School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe AICCM Bulletin, Volume 37.1 Editorial(Informa UK Limited, 2016-01-02)
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ItemComparing the Same Task in ESL vs. EFL Learning Contexts: An Activity Theory Perspective(Wiley, 2019-07-11)This classroom-based study examined the role of context in task-based interaction. Identical tasks were implemented in university-level classes in two contexts: Australian ESL (n = 27) and Chilean EFL (n = 19). The learners engaged in discussion tasks, as part of the regular classroom activities. Data included audio-recorded task-based interactions, observations, and a survey. Data analysis was guided by activity theory, examining how learners approached the tasks, including deliberations about language (actions), the group dynamics, and their use of mediating tools (e.g., L1). Our findings revealed differences in the learners' actions in these two contexts, both expected (e.g., use of L1) and unexpected (e.g., the nature of assistance provided). Our study shows that in different contexts, the same tasks represent different learning activities.
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ItemDeveloping an authorial voice in PhD multilingual student writing: The reader's perspective(PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, 2019-03)Most scholars agree about the importance of an authorial voice in academic writing. There is also a growing body of research on how voice is manifested in texts at a word and phrase level, but relatively little that investigates readers’ perceptions of authorial voice (the effect on the reader) or the development of voice over time. In our study, we explored these issues by eliciting the views of five supervisors as they read and evaluated authorial voice, in the texts of three PhD students, writing in English as an additional language (EAL). We used two sets of comparable texts written by the students relatively early and near the end of their PhD to address the issue of voice development. A thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews revealed what constituted evidence of authorial voice for the five expert readers. All were adamant that an authorial voice is crucial in the writing of PhD students, but found the task of defining and locating voice in the students’ texts, and in discerning progress in students’ abilities to articulate a convincing authorial voice very challenging. Of interest was the finding that the supervisors’ language backgrounds, disciplinary specialities, personal histories, and preferences shaped their impressions of voice. These differences in perceptions of what voice entails held by supervisors from the same broad discipline raise questions about how we approach the teaching and assessment of voice.
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ItemStudents' Accounts of Their First-Year Undergraduate Academic Writing Experience: Implications for the Use of the CEFR(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2018)This article addresses the suitability of the CEFR as the basis for decisions about the readiness of individuals to engage in academic writing tasks in undergraduate university courses, and as a guide to progress. The CEFR offers potentially relevant general scales and subscales, but also more specific subscales for writing in the academic context. However, recent challenges to traditional views of academic writing have potential implications for assessment frameworks such as the CEFR when they are used to identify readiness for, and progress in, academic study. In this article we explore the views of students on what it means to “do” academic writing. Questionnaires, interviews, and short reflective texts were used to investigate the changing perceptions of first-year undergraduate students at an Australian university. The analysis of student data confirms the reality of the more complex view of academic writing suggested by the recent literature. The article then considers what implications this has for the adequacy of the definitions provided in the CEFR. It suggests that the CEFR descriptors underrepresent the complexity of the challenges of academic writing, particularly its cognitive demands. A new and rather different approach will be required to inform assessments used to manage the admission of students in`to academic writing contexts and the monitoring of their progress.
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ItemBecoming an applied linguist A study of authorial voice in international PhD students' confirmation reports(JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING CO, 2016)The need to establish an authorial identity in academic discourse has been considered to be critical for all doctoral students by academic writing teachers and researchers for some time. For students for whom English is an additional language (EAL) in particular, the challenges are not only how to communicate this identity effectively in English, but also how to develop from a writer who simply ventriloquizes the voices of scholarly others to an author who writes with authority and discipline-specific rhetorical knowledge. In the current project, we explored how three EAL students constructed authorial voices through the use of personal and impersonal forms of self-representation and evaluative stance in the Introduction sections of their written PhD Confirmation Reports. Our findings indicate that students combined a complex range of linguistic and rhetorical resources, such as integral and non-integral attribution of sources and attitudinal markers of stance, in their quest to project credible authorial identities as Applied Linguists. We also discovered the effect of these resources on readers to be cumulative. We recommend further research, including interviews with students, supervisors and examiners from across the disciplines, to explore and extend the scope of the present study.
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ItemBecoming an applied linguist A study of authorial voice in international PhD students' confirmation reports(JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING CO, 2016-01-01)The need to establish an authorial identity in academic discourse has been considered to be critical for all doctoral students by academic writing teachers and researchers for some time. For students for whom English is an additional language (EAL) in particular, the challenges are not only how to communicate this identity effectively in English, but also how to develop from a writer who simply ventriloquizes the voices of scholarly others to an author who writes with authority and discipline-specific rhetorical knowledge. In the current project, we explored how three EAL students constructed authorial voices through the use of personal and impersonal forms of self-representation and evaluative stance in the Introduction sections of their written PhD Confirmation Reports. Our findings indicate that students combined a complex range of linguistic and rhetorical resources, such as integral and non-integral attribution of sources and attitudinal markers of stance, in their quest to project credible authorial identities as Applied Linguists. We also discovered the effect of these resources on readers to be cumulative. We recommend further research, including interviews with students, supervisors and examiners from across the disciplines, to explore and extend the scope of the present study.
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ItemDoes the writing of undergraduate ESL students develop after one year of study in an English-medium university?(ELSEVIER SCI LTD, 2014-07)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableWhat happens to ESL students' writing after three years of study at an English medium university?(PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, 2015-06)
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ItemFeedback on writing in the supervision of postgraduate students: Insights from the work of Vygotsky and Bakhtin(ASSOC ACAD LANGUAGE LEARNING, 2014)