Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemFocus on form in a Thai university English course( 2006)This thesis reports on an investigation about the application of new pedagogy to the teaching of English grammar to the first year English major students in a Rajabhat University in Bangkok, Thailand. This study sought to explore the effectiveness of an indirect explicit instruction approach on improving students' motivation and attitudes towards learning English grammar. This study was conducted in a normal grammar classroom of thirty three students for sixteen two-hour weekly sessions. Kemmis and McTaggart's (1988) action research cycle method was adopted, involving two cycles of teaching-learning activity. Each cycle was regulated into steps of developing a unit of work, implementing an instruction for six weekly two-hour sessions, observing and reflecting. The data obtained consisted of teacher/researcher's journal, students diaries and interviews and students' self-assessment questionnaires. The teacher's journal provided information about how students were responsive to the new teaching approach whereas students reflected on their new learning experiences in their diaries. Moreover, self-assessment questionnaires using a 5-point Likert scale were employed to obtain a clearer picture on students' attitudes, activities provided and their perceived improvement in learning English grammar. The results of this study reveal that indirect explicit grammar instruction had a great impact on students' motivation and attitudes. Effective learning atmosphere and cooperative learning led to significant changes of students' learning behaviours. Students showed their eagerness to participate in the learning process. They became more self-confident and expressed their willingness to take risks in learning in the language classroom. It could be argued that students' attitudes had improved and they, therefore, were motivated to learn English grammar. However, the students' grammatical knowledge had not significantly developed since the study was undertaken over a short period of time. The study proposes some factors that the teachers should carefully take into consideration in adapting indirect explicit approach to their teaching. Of greater significance were contributions made by the study regarding the advantages of developing own instructional materials that respond to the learners' needs over commercial materials and the value of employing action research to investigate problems arising from teaching practice. Finally, it is suggested that a longitudinal study is worth trying in order to establish the applicability of the indirect explicit approach in teaching English grammar in EFL contexts.
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ItemAn evaluation of quality assurance implementation at a higher education institution in Bangkok( 2005)This study aimed to investigate the implementation of Quality Assurance (OA) regarding two compulsory English courses in a Rajabhat University in Bangkok. Quality of these courses is considered to be crucial because they are required for the completion of all undergraduate degrees in every program of study in the Rajabhat. The study intended particularly, to examine the level of success of QA implementation in order to recommend improvements to the implementation process. The study employed a qualitative case study of the institution to reveal factors affecting QA implementation and to construct an improved QA management model for such courses. Document analysis and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The participants of the research were purposively selected according to their levels of participation in the QA program, namely, policy makers, transmitters of the policy and implementers. Miles & Huberman-style grids were employed to facilitate data analysis and then Fullan's theory of change was used as a framework for discussion of the findings. Analysis revealed that QA was thought to be needed but the level of success of the QA implementation was rather low at the course level due to a lack of efficient communication between the systems level and implementers on the ground. Consequently, teaching staff's knowledge and understanding of the QA operation was inadequate. However, strengths of the program included availability of financial and physical supports, i.e. multi-media teaching materials, IT infrastructure and provision of professional development. Perhaps the most important strength was the awareness and willingness of lecturers to implement QA during routine teaching. Nevertheless, IT literacy, teamwork skills and explicit systematic QA implementation documents were inadequate. Overall, this study has demonstrated a limited level of success regarding QA implementation in this Thai context due to various factors. Therefore, recommendations for improvement are presented and a QA model for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) is proposed.
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ItemExperiences of Russian-speaking immigrants in Australia: beliefs about language learning, teacher learner roles and learning style preferences( 2007)In previous years the Australian Government's Migration Programme focused on attracting a family member category first. Recently the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, Amanda Vanstone stated, "We've aided the growing Australian economy by attracting skilled migrants who continue to make a valuable contribution to Australia's economic growth". A quarter of skilled immigrants come from non-English speaking backgrounds, for instance, from Eastern Europe. Newly arrived immigrants receive English instruction in the Adult Migrant English Program. There has been little research on immigrants with high levels of education who were exposed to foreign language learning prior to migration. This in itself constitutes a serious gap in the knowledge required for the efficient language teaching of this group of students. This study examines the English learning experiences of eleven highly educated immigrants from the former USSR in the adult ESL classroom. It explores students' beliefs about language learning, beliefs about teacher and learner roles and students' preferred learning styles. This in-depth study employed a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection. The theoretical framework behind this study is based on the situational-interpretative orientation to research, whilst the approach adopted here is a synthesis of phenomenology, sociology and ethnography. This study found that Russian-speaking immigrants take formal language learning seriously. They expect ESL courses to be highly organised and structured. This study identified the main factors that impact on immigrants' language learning. Russian-speaking students demonstrate a strong instrumental motivation for learning English. They are in favour of traditional methods of learning the language. This study concludes that students' beliefs are culturally shaped. Students' prior educational experiences contribute to their beliefs in terms of approaches to language learning and strategy usage. Russian-speaking learners have high expectations of their ESL teachers. They assign multiple roles to the teacher ranging from an authority to a friend. Russianspeaking students view the learner's role as needing to follow teachers' commands, obey the teacher, work hard and be serious. The data indicates that students' beliefs are deeply rooted in their past educational experiences gained in the country of origin. Results indicate that changes in learners' beliefs occurred over the six months measured. These changes were associated with motivational, environmental and personality factors. Changes in learners' beliefs resulted from the connections students made between their past and present language learning experiences. Russian-speaking ESL learners prefer visual and kinaesthetic learning styles. They identified individual learning as a minor preference. Russian-speaking students appear to be pessimistic about their language abilities. They prefer to use a bottom-up approach and typically learn English for personal gain. Building on these results, this thesis argues that individual voices of language learners should be heard and propose a Principled Negotiated Approach to Pedagogy which would allow teachers and learners to discuss issues central to the learners' achievement in language learning. The implications of the results are provided.
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ItemA critical genre based approach to teaching academic writing in a tertiary EFL context in Indonesia.( 2005)This thesis reports on the effectiveness of using a genre-based approach in teaching academic English writing to studnet teachers who were learning English as a foreign language in a state university.
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ItemJourneys of adaptation of Chinese and Vietnamese international students to academic writing practices in higher education( 2007)The study reported in this thesis explores how Chinese and Vietnamese international students exercise personal agency and mediate their academic writing to adapt to disciplinary practices at an Australian university. It also examines academics' attitudes toward student writing. The study employs a trans-disciplinary framework for interpreting student writing practices and lecturers' views within the institutional structure. This framework has been developed by infusing a modified version of Lillis' heuristic for exploring students' meaning making in higher education with positioning theory. The study documents the complexities and multi-layered nature of the adaptation processes that the students go through in their attempts to mediate their academic writing. A prominent finding of the study indicates the emergence of three main patterns of adaptation, committed adaptation, surface adaptation and hybrid adaptation, that the students employ to gain access to their disciplinary writing practices. The students' process of adaptation arises from their intrinsic motivations to be successful in their courses and to participate in their disciplinary community. However, where they differ is in their internal struggle related to what they really value amongst the possible disciplinary writing requirements they adopt in constructing their texts. The findings of the study show that the students' journeys of adaptation appear to be much more complex than what is often described in the current literature as being largely related to language and cultural factors. The analysis or the students' practices shows that they exercise personal agency by drawing on various strategies to facilitate their understandings of disciplinary expectations. In particular, the students have transformed their own practices through seeking ways to contact their lecturers to deepen their understandings of the disciplinary expectations, ask for feedback on draft versions of writing assignments and go through the redrafting process. The students are quite successful in using different ways to increase their understandings of the disciplinary expectations and even find the process rewarding. This shows that contrary to popular belief, international students in this study are able to demonstrate initiative and problem-solving skills. They actively exercise their own power as students, which allows them to participate in their disciplinary written discourse. The findings also indicate that what is of paramount importance to students' success is the interaction and dialogues they establish with their lecturers. The students' varying practices in spelling out what is expected of them establish a case for the importance of individual factors of each student and that success or failure is likely to relate to the possession of certain dispositions, regardless of one's ethnic background. The positioning analysis of the four lecturers involved in the study shows that they appear to be aware of the needs of international students and are determined to accommodate them in many ways. There are however a number of mismatches in the display of disciplinary knowledge among the academics themselves and between the academics and the students. Yet, in the relevant literature, what challenges international students is often attributed to such factors as English language, study skills and cultural adaptation, which arise from international students themselves. The study reported in this thesis reveals that the inconsistency and subtlety of the lecturers' explanations of the academic expectations makes it more challenging for international students to make sense of what is required of them in specific disciplines. Even though the lecturers attempt to find ways to facilitate students' understandings of the conventions, there is little mutual transformation occurring in terms of negotiating different ways of constructing knowledge. The findings of the study give insights into ways that a dialogical pedagogic model for mutual adaptation can be developed between international students and academics rather than the onus being on exclusive adaptation from the students. The model offers concrete steps towards developing mutual relationships and changes of international students and staff to each other within the overarching institutional realities of the university. Such a dialogical model is put forward as a tool to enhance the education of international students in this increasingly internationalized environment.
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ItemThe epistemological authority of an ESL teacher in science education( 2000)This thesis investigates the epistemological authority of an ESL teacher in science education. The state of Victoria, Australia, reflecting a world-wide trend in English speaking countries, has adopted a policy of mainstreaming ESL within the secondary school context. One of the ways this policy has been implemented in government secondary schools in Victoria is by ESL specialists and mainstream teachers jointly planning the curriculum. There has been very little research into how an ESL and a mainstream teacher actually negotiate pedagogic understandings when planning together. This thesis explores the planning relationship with a view to enhancing policies of mainstreaming. The central data in the study are the two planning conversations of two teachers, one on the topic of genetics and the other on motion. The conversations are analysed using positioning theory and appraisal theory within a transformational model of social action. It is argued that positioning theory, with its focus on personal identity formation, offers an analysis of agency and structure, but not of the language used in the conversation. Appraisal theory, with its focus on the linguistic resources used by the teachers to negotiate meaning, allows for a detailed linguistic analysis which assists the positioning analysis. The analysis offers insights into how the teachers maintain and sustain their planning conversations, within a secondary school context. The analysis of the planning conversations reveals overwhelmingly the difficulties and sources of tension that can emerge in a planning relationship between a science specialist and an ESL specialist, even when they enjoy a good working relationship. There are genuine dilemmas and difficulties in attempting to bring together the different and competing epistemological assumptions of the two teachers, who ome from very different disciplinary discourse communities. It is argued that the attempt by the two subject specialists to work together and 'fuse their horizons' is difficult. This is partly because the two discourse communities they represent are very different, and partly because one such community - namely science - enjoys considerably greater power in the working relationship. Overall the findings of this thesis indicate the considerable difficulties in the way of achieving successful mainstreaming of ESL in the secondary school context. The policy directives about mainstreaming have assumed that it is a simple process of the ESLteacher sharing teaching strategies with the mainstream teacher. The study will demonstrate that negotiating pedagogic understandings is a profound journey of epistemological reconstruction, the nature of which had not been anticipated by the policy makers. This is because the two teachers' views of language and teaching are negotiated through their subject disciplinary prejudices and biases. The study offers a model that theorises the personal professional development project implicit within the mainstreaming of ESL policy.
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ItemAccessing the discourses of schooling: English language and literacy development with aboriginal children in mainstream schools( 1998)This thesis reports on aspects of an intervention program in literacy and language development implemented for Aboriginal children at Traeger Park School in Alice Springs. The study proposes that the provision of access to academic/literate discourses for Aboriginal children is an issue that has been either avoided or devalued generally in Australian linguistic research. This negative orientation has been particularly prevalent in mainstream linguistic studies which have followed Labovian (ie. Labov 1969) perspectives on notions of difference/deficit since the 1970's.