Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 43, Issue 1, 2020

Abstract

In China, since 2004, developing students’ overall communicative competence has become the central goal of the current College English Curriculum Requirements. However, this goal has yet to be addressed, particularly in regard to the teaching of writing. This paper examines whether and how changes in teachers’ knowledge base related to teaching writing may impact their students’ writing outcomes. Six experienced teachers were introduced to a SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics)-informed genre approach and subsequently trialled this pedagogy in practice. Through pre- and post- workshop interviews and classroom observations, changes in teachers’ knowledge base were investigated. In each observed class, two writing samples produced by students were collected. The findings of changes in the teachers’ knowledge base were compared with possible changes emerging in their students’ writing products. The results of the comparison reveal that, corresponding to positive changes evidenced in the teachers’ knowledge base, the majority of the students made improvements in their writing products.

Abstract

In the linguistic landscapes (LL) literature there is frequent mention of the viewing of public locales by passers-by, owners, and tourists, who necessarily enter and exit locales in different ways, times, and conditions. This paper extends our understanding of the viewing of LL by investigating the discursive constructions of the bathroom of a shared home through the voices of its residents: six Vietnamese international students studying in Australia. When the residents of the home were asked to reflect on their perceptions of language in this locale, the findings show that they attend to the inscriptions on the artifacts, the linguistic activities that take place within the locale, or see no LL whatsoever because of the ways they construct the locale. The findings suggest that linguists need to give more consideration to the types of linguistic activities that occur in a locale in exploration of how individuals view their LL.

Abstract

Academic language and learning advisers are employed by many Australasian universities to help students develop their academic literacies, that is, the knowledge and skills needed to be successful at university both within and beyond disciplinary contexts. At the Academic Skills and Learning Centre of the Australian National University, a team of Learning Advisers spend a third of their time consulting students individually, often about a piece of writing to be submitted for assessment. There is much concern in the literature about the pedagogical effectiveness of the one-to-one session, yet little that examines it and its discourses as sites of identity genesis. This study examines Advisers’ post-consultation notes, and through a community of practice approach to workplace discourse finds that discussion of “what we do and don’t do” is the nexus at which Advisers negotiate the discourses of their organization, define boundaries around their work, and develop their professional identities.

Abstract

Professional engineers must move easily between concretization and abstraction in written communication, while remaining rooted in the context of the particular engineering problem to be solved. Engineering programmes often seek to use a replicated professional situation in order to prepare students for the workplace; however, there are questions as to how a decontextualized task prepares students for the language and knowledge requirements of the field. This paper reports on the findings of a Master’s research project, which investigated this issue through a comparison of two sets of engineering feasibility studies: publicly available industry texts and English as an Additional Language (EAL) student texts from a Master’s engineering program. The findings show that while the corpora have some similarities, there are differences that suggest that the student texts are less bound to the concrete reality of their project, which has implications for those working in disciplinary and professional literacies.

This article reviews Portfolio assessment for the teaching and learning of writing978-981-13-1173-4