School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses

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    Development of Second Language Pragmatic Competence at Advanced Proficiency Levels
    Gomez Romero, Jaime Ignacio ( 2023-11)
    Whereas much of the research in testing L2 pragmatics has been concerned with learners from low to higher-intermediate levels of proficiency, this study examined the pragmatic performance of advanced L2 learners to identify some of the features that best describe advanced pragmatic competence. To do this, 45 advanced EFL teachers from Chile at B2 and C1 level of the CEFR performed four speaking tasks: two monological and two role-play tasks. Employing a CA-inspired methodological approach, the groups were compared in terms of openings, preliminaries, core action, posterior moves, and closings for both types of task. Findings agree with previous research indicating that as proficiency increased, advanced learners had more access to linguistic resources, successfully marked disaffiliative actions as dispreferred, and identified contextual cues to produce talk. Lastly, the results also suggest that some features of pragmatic competence and interactional competence can be elicited through monologic tasks.
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    The affordances of pedagogical translanguaging in university language teaching and learning
    Pirovano, Elena ( 2023-11)
    As Australian universities are increasingly recognised as multilingual spaces (e.g., Ollerhead & Baker, 2019; Pauwels, 2014a, 2014b), student cohorts in language courses are also becoming more linguistically and culturally diverse. Taking translanguaging as a conceptual framework (e.g., Li, 2018), this project explores language students’ understanding of the notion of translanguaging and its pedagogical affordances in language learning through recognising prior experiences with and knowledge of languages and linguistic practices as resources (Cummins, 2017; de Jong et al., 2019). As translanguaging is a debated and complex notion (e.g., Bonacina-Pugh et al., 2021; Jaspers, 2018), the conceptual framework of this research includes all its dimensions (e.g., Leung & Valdes, 2019; Slembrouck, 2022) - theoretical, pedagogical, methodological and critical - to investigate its pedagogical potential in multilingual language learning spaces. Within this translanguaging framework, this project draws on the notions of linguistic repertoire (Busch, 2012), translanguaging space and moment analysis (Li, 2011), and post-monolingual research methodology (Singh, 2018, 2019, 2020) to investigate the pedagogical affordances of translanguaging in learning additional languages. In this instance, the term “additional languages” refers to languages other than English that are not a majority language in the chosen context. Through two case studies, the project collected data on language students’ experience of translanguaging (case study 1) and on the affordances of pedagogical translanguaging for beginner Italian learners’ writing skills (case study 2). The findings suggest that students’ understanding of translanguaging occurs through a complex negotiated process that develops through experiential, collaborative and reflective practices facilitated by the pedagogical design purposefully planned by the language teacher. The affordances of pedagogical translanguaging (e.g., Cenoz & Gorter, 2022a) for writing processes are enabled by a preliminary exploration of linguistic repertoires through multimodal biographies such as the language portrait (Busch, 2018) and translanguaging affordances (Garcia & Kleifgen, 2020) planned to leverage shared linguistic repertoires as communicative and semiotic resources. Within this process, language students activate translanguaging practices to achieve enhanced linguistic competence as well as a more autonomous expression of agency and identity in the learning process.
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    The emergence of patterns in second language writing : a sociocognitive exploration of lexical trails
    Macqueen, Susan Mary. (University of Melbourne, 2009)
    One of the enduring frustrations of the second language learner who has a sound knowledge of grammatical rules is the elusiveness of �naturalness�. Just what constitutes �naturalness� and how central it is to linguistic theory has also been a point of contention amongst linguists. Drawing upon a convergence of sociocultural theory and linguistic emergentism, this is a long-term investigation of the development of four ESL users� written lexicogrammatical patterning. A qualitative methodology (Lexical Trail Analysis) was developed in order to capture a dynamic and historical view of the ways in which the participants combined words. Recurring patterns, i.e. collocations and colligations, were traced in the learners� essays as they prepared for the IELTS exam and later in their university assignments once they entered their university courses. The participants received direct and indirect feedback on their writing and they were interviewed after revising their essays about what motivated their revisions and the history of lexicogrammatical patterns they had used. Selected lexicogrammatical patterns were later tested using the principles of dynamic testing. By tracing selected lexemes chronologically throughout the participants� written production and incorporating insights from the participants, it was possible to observe 1) the ways in which the participants� words are habitually combined, 2) how these combinations are transformed over time 3) why the participants combined words in certain ways and 4) how word combinations are affected by sources such as teacher feedback and reference texts. The analysis reveals that the participants were aware of their L2 patterns and used the feedback process as a forum for experimentation with new combinations. Feedback provided one source of assistance, but the participants noticed and sought to imitate native-like patterning through the use of a range of other resources such as dictionaries, other L2 users and L2 texts. In the gradual process of developing increasingly native-like means of participation, the participants were agents of change, seeking assistance and adapting patterns to suit their changing goals. These findings suggest that resourcefulness in tool use, the ability to imitate and adapt linguistic resources and sociocognitive resources such as memory and attention are paramount in the massive task of internalizing the lexicogrammatical patterning of a second language. This process of language patterning is theorized via a model which encompasses adaptations in the linguistic properties of language patterns as well as adaptations in sociocognitive status.
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    Languages of the body : Kathy Acker's corporeal sublime
    Rose, Miranda. (University of Melbourne, 2007)
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    In states and up town and down country : poetic landscapes of Richard Hugo
    MacCarter, Kent. (University of Melbourne, 2006)
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    In states and up town and down country : poetic landscapes of Richard Hugo
    MacCarter, Kent. (University of Melbourne, 2006)