School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses
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ItemApplying the context-adaptive model: evaluating a DEET funded English Language Program( 1995)Financially able governments around the world are embarking on major projects to retrain the growing numbers of unemployed. Education systems now dominated by 'market economy' -thinking government bodies holding the reigns on policy making and funding. It would appear from the writing of Bell and Goldstein (1995:21) that the situation in Australia is parallel to that of Canada. It is summarised in the words: "Many workers who have permanently lost their jobs in t:llls current economic recession have been advised to upgrade their educational credentials and obtain new work skills. In these changing economic times, upgrading, training and 'lifelong learning' are seen by many to be the key to finding and keeping a good job." This statement could easily be made about Australia, where the Federal Government is funding many types of training programs for the unemployed. The one being evaluated here is an English as Second Language (ESL) program funded by the Department of Employment Education and Training (DEET) for retrenched workers from the Textile Clothing and Footwear (TCF) industry. The program to be discussed is located at Victoria College, a registered private provider of education and training in Melbourne. Initially, the college offered English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS) accredited by an industry body, the National ELICOS Accreditation Scheme (NEAS). It has now broadened its scope to offer business and DEET funded courses. The evaluator has been closely connected to the program in the capacity of teacher, coordinator and (DEET) liaison officer. The first chapter presents the historical background of language program evaluations. Reports on outcomes from closely related areas, are presented next, as relevant background literature. The model chosen for the framework of this evaluation is the Context-Adaptive Model (CAM) (Lynch 1990). The second chapter leads to an evaluation design by adapting steps of the model to the evaluation context. It takes into consideration "such issues as the social and political basis and motivation for the language learning and teaching" (Lynch In press 94 13) which are important background to the evaluation. The data collection design is presented in the third chapter with the thematic framework for the evaluation. The design has quantitative and qualitative data collected for separate audience goals. The fourth chapter shows how qualitative and quantitative data is collected from various sources. The qualitative data consists of post-course questionnaires; case studies and interviews. Quantitative data consists of Australian Second Language Proficiency Rating (ASLPR) results in the form of precourse and post-course proficiency ratings for all the students and as well as a two-year charting of the four macro-skills for the case studies. In the fifth chapter, the results are discussed and arguments for the validation of the data and methods are put forward in the sixth chapter. The evaluation conclusions can then be drawn from the different perspectives presented in the last chapter.
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ItemThe Russian language in an Australian environment: a descriptive analysis of English interference in the speech of bilingual Russian migrants( 1973)The purpose of this dissertation is to present a descriptive analysis of English interference phenomena observed in Australian Russian as spoken in the urban communities of Melbourne, Sydney and. Brisbane. The project concentrates on vocabulary and idiom (the level at which the bulk of interference phenomena occurs) but phonological and grammatical aspects are introduced in the analysis of integration processes in Chapter IV. Chapter I contains a survey of previous work on bilingualism, language contact and linguistic interference. The basic concepts pertaining to this type of investigation are discussed and defined. Fieldwork is also described. Material for the study was gathered in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. It consists of tape-recorded interviews with individual informants and group conversations on the following topics: daily activities, including work and recreation, and memorable events that had occurred before and after migration to Australia. Forty-six informants were used in the investigation and they represent both adult and childhood bilinguals, and a cross-section of the different backgrounds that characterise the Russian migrant population in Australia. As well as a classification of the informants, Chapter I also contains a brief outline of the history of Russian migration to Australia and a description of Russian community activities and efforts towards Russian language maintenance in Australia. Chapter II is concerned with a discussion of the fundamental causes of interference in Australian Russian speech. Actual contextual examples of interference phenomena are described, classified and as far as possible explained using the author's own observations and the findings of other researchers in this field. The analysis shows that interference in the speech corpus may be correlated with sociocultural, structural and psychological factors and that the situations in which Russian and English are used, as well as the attitudes of the speaker, play an important role in conditioning the extent and nature of interference. Chapter III presents a classification of interference phenomena according to different modes of interference, namely, the transfer of English identities (words and expressions in their entirety of form and meaning); the transfer of English distributions (the semantic extension of Russian words on the model of English and the translation of English expressions); the transfer of English identities and distributions to form bilingual compounds and phrases. The transfer of English identities was found to outnumber other modes of interference in the corpus. Chapter IV describes the integration processes used by the informants to adapt English items to the phonological and morphological systems of Russian. The examples show a clear pattern of sound substitution of Russian phonemes for English ones, a strong tendency to assign the majority of English nouns to the masculine gender, a preference for the productive declension, conjugation and word-formation patterns. A number of words and expressions are classified as socially integrated or adopted into Australian Russian on the basis of their frequency and range of occurrence. Chapter V discusses the few examples of code-switching between English and. Russian that occur in the corpus. The Conclusion contains a recapitulation of the main findings of this project and a brief discussion of what these findings indicate about the changing function of Russian in Australia. The three Appendices contain a description of the informants, sample interviews and extracts from Unification relevant to Chapter I.
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ItemBilingual language practices in a migrant community: language shift and code-switching in a Serbian language community in Melbourne, Australia( 2005)The dissertation describes bilingual language practices in a Serbian language community in Melbourne, Australia at the macro-social and the micro-interactional level. The analysis is based on sociolinguistic interviews with twenty first and second generation female Serbian-English bilinguals. All twenty participants are members of the same church-school community, referred to in the study as the St Vitus community. Patterns of language choice at the community level, expressed as ratings on a maintenance to shift continuum, suggest an ongoing intergenerational shift to English. Features of bilinguals' social networks are revealed to be strongly implicated in the maintenance of Serbian. In particular, statistically significant correlations are found to exist between bilinguals' language maintenance ratings, on the one hand, and the ratio of primary network contacts to whom bilinguals report using Serbian to contacts to whom use of English is reported and bilinguals' involvement in practices that foster language maintenance, expressed in terms of degree of community integration, on the other. Code-switching practices are revealed to have both participant-related and discourse-related functions in conversation. The sequential analysis of code-switching is situated within a structural description of the phenomena of Serbian-English bilingual speech, creating an opportunity to explore the difference between external, i.e. conversational, motivation for language contact phenomena and motivation internal to the bilingual grammar. The dissertation makes a contribution to the study of language maintenance and shift in providing further evidence of the significance of bilinguals' social networks. It demonstrates the interaction of the structural and the sequential levels of analysis and its importance for a more complete understanding of the phenomena of bilingual speech. Finally, the dissertation adds to the growing body of research on community languages in Australia.
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ItemThe process of the assessment of writing performance: the rater's perspective( 2000)The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the process by which raters of texts written by ESL learners make their scoring decisions. The context is the Special Test of English Proficiency (step), used by the Australian government to assist in immigration decisions. Four trained, experienced and reliable step raters took part in the study, providing scores for two sets of 24 texts. The first set was scored as in an operational rating session. Raters then provided think-aloud protocols describing the rating process as they rated the second set. Scores were compared under the two conditions and comparisons made with the raters' operational rating behaviour. Both similarities and differences were observed. A coding scheme developed to describe the think-aloud data allowed analysis of the sequence of rating, the interpretations the raters made of the scoring categories in the analytic rating scale, and the difficulties raters faced in rating. Findings demonstrate that raters follow a fundamentally similar rating process, in three stages. With some exceptions, they appear to hold similar interpretations of the scale categories and descriptors, but the relationship between scale contents and text quality remains obscure. A model is presented describing the rating process. This shows that rating is at one level a rule-bound, socially governed procedure that relies upon a rating scale and the rater training which supports it, but it retains an indeterminate component as a result of the complexity of raters' reactions to individual texts. The task raters face is to reconcile their impression of the text, the specific features of the text, and the wordings of the rating scale, thereby producing a set of scores. The rules and the scale do not cover all eventualities, forcing the raters to develop various strategies to help them cope with problematic aspects of the rating process. In doing this they try to remain close to the scale, but are also heavily influenced by the complex intuitive impression of the text obtained when they first read it. This sets up a tension between the rules and the intuitive impression, which raters resolve by what is ultimately a somewhat indeterminate process. In spite of this tension and indeterminacy, rating can succeed in yielding consistent scores provided raters are supported by adequate training, with additional guidelines to assist them in dealing with problems. Rating requires such constraining procedures to produce reliable measurement.
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ItemAn investigation of the relationship between L2 learners' goals and their attitudes towards their learning( 2006)This thesis investigates the students' reactions to a specific pedagogical approach to second language (L2) writing, termed the Enhanced Genre Approach (EGA), looking at not just gain scores and students' evaluative comments, but at how individual students differ in their classroom behaviour. The approach entails the teaching of one specific genre, the argumentative essay, through the use of model texts organised according to the elements of Toulmin' s (1958; see also Toulmin' s et aI., 1984) framework of argumentation. It emphasises the communicative purpose of writing and the importance of having an audience in mind during the writing process. Other features of the approach include handouts and exercises derived from the model texts and Toulmin's argumentative framework, written feedback provided by the teacher with focus on Toulmin's elements of claim, grounds, and warrants, the opportunity to re-write essays, and pair-work activities. This study presents my perspective as the teacher and designer of the EGA and investigates the students' reactions to, and engagement with, this approach in the classroom. The investigation of the students' perspectives is framed within the socio-cultural theoretical framework. The investigation of the student's reaction to the EGA includes their likes and dislikes about the specific features of the approach, as well as their improvement over the length of the course. The investigation also explores similarities and differences observed across the students in terms of outcome and behaviour. Through the framework of activity theory, this thesis also examines how the students' goals may help explain their individual actions in the classroom, i.e., their attitudes and behaviours towards class activities, such as lectures, teaching methodology, course materials, tasks, teacher's feedback, and collaborative work. Further, the investigation explores the robustness of activity theory in explaining the students' performance and outcome. The investigation took place in an eight-week elective composition course (Composition 1) at an English language institute in the USA. The participants were nine adult intermediate second language learners from various backgrounds: Togo, South America, Central America, and Sweden. The Composition 1 course was specifically structured for the teaching of argumentative essay writing using the enhanced genre approach, that is, all tasks pertaining to Composition 1 formed part of the approach to second language writing instruction devised for this study. These included individual and pair-work tasks extracted from three "default" model texts organised according to the elements of Toulmin's model of argumentation, and the writing of short argumentative essays.
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ItemIntroducing EFL speaking tests into a Japanese senior high school entrance examination( 2004)This thesis investigates the feasibility of introducing speaking tests into the existing English test of the senior high school entrance examination in Japan by employing Messick's (1989) validity framework. The study demostrates that validity investigations need to include not only psychometric analysis but also a consideration of the competing values of stakeholders. The teaching guidelines for English issued by the Japanese Ministry of Education (1998) state that speaking is one of the most important skills for junior high school students. An entry decision to senior high school is based on both school-based assessment implemented by junior high school teachers and the existing external standardized English test. Despite the emphasis on the development of speaking skills, the existing English test does not include the assessment of speaking skills. There is a clear discrepancy between the aims of the guidelines and the skills tested in the entrance examination. A way to bridge this gap could be to introduce speaking tests into the English test of senior high school entrance examination, a step that would necessitate considering the validity of such test. The major issue of test validity relates to the meaning, relevance and utility of test scores as well as the value implications of test scores and the social consequences of test use (e.g. Messick, 1989; Bachman, 1990; McNamara, 2001). A questionnaire survey of teachers and students, and interviews with government officials and academics responsible for the test, were used to ascertain stakeholders' attitudes towards the introduction of speaking tests and their view of possible washback effects on the teaching or English (Study I). In order to respond concerns expressed by stakeholders in Study 1 about the reliability, validity and practicality of tests assessing oral skills, a possible oral skills component in the existing test was developed, and trialled and test scores were analysed, focusing on the practicality of the administration and psychometric adequacy of investigating student ability, raters, tasks and items via Rasch measurement (Study 2). Study 1 revealed that while most stakeholders were positive about the introduction of speaking tests, two stakeholders groups—the Education Board and senior high school teachers were not. The former, the test developers, took a conservative approach in wanting to maintain the status quo, and the latter, the test administrators, were resistant to the introduction of speaking tests for complex reasons, both internal and external. The views held by these two stakeholder groups are major obstacles to introducing such a test. Preliminary findings from Study 2 showed that the speaking tests developed were psychometrically adequate to measure junior high school students' oral skills. This study demonstrates that careful consideration needs to be given to the possible psychological fear aroused in stakeholders by the changes that would occur if speaking tests were included in the senior high school entrance examination. These changes can also challenge the values that underpin the existing educational system, both at the institutional and individual level, with different groups of stakeholders holding competing values. Clearly, taking these values into account is important in investigating the feasibility of introducing speaking tests into the entrance examinations in that any future component oral skills component in the entrance examination challenge the existing examination embodying ideological, political, and educational values - for as Messick argues, validity needs to be viewed in terms that go beyond psychometric rigour. The thesis concludes with a discussion on the implications for validity theory and the development of language assessment policy.
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ItemThe importance and effectiveness of moderation training on the reliability of teacher assessments of ESL writing samples( 1993)This thesis reports the findings of a study of the inter-rater reliability of assessment of ESL Writing by teachers in the Australian Adult Migrant Education Program, using the ASLPR, a language proficiency scale used throughout the program. The study investigates the individual ratings assigned to 15 writing samples by 83 teachers, both before and after training aimed at moderation of raters' perceptions of descriptors in the scale by reference to features of other 'anchor' writing samples. The thesis argues the necessity for on-going training of assessors of ESL writing, at a time of change in the program, from assessment of language proficiency to that of language competencies, since both forms of assessments are increasingly having consequences which affect the lives of the candidates. The importance and necessity for moderation training is established by reference to the problems of validity in the scale itself and in its use in the program, and by reference to the literature of assessor-training and features of writing which influence rater-judgements. The findings indicate that training is effective in substantially increasing inter-rater reliability of the subjects, by reducing the range of levels assigned to the samples and increasing the percentages of ratings at the mode (most accurate) level and at the Mode +/- 1 level (an allowance for 'error' due to the subjective nature of the assessment), after training. The paper concludes that on-going training is effective in achieving greater consensus i.e. inter-rater reliability amongst the assessors, but suggests that variability needs to be further reduced and offers suggestions for further research aimed at other assessors and variables.
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ItemOn some uses of the conversational token Mm( 1995)This thesis examines the conversational token Mm, using a core corpus of one hour each of seven Australian couples' conversation. Mm is a common conversational object in the Australian data set, with over 700 instances in the core corpus. Despite its frequent occurrence, it has been little studied in the past. It is a highly indexical, interactional token, as well as being one of the semantically most empty tokens of conversation. Mm belongs to what is probably a closed set of receipt tokens of various kinds in English, which are objects that claim some kind of attention from their producer, who is in a primarily listener role at the time of their utterance. Related tokens include Mm hm, Uh huh, Yeah, Oh, Okay, Right, and probably No. Mm was also found to be flexible and multifunctional, with seven uses found: as a lapse repair token, a degustatory token, a repair initiator, a hesitation marker, a 'quotatory' token, an answer token and a receipt token, the last with three subtypes: as an acknowledger, as a continuer, and as an assessment. The last two are intonational adaptations, from the more typical acknowledging function. By far the most frequent use found in the Australian data set was the acknowledging use, which is one of its uses as a receipt token. Mm in this role was found to be rare in American data examined, but common in British data. As a receipt token (as well as in its other uses), Mm was found to be distinctive from related tokens, most notably in its use as a retrospective, sequence closing item showing weak commitment to the talk to which it is oriented; in many instances it is a weaker version of Yeah. Most typically it is a free-standing token in second position in the sequence. It is quite often followed in the same turn by other brief response objects such as agreement tokens, assessments, collaborative completions, clarification sequences, or topic boundary marking objects. It typically says that its producer has nothing substantial to add to the topic of the talk to which it is oriented, most obviously when the Mm is followed by substantial same speaker talk. Such talk is almost invariably on a topic other than the topic of the talk to which the Mm that precedes it is oriented. The handful of cases where Mm is followed by same speaker on-topic talk show an illocutionary rather than the more usual topical distancing from the talk. Both topical and illocutionary distancing support the interpretation that Mm is a token indicating weak commitment to the talk to which it is oriented. The effect of intonational mappings on Mm is also shown in this thesis. Typically, the receipt token Mm has falling intonation, in which case it is a weak acknowledging or affirming object. If it takes a fall-rising contour, it becomes a continuer similar to Mm hm and Uh huh. If it takes a rise-falling contour, it becomes a relatively weak assessment token, showing heightened involvement in the talk. This thesis goes some way to positioning Mm as a member of a set of receipt tokens, including Mm hm and Yeah. Further work is required to show how these and other related tokens, notably Uh huh, Oh, Okay, and Right can be differentiated more thoroughly, and how they may constitute membership of an interactional, recipiency paradigm in conversation.
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ItemThe predictive validity of the IELTS and TOEFL: a comparison( 1994)This study compared two groups of overseas students who entered Melbourne and Monash universities in Melbourne in semester 1 1993. One group entered on the basis of an IELTS score and the other group entered on the basis of TOEFL score. Their academic performance at the end of semester 1 1993 was compared. Predictive validity coefficients were also compared. Differences were minimal with a slight tendency for the TOEFL to correlate more strongly than IELTS with undergraduate academic performance. The assumption made by admissions officers who use the two tests to make admissions decisions that the two tests are equivalent in their predictive validity was not refuted.
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ItemAn investigation into the validity of two EFL (English as a Foreign Language) listening tests: IELTS and TOEFL iBT( 2008)This study is an investigation of the construct validity of two EFL listening tests: IELTS and TOEFL iBT. It aimed to answer the question: "How do IELTS and TOEFL iBT listening tests compare in terms of test construct?" (For complete abstract open document.)