Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 47, Issue 1, 2024

Abstract

Group assignments are widely used in higher education for a range of educational reasons. Although there is a large body of research on the merits of group work and factors that may contribute to successful group work, less is known about students’ and teachers’ perspectives, particularly when groups are composed of students from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The current qualitative study investigated students’ and teachers’ perspectives on group assignments in a Master of Applied Linguistics program offered by a leading research university in Australia. The program has predominantly English as an additional language (EAL) students. Teachers and students in four graduate subjects that involved group assignments were interviewed for their views and reflections. Analysis of the interview data revealed similarities and differences in perspectives in five main areas – group work benefits and challenges, group formation and assessment, and the need for pre-implementation training. The findings highlight the need for teachers to promote open discussion about the purposes and merits of group work, both pedagogical and social.

Abstract

Children’s writing development is a matter of concern for Australian and other education systems. Factors related to the nature of writing as a literate skill, school writing pedagogy, and diminishing role of writing in a screen-dominant environment may account for this educational concern. What happens in a child’s writing when immigrant parents assign them writing tasks at home taking into account their writing concerns compounded by their family linguacultural backgrounds in an English-only environment? This paper presents developmental corpus analyses involving data taken from a 1.5-year family writing intervention program for a primary school immigrant child, using multidimensional analysis to determine the latent linguistic traits characteristic of the child’s writing development over time. The findings illustrate a range of linguistic features comprising four main dimensions representative of the child’s writing development, together with a focus on the emergence of his written self. Although the findings provide data-driven developmental insights into the child’s writing life, the parental intervention itself presented ethical dilemmas.

Abstract

This study investigates how L1-Korean L2-English learners perform with regard to articles in both explicit and implicit tasks. It also examines the role of L1-transfer from Korean demonstratives to English definites in L2 article production. 21 native English speakers and 27 adult intermediate L1-Korean L2-English learners were tested. The participants completed an elicited imitation task (EIT, implicit) and a forced-choice task (FCT, explicit). In the EIT, participants repeated sentences with and without articles, while stating whether the sentence matched the picture. In the FCT, participants chose the correct article for each item. The same sentences were used in both tasks. The results showed that in the FCT, learners were target-like in anaphoric contexts, supplying the, but very frequently overused a in non-anaphoric (bridging) contexts, suggesting that they equate definiteness with previous-mention. In the EIT, learners were less target-like than native speakers, yet the patterns of the two groups were similar. We consider possible explanations for the different results obtained in the two tasks.

Abstract

In this article I describe the transition of a group of university students in Australia into an online learning environment during COVID-19 pandemic disruptions. I reflect upon my intersubjective experiences as the lecturer in an unexpected situation of urgency and physical distancing. Research has acknowledged synchronous virtual learning contexts as less psychologically distancing than previously thought. I argue that these contexts can foster profound intimacy between participants through linguistic and multimodal means. I use an auto-ethnographic narrative inquiry approach to share observations gained retrospectively through multimodal, critically reflexive, social semiotic discourse analysis of audio-visual recordings of synchronous workshops conducted in 2020. I attempt to fill the gap in research on intimacy in online educational settings by suggesting that intimacy can be created by linguaplay, personal testimonies, and contrived chaotic material ecologies. I advocate moving away from an obsession with standardising and generating student knowledge in formal online learning to a stance that values intimacy, connection, and spontaneity.

Abstract

Lexical bundles are recurrent multiword combinations and often function as discourse building blocks. Lexical bundles have been analysed in university students’ writing to detect linguistic errors, measure writing competence, and investigate the divergence between L1 and L2 writing. Few studies, however, have focused on the high-stakes genre of PhD thesis and investigated the bundle productions of the same genre within the same level and discipline. This paper compares sentence initial lexical bundles in the corpora of English theses written by Chinese and New Zealand PhD students in the discipline of General and Applied Linguistics. Forty-six bundles from a Chinese corpus and forty-two bundles from a New Zealand corpus were generated. Among them, 94% of sentence initial bundles were identified as metadiscursive bundles. Chinese and New Zealand doctoral students showed considerably different preferences in their bundle selection. The paper examines the possible impact of these preferences and suggests there is a need to extend the metadiscourse knowledge of doctoral students in terms of lexical bundles.

This article reviews Pop culture in language education: Theory, research, practice9780367644895