ABSTRACT This research is a Qualitative Case Study which investigates the electronic literacy practices of one English teacher and two Grade 10 English classes in a Muslim High school outside of Johannesburg. This study seeks to find out what the forms of electronic literacy used in the classroom are and for what purposes these are used. It is also aimed at investigating how the students in the English classroom engage with these forms of electronic literacies and whether or not gender plays a role in their engagement. This study draws on work in New Literacy Studies, particularly theories of literacy as social practice, Multiliteracies and multimodality as well as current research in the field of electronic literacy. Although there have been numerous studies in the fields of electronic literacy and digital literacy in developed contexts like the United Kingdom and Australia, there is a paucity of research in South Africa in the field and particularly in the area of electronic literacy in the English classroom. The main sources of data were: classroom observations from which field notes were created and group interviews with the students as well as an interview with the English teacher. The findings of this study reveal that being electronically literate in the English classroom means having access to sophisticated forms of technology not only inside the classroom but also outside as well as having a certain degree of fluency around computer use. The forms of electronic literacy used by the English teacher and the purposes for which they were used demonstrate his pedagogy in English and the social forces that shape the production of this pedagogy. The research shows an expansion of the teacher’s role in the English classroom as he is no longer only ‘a mediator of learning’ but a mediator of technology. The status of the text has also changed as the ‘disappearance’ of print-based texts from the classroom was noted with the foregrounding of visual texts and hypertexts. It was found that the students on the whole were engaged with the technology used in the classroom and expressed a preference for its integration into their lessons as opposed to the traditional ‘reading and writing’ practices. Additionally, students’ engagement did not vary according to gender.

<p>The aim of this study is to investigate the notion of pupil influence in English teaching at level 1 and 2 at High-School level. The study focuses on how the students and teachers experience the possibility of influence in their English classes. Empirical data has been collected through questionnaires from two classes at year 1 and two classes at year 2 in English. The study also includes interviews from four teachers and four students. The study is both qualitative and quantitative. The results show that the majority of the students consider their possibility of influence in their English- learning to be very high in all schools to a great extent, even though the results showed that their influence in their teaching was not very extensive.</p><p>The way the students mostly influenced their teaching was when discussing the planning of their courses and through regularly made evaluations of their courses.</p><p>The teachers´ view on the pupil-influence was mostly linked to personal views and opinions of the matter as well as the referred information in the national curriculum for teachers. Overall the results show that the students´ and the teachers´ view on the influence seems to coincide very well.</p><p>The differences in year 1 and 2 at high-school in this investigation can mostly be seen by the fact that year 2 increasingly can influence their curriculum of their courses and that they also can influence how examinations are to be carried out in a more extensive way than the students in year 1.</p><p>The hypothesis of this essay, that pupil-influence should increase with age and level at</p><p>high-school proved to be a partly correct assumption, mainly because the majority of the students expressed that this was partly true. Nevertheless, both the teachers and the interviewed students claimed that influence increases with age, so maybe it is hard to make a clear conclusion out of these results.</p>

The aim of this study is to investigate the notion of pupil influence in English teaching at level 1 and 2 at High-School level. The study focuses on how the students and teachers experience the possibility of influence in their English classes. Empirical data has been collected through questionnaires from two classes at year 1 and two classes at year 2 in English. The study also includes interviews from four teachers and four students. The study is both qualitative and quantitative. The results show that the majority of the students consider their possibility of influence in their English- learning to be very high in all schools to a great extent, even though the results showed that their influence in their teaching was not very extensive. The way the students mostly influenced their teaching was when discussing the planning of their courses and through regularly made evaluations of their courses. The teachers´ view on the pupil-influence was mostly linked to personal views and opinions of the matter as well as the referred information in the national curriculum for teachers. Overall the results show that the students´ and the teachers´ view on the influence seems to coincide very well. The differences in year 1 and 2 at high-school in this investigation can mostly be seen by the fact that year 2 increasingly can influence their curriculum of their courses and that they also can influence how examinations are to be carried out in a more extensive way than the students in year 1. The hypothesis of this essay, that pupil-influence should increase with age and level at high-school proved to be a partly correct assumption, mainly because the majority of the students expressed that this was partly true. Nevertheless, both the teachers and the interviewed students claimed that influence increases with age, so maybe it is hard to make a clear conclusion out of these results.