. Firstly, it asked whether learners are able to modify their discourse practices at will in order to achieve successful negotiation outcomes. Secondly, it explored the effect of deliberately altered discourse styles on perceptions of learners held by speech community members. The methodology employed to achieve these objectives was ethnographic in nature and involved the following processes: 1. Learners were video-taped negotiating with other learners before and after the program. 2. Learners undertook the program aimed at increasing their ability to negotiate in business environments using culturally appropriate spoken language in conjunction with compatible prosodic and paralinguistic features as well as conversation management strategies. Learners kept diaries of their experiences and self-evaluation, and were interviewed following the course. 3. A group of nine native speakers of English viewed the 'before' and 'after' video-tapes and completed a survey aimed at collecting and quantitatively measuring (change in) their perceptions of the learners. This change was statistically analysed using a repeated-measures t test. The effect proved statistically significant overall; t(80) = 1.990, p&gt.01, two-tailed. 4. The 'before' and 'after' negotiations were then analysed by the researcher using ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis, modified to include some aspects of facial expression. The implications of the findings for teaching 'Business English', 'Global English' and 'Speaking' more generally are then discussed.

This thesis is a case study of dialogic learning in a university context as demonstrated in tutorial talk. The aim of the study is to examine the effectiveness or otherwise of dialogic learning as applied in an economics curriculum. More specifically, the thesis examines the learning experiences of a second language international student cohort as they attempted to understand the role of prediction and causality in economic principles and theories through spoken dialogue. This approach means interpreting the students’ learning as a semiotic process and the students’ cognitive development as shaped by their language in use. The theoretical framework for this examination is offered by the analytical resources of systemic functional linguistics, as developed by M.A.K. Halliday (from 1975 to 2004) combined with frameworks for mediated learning offered by Vygotsky (1986, 1987); Bakhtin (1986); Hasan (from 1985a to 2001); Bernstein (from 1971 to 2001) and Cloran (from 1994 to 2006 draft); and more recent research in ‘scaffolded learning’. The study applies these resources to analyse significant rhetorical functions of economic discourse, such as predictive reasoning and argumentation, and to examine how these were negotiated and mediated by the students and their lecturer. The method for analysing negotiation and mediation in these students’ learning draws on Rhetorical Unit (RU) analysis as devised by Cloran. Linguistically, the analysis takes account of categories and relations between the Rhetorical Units on the basis that these are able to provide theoretical explanations for the predictive reasoning construed in the interactions. The analysis of Rhetorical Units primarily involved the identification of relations between the basic constituent of the text, ie, the message, and how these relations constructed the units of rhetorical meaning in the discussion. The advantage of adopting this approach is the possibility of realising rhetorical activities as an abstraction at the semantic stratum, and, as such, how they were realised by lexicogrammatical phenomena. The analysis examined: first, the use of Rhetorical Units by the lecturer and students in their construal of the critical pedagogic discourses identified by Bernstein, being the regulative and the instructional; and second, the adjustments and shifts to more congruent explanations as a result of contingency strategies taken by both the lecturer and students in response to the students’ difficulties. The findings throw a different light onto dialogic learning in a new social constructivist pedagogical approach in a university context. The study reveals that while the students’ learning was a highly collaborative dialectical process, any transformations in understanding were not at all neatly incremental as described in the literature. Indeed, the negotiations were highly ‘peripatetic’; any increments in understanding were overall devolutionary. While the lecturer’s initial guidance reflected the monologic discourse of written economics, her responses became more congruent and reactive. It was shown that a key predictor of these contingency strategies was the kinds of meanings sought by the students’ extensive questioning. Hence, in this case study, the contingency strategies undertaken within the interactional dynamic reveal a different view of semiotic mediation, necessarily a process of semiotic remediation. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1283936 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Mechanical Engineering, 2006

No research to date has involved ESL students as researchers in investigations of community language practices. This study examined the research processes of 23 international college students in an advanced ESL course. The students worked on an original curriculum, the Language Research Project, through which they performed ethnographic and discourse analytic tasks and engaged in collaborative action research. As the students uncovered the tacit rules that regulate communicative practices in the university community, they sought to improve their own performance in academic interactions. The teacher-researcher simultaneously observed and analyzed students' perspectives, seeking to improve her teaching practice. An analysis of the classroom dialogues showed that intertextual links made by the teacher and the students served to build a system of scaffolds for the group. These intertextual links acted as cognitive and affective support for reflection and evaluation of ideas. The students' comments to each other resembled comments made by the teacher, which indicates that they appropriated the teacher's expert role. Thus, this study reveals that learners of similar levels can offer each other expert assistance in the completion of tasks. The students developed a high level of metacognition. Their reflections uncovered serious conflicts between themselves and native English speakers. They observed that they performed better in social settings. Conversely, they felt awkward in academic settings when interacting with domestic classmates and professors, who were often unsupportive and unwilling to engage in communication. This denial of access by Americans resulted in feelings of inadequacy and inferiority for the students. Nevertheless, some students rejected and transformed certain dominant practices of the community. By adopting the identity of researchers, the students were empowered to engage in their own realities from a position of strength and to assert their individual needs. These findings demonstrate that the students developed a sense of critical language awareness. This dissertation portrays an emerging Vygotskian sociocultural perspective on second language acquisition research. The findings support social constructivist teaching approaches that incorporate students' lived experiences. Finally, this study reveals an urgent need to sensitize faculty and students in higher education in the United States about the experiences of language-minority students. / Graduation date: 2003

The purpose of the study was to determine whether tenth grade adolescents can exhibit the three goals of bibliotherapy, identification, catharsis, and insight, thus achieving self-discovery, through reading contemporary adolescent novels and discussing them with their English teacher on an individualistic basis. Six subjects, four girls and two boys, were selected from two tenth grade English classes at Anderson High School, Anderson, Indiana. The students were given two literary attitude surveys: "Questionnaire: Responses to Feminine Characters in Literature" and "Literary Transfer and Interest in Reading Literature," as pre-tests and post-tests. The six subjects, selected on the basis of average or better grades as well as demonstrated maturity and responsibility, read' Confessions of a Teenage Baboon by Paul Zindel, Don't Look and it Won't Hurt by Richard Peck, The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katharine Paterson, My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel, The Pistachio Prescription by Paula Danziger, and That Was Then, This Is Now by S. E. Hinton. The students discussed each book in a specific order in a private, tape-recorded session with their English teacher, the researcher, who asked predetermined questions over each book. After the tape-recorded discussions were transcribed, the responses were identified as examples of identification (ID), catharsis (C), and insight (IN).Findings1. Identification with fictional characters can lead to insights by adolescents not only about the characters but also about their own personal lives.2. The number of insights did not increase as more books were read.3. In this study the girls appeared to achieve more identification and to gain more insights than the boys.4. Catharsis is the one goal of bibliotherapy less frequently experienced, but the more an adolescent becomes emotionally involved in a book, the more likely he is to experience catharsis.5. Adolescents can achieve self-discovery if they are given the opportunity to discuss fictional characters and situations as related to their own concerns with teachers who can take the time to do so.Conclusions1. Bibliotherapy on an individual basis with adolescent novels not only has emotional and personal benefits but also academic value in that students will respond more readily and responsibly to literature within the realm of their own experience than to the traditional literature of classroom anthologies.2. Emotional maturity and self-discovery can occur if educators are willing to individualize and humanize education.3. Bibliotherapy with adolescent novels can engender feelings of mutual trust and respect between teachers and their students, who need the opportunity to discuss their feelings and problems with adults whom they perceive care about them.4. The individualized approach to bibliotherapy can provide more thorough and genuine responses, leading to significant conclusions.

This research addressed two major questions: (1) whether students in an English 104 class in which synectics was used as an aid to invention would develop the ability to think analogically by using an analogy invented in the synectics process and to think divergently by using the oxymoron invented in the synectics process and (2) whether these students would develop a more positive attitude towards writing.The subjects of the study were two English 104 composition classes with fifty students, including eight case studies. The research was conducted during Winter Quarter 1982-83 at Ball State University.The study followed these steps: (1) a diagnostic theme, (2) questionnaires, (3) three synectics sessions and the resulting essays, accompanied by journal responses and logs, (4) interviews as necessary to complete data, (5) a final theme without a synectics session, accompanied by a journal response and log, and (6) instructor's logs.Analyses of the data led to the following findings:(1) that all of the case studies and the majority of the group used analogical thinking on all of the themes.(2) that although four of the case studies and the majority of the group used divergent thinking on at least one theme, only one of the case studies and a minority of the group used this type of thinking on the final theme.(3) that all of the case studies and the majority of the group evaluated synectics as being helpful.(4) that of the four case studies responding to the questionnaires, two indicated more positive attitudes towards English 104 than they had indicated towards previous writing experiences, as did the majority of the group as a whole.These findings led to the following conclusions:that students learned to think analogically. that few students learned to think divergently. that students developed a more positive attitude towards their writing.

Attitude and motivation, two central concepts in the domain of educational psychology, have not been attended to as required in the literature on English language teaching and learning in Iraq. Consequently, the current study aims at launching a theoretical and empirical investigation into the role of both concepts in bringing about the current discouraging situation of teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Iraq. The theoretical part of the work subsumes the first four chapters. Chapter One is the introduction where the problem to be investigated, the hypotheses, the aims of the research, and the reasons behind the choice of this topic for research have been stated. Chapter Two describes the educational system and the current situation of English language teaching and learning in Iraq. Worth mentioning in this respect are the different pre- and in-service training establishments, English textbooks and tests, and the supervision of teachers of English. Chapter Three is on attitude. The concept has been initially considered from a purely psychological viewpoint with focus on the historical review of attitude development, definition, basic components, main characteristics, formation, and change. Attitude in education forms a second point of departure with emphasis being laid on the role of the concept in teaching and learning foreign languages. Chapter Three ends with attitude measurement. Motivation, the topic of study of Chapter Four, is tackled in terms of its historical development, definition, and different theories. Reference is also made to the role of motivation in education in general, and in foreign language teaching and learning in particular. Accordingly, types of motivation, factors affecting pupils' and teachers' motivation, and teachers' role in motivating pupils form main subjects of discussion. Chapter Four ends with two sections; the first of which tackles the facets of difference between attitude and motivation, while the second deals with the differences between interest on the one hand, and attitude and motivation on the other. Chapter Five is on the method of research adopted to gather the data for the current study. It also contains the analysis of the Pupils' and Teachers' Attitudes and Motivation Questionnaires. Finally, some general remarks about the empirical part of the work are also made. Chapter Six presents the statistical analysis and survey results. It also contains some hypotheses on pupils' and teachers' attitudes and motivation. There is further analysis of some responses made by pupils and teachers which could not be hypothesized. This chapter ends with the analysis of headteachers' and supervisors' perceptions of English language teaching and learning in Iraq. The final chapter titled 'conclusion' contains the general conclusions arrived at by the researcher, followed by some implications for future work.

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy