Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 36, Issue 1, 2013

This paper was presented at the ALAA/ALANZ conference, Canberra, Australia, December, 2011.

Within the theoretical and methodological framework of Conversation Analysis, the present study explores the nature of the native speaker (NS) and nonnative speaker (NNS) identities in repair practices of English conversation. It has identified and analyzed in detail repair sequences in the data and has also conducted quantitative analyses in order to investigate the relationship between NS/NNS identities and repair practices. The results show that the categories of NS and NNS identities are social products that are invoked during and through the participants’ ongoing interaction. First of all, the participants did not invariably make their NS/NNS identities relevant to their repair work; specifically, more than half of the repair practices were irrelevant to these identities. Secondly, when the participants’ NS/NNS identities were made relevant to repair, both the NS and the NNS participants initiated repair in order to solve interactional problems that had resulted from the NNS participants’ insufficient linguistic abilities. The participants’ orientation to their NS/NNS identities was frequently triggered by the NNS participants’ repair-initiation while the NS participants invoked these linguistic identities only in a limited range of interactional environments. The findings of this study provide a further empirical basis for arguing the importance of an emic approach to NS-NNS interactions and the potential to learn new vocabulary through repair.

The vast majority of second language (L2) vocabulary research focuses on learners’ knowledge of isolated word forms. However, it is unclear to what extent this knowledge can be used as an indicator of knowledge in context (i.e. reading and listening). This study aims to shed light on this issue by comparing ESL learners’ knowledge of the meaning of isolated words (‘decontextual knowledge’) with their knowledge of the same words in both reading and listening (‘contextual knowledge’). Decontextual knowledge was measured in a free recall interview. Contextual knowledge was measured through a task in which participants paraphrased sentences containing the target items from both a written and spoken narrative. Results showed that learners’ decontextual and contextual knowledge agreed in 65% of the cases. This indicates a considerable gap between the two, and emphasises that scores on decontextualised vocabulary test should not be used as predictors of learners’ vocabulary knowledge in context. In addition, learners demonstrated significantly better knowledge of word meaning in the reading than listening mode, which may be due to processing difficulties in listening as well as better inferencing opportunities in reading. Two additional factors found to affect both decontextual and contextual knowledge are word frequency and learners’ vocabulary size.

Studies on apologies have proliferated in pragmatics research, but little research has been conducted on apology responses (ARs). The present inquiry contributes to filling the gap in the literature, and it does so by examining such responses in two languages, Australian English (AE) and Bahasa Indonesia (BI). The study ultimately focuses on two variables, gender and culture. It probes behavioural differences in the genders in and between the two societies, and considers cultural differences in the expression of ARs. Using oral discourse completion tasks (DCTs), the researchers recorded and analyzed a total of 360 responses to three apology situations. The findings reveal that ARs in both languages were complex and elaborate, embodying various subsidiary speech acts and expressions. The ARs generally showed indirectness and mitigated face threats towards interlocutors. However, one striking result is that there was no marked gender difference in AR strategy either within or between languages, thus challenging a stereotype that females are more accepting and ‘polite’ than males (Brown, 1980; Holmes, 1995, 2008). Another surprising result was that, in a significant minority of cases, Indonesians were revealed to be more direct and face-threatening than their Australian counterparts, again confronting a stereotype of speech behaviour, in this case that Asians are more indirect and ambiguous than native English-speakers in Western cultures

There is no standard way via which to measure the ‘qualified’ English language teacher in a way that is meaningful to institutions seeking to employ teaching staff. This is significant given that candidates may differ markedly in their language competence, knowledge about language, methodological skills and ability to explain and justify their praxis and operate in intercultural spaces. In this article, we propose a framework, based on Bourdieu’s (1986) ‘forms of capital’, with a view to helping stakeholders articulate and evaluate teachers’ skills. To demonstrate how this framework might be used, we apply it to two English language teacher qualifications that have wide professional currency: CELTA courses and Masters degrees in ELT/Applied Linguistics.