Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 17, Issue 1, 1994

The prevailing pattern of second language instruction in NSW schools is one in which the available time is distributed across several languages (a ‘breadth’ approach). With the impending introduction of second languages into many primary schools, a window of opportunity has opened: if all the available curriculum hours are devoted to a single language in primary and secondary school (a ‘depth’ approach) there is a possibility of most students attaining a communicative proficiency in a LOTE. This possibility can be increased (a) if the second language is a language spoken in the home (b) if certain classroom processes are adopted, and (c) if the language is more easily learnable. A case study of a school is presented which includes information and opinions gathered from parents on these issues, and an outline ‘depth’ curriculum for this school.

There has been a surprisingly limited amount of research comparing the direct assessment of writing by teachers of English as a mother tongue and English as a second language (abbreviated as English and ESL respectively) given the amount of common ground they share as teachers of writing. This study aims to investigate whether these two groups of teachers rate writing samples differently using both holistic (global) and analytical (multiple trait) scoring methods. The research compares the assessments made by four experienced teachers from each of these two rater groups of the same set of 20 native speaker (English) and 20 non native speaker (ESL) essays written by final year secondary students. While no significant difference was found between the single global essay ratings of the two groups of teachers, this was not the case for the essay totals obtained by combining the global and analytical scores. The comparison based on these essay totals indicated that overall English teachers rated all of the essays significantly more harshly than ESL teachers. These findings suggested that the analytical scoring method may be more faithful to real dissimilarities which exist between raters of different backgrounds and professional experience than is the holistic scoring method in the assessment of writing. The choice of scoring procedure when both types of raters are used, therefore, is likely to determine whether or not these differences are highlighted and thus the overall level of inter-rater reliablity.

This paper discusses one identifying feature of journal articles — Reports or Citations. The study focuses on an examination of the syntactic choices available to writers for making reporting statements and the conditions governing such choices. There is a great deal of variation in the forms of the Reports in academic articles and one factor in this seems to be the writer’s choice of a particular element of the message as Theme of the reporting statement. The purpose of this research was to turn up information regarding thematic options and their distribution which would be useful for identifying the patterns of choice that are characteristic of reporting. We investigate the way in which the choice of Theme affects the syntactic form of the Reports. It is suggested that a typology of Reports based on participant Subject in the Theme element can be drawn up. Reports were categorised as having Agent Themes, Text Reference Themes or Content Term Themes. With these three main choices for Theme, variations are created when Textual, Interpersonal or Ideational elements in the form of Circumstantial Adjuncts work in conjunction with the Subject headword. The different syntactic forms of Reports resulting from different thematic choices are shown to be associated with the function of Reports in their contexts.

This paper examines the research needs relating to the use of foreign languages in tourism activities in Australia and New Zealand. Various claims have been made that the provision of effective foreign language services is essential to the expansion and diversification of tourism in both countries. However, there is currently a lack of precise information on the ways in which the tourism industry in Australia and New Zealand is providing appropriate language assistance that meets the needs of inbound visitors who are speakers of languages other than English. Studies that have been carried out into certain areas of foreign language use in tourism in Australia and New Zealand are discussed and a number of suggestions are made as to future directions for research.

Do students believe that Year 12 LOTE courses contribute to the development of oral and aural proficiency in the target language? Attitudinal and performance data collected from university French 1 students shed some light on students’ satisfaction with their Year 12 LOTE course and on the relationship among perceived outcomes, course components, language of instruction and language performance. The findings, while not definitive, provide some insights for secondary and tertiary LOTE teachers, together with some baseline data for further research into the success of school language programs.

This paper examines some aspects of English and Lebanese-Arabic adult-responses to child-answers, exploring the way the use of preferred communication strategies reflects culturally-based assumptions about learning and guiding learning. Adults who regularly deal with young children develop preferred interactive strategies which derive from social attitudes. Naturally there is an element of individual style, but this is only recognisable as individual in relation to the norm. These early experiences teach children how to make sense of the world and how to relate within it. They develop a relational competence, learning how to adapt to differing role expectations as they move between home, peer, preschool and school groups. Understanding how to ask and answer appropriately is certainly part of being a competent speaker. Home and pre-school norms are not always the same, and young children and adults don’t always understand each other, particularly in crosscultural interactions. Data was elicited from dyads engaged in narrative and descriptive tasks using sets of pictures. The approach is interpretive. In cross-cultural studies there is not always a neutral middle ground between cultures from which one can easily develop objective interpretations. There is a different ranking of values, assumptions and expectations. Part of the analytical approach of this research is aimed at reducing the potential for cultural bias in interpretations by using Natural Semantic Metalanguage to produce cultural scripts representing meanings.

Student writers in Hong Kong have a distinctive style in ordering their thoughts for academic essay assignments which consists of frequent prefacing of their points with cohesive conjunctions. Applied linguists in Hong Kong have studied this use of conjunction to ascertain how it differs from native speaker use, to gauge the extent to which teaching, textbooks and transfer are influential and to analyse the extent of misuse and unnecessary use. This work is reviewed with close attention to Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion theory and further research directions and teaching implications are presented in the light of this theory.