South African education has been going through a process of transformation: from a traditional, transmission system to one of a more progressive nature. In the new curriculum, Curriculum 2005 anchored on Outcomes-based Education (OBE), focus is laid on critical reflection, innovation and creativity by classroom participants. Learning situations are expected to promote flexibility, co-operation and relevance of teaching/learning materials. This research looks at these aspects in the English Second Language (ESL) situation where print media articles are used as resource. Other than being a rich resource for language, print media texts have been found to be appropriate for this exploration because of their potential to offer opportunities for critical reflection and interaction with authentic issues. Unlike uncritical reliance on textbooks, the proper use of media articles can give the teachers and learners the space to select relevant and exciting materials for their situations. In this study, the research was done through action research where I (the researcher) actually taught the lessons in collaboration with the English teacher. The teaching method was influenced by the Freirean style of Iiberatory teaching where critical reflection, socio-political relevance and co-operation are crucial elements. The action research was done in two cycles. Experiences in the first cycle pointed to, among other aspects, the fact that the learners could not work in a co-operative way as they were not used to it. Addressing this problem consequently became the basis of the second cycle where the skills of co-operative learning were taught before the learners engaged in further lessons. The conclusions drawn from this research point to the importance of the teacher as an agent in the learning process if the demands of progressive and liberatory teaching are to be met. It has thus been concluded that elements such as critical thinking, creativity, flexibility and selection/development of relevant materials presuppose the existence of a well-trained teacher who is skilled and able to make these possible. In the light of my findings, my major recommendation is that teacher development needs to be strengthened so that more emphasis is placed on enhancing the teacher's ability to critique texts and improve his or her own practice, acquiring the skills to teach in a critical way and achieving the learning competencies.

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This thesis analyses the way in which placement testing is being interpreted in Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET). The thesis examines whether the placement tests used in the case study were valid in terms of whether their contents were relevant and authentic with regard to what English second language speakers could reasonably be expected to know. Adult learners have differing English second language knowledge depending on the different contexts in which they have learned their second language. This thesis investigates the implications of the different contexts and different language needs of adult learners for the testing of English as a second language for placement purposes in ABET programmes. The thesis examined two placement tests to determine how the recognition of prior second language learning was being interpreted and how the interpretation affected the validity of the tests. Learners= perceptions of the assessment process and test content were elicited in order to determine whether a policy of transparency had been followed in the implementation of the assessment. It was also established what the goals of the organisation were in implementing an ABET programme. This research suggests that placement testing should be viewed holistically; in other words, the goals of the organisation and the level of transparency affect the validity of the placement test. The conclusions were that the placement tests were inauthentic since their contents excluded certain vital aspects of real life performance, namely, that related to the work context. The research revealed that if the placement testing process and the ABET programme are integrated into the culture of the organisation and if employees are remunerated when they have passed the different levels in the programme, the programme is likely to achieve a fair measure of success. Recommendations are that literacy should be viewed as based on a variety of contexts and uses and that therefore tests should be tailored to suit each particular organisation and should contain workrelated content. Furthermore, multiple methods of assessment should be considered.

M.A. / The movement of former township learners to suburban schools has resulted in more non-native learners taking English as a Home Language (EHL). In some suburban schools, the former township learners are now in the majority, with implications for the conceptualization of EHL as a curriculum option. EHL classrooms in suburban schools with a majority non-native English learner population were investigated for their communicativeness. It might be expected that such classrooms will exhibit an affinity with English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms. Therefore, ESL classrooms, which have attracted a lot of attention from researchers, were used as a tool in understanding the nature of the said EHL classrooms. Once the data on the communicative orientation of the EHL classrooms were obtained, they were compared to the data from ESL classrooms. There were few significant differences between the EHL classrooms and the ESL ones. The conclusion was that non-native EHL has a lot in common with ESL. The most important difference from the standpoint of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) was found to be in the learning content selection, with the EHL settings using more literary works, and so focusing less on the direct teaching of grammatical forms. However, a disturbing pattern was the inability of the learners in the EHL settings and the ESL settings to take full advantage of CLT, which suggests that CLT might not be suitable for learners with rudimentary language skills.

M.Ed. (Curriculum Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This study examines the small group work management techniques of a teacher of English in a second language classroom in Bophuthatswana. The school at which the observation takes place, is a black secondary school in Mmabatho which follows the Department of Education and Training (DET) syllabus and writes the DET external matriculation examination. The goal of the research is to assess and evaluate the methods the teacher uses in managing group work according to five specified areas. These areas are noted for their importance in the successful management of group work. The report on the findings of this research reveals that the teacher's understanding of the nature of small group work differs from the accepted characteristics of successful group work management as interpreted by authorities in this field. This gives rise to management techniques that are sometimes inappropriate and ill-considered. Although this study observes only one teacher, the findings indicate the need for more classroom-based research in order to establish the true nature of classroom practice. Assumptions about classroom practice are too readily made by innovators, syllabus designers and textbook writers who design materials based on methodologies which can be complex and difficult to implement. These methodologies require understanding and commitment from the teacher. However, the pre-service and in-service education and development that the teacher receives often does not guarantee understanding of the processes involved nor does it generate the necessary commitment to small group work as an effective teaching technique.

Since the official opening of ex-model C (previously whites only) schools to learners of all races, cultures and languages, there has been an influx of black learners into these schools. Reasons for this are that many black parents believe the quality of education and resources available at these ex model C schools is better than those available in township schools (De Klerk, 2000). Parents also believe sending their children to English medium schools enables them to compete and be marketable in the global world of work. This dissertation describes a qualitative case study of grade 8 learners who took part in a six week intervention conducted at a school in the Eastern Cape where they learn through an additional language (English). The purpose of the intervention was to equip these learners with skills to enable them to improve their reading and comprehension in this language. Participation in the intervention was voluntarily, based on a selection conducted of learners who wrote a baseline English assessment test. Assessments done during the intervention suggest that isiXhosa home language learners fare academically weaker than their English and Afrikaans counterparts who learn through the medium of English. This correlates with findings done nationally and internationally with regard to South African learners’ literacy levels. This dissertation looks at the affective and cognitive effects of the intervention on its participants. Literature on how additional language learning should be done is examined, as well as the Language in Education policy of South Africa (1997). Findings from the research suggest the importance of establishing a ‘safe’ teaching and learning environment for learning to take place optimally and indicate that interventions to improve English reading can produce positive results. Furthermore the research provides evidence that explicitly teaching reading strategies can improve the participants’ comprehension and overall language competence. While English, as the language of technology and economics is acknowledged, it is argued in this dissertation that due to a lack of information to make informed choices, parents and learners become victims of the ‘straight for English’ phenomenon, and learners are robbed of an opportunity to reach their academic potential. However, if additional language learning takes place under the ideal conditions, learners can be enabled to become academically equipped to deal with the demands of learning through an additional language. What is essential for the afore-mentioned to materialize is that learners need to be equipped with reading and comprehension skills in their home language first, for these skills to be effective in attaining the ‘other’ language. Also, learners need to be aware of the fact that they carry knowledge in their own language that can and should be used to learn (in) the additional language.

This study is concerned with teacher decision-making in the English as a Second Language classroom. Specifically, the study examines the impact of teacher beliefs and perceptions, context factors and second language theory on planning and implementation decisions for the ESL instructional context. Nine ESL teachers in three post-secondary institutions participated in this qualitative study. Data were gathered through classroom observations, postlesson conferences and interviews. These data were examined in terms of what instructional decisions teachers made and the factors that influenced these decisions from the individual teacher's perspective. Second, the data were analysed for internal consistency between stated beliefs and instructional decisions and external consistency between decisions and second language theory. In examining the role of the teacher in the ESL instructional context, this thesis contributes to both research and teaching theory in English as a Second Language. First, while regular classroom research has indicated that the role of the teacher and the ecology of the classroom are central to understanding the instructional context, ESL classroom studies have primarily focused on the learner, the learning process and language learning outcomes in this context. This thesis addresses this gap in the research by investigating the teacher's role in the ESL instructional setting and the factors that impact on teacher decisionmaking. Second, ESL classroom researchers have observed that theoretical ideas are implemented in various ways in the formal setting. While researchers have speculated on the reasons for teachers' eclectic use of theory in practice, there has been little exploratory research conducted to investigate this phenomenon. The findings from this present study indicate that teachers' instructional decisions are centrally influenced by both individually held beliefs about second language learning and teaching as well as experiential knowledge of the ESL classroom. These findings not only contribute to our understanding of the ESL instructional context from the teacher's perspective, but are also significant for the development of instructional theory. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

The major assumption underlying this investigation was that pupils learning English as a second language read more effectively if beginning reading materials consist of language structures which are taught in the oral language program. It was believed that structures learned in the oral language course would reinforce reading skills and vice versa. Research evidence based on modern linguistic theory has indicated that patterns of form and arrangement of words, not words in isolation alone, contribute to meaning. It has also been shown that comprehension is a function of the degree of similarity between the language structures learned orally and the language structures used in the reading passage. The present study analyzed and compared the language structures in the beginning readers with the language structures which are taught for oral proficiency in the teaching guides for English used in Philippine schools. The T-unit, which is the shortest grammatically independent segment of language, consisting of one independent clause and all subordinate clauses attached to it was the basis of syntactic analysis and measurement. The language samples from the oral language guides and the reading texts were analyzed and compared on two levels. The first-level analysis was concerned with the underlying basic patterns and the length of the T-units as well as other related structural features. The second level analysis determined the kinds and number of constructions produced by sentence-combining transformations. The analysis of data revealed that there was a close similarity between the kinds of basic patterns which occurred in the oral language materials and in the readers. The frequency of occurrence centered around a few commonly used patterns. There were relatively more rare patterns in the reading passages than in the oral language materials. The length of the T-unit in the readers was greater than in the oral language materials. The greater length of the T-unit in the reading texts was due to the greater number of subordinate clauses and non-clausal constructions produced by sentence-combining transformations. The kinds and functions of constructions resulting from sentence-combining transformations which occurred with highest frequencies in the reading texts were similar to those in the oral language materials. But the data also indicated that types of rare constructions occurred more frequently in the reading passages than in the oral language materials. The greater number of sentence-combining transformations reflects greater complexity of language structures in the reading passages compared to the language structures in the oral language materials. This finding suggests that when the Filipino pupil begins to read English, his oral language background seems inadequate to cope with the difficulty level related to the complexity of structures of his reading materials. Further investigations are necessary to provide more useful guidelines for evolving effective reading materials in second language teaching. Suggested follow-up studies in second language classroom situations include comparison of comprehension between commonly used patterns and rare patterns, an investigation to establish a hierarchy of difficulty of the different kinds of sentence-combining transformations, and a quantitative study to determine the relationship of comprehension to the number of transformations in a reading passage. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

An experiment was conducted to determine how learners and teachers of English as a foreign language in Japan cooperatively attempt to improve the comprehensibility of their talk in English during performance of various conversational tasks. The basic practical issue under study was the possibility that certain kinds of teacher-led groups and tasks would be more effective in generating repair and negotiation of the language by which tasks are accomplished than others, and that these group-task combinations might eventually be employed as alternatives to traditional teacher-fronted forms of foreign language instruction. The study was operationalized in a 2 x 5 between-and-within subjects, repeated-measures analysis of variance design. Two, six-dyad, teacher-led groups -- homogeneous (Japanese teacher/Japanese learner) and mixed (native English speaking teacher/Japanese learner) -- were formed in order to compare the frequency of 12 repair exponents generated during performance of five tasks. Teaching goals were represented in two tasks, instruction in use of the string-searching function of a laptop computer 1) with and 2) without the computer physically present. Non-teaching (social and cooperative problem-solving) goals were embodied in three additional tasks, 3) free discussion, and construction of a Lego (snap-together) toy accomplished with participants facing 4) away from and 5) towards each other. Task categories were also divided into experiential and expository activities (respectively, Tasks 2 and 5, and Tasks 1 and 4) following a model for use of reference in English. Experiential dyadic activity was related to the occurrence of exophoric (pointing out) reference and expository dyadic activity to the incidence of anaphoric (pointing back) reference in the task transcripts. Results of the analysis of variance indicated that while tasks differed on the basis of repair and reference, the groups did not: Dyadic talk was more responsive to the nature of the task than to the language background of the teacher. Further analysis suggested more frequent and elaborate repair during tasks which combine non-teaching goals and experiential processes as compared with tasks emphasizing teaching goals and expository processes. Qualitative analysis of task transcripts supported this distinction and elaborated specific discourse functions for such repair exponents as referential questions and confirmation checks which characteristically co-occur in conversational discourse. Based on these findings, it was concluded that Japanese teachers are capable of generating appropriate conversational repair in dyadic interaction with learners largely on a par with their native English-speaking counterparts. To this extent, their potential contribution to learners' acquisition of a foreign language is of an equivalent value. Furthermore, teacher-led small groups can be effective contexts for generating a rich supply of conversational repair and. thus should be considered as alternatives to traditional teacher-fronted foreign language classroom instruction. Finally, tasks which support achievement of social and problem-solving (i.e., non-teaching) goals through experiential activity are effective contexts in which normal forms of conversational repair can be generated. Since such tasks can be adapted easily to classroom settings, they merit consideration among the range of task options available to teachers and other instructional planners. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate