Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 20, Issue 2, 1997

With the continuing demand for Australians to develop second language skills to ensure, in part, the development of cross-cultural understanding, there is a need to examine critically the claim that language learning and cultural understandings are causally related. This paper examines the question of whether cross-cultural competence can exist independently of language expertise, and whether language learning of itself results in cultural tolerance and access to other world views. An examination of existing research, together with an analysis of the popular press in three Australian states, indicates that: (i) the wider community believes that learning a language will result in an understanding of and facility in the target culture; and (ii) languages learned in formal class settings do not necessarily lead to cross-cultural understandings and a lessening of insular cultural attitudes.

Language learning has rarely had a secure place in perceptions of teriary education and is coming increasingly under threat as the result of tightening budgets in Australian Universities. This paper examines the role of language learning as a part of tertiary education. It argues that language learning is of itself an important element in the educational mix of tertiary education and that, as language learning goes beyond learning of the code, it provides aspects of education which are central to modern global concerns. It is argued that the value of language learning, including ab initio learning, in tertiary education can be see through the substance of language learning, the process of language learning and the outcomes of language learning.

This paper reports findings from a project involving the critical analysis of English grammar books (and language books with grammatical content) used at Primary and Secondary levels in NSW schools. The books surveyed betrayed a low level of awareness of developments in contemporary linguistics, and in particular, of the ‘structural’ approach to grammatical description. Such an approach, it is argued, has the potential to build on the insights of traditional grammar and to remedy many of its major shortcomings.

The practice of citation is indicative of academic discourse. Over the last two decades, a number of papers have explored the language of citation, some directly motivated by concern about poor citation practices among student writers. This emerging interest has given us detailed understanding of specific aspects of citation language, for example verb tense, thematic choice, voice, and the name of the cited author (eg. Swales 1986, Thompson and Ye 1991, Shaw 1992, Thomas and Hawes 1994a, Thomas and Hawes 1994b). However, we do not yet have a tool for analysing citation in terms of the underlying intertextual understandings of academic writers. This paper proposes a model of citation options which relates variation in citation language forms to writers’ ability to control how they position themselves and their texts within a multi-member colloquy that is the academic community, past, present and future. Academic writers use variation in citation language to present knowledge as more or less negotiable, and in so doing control their readers’ engagement on points of controversy. The model is potentially valuable both pedagogically and for analysing specific discourse issues, within and across academic disciplines.

The aim of this paper is to present the results of research conducted with four adult learners of Chinese, in order to throw some light on the process of learning Chinese as a second language. The term “process” is used here to refer to operations used by learners to find and/or construct meaning within the context of a particular second language classroom. “Strategy” refers to a single operation which is a feature of the process of meaning construction. Data were collected over a two year period using individual and group interviews, think aloud protocols, classroom observation and learner diaries. The students showed a number of different approaches to learning, not all of which could be classified as “good language learner” strategies. Findings relating to literacy are presented, as well as more general learner strategies. Research implications are that there is still much to be learned about what goes on in immersion classrooms, especially as regards older learners and languages with ideographic scripts.

This paper presents an overview of 150 years of accident news writing as presented in the Sydney Morning Herald, with the aim of uncovering the genesis of the ‘hard’ news story, and locating the practice of news writing in its historical context. This overview will serve as a grounding for a discussion of current news writing practices in general. Parallels will be suggested between the nature of accident stories on the one hand, and the role and concerns of the print media in modern industrial society on the other. The paper concludes that ‘hard’ news writing is concerned with the recontextualization of socially ‘destabilizing’ events (Iedema, Feez and White 1995), as well as with the rendering relevant of these recontextualizations to a diffuse and generalised media audience.

Despite the popularity and widespread influence of broadcast video media, this paper argues that applied linguists has generally ignored such media as a site of research. Media research techniques, emphasising qualitative approaches within second language settings, are discussed from a pedagogical, cognitive, and sociological perspective. The paper concludes with a call for further research of media in second language settings.

This paper investigates the role in which Vietnamese tones may hold in facilitating code-switching between Vietnamese and English. Stress patterns of English and perceptual pattern of the six Vietnamese tones were compared (Vietnamese assigns one tone to each syllable). The analysis of Vietnamese tones immediately preceding code-switching reveals that there is a statistically significant proportion of the high tone group at the point of switching. This fact, together with the perceptually phonological compatibility between Vietnamese tones of high and mid-level pitch and English stressed vs unstressed syllables, suggests that code-switching tends to be facilitated by the mid-level to high pitch Vietnamese tones.