School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses
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ItemThe effect of including non-native accents in English listening tests for young learners: psychometric and learner perspectives( 2015)As English has been used widely as a lingua franca for communication, language testers have started to evaluate the proposal for introducing non-native accents into the listening input of English tests. This study aims to further this debate from both the psychometric and learner perspectives by not only investigating how accents influence test takers’ performance, but also eliciting their subjective perception of accents. 80 young L1-Mandarin test takers were recruited and divided into four groups, with each group listening to one accented version of the same test. The four accents used in this study were Australian, Spanish, Vietnamese and Mandarin English accents. Test takers subsequently completed a Likert-scale questionnaire, which measured their accent perception on three sub-scales, Familiarity, Comprehension and Attitude. Results indicate that the Mandarin accent group performed significantly better than the other three groups in the test and also perceived the Mandarin accent significantly more comprehensible, lending support for the shared-L1 effect. No significant difference is observed among the three non-Mandarin groups whether in the test scores or the Comprehension sub-scale. There is no significant difference in test takers’ perception of the four accents in terms of Familiarity or Attitude. The central implication from this study is that there is potential for the inclusion of non-native accents into listening tests provided the shared-L1 effect can be properly addressed.
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ItemIntegration of World Englishes into EFL Materials: A Case Study in the Brazilian Federal Network of Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education( 2021)The evolution of the English language into a global lingua franca and learners’ needs in the 21st century sociolinguistic landscape have drawn attention to calls for a paradigm shift in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). With this concern in mind, integrating World Englishes (WE) into English as a Foreign Language (EFL) materials is considered important in order to better prepare learners for using English in international contexts and to foster curriculum innovation. Aiming to examine how this integration could be made into EFL materials, a case study was conducted in the Brazilian Federal Network of Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education, focusing specifically on EFL materials developed for the e-Tec Language without Borders Programme released by the Ministry of Education. Making use of an autoethnographic approach, recollections of conversations with four writers and modules 1 and 2 materials were analysed in search of suggestions for WE integration into the program materials. Main findings revealed that a wider range of English varieties were included in module 2 and that module 1 was more focused on American and British English, which is in line with traditional English Language Teaching (ELT) in Brazil. In spite of the representation of WE in the materials, no activities drawing learners’ attention to the different varieties of English used or attempting to raise students’ awareness of English as a global lingua franca were identified, except for a comparison between American and British English. Also, it was found that ideological divergences regarding English language use and teaching among materials writers impacted on the expected outcomes in terms of WE inclusion. Based on the findings, five suggestions were made to integrate WE into the materials: 1. Balanced integration/representation of WE; 2. Noticeable English varieties; 3. Complementary WE activities; 4. Authentic audios; and 5. Integration of writers and learners.
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Item‘Language as relationality’ in Online Australian Indigenous Language Programs: A Case Study( 2021)Due to the deeply important role of language in connection to Country, culture and ancestors, many Indigenous peoples in Australia are working to maintain and revitalise their traditional languages through language learning programs. However, mainstream approaches to language teaching may neglect the Indigenous concept of language as relationality. Language as relationality refers to the inseparable connections between people, language, and Country. While online language programs may offer increased accessibility for learners, particularly in the wake of COVID-19, the place-based embedding of language may be neglected or undermined. Thus, this paper explores two research questions. Firstly, how is the concept of language as relationality expressed in the design of fully online Australian Indigenous language programs? Secondly, how do collaborative relationships between Indigenous language holders and academic institutions support embedding of relationality in program design? These research questions are investigated through a case study of two fully online Australian Indigenous languages programs, namely Bininj Kunwok and Noongar. The design elements which connect the learner to the language holders, language and Country are mapped out, including the use of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach. Furthermore, one of the program creators for the Bininj Kunwok program is interviewed to find out more about the collaborative design process. Results indicate that language as relationality in the Bininj Kunwok and Noongar programs is expressed through culturally and contextually grounded course content, multimodal design features and a CLT approach. Relational design is facilitated by collaborative relationships between Indigenous language holders and academic institutions. These findings have implications for pedagogy in illustrating the compatibility of CLT with language as relationality, especially in structuring the program around culturally significant content, as well as highlighting the benefits of multimodal integration. Implications for the process of online program design foreground the significance of equitable partnerships with language holders.
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ItemThe relevance of IELTS Academic Writing Task 2 to successful university writing( 2019)Amidst accelerating globalisation, international students currently occupy a sizeable percentage of university enrolments in English-speaking countries. Of these countries, Australia has the highest ratio of international student tertiary enrolments at 21.5% (OECD, 2019). Due to this ongoing trend, the validity of high-stakes language tests has become more vital than ever before. For language tests to be valid for university entrance, they should elicit language that is relevant and applicable to successful university participation. This relates to the extrapolation of language elicited by tests to university contexts (Chapelle, Enright, & Jamieson, 2008). The purpose of this study is to investigate the relevance of language elicited by IELTS Academic Writing Task 2 (WT2) to successful graduate-level university writing produced for the Master of Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. To date, studies investigating IELTS extrapolation have yielded limited evidence with little relevance to stakeholders. The present study addresses this issue by interviewing stakeholders about language needs and using the interview results to inform functional move-step analyses (Swales, 1990, 2004) of test and assignment writing for comparison. The results suggest that IELTS Academic WT2 is only somewhat relevant to successful university writing and highlight the need for students to develop skills in defining disciplinary concepts and interpreting study results. The results also suggest that IELTS scores should be interpreted with caution, given that claims pertaining to score use currently rest on weak extrapolation evidence. The methodological approach of the study demonstrates the potential to provide stronger extrapolation evidence if applied to broader contexts.
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ItemBehind the presence of Chinese: the linguistic landscape of Box Hill( 2016)With the ongoing trend of globalisation, more attention has been paid to multilingual and multicultural communication in the urban area. Such growing interests have made linguistic landscape (LL) studies, which address languages on public signage, a popular approach to sociolinguistics and social semiotics in the past few years. Previous LL literature has been preoccupied with the spread of English in multilingual cities around the world with little attention to the role of Chinese in the Australian urban context. As such, the current study aims to conduct a LL study concerning the use of Chinese in Box Hill. To achieve this aim, I used photographs of signs, such as street signs, shop names and promotional signs, as the source of data. A multi-layered approach combining quantitative and qualitative analyses are employed to firstly give an overview of the language combinations in Box Hill and secondly dive deeper into the intentions and ideologies underlying linguistic and semiotic choices. Findings of this study show that different signs have their respective language choices and semiotic preferences, and these can be understood in relation to the social context and cultural knowledge. This study revealed the status of Chinese language in an English-dominant environment. It contributed to the field of LL by promoting a multimodal perspective of photographic data, and made an effort to extend multimodal theories to accounting for signs with a Chinese origin. The study has important implications for linguistic and visual literacy. It suggests that language learning should not be based solely on linguistic knowledge, but also include cultural understandings. In addition, visual literacy is as important as linguistic literacy and are key in deciphering the meaning of signs in the modern world.
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ItemAustralian Indigenous language learner’s guides for revitalisation: language acquisition and materials evaluation( 2019)Given that many Australian Indigenous communities have undergone language loss and wish to (re)learn their heritage language, and that existing learner’s guides for these languages written by linguists are limited in their pedagogical capacities, this study is set out to investigate the current state and possible improvement of learner’s guides in response to Penfield and Tucker’s (2011) call for applied linguists with an expertise in language acquisition to step into this area. Specifically, this present study first adopts the learner-centred second language acquisition (SLA) stance and interviews four community-based language workers to identify the learning goals and needs of Indigenous communities. The study also evaluates nine existing learner’s guides published over the past four decades with Tomlinson’s (2010, 2011, 2016) principles proposed for SLA materials development as the fundamental framework. Findings suggest that one of the major learning goals of Indigenous communities be communicative competence, which matches with Tomlinson’s (2016) emphasis. Additionally, comprehensibility is the most salient issue of learner’s guides at present. To compare the insights of the interviewees in this study and the results of the learner’s guides evaluation, it is found that the SLA frameworks adopted in this study can indeed inform future development of learner’s guides for Australian Indigenous languages, but the application requires modifications in order to achieve cultural appropriateness, especially considering the colonial history of Australia. Beyond learner’s guides per se, the governing principle of future learner’s guides development is to have community consultation, involvement, and ideally, initiation. Positioned as an initial attempt to bridge language revitalisation and SLA, this study provides novel perspectives to both fields, introducing a theoretically and practically informed approach to develop pedagogical materials for Indigenous languages and an insight into a less studied audience in SLA research.
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ItemThe effects of study-abroad: the acquisition of English embedded wh-questions by L1 Cantonese speakers( 2018)Motivated by the growth of study-abroad (SA) population and the various findings in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) literature, this thesis investigates the effect of the SA context on the acquisition of English embedded wh-questions by first-language (L1) Cantonese speakers. 21 (11 at-home, AH and 10 SA) Cantonese learners of English participated in the study. The data were elicited by an oral production task (OPT), a grammaticality judgement task (GJT), a language contact profile (LCP) and an interview. The focus of the OPT and GJT was the inversion error made by the participants in the production and judgement of English embedded wh-questions, while the LCP and interview aiming at figuring out the possible factors of the participants’ knowledge of the target feature or the lack thereof. Moreover, the study set out to examine the difficulties of different wh-words (what, who, which, when, where, how and why) and whether the argument (what, who, which) – adjunct (when, where, how and why) asymmetry existed. The results showed no significant difference between the scores of the SA group and the AH group, suggesting that SA does not have a superior effect on the acquisition of L2 syntax. Diverse difficulties of different wh-words and the argument-adjunct asymmetry were found. These findings were discussed in light of the concepts of explicit and implicit knowledge as well as usage-base approaches. The study has pedagogical and theoretical implications.
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ItemConsonant-vowel interaction and phonological structure processing in cross-language perceptual assimilation: Australian English CV syllables perceived by L1 Mandarin listeners( 2018)Research on cross-language phoneme perception has mainly focused on either vowels or consonants, but little is known about the difference of the perception patterns of the two groups of phonemes. Therefore, both non-native consonants and vowels were investigated in syllable combinations within the theoretical framework of Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM). Native Mandarin listeners completed assimilation tasks (category identification and goodness rating) on CV syllables composed of six Australian English vowels /æ e iː ɪ ʉː ʊ/ and five consonants /b p d t h/. Results in general show that consonants and vowels have different perceptual patterns in a non-native setting, and the assimilation patterns of phonemes can vary across different phonological contexts. It is also found that the full range of native language syllable inventory is available to listeners in perceptual assimilation, and non-native listeners can analyze the CV syllable sounds as having different phonological structures. Individual differences were found in the perceptual pattern and were more salient in perceiving vowels than consonants. The findings suggest that a syllable-to-syllable point of view in cross-language speech perception may better reflect the nature of the processing mechanism for perceiving phonological structure.
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ItemThe construction of risk in government advertising: a case study of Operation Sovereign Borders video advertisements( 2017)The notion of risk has become an integral part of the contemporary societies, which come to understand potential harms and threats in and through the discourses of risk. Aligning itself with the literature of risk and discourse, the current study aims to gain an insight into the construction of risk in and through semiotic resources within multimodal texts in their social contexts, with a focus on the discourses of irregular migration in Australian government advertising. Through a case study of two video advertisements as part of the Operation Sovereign Border campaigns to deter maritime arrivals, the study examines how risk is constructed through a multimodal analysis of each video. Findings of the study are consistent with the social theories of risk, which point to the use of both technico-scientific discourse to highlight expertise, as well as the discourse of governmentality that stresses the role of self-regulation of the individuals in controlling risk. With its findings, the study has added to the growing bodies of research on risk and multimodal discourse analysis, and enhanced understanding of migration issues in Australian political contexts, which contribute to the future research on similar topics.
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ItemFinding Hawu: landing pages, finding aids and the Alan T. Walker Collection( 2016)Linguists working in language description have developed valuable grammars and dictionaries for many of the world’s small or endangered languages. However, without access to the primary data used to produce these tools, it can be difficult to scrutinise their accuracy. Language documentation aims to improve access to field data using online archives. Thus it shifts the focus from a grammar or dictionary to the data itself. Alan T. Walker collected an extensive written and audio record of Lii Hawu (the Hawu language), a small language spoken on the Sabu islands in eastern Indonesia, from May 1975 to January 1976. He subsequently published a description of the language titled A Grammar of Sawu (1982). Walker’s primary data (the Walker Collection) is now available digitally in the Pacific Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC). In this thesis, I consider the practical steps involved in creating a finding aid and inventory as a guide to the extensive Walker Collection. I also argue that landing pages and finding aids are essential elements of archival description. They are necessary to ensure digital language collections are accessible for both researchers and community members. I also discuss how primary data such as Walker’s can be used more widely, with the support of finding aids and inventories, to further document and revitalise small or endangered languages.