M.A. (Applied Linguistics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This qualitative naturalistic descriptive case study provides an understanding of the characteristics of a community of practice within a National Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute. This study utilized naturalistic, descriptive case study methodology to answer the research question: What characteristics of a community of practice are revealed by the perceptions and experiences of the fellows of a National Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute? Data were gathered in the form of interviews, focus group, observations, field notes, and participant reflective pieces. Peer debriefing, triangulation, thick rich description, as well as member checking served to establish credibility and trustworthiness in the study. Bracketing, a phenomenological process of reflecting on one's own experiences of the phenomenon under investigation was utilized as well. The findings of this study point to five analytic themes. These themes, ownership and autonomy, asset-based environment, relationships, socially constructed knowledge and practices, and experiential learning, intertwine to illuminate the three essential components which must be present for a community of practice to exist: joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire. Participants' portraits provide a description of their unique experiences as they moved fluidly between the periphery and core of the community of practice.

In this ever-changing world of 201 0, we are more closely interconnected than ever before. English plays a key role in this world's communication as a global or international language- making intercultural connections and bridging differences in the process. It is critically important and challenging for people to learn skills for interacting in this global society. ESL/EFL teachers, educators, and administrators become key resources for learning and transmitting the knowledge, skills, and strategies for using English in a variety of social, business, or academic interactions. Immigrants, refugees, and international students need to learn more than the linguistic structure of the English language. To communicate effectively and competently, they need to learn cultural and intercultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes for navigating those intercultural situations. This exploratory study examined the roles of cultural and intercultural knowledge, skills, and competency of ESLIEFL teachers and educators in the teaching of language. An electronic survey was used to explore how ESL/EFL teachers and educators were defining the terms cultural and intercultural, how and to what extent were cultural and intercultural concepts being taught, where educators were receiving their information, and if, and how, were they assessing students' learning. Results indicated that many teachers and educators were not receiving primary cultural and intercultural information from courses connected to MA TESOL programs, that confusion exists over the definitions of cultural and intercultural, and that in many cases intercultural concepts and competency were not being integrated into class curricula. It appears clear that the designers and teachers in foreign language programs would be well served by adopting a more interdisciplinary approach to foreign language teaching and by collaborating with those who could provide information, clarity, and freshness for the integration of cultural and intercultural competency into current programs.

This qualitative narrative study investigated the relationship between emerging adults’ understandings of themselves as writers and their autobiographical memories of writing. Narrative data, largely elicited through semi-structured interviews, were collected from 14 participants who were recruited from six postsecondary institutions. Recruitment efforts aimed to yield participants who had divergent educational experiences, career ambitions, and dispositions towards writing, and who inhabited divergent racial, social, and cultural identities. The study contributes to writer identity research by applying a sociocultural framework that holds memory, narrative, identity, and culture as reflections—and, often, distortions—of each other. The research questions, asked through this lens, aimed to provide insight into the emotional residues of pre-college writing experiences, the potential patterning of narrated memories or identities among participants, and the ways in which the stories participants shared and the identities they storied shape each other. While this is fundamentally an inquiry into the narrative features of writer identity, it is also a study about how certain lived writing experiences reincarnate as highly emotive autobiographical memories; even if such memories tend to be unstable, unreliable, and suggestable, they are nonetheless meaningful reflections of the lingering effects of the past. Through this retrospective study, a portrait emerges of classroom conditions and writing experiences that are particularly hospitable to the nurturement of positive memories and healthy writing identities, as well as to the inverse. This research is intended to speak to both secondary English teachers and English teacher educators and college composition instructors by bridging secondary and postsecondary understandings of how student writers are moving between worlds, the memories they are bringing with them, and the ways in which they might be storying their writer identities en route.

This study investigates the effect of multilevelled semanticogrammatical consciousness raising procedures on fossilised verb structures. It is hypothesised that these procedures will reactivate grammaticisation processes leading to the destabilisation of fossilised structures. The study attempts to establish whether fossilised structures can be destabilised, how processes of grammaticisation may be activated, whether adult advanced learners are still able to improve grammatical accuracy levels, what cognitive processes operate in interlanguage change, and how ESL teaching in the primary school classroom may be improved. The subjects are first-year ESL teacher trainees who have been learning English in formal classrooms for eight to ten years. They are subjected to pretests, a ten-week consciousness raising intervention programme, and posttests. The consciousness raising activities are set in a primary school teaching context, thus establishing relevance. The varied strategies used are presented progressively on different levels of consciousness. The theoretical contributions of the study are the insights gained in respect of the psychodynamics of fossilisation and learning theory as it relates to semantico-grammatical consciousness raising within a Cognitive Theory paradigm. According to the findings the total number of verb errors are significantly reduced and self-monitoring and other-monitoring skills significantly improved after the intervention. The semantic value of verb structures evidently acts as a regulator of form: semantically significant structures are destabilised but semantically vacuous structures do not respond to semanticogrammatical consciousness raising strategies. By implication, semantic significance of structures promotes learnabili ty whereas semantic vacuity is conducive to fossilisation. A relatively invariant ability gap between self-monitoring and other-monitoring is also identified. Subjects are significantly better at monitoring structures produced by others than their own. Self-monitoring, which is a necessary prerequisite for interlanguage change, is improved by consciousness raising but is apparently affected negatively by conventional analytical rule-based teaching. This study concludes that multilevelled semantico-grammatical consciousness raising procedures may precipitate defossilisation and that fossilised structures are not necessarily immutable. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Lunguistics)

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, School of Education, 1994. / Includes bibliography. / Introduction ; The research question and the professional context of the inquiry -- Literature review: substantive survey -- Literature review: methodological survey -- Research method -- The prgamatics of feedback -- An ethnographic portrait of supervision -- Perceptions of mitigation -- Conclusion. / This research project investigates the language of supervisory conferences. A grounded theory approach is taken to the analysis of data drawn from teacher educators in TESOL (Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages) in their feedback discussions with teachers following observed lessons.--Supervisory talk is investigated within a linguistic framework of politeness theory: while the supervisory role includes the obligation of criticism, the act of criticism is constrained by the face-to-face encounter of the supervisory conference. A central construct is the notion of fragility: the supervisory conference-an event which is equated with the talk that achieves it - is considered to be inherently fragile. The aim of the project is to investigate the language so as to uncover the source of the fragility.--Findings suggest that the perceived tension derives from a tug-of-war of essential elements: while the supervisory position affords discoursal power (the right to raise and pursue topics, take long turns, drive the discourse etc), the fa-threatening nature of the event obliges supervisors to resort to social/strategic skills to protect the teacher's face, as well as their own. The textualisation of this restraint takes the form of linguistic mitigation - devices rooted in syntax and semantics that allow supervisors to undercut the force of their own assertions. Mitigation is posited as the means by which supervisors resolve the clash-of-goals that is central to their role. However, mitigation is risky because it may interfere with message clarity.-- The product of the grounded study is a typology of utterance-level mitigation. The typology has three macro-categories (syntactic, semantic and indirectness) and fourteen sub-categories.-- The study was triangulated through an ethnographic investigation of supervisory concerns about feedback; and through an experiment designed to gauge teachers' perceptions of variously mitigated supervisory language. Findings from both studies corroborate the central tenet by contributing images of supervision that support the clash-of-goals thesis.--The projected applied outcome is in supervisor training where, it is suggested, strategic training delivered in a framework of politeness theory would reduce the unwitting dependence on mitigation and hence the risk of message distortion.--Suggestions for further research conclude the study. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 413 leaves

The distinction between theory and practice can be traced back to Aristotle (384-322 B.C). Theory has been seen as the preserve of the academician who, through research, produces knowledge for the practitioner to use in his/her practice. This research sets out to investigate perceptions of the respondents with regard to the extent to which theory is applicable in practice. It does this in the context of teacher training at the Lesotho College of Education, (LCE), a teacher training college in Lesotho. In this research project; a case study of 5 students from the LCE who had been on teaching practice, their mentor teachers on teaching practice, and a college lecturer who had observed said students on teaching practice was used. Data was collected by means of focus group interviews and semi-structured interviews. Relevant documents in the form of classroom observation forms were also used. The findings from the data analysis revealed that students on teaching practice had, to a great extent, had difficulties in applying what they had learned at the college when they got to teaching practice. Difficulties were mainly experienced in the areas of classroom and time management as well as in the application of the teaching methods learned at the college. This research takes a closer look at these difficulties. It investigates their probable causes and, finally, suggests ways of responding to them.

The aim of this research was to better understand teacher's beliefs about visual literacy and to explore how their beliefs influence their teaching practice. In order to investigate this, a case study was conducted that comprised of lesson observations and semi-structured interviews with two secondary school English home language educators. The backdrop to the research was the implementation of the new national curriculum for grade 10. The participants, though well educated and experienced teachers, felt their training had been inadequate in the area of teaching visual literacy and although they acknowledged the importance of visual literacy, it seemed to have a fairly low priority in their actual teaching practice. In particular, very little attention was given to the production of multimodal texts by learners. The reason for this low priority may be related to the requirements of the formal assessment programme as well as limited lesson time in which to cover an extensive curriculum. The research findings would seem to suggest a need for in-service training in this area as well as access to suitable learning support materials and teacher resources.

This study investigates the effect of multilevelled semanticogrammatical consciousness raising procedures on fossilised verb structures. It is hypothesised that these procedures will reactivate grammaticisation processes leading to the destabilisation of fossilised structures. The study attempts to establish whether fossilised structures can be destabilised, how processes of grammaticisation may be activated, whether adult advanced learners are still able to improve grammatical accuracy levels, what cognitive processes operate in interlanguage change, and how ESL teaching in the primary school classroom may be improved. The subjects are first-year ESL teacher trainees who have been learning English in formal classrooms for eight to ten years. They are subjected to pretests, a ten-week consciousness raising intervention programme, and posttests. The consciousness raising activities are set in a primary school teaching context, thus establishing relevance. The varied strategies used are presented progressively on different levels of consciousness. The theoretical contributions of the study are the insights gained in respect of the psychodynamics of fossilisation and learning theory as it relates to semantico-grammatical consciousness raising within a Cognitive Theory paradigm. According to the findings the total number of verb errors are significantly reduced and self-monitoring and other-monitoring skills significantly improved after the intervention. The semantic value of verb structures evidently acts as a regulator of form: semantically significant structures are destabilised but semantically vacuous structures do not respond to semanticogrammatical consciousness raising strategies. By implication, semantic significance of structures promotes learnabili ty whereas semantic vacuity is conducive to fossilisation. A relatively invariant ability gap between self-monitoring and other-monitoring is also identified. Subjects are significantly better at monitoring structures produced by others than their own. Self-monitoring, which is a necessary prerequisite for interlanguage change, is improved by consciousness raising but is apparently affected negatively by conventional analytical rule-based teaching. This study concludes that multilevelled semantico-grammatical consciousness raising procedures may precipitate defossilisation and that fossilised structures are not necessarily immutable. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Lunguistics)

The purpose of this project is to examine interactive methodologies which provide effective EFL instruction and curricula that foster listening, speaking, and reading through the teaching of writing, peer review, and oral presentation skills.