Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of Input And Interaction In The Acquisition Of Chinese As A Second Language, Xiaoping Gao

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Input and interaction have received great attention in second language research due to their dominant role in second language teaching and learning. However, empirical studies that have examined their effects on the acquisition of Chinese as a second language remain scarce. This study fills this gap by comparing the effects of teacher-student interaction and student-student interaction on vocabulary acquisition in Chinese as a second language. Thirty-six adult beginners of Chinese completed ten weeks' study in Australia, in addition to pre- and post- tests and a background questionnaire. Selected participants attended a focus group interview. Statistical analyses show that both types …

Language Use And Language Attitudes In New Caledonia With Particular Reference To French Creole Tayo, Anu Bissoonauth-Bedford

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

New Caledonia has an unusual language dynamic in comparison to other French overseas territories. In most of these islands, a French Creole is usually the lingua franca and has a lower status than French. In contrast, in New Caledonia the French Creole, called Tayo, is a minority language and comes in contact with French, English and 28 Indigenous languages (also called Kanak languages). The 2014 census population revealed a multi-ethnic and multicultural NewCaledonian population. It did not, however, record the rate of multilingualism in speakers. Results from a recent sociolinguistic study on patterns of language use and language attitudes revealed …

Employment Of Graduates Of Japanese Language, Rowena G. Ward

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

An underlying assumption behind the former Australian Federal Labor Government's 2012 Asian Century White Paper was that language skills were not only important for Australia's future engagement with its regional neighbours but would also lead to employment opportunities. Yet, little research has been undertaken into the employment of graduates with majors in languages, irrespective of the language. This paper discusses the results of an online survey on the use of their Japanese language in employment by graduates who undertook a major or a minor in Japanese language between 2008 and 2012. The results discussed here focus on the questions which …

Transforming Practice: Designing Rubrics For Cumulative And Integrative Assessment Of Disciplinary Learning And Development Of Students' Language Communication, Honglin Chen, Emily Rose Purser, Alisa J. Percy

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

While it is widely recognised that university graduates should be good communicators, and that close attention be paid to the development of students' communication skills within their disciplinary learning contexts (Arkoudis, 2014; Johnson, Veitch, & Dewiyanti, 2015), it remains open to debate how an effective and sustained focus on language communication can be achieved within disciplinary curricula. The past few years have seen major efforts to identify good practices in teaching language communication, yet as Arkoudis (2014) notes, these are often fragmented and not explicitly linked to disciplinary assessment. The existing literature on language communication consistently points out that designing …

Policy Into Practice: Using Practice Theory To Implement An English Language Policy, Alisa J. Percy, Leonie G. Watson, Catriona A. Taylor

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

National studies concerned with the assurance of students' language communication within higher education courses have identified several principles for leveraging change, which include an institutional wide strategy, the articulation of clear language communication outcomes at the course and subject level, the identification of subjects within courses from first year to the capstone that have a particular focus on teaching and assessing communication skills, the incorporation of English language and literacy into assessment criteria, and collaboration between discipline staff and academic language and learning staff (Arkoudis, 2012, 2014). These principles have been incorporated into an English Language Policy at one university; …

Reflections On The Positioning, Politics, And Pedagogy Of A Language Education/Research Writing Subject For International Hdr Students, Alisa J. Percy, Emily Rose Purser

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

This presentation reflects on the positioning, politics, and pedagogy of a centrally delivered language education/research writing subject for international HDR students at the University of Wollongong,

Resource Development And Teacher Training: A Model Of Interactive Whiteboard (Wb) Integration In Language Labs, Lidia Bilbatua, Laetitia Vedrenne

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Pedagogical research often focuses on learners’ experience of technologyenhanced learning environments. It is widely accepted that effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in learning requires the learner to be already fluent in them (Lai and Morrison 2013: 154). If this is the case, then practitioners also need to be competent, yet the digital literacy of today’s learners often appears greater than that of practitioners. This translates into a big gap between learners and practitioners in ability and confidence in the use of ICTs.

In this paper, we present the outcomes of a research project funded by the University …

Back To The Classroom: Language Educators Learning A Language, Lidia Bilbatua, Laetitia Vedrenne, Rowena G. Ward

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

As part of our preparation for this presentation, we undertook research into the field of teachers as students etc but there is virtually none irrespective of language or other. Research on the motivation of students and teachers and the differences between teachers’ beliefs and their actual classroom practice is ample but there is virtually nothing on teachers as students and the impact that being a student had on their teaching practise etc. In some ways, it seems that once you are a language teacher, you are expected to remember what it is like to study a language – from our …

“How Do You ... Use Film Viewing To Enhance Language Comprehension?", Alfredo Herrero De Haro

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In this article I will be looking at ways of using films to enhance students’ language comprehension, following on from the How do you…? section in the previous issue of Vida Hispánica, -henceforth Herrero de Haro (2013)-.

Teachers' Attitudes Towards Computer-Assisted Language Learning In Australia And Spain, Lidia Bilbatua, Alfredo Herrero De Haro

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

A review of the existing literature shows that when it comes to studying attitudes towards CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning), researchers have traditionally focused on students’ perspectives and ignored teachers’ views. This study focuses on teachers’ attitudes towards CALL in order to gain a better understanding of what issues, advantages, and disadvantages teachers come across when incorporating CALL into their teaching. Furthermore, a group of teachers from Australia and Spain has been interviewed to compare how views on CALL vary across professionals in these two countries. As some authors have previously proved, the more IT literate teachers are, the more likely …

A Critical Turn In Higher Education Research: Turning The Critical Lens On The Academic Language And Learning Educator, Alisa Percy

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

This paper suggests that historical ontology, as one form of reflexive critique, is an instructive research design for making sense of the political and historical constitution of the Academic Language and Learning (ALL) educator in Australian higher education. The ALL educator in this paper refers to those practitioners in the field of ALL, whose ethical agency has largely been taken for granted since their slow and uneven emergence in the latter half of the twentieth century. Using the lens of governmentality, genealogical design and archaeological method, the historical ontology proposed in this paper demonstrates how the ethical remit of the …

Chinese Second Language Teacher Education And Teacher Self-Development, Xiaoping Gao

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper addresses three key components in Chinese Second Language Teacher Education: the history, development and objectives of the field, the curricula of teacher education, and student teachers' self -reflection in teaching practices and its role in teacher self -development. Given the changes in the objectives and contexts of teaching Chinese as a second language. it emphasizes that student teachers' self - reflection in supervised teaching practice is central to realize teachers' self -development and to meet the requirement of International Standards for Chinese Language Teacher.

Chinese Language Teaching And Teacher Training In Australia, Xiaoping Gao

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

摘要：

自国家汉办2006年启动海外汉语教师志愿者项目以来，志愿者的素质问题逐渐成为志愿者选派、培训及国际汉语教育专业人才培养关注的焦点。本文旨在探讨赴澳大利亚志愿者的必备素质与培养策略。文章以澳大利亚的中文教育状况为背景，通过对比澳洲本土教师从业资格与志愿者的选拔条件、培训内容，提出满足澳大利亚教学需求的志愿者应具备良好的英语沟通能力、扎实的专业素养、踏实的敬业精神，娴熟的多媒体课件制作技巧、和适合学生特点的组织管理课堂教学活动的技能。本文并就如何培养志愿者的上述素质提出了相应的培养策略，以期丰富国际汉语教师志愿者的选拔、培训及相关研究，探索高质量国际汉语人才培养的新途径。

How Do You …? Use Film Viewing To Enhance Students’ Analytical Skills?, Alfredo Herrero De Haro

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Many teachers, and I have been one of them, treat listening skills as something that is innate and that can be neither learnt nor taught. That is, as something that students either can or cannot do, and as something that teachers have no control over. However, trial and error in lessons has shown me how, irrespectively of students’ level in the L2, there are certain things that we can teach students to make them better listeners and to help them understand how to improve their (foreign) language comprehension.

The starting point will be preventing our students from being passive listeners, …

Teaching A Mother Tongue Far Away From The Motherland: An Analysis Of Chinese Language Curriculum In Australian High Schools, Min Tao, Wei Wang

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article is concerned with the situation of teaching of Chinese as a first language or a mother tongue in Australia. Based on the analysis of the curriculum documents, students ' identities and exam papers in Victoria and New South Wales, the two biggest states in Australia, we argue that 1 ) the emergence of Chinese as a first language curriculum in Australia where English is the de facto national language is attributed to the globalisation and commercialisation in education; 2) the curriculum design of Chinese as a first language represents the curriculum' s Euro-centric mind-set and this also results …

Collaborative Creation Of Spoken Language Corpora, Michael Haugh, Wei-Lin Melody Chang

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Analysing authentic interactions at progressively greater levels of complexity is one means of promoting deeper engagement with pragmatic phenomena amongst L2 learners. However, effective analysis often requires a greater amount of data than learners can feasibly gather. It is proposed here that encouraging students to collaborate through the creation of a corpus of spoken interactions is one potentially effective way to help them engage with a much richer set of interactional data than they might normally encounter. Here we report on a corpus created through “crowdsourcing” the collection and transcription of recordings of spoken interactions, the Griffith Corpus of Spoken …

Time To Define 'The Cornerstone Of Public Order Legislation': The Elements Of Offensive Conduct And Language Under The Summary Offences Act 1988 (Nsw), Julia Ann Quilter, Luke J. Mcnamara

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article addresses a contradiction that has long been at the heart of the criminal law concerned with ‘public order’. Although crimes such as offensive conduct and offensive language are amongst the most frequently prosecuted offences in Australia, their legal nature is poorly understood and rarely the subject of judicial scrutiny or academic explanation. In the context of ongoing controversy over whether such offences have a legitimate place on the statute books, we confront this oversight. This article draws on the High Court of Australia’s decision in He Kaw Teh v The Queen1 to lay out a methodology for construing …

Swings And Roundabouts: Changes In Language Offerings At Australian Universities 2005-2011, Kerry S. Dunne, Marko Pavlyshyn

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

In this study we report on changes in language offerings in Australian universities for the period 2005–2011, focusing on languages with small enrolments. We also give a progress report on collaborative arrangements that were introduced to ensure wider availability of language programs. These programs were surveyed most recently in the 2009 DASSH project on collaborative models for the provision of languages in Australian universities (Winter 2009). We find that there has been an increase in the number of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) offered across the tertiary sector. However, it is not the case that all of these languages are …

Supporting The Language And Learning Development Of Eal Students In Australian Higher Education, Paul J. Moore

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

The role of learning advising in improving the educational outcomes of students for whom English is an additional language (EAL) in Australian universities has received significant attention in recent years. A combination of research findings, governmental pressure and media scrutiny has provided renewed impetus for universities to address issues of language proficiency and academic literacy amongst the growing population of onshore international students for whom English is an additional language (EAL). In this paper, I discuss the role of academic language and learning advising in the Australian university context, including how this practice is influenced by a range of political, …

Supporting Interaction And Collaboration In The Language Classroom Through Computer Mediated Communication, Mariolina Pais Marden, Jan Herrington

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper describes the design and implementation of a technology supported learning environment that enabled interaction and collaboration between a group of sixteen intermediate and advanced level university students of Italian and a group of seven Italian native speaker facilitators. For one semester students and facilitators worked together to complete two authentic tasks and interacted with each other through the communication tools and resources of an online learning management system. These resources included both asynchronous and synchronous communication tools such as an online threaded class discussion forum, a group discussion forum, chat and email. This paper discusses the theoretical underpinnings …

E-Mail And Portfolio Assessment As Ways For Language And Culture Learning - Exchange Between Australia And Taiwan, Yu-Ju Chang, Su-Lien Chen

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

In Taiwan, elementary school students have started taking their formal English classes in the third grade. Besides, many students in large cities like Taipei start their formal or informal English classes at an even younger age. English learning has become a popular movement in Taiwan.

"Desde Australia Para Todo El Mundo Hispano": Australia’S Spanish-Language Magazines And Latin American/Australian Writing, Michael Jacklin

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Migrants from Latin America have had a literary presence in Australia since the 1970s and their work forms an important part of Australia's multilingual literature. From their participation in literary competitions organized through cultural groups such as the Spanish Club in Sydney or the Uruguayan Club in Melbourne, to anthologies of community writing produced through the 1980s and '90s, to the publication of numerous volumes of poetry and short stories, to their novels, plays, biographies and autobiographies, Latin American writers in Australia have developed and sustained a significant body of literature over more than three decades. The majority of this …

Integrating Key Work Skills In Language Modules, Laetitia Vedrenne, Sally Wagstaffe

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

‘Marketing and the Media in France’ is a final-year undergraduate module which integrates the development of key or transferable skills with the acquisition of subject-specific knowledge (of marketing and the advertising media in France) and the development of all four language skills. This case study provides an outline of the module, its aims and assessment methods, introduces some of the resources used to support the module and reviews student responses regarding the challenges and benefits of integrating key skills into a final-year module as they prepare to make the transition into the world of work.

Developing An Online Community Of Learners For Second Language Students Using Design-Based Research, Mariolina Pais Marden, Janice A. Herrington, Anthony J. Herrington

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper describes the design of a research project that adopted a designbased research (DBR) approach to create and implement an online community of second language learners of Italian. For one semester a group of sixteen intermediate and advanced level students of Italian, their teacher and seven Italian native speaker facilitators participated in the activities of an online community of practice and interacted with each other through the communication tools and resources of an online learning management system. This paper presents the four phases of the study using the DBR model outlined by Reeves (2006) and the methodology that informs …

Providing Language And Academic Skills Support In A Multi-Media And Distributed Learning Environment, Jeannette Stirling, L. Celeste Rossetto

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

[extract] This paper examines the role of the language and academic skills (LAS) lecturer in a multi-media and geographically distributed learning environment at the University of Wollongong. By this we mean providing language and academic skills support where subjects comprising various degree programs are taught simultaneously across a range of networked satellite campuses including, at times, the central campus: hence the idea of a ‘distributed learning environment’. Subject delivery to this network of campuses is variously achieved through the use of multi-media teaching and learning technologies such as videoconferencing, web-based resources, online discussion spaces, pod-cast lectures, and face-to-face tutorials. We …

Language(S) And Identity(Ies) In French Society, Henri A. Jeanjean

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Most discourses about France seem to imply that France is a homogeneous, monolingual, monocultural country. This is denying the cultural and linguistic diversity of the country. Regions were conquered throughout the centuries and the various regimes have always tried to eradicate regional languages and cultures, imposing French as the sole language, a powerful tool of colonisation. Resistance to the linguistic and cultural genocides have always been present. Until the second half of the 20th century this resistance was expressed only in linguistic terms. Recent events such as the Algerian war led to a new militancy and a political awareness slowly …

Language Literacy And Diversity @ 21st Century: A New Basics For Designing Global Learning, Koo Yew Lie, Peter Kell, Wong Fook Fei

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Editorial: This volume examines learning and the learner as situated in a range of social and institutional contexts in Australia and Malaysia. This is the second volume in a special themed collection of two volumes on language, literacy and education in changing times. This volume explores the intersections between ICT, globalisation and institutional change with the issue of multilingualism and literacy (ways of reading, writing, speaking, listening and communicating in two or more languages) in environments of complex multiple and intersecting agendas of change.

Language, Literacy And Education In Diverse Contexts: Theory, Research And Practice, Koo Yew Lie, Peter Kell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The articles in this first volume are articles situated in diverse social and institutional environments both in Australia and Malaysia. Here, the scholars discuss literacy, language and education issues from their academic experience in multilingual and multicultural contexts of schools, higher education and cultural communities such as digital and culture consuming communities. Contributors engage in literacy issues emerging from the diversity of communities straddling overlapping local-global contexts as well as communities of practice distinguished in terms of class, ethnicity, religion, spirituality and ideology. These are affiliated through common values and interests which transcend the divides of ethnicity, class, religion and …

Working With Global English: The Experience Of English Language Teachers In A University Language College, Peter Kell, Gillian Vogl

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Through in-depth interviews and focus groups with English Language teachers employed at a university bridging college, this paper explores the challenges that teachers face in preparing international students for university life in Australia. Findings from this research suggest that the narrow business focused objectives of the English Language market undermine more holistic approaches to teaching English. A more holistic approach is required to respond to the social and cultural needs of students while they are studying in Australia. Nevertheless, this research suggests that regardless of the instrumental and reductionist neo liberal philosophy which informs these programs, meaningful intercultural dialogue, critical …

Between The Lines: An Analysis Of The Language Of Indonesian Reporting Of Military Clashes In Aceh, Philip Kitley

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

[extract] Kompas Cyber Media is the online presence of the leading Indonesian daily Kompas and it was on the small screen that I first read about the kidnapping on 29 June, 2003 of television journalist Ersa Siregar, camera operator Ferry Santoro, their driver Rahmatsyah and two female passengers, sisters Safrida and Soraya. The online version of this drawn out story of reporters hostage to the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) stripped down the news stories that appeared in the broadsheet. I was struck by the more than usually limited information value of the hostage headlines and stories from …