Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemLearner access to language research( 2008)This is a study of how my class of learners perceived the relationships between English language learners, teachers, and researchers, during a five week Intensive Academic Preparation ELICOS course at an Australian university. As a starting point, it seizes on the fact that learners, unlike teachers and researchers, are rarely, if ever, encouraged to engage with language research as a potentially valuable resource for language learning. Noting the dearth of literature surrounding this topic specifically, this study focuses on the appropriateness of various practitioner inquiry models for a naturalistic exploration of my own classroom. The approach taken is one of Exploratory Practice, which is a set of guiding principles motivated by a strong ethicality towards learners and teachers. Using everyday pedagogical activities as data collection methods, such as group discussions and summaries as well as individual written pieces, this study reveals three important characteristics of my learners: a sense of pride in their personal knowledge of English language learning, an understanding of themselves as individuals within the language learning process, and a deep concern with the practical aspects of learning English. Meanwhile, my learners generally portray the relationships between learners, teachers, and researchers as hierarchical and unidirectional, with researchers and research on top. Overall, the study suggests that there is some value in providing access for my learners to language research, and in the conclusion to the study I make some recommendations for future research centring around ideas of learner identity, teacher/learner understandings of roles, and the place of the individual language learner within language learning.
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ItemInteractions between first and second language writing skills in Macedonian bilingual children in Australia( 2009)The theoretical belief arising from the interdependence hypothesis suggests that there is a common underlying proficiency in bilingual literacy development, particularly with respect to literacy skills, strategies and knowledge transfer across different languages. According to this view a strong establishment in one language not only develops skills in that language, but also facilitates the development of a second language. The aim of this research was to look at the interactions between literacy in Macedonian and English and to analyse the role of the first language literacy in second language acquisition in two dissimilar languages. Although the research explored the relationships between first language (Macedonian) and second language (English) writing skills, strategies and knowledge, the influence of motivation and the performance in English were also discussed. Namely this research investigated the skills and strategies that Macedonian bilingual children use for writing in Macedonian script and whether these strategies have a positive or negative transfer to English literacy. This research also analysed the writing behaviours, and attitude towards the two languages and how they affect the transfer of literacy skills and strategies. To address the aim of this research and gain an in-depth understanding about bilingual children's language acquisition and development a qualitative case-study method was employed. The subjects for this research were six nine year old children from a Macedonian/ English bilingual school. They were asked to write recounts in both languages, Macedonian and English, in order to investigate the transfer of skills, strategies and knowledge across both languages. The think-aloud protocols were used to look into the writing process and to categorise the types of writing strategies that the children can transfer from Macedonian to English literacy. This method was used to observe children's writing processes while writing and simultaneously discussing what thoughts were going through their mind. The childrens' attitudes towards learning in two languages were discovered by using semistructured interviews. The official results from the literacy assessment conducted at the school were also analysed and compared. The discussion of findings from the six children focussed on the transferable skills and strategies and the relationship between Macedonian and English writing. This research confirms that writing behaviours and strategies that the children displayed were consistent across both languages, even though the languages have different writing systems. In fact this research provided a better understanding of children's biliteracy development from an early age in a bilingual setting. Results of the study indicated that there is an interdependent ability between the first language and the second language writing and that there is a positive transfer of skills, strategies and knowledge from Macedonian to English. Therefore the conclusion is that the development of the stronger language literacy (Macedonian) facilitates literacy development in the second language (English) and that access to two languages from an early age and the possibility of learning those languages can facilitate literacy development.