Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 26, Issue 2, 2003

This paper tackles some analytical challenges of multimodal texts as they contribute to production of racial anxiety about asylum seekers. Building on a recent article in the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics in which Michael Clyne1 discusses the lexical manifestations of increasing racial hatred towards refugees, the paper focuses on the ‘children overboard’ affair in Australian news. This affair was generated out of a false claim by Liberal Party ministers that asylum seekers threw their children overboard in an effort to coerce the Navy to offer them sanctuary. The story was front page news in October, 2001 and became a defining feature of the successful Coalition campaign for re-election in 2001 with long term effects on public discourse about refugees and border protection. The paper argues that applied linguists need ways of analysing the symbiosis of visual and verbal stories in media treatment of such issues. It presents key strategies of representation of boat people and their critics in in one exemplary news text in 2001 and the ways in which photograph and story helped to co-create the fiction. The paper investigates the complementary contribution of strategies of homogenisation, indetermination, essentialisation and negative role allocation in both image and verbiage and their combined effect on our interpretation of asylum seekers. Implications for applied linguistics of multimodal analysis of racist discourse are briefly canvassed.

This study investigates three important issues in kanji learning strategies; namely, strategy use, effectiveness of strategy and orthographic background. A questionnaire on kanji learning strategy use and perceived effectiveness was administered to 116 beginner level, undergraduate students of Japanese from alphabetic and character backgrounds in Australia. Both descriptive and statistical analyses of the questionnaire responses revealed that the strategies used most often are the most helpful. Repeated writing was reported as the most used strategy type although alphabetic background learners reported using repeated writing strategies significantly more often than character background learners. The importance of strategy training and explicit instruction of fundamental differences between character and alphabetic background learners of Japanese is discussed in relation to teaching strategies.

This paper reports the findings of a research project aimed to (a) identify the foreign language and cross-cultural skill needs of workers in the tourism and hospitality industry in Australia, and to (b) develop foreign language competencies for use in industry training packages. A representative sample of work sites was visited to develop a detailed profile of the language and cross-cultural skills/levels and job requirements. The resulting competency standards were subsequently included in the industry training packages (Tourism Training Australia, 2002). This paper gives empirical evidence for the need for foreign language skills in the industry and gives account of the methodology used for identifying these needs and translating them into foreign language competencies. The outcomes of this research, the competency standards, bear twofold significance. On the one hand, they provide a tool for recognising the existing linguistic and cultural skills of those Australians who work in the industry (these are mainly Australians from non-English speaking background, NESB), on the other hand they provide a tool for motivating foreign language learning by those who seek a career in the industry, by giving recognition for their foreign language skills as part of the wider training program. This research was commissioned by Tourism Training Australia, Sydney and funded by the Department of Industry, Science & Resources.

Analysis of a series of computer science seminars indicates that use of the discourse marker ‘so’ in monologic talk is not random, rather it plays an important role in orienting the listener to the overall structure of the seminar. Although the institutional nature of seminar talk is such that only one person speaks for an extended turn, detailed analysis of seminars indicates that presenters do not maintain a continuous stream of talk. They talk for a bit, pause, and then talk for a bit more. These bits of talk (or sections) are characterised by a number of features, including discourse markers. The analysis shows how the discourse marker ‘so’ occurs in specific environments, with specific prosodic features, and that its role and function varies according to where it occurs within the seminar. The close interaction between talk (in this case, presenters’ use of ‘so’), and action (in this case, putting slides on the overhead projector), is also made apparent.

Since the early 1980s, SLA research has been exploring the contribution of negotiated interaction to second language learning. Attention has been and continues to be given to the conditions that are necessary for L2 acquisition, the relationship between negotiated interaction and language learning, and factors that may facilitate the process. This article reports on a study which investigated the extent to which two individual learner variables (ethnocultural pairing and gender) and certain types of task (free conversation and decision-making tasks) have an effect on negotiation opportunities provided for and by advanced Japanese and Korean male and female ESL learners. Data from 24 dyads found that neither of the individual learner variables affected the amount of negotiation that occurred but that free conversation generated a significantly higher amount of negotiation than decision-making tasks.

This paper reports on a structured exchange program between Chinese and Australian students which focuses on discussion and reflections on everyday cultural practices and behaviours, the most relevant but often least accessible aspect of culture for international students. We ground these discussions in a setting common to both groups: the situationally familiar, yet culturally unfamiliar, environment of Australian universities. The interactions allow students to create a comfortable and non-threatening ‘cultural space’ from where they reflect on their own and others’ cultural mores and practices that occur within the context of the university setting. Students discuss the underlying values that drive behaviours in situations ranging from social gatherings such as parties, to task-oriented academic settings such as tutorials. The program includes a strong language component. We ask students to reflect on the language used in daily conversations, the language appropriate for particular situations, and the cultural norms that interface between situations and language appropriate to them. The aim of our program differs from that of models since it proceeds from less conventional understandings about culture, agency, and authenticity, and therefore the extent to which cross-cultural communication should involve interpretation rather than enculturation as the traditional programs appear to advocate.

Generic structures have been developed for longer genres such as reports (Marshall 1991), book reviews (Hyland 2000) and specific parts and types of articles (Brett 1994) but so far, many shorter genres such as the annotated bibliography (AB) have not been examined. This study reviews four examples of professional ABs, and on the basis of these, establishes a list of potential features of this genre. We use this list to evaluate student ABs. Our results show that students, as emerging members of their professional communities, have an understanding of the conventional structure of ABs, but that they tend to generalise and overextend the most marked and variable features of the genre.