The purpose of the study was twofold. The first purpose was to determine the role of the Head of Department in maintaining the motivation of English first additional language teachers in deprived communities. The role of the Head of Department will depend on factors that motivate and demotivate EFAL teachers and the influence of demographic factors on the motivators and demotivators reported by the participants. The second purpose was to establish the expectations that EFAL teachers have of their Heads of Departments in order to gain an understanding of the role that the Head of Departments can play in the motivation of the EFAL teachers teaching in schools situated in educationally deprived communities. This study not only aimed at presenting the findings but to also develop recommendations that can be formulated for the Head of Departments of English first additional language department of high schools situated in educationally deprived communities with regard to supporting the motivation of teachers. To this end, a literature study was undertaken on relevant theories and on the results of previous research on the issue. The research design was a mix-methods design. The questionnaire for collecting both qualitative and quantitative data was designed in line with instruments used in similar research studies on English FAL teacher motivation by Bennell and Akyempong (2007), Kassagby, et al. (2001) and Yau (2010). The questionnaire was administered to EFAL teachers teaching at high schools located in educationally deprived communities in the Nelson Mandela Metropole where isiXhosa is the home language of the learners and English is the medium of instruction. It was discovered that the main factors influencing teachers in the context of EFAL teaching in educationally deprived communities include the culture of teaching and learning of the school, the teacher’s interaction with learners, colleagues and the recognition and feedback associated with supervision of curriculum implementation. It was found that demotivated learners, unsupportive colleagues and unprofessional or unethical practices by the Head of Department to be the most demotivating factors.

The medium for teaching and learning in South African universities is not the mother tongue of the majority of students and this has been reported to be a barrier to achievement (Department of Education, 2002). Poor English language skills, as well as poor discipline specific vocabulary knowledge, can lead to poor study techniques with the students resorting to rote learning as they are unable to interpret the recommended texts (Gow, Kember, & Chow, 1991; Shembe, 2002). In 2005 at the NMMU a significant difference was reported between the marks achieved for the Pharmacology 2 (ZCL2) module by English first language (EFL) students and the English second language students (EAL) (Boschmans & McCartney, 2005). These finding provided motivation for this study which interrogates issues of language and learning in a multilingual Pharmacology classroom. A mixed methods approach, which employed a concurrent triangulation design with quantitative dominance, was used. Two parallel studies were undertaken. One consisted of a quasi-experimental, pre-test and post-test control group design using an intervention which consisted of the application of the didactical practice of exploratory talk with an experimental sample group during ZCL2 Supplementary Instruction sessions (SI). A second study involved a parallel data collection from the ZCL303 and ZCL401 Pharmacy students at the NMMU to investigate possible effects of academic progression. Purposive, homogenous sampling was used in selection of the samples. The mean ZCL2 mark for the experimental group (58.70±14.14 percent) of students who experienced the intervention (application of exploratory talk) was significantly higher (p = .0004) than the mark achieved by the ZCL2 comparison group (46.47±14.48). This Abstract difference was of high practical significance (Cohen‟s d = 0.85). This quantitative finding was supported by the qualitative data where the students expressed support for the discussion sessions (application of exploratory talk) held during SI sessions. There was a significant increase, with academic progression, of English reading comprehension amongst the EFL students (p = .025) but not in the EAL students and BPharm1 weighted average (p < .001) as well as SI attendance (p = .02) correlated significantly with achievement in ZCL2. The findings of this study provide insights into the teaching of Pharmacology in a multilingual classroom. The qualitative results in addition to strengthening the quantitative findings through triangulation have provided a rich, deep and detailed description of the lived experiences of Pharmacology students. The data will provide insights into students‟ experiences for Pharmacy academics and are a resource for understanding student perspectives.

Writing skills is are an essential requirement to lifelong learner success yet the way teachers teach and provide feedback to their learners on writing is quite challenging. This study sought to explore the teaching strategies to improve writing skills as an essential requirement for effective learning in schools for grade 8 and 9 learners in English First Additional Language. For people living in the townships and rural areas in South Africa, exposure to English is limited, because the majority of people communicate with each other in local languages. With teachers and learners residing in the townships where communication occurs mostly in isiXhosa, problems in language proficiency, in particular writing in English First Additional Language, are often encountered not only by the learners, but by educators as well. This was a case study of four high schools in the Cradock Education District. In-depth interviews were conducted with eight participants in the four schools. There were eight main findings, which are as follows: Lack of support for teachers, lack of a culture of learning amongst learners, and lack of competence in English for both learners and parents, which need to be addressed; and strategies proposed to improve writing skills are: the importance of creative writing; regular feedback and the importance of drafts.

A discrepancy appears to exist between the value placed on reflective journal writing by the writers of journals and the value seen by educators of that same journal writing. In this study, I explored the journal writing of six tutors working in a learning centre at a two-year community college in western Canada. I examined: (1) tutors' perspectives on the journal writing task; (2) the content and reflectivity of tutors' journals; and, (3) the accuracy of the journals in representing tutor thinking initiated by the journal writing task. The initial data collection for the study included observation of weekly in-service training sessions and examination of tutor journal entries. Tutors were interviewed about their perceptions of journal writing and their thinking around issues they wrote about in their journals. The tutor trainer was interviewed about his expectations of tutor journal writing, his reactions to tutors' journals and his perceptions of the journal writing task. After the initial data collection, the participants were given summaries of data collected in the initial phase. Tutors read the summaries and as a group discussed issues raised by the data. I interviewed the trainer about insights he had gained from the summaries. Content choices and levels of reflectivity in the tutors' journals varied widely. Factors affecting the content and levels of reflection in the tutors' journals were affected by tutors’ understanding of the journal writing task, their motivation for journal writing, their feelings of vunerability, their personal histories, their tutoring experience, their preference for writing as a mode of learning, and their purposes for writing journals. Most tutors perceived their journals as useful to them, but the tutor trainer regarded the journals as less useful. This difference in perception of the benefits of journal writing can be attributed, at least in part, to the differing levels of access of the trainer and the tutors to the benefits of journal writing. The trainer based his understanding of the benefits of journal writing on the journals themselves whereas the tutors were aware of benefits that were not apparent from studying the journals. Interviews with the tutors showed that tutors reflected more as a result of the journal writing task than was evident from their journals. The trainer’s view of the reflection initiated by the journal writing task was obscured in tutors’ journals due to the fact, that tutors reported prior reflection, provided incomplete representation of their reflective thinking, made rhetorical choices which masked their levels of reflection, and continued to reflect after completion of journal entries. Implications of the study for educators include the importance of a process approach to journal writing, the risks of assuming that journals provide an accurate picture of the reflection the task initiates, and factors for consideration in the construction of the prompt for journal writing. Implications for researchers focus on the risks of assuming that journals provide an accurate measure of the benefits of the journal writing task. Collaboration with journal writers is seen as essential for any such measure to be achieved. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

This research addressed two major questions: (1) what effect does instruction in writing heuristics have on the expository writing of E.S.L. students? (2) is one writing heuristic better than another? In an experiment involving 116 twelfth-graders in eight classes, the subjects were randomly assigned within classes to one of three groups. Each of the three groups received ten hours of instruction: two groups in writing heuristics, and a third group which served as an experimental control received instruction in grammar. The study was a pretest/posttest design where essays were administered as the tests. The students' essays were scored for quantity (number of words) and quality. Scores were analyzed in a repeated measures design. The results revealed that there were no significant differences between the three groups on either the quantitative or qualitative measures. Although a review of the literature indicated support for the use of writing heuristics with E.S.L. students, the experimental evidence in this study does not substantiate this view. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Recent research in second language acquisition makes a strong argument for the importance of promoting language learning tasks in the classroom which allow students to engage in authentic information exchange for which the main focus is meaning. The current emphasis on language learning through meaningful use has highlighted the role of negotiation of comprehensible input in second language learning. This has led to a psychololinguistic rationale for advocating group work in the classroom. Discussion on a topical issue provides a specific and natural group work task for ESL learners to use language in a problem-solving and decision-making context. As well, this type of task provides a productive context in which to study the processes of effective language use and the strategies of competent language users. The research reported here is exploratory; this document reports on a case-study of eight adult learners enrolled in an English for Academic Purposes discussion course. Their performance in discussion leadership was ranked globally by instructor and class peers using a leadership criteria checklist. These two subjective rankings correlated highly and were used as a central indicator of leader effectiveness. The study investigated the question: how might we better understand a number of variables which relate to these global rankings? This was explored through objective measures of discourse, self-reported learning strategies, an integration index and a learning style preference measure, which were analysed statistically for correlation. Discourse variables were measured on data collected during the group discussions. Strategy use, integrative motivation and learning style flexibility were determined by analysing what the students reported in a semi-structured interview. Results showed that the global ranking correlated positively with the objective discourse measures and learning style flexibility, but not with learning strategy use nor with integrative motivation. Qualitative examination of two high achievers was conducted. These two detailed cases reinforced some aspects of quantitative findings, but also shed light on possible individual differences between high achievers. The findings from both quantitative and qualitative data are reported together with their implications for future work in this area. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

Assessing English-as-a-second-language (ESL) children in their native and second languages (L1 & L2) is likely to result in a better estimate of their academic potential than in the L2 alone. In the present study, the Hong Kong-Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (HK-WISC), the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale: Fourth Edition (SB: FE), and the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery (WLPB) were administered to 32 Cantonese-speaking children from Hong Kong. The mean age of these children was 11.01 years. Their mean age on arrival (A0A) was 9.27 years, while their mean length of residence (L0R) was 1.74 years. Results of the multiple regression analyses and analysis of variance indicated that AOA and LOR are significant predictive variables for ESL immigrant's verbal performance. In addition, variables such as family socioeconomic status, frequency of speaking Cantonese at home, gender, and having studied English before are also useful to make predictions of these children's performance. The present sample had a high nonverbal and low verbal profile of performance on the English IQ measure. However, this profile of performance was not present on the Chinese IQ measure. These findings add to the cumulative data that Orientals have a characteristic intellectual profile. Finally, this study suggests that, if feasible, immigrant children should be assessed in both LI and L2. Standardized tests can be used to assess ESL immigrant children, even in their first few years of arrival to a new country. The results of the assessment should be kept as a record so that comparisons can be made with future assessment results. However, all these results need to be interpreted with extreme caution because inappropriate labelling and misplacement of these children are unacceptable. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

This thesis evaluates the first three years of the Canadian Farmworkers Union ESL Crusade and the Freire-based philosophy which inspired it. Based on the author's three years of participant-observation, it pursues the following question: In the context of the union, is it possible to operate an ESL program which will both teach basic ESL and further the union's goal of organizing Punjabi farmworkers? The thesis begins by summarizing Freire's educational/ political philosophy, and continues by examining the program's context: conditions of farmwork in British Columbia, the role of CFU in improving them, and the dynamics of the Punjabi community which affect this process. This is followed by a detailed description and evaluation of the Crusade: its objectives, recruiting and training of volunteer tutors, teaching methods and materials, curriculum topics, organizing strategies, results in terms of both teaching ESL and organizing, and finally analysis of the program's limitations. The following section re-evaluates Freire's philosophy in view of three years experience in a North American setting. Key issues include the relationship between students' concerns and the union's agenda, dialogue versus banking, the complex nature of oppression for North American immigrants, the distinction between a realistic and idealistic frame of reference in operating and evaluating a program, and the importance of organizers reflecting on their own vested interests. All these issues proved salient to the daily operation of the program and have ramifications for other programs. In the course of three years, the Crusade was able to develop methods and materials which had good potential both for ESL instruction and organizing, and which approached the Freirian ideal. However, a number of limitations prevented the program from fulfilling this potential. Some of these could be overcome with changes in the Crusade's format, such as using full-time Punjabi tutors rather than Anglo volunteers. The study concludes by outlining these changes plus directions for further research. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

Twenty-five ESL students who were identified by teachers as "academically successful", i.e. with at least a C average in their regular courses, were interviewed, using an open ended conversational approach. Informants shared their own perspectives on their ESL and regular classroom experiences, their perceptions about themselves as students and their strategies for success. They compared experiences in Canada and their native countries, and talked about their home background. They were encouraged to identify both strengths and problems in their education experiences, and to suggest changes in the schools to help themselves as well as less successful students. Data concluded that informants showed additive bilingualism, many use L1 to learn their academic work, and overwhelmingly they support ESL classes which they credit with fulfilling both academic and affective needs. Academic work in the home country transfers to subjects such as Math, but they express frustration with written assignments and essay questions in subjects with heavy language requirements. In general there is little involvement with native-speaking peers. Informants were found to be highly disciplined, with high future aspirations. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

A micro-analysis of the interlanguage (IL) employed by Pakistanis learning English as a second language (ESL) is performed on ten subjects' speech samples in order to gain insights into their second language acquisition. Only one aspect of ESL — collocation is studied. Collocation is idiomatic in nature and has single-lexemic function; it is assumed therefore to present some acquisitive and productive difficulties for second language learners, who would tend to fail to recognize collocations as "fixed" expressions and to view each word within them as independent and therefore replaceable. The objective of this study is to analyze the conversational collocation errors that Pakistani-Canadians make in ESL. This study addresses the following three hypotheses: 1) that in the English variation in collocation across discourse domains; speech of Pakistani subjects correctness will be found 2) that a continuum will be found for this variation, running between more Target-like collocations in the Work Talk Domain / Exposition Activity and fewer Target-like collocations in the Life Story Domain / Narrative Activity; 3) that formally educated subjects will show more Target-like use of collocations than informally educated subjects. The results of this study show that there exists an IL in Pakistani-Canadians' use of the English language. The IL of Pakistani-Canadians' English seems to indicate that: 1) IL collocations are domain specific; 2) Non-target-like collocations occur most often when referring to quantification; in T-unit initial position; and adjacent to parallel contextual and/or structural forms; and they often contain article ellipsis; 3) In addition, this study shows that formally educated subjects produce more Target-like collocations than informally educated subjects. Furthermore, this study has generated some questions and highlighted areas that merit further research. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate