Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 16, Issue 1, 1993

Reports are important genres in our culture and they have achieved some prominence in education. What it means to report and the way reporting is conceived in our culture can be revealed through semantic analysis. By looking at the meaning of the verb report, this paper will argue for a view of genre as a cultural activity and a view of literacy that involves children in the development of personal perspective. This approach argues against a text based view of genre and a pedagogy that relies primarily on the modelling of ‘considered texts’.

Linguistic and cultural needs of non-English Speaking background graduates in science and technology fields are currently not being met due to the lack of specific language and communication programs. This paper discusses the development of an innovative Scientific and Technical English curriculum to be offered in university as well as industrial settings, with the aim of providing language and acculturation bridging programs for the overseas qualified professionals, to satisfy Australia’s educational and industry requirements. It describes the aims, design and outcomes of a modular, socio-cultural, negotiated curriculum, written from a perspective of training in its broad sense with education playing an integral part. The acquisition of communicative skills in English which will enable the learners to access and function in positions commensurate with their overseas qualifications and experience is seen as the ultimate objective of the program.

This paper discusses some of the results of a pilot study of spontaneous teacher/child discourse in two Year 1 Sydney classrooms (children aged 6 and 7 years). The two classrooms differed greatly in terms of their ethnic composition; in one class, the majority of children came from non-English speaking backgrounds, while in the other class, all the children were native English speakers. The teachers and students were taped during typical group lessons, and the resulting data were transcribed and analysed using a speech act framework (Hasan’s message semantics network). The results showed significant differences between the discourse in the two classrooms; for example, the teacher of the non-English speaking background class spoke more frequently than the teacher of native English speakers, and she asked different types of questions. The children from non-English speaking backgrounds rarely participated in the classroom conversation. These results suggest that further investigation in the area is justified, in order to determine how typical these differences are, and the extent to which the differences are educationally significant in terms of classroom practices currently followed with ESB and NESB children.

This study uses the methodology of conversational analysis to examine a case of ‘troubles talk’ between a group of female survivors of rape:that is, conversation on the discourse topic of ‘troubles’ or problems, and displaying the close interactional distance of intimacy. Rather than dwelling on the sequential and functional framework of ‘troubles talk’, this paper analyses the conversational process of ‘affiliation’ between the interactants as it occurs within the structure of the conversation, and the linguistic and paralinguistic devices utilised successfully in the achievement of ‘affiliation’ in the ‘troubles talk’. Both topical and interactional levels are considered, as they interact in the conversation to achieve successful ‘affiliation’ and ‘affiliation response’. The successful utilisation of linguistic and paralinguistic devices in affiliation affect the consequent self-disclosure which is crucial in overcoming the trauma of the experiences discussed in the ‘troubles talk’. The significance of affiliation to social context, gender, and culture are also considered.

Strategy training appears to be a promising means of assisting second language learners. However, strategy training operates within a context. If factors in that context are not considered, the training will not be successful. This paper discusses a number of insights highlighted by a reading strategy training study conducted in a second language (L2) setting. It cautions against the uncritical adoption of strategy training as a panacea for learning difficulties, and stresses the importance of recognising and taking account of factors in the second language learning context which may suggest modifications to procedures carried out successfully in first language (L1) settings.

This paper sets out to clarify the nature of fabrication in relation to conversational interaction. Drawing upon work in the conversation analysis tradition, the paper argues that two dimensions to talk-in-interaction can be distiguished which permit a clearer understanding of the idea of fabrication. Fabrication involves questions of content or substance where the functional end is one of deception, but it can also be seen as referring to practices involved in the production of talk in institutional settings – courtrooms, news interviews, etc. -where a degree of rehearsal of what is to be said is deemed necessary. The paper then explores these dimensions of fabrication in the context of an examination of a tape recorded exchange between a police officer and his informer, an encounter which has been alleged to have been an ‘artifical facade’.

This paper is a replication of Pamela Fishman’s ‘Interaction: The work women do’ using Brazilian Portuguese speakers as subjects. The study develops Fishman’s methodology, in particular in the treatment of question forms which are analysed taking into account the function of the questions in the discourse. Not all questions were found to have a role in the development and maintainance of interaction. There are few similarities between the findings reported in Fishman’s study and the findings in this study. There appears to be no clear evidence of unequal distribution of work in the conversations of the two couples. Even though the men raised more topics, both men and women worked for the conversation to develop smoothly by doing support work while the other participant was talking.