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Investigating the Complexity of Language Use in Trades Education in the Aotearoa New Zealand Context
Abstract
Language use in vocational education is a little studied area. The Language in Trades Education project investigated the complexity of this language using a multi-pronged approach. It involved an examination of written and spoken texts in four trades at the Wellington Institute of Technology (WelTec), an Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) Polytechnic (ITP). The study centred firstly on gathering written texts used in two construction trades (carpentry and plumbing) and two engineering trades (automotive technology and fabrication). Secondly, the spoken language of tutors and learners in these trades from classroom, building sites, and workshops was also collected. In this chapter, we share our findings related to the writing and talk in this context, the multimodal texts that students read and write, and the vocabulary used in these texts. We also discuss the translation of technical vocabulary in each trade from English to Tongan, a language of the Pacific, using a Pacific research methodology called Talanoa. Taken together, the findings from the project illustrate the complexities of language use in vocational education and have practical applications for teaching and learning.KeywordsVocational education and training (VET)Language in the tradesInstitute of technology or polytechnic (ITP)Tongan languagePractice-based learning
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"Il y a eu une telle fertilisation réciproque des idées de la sémiotique de Saussure, centrée sur le code et le langage, et de la sémiotique inspirée par Peirce, qui est pragmatique et interprétative, qu'il est difficile de trouver aujourd'hui un sémioticien qui ne croit pas à la nécessité de développer une socio-sémiotique, interprétative et pragmatique ».
S'il fallait donner l'illustration de cette conception ouverte des avancées en sémiotique, l'ouvrage de Gunther Kress et Théo van Leeuwen : Reading Images - The Grammar of Visual Design, en serait
la meilleure preuve.
For learners in vocational education, acquiring the specialized language of their field is important in facilitating the ability to communicate appropriately with colleagues and customers. Spoken and written discourse in a range of workplace settings has received some attention, but less attention has been given to discourse in vocational education contexts. This article concerns Builders’ Diaries; this is a key written text produced by trainee carpenters, both in an educational setting and once they move into the workplace as apprentices. Writing the Builders’ Diary gives trainees experience in producing a text important also to carpenters in the workplace. An analysis that focuses on language and meaning is used to investigate the purposes served by the Builders’ Diary in educational settings and the meanings expressed in it. Drawing on insights from Applied Linguistics, the analysis uses a small corpus of trainee diaries as well as interviews with qualified carpenters/tutors. It includes a comparison of writing done early on while the trainees are still in an educational setting, and towards the end of carpentry training, once the trainees have moved into the workplace. The study demonstrates the effectiveness of apprenticeship and situated learning in trainees’ acquisition of written workplace discourse.
As a learning model, apprenticeship is well known for its capacity to develop skills and vocational identities. It is also increasingly appealing for its potential to develop soft skills and enhance dispositions. This article focuses on the nature and role of apprenticeship and employers in developing dispositions and soft skills. It draws on a two-year New Zealand study of 41 apprentices in general practice medicine, carpentry, and engineering technician work, and their workplace mentors and teachers. The study theorised that apprentices’ most significant learning is personally as well as professionally challenging, and can be understood in terms of ‘vocational thresholds’ – portals to deeper capability in the field. This article argues that crossing vocational thresholds requires ongoing development of dispositions and soft skills, critically supported by workplace mentors and teachers. The article suggests that the situated nature of apprenticeship uniquely positions it to foster dispositions and soft skills, and that these are field-specific and learnable, rather than general, abstract and fixed.
How do people learn to become general practitioners, carpenters and engineering technicians? This report explores practice-based learning (apprenticeship or vocational immersion) across three different fields. It is based on observations and interviews with 41 learner-practitioners and their workplace-based mentors, teachers, and advisors:
1. GP registrars in the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners’ (RNZCGP) General Practice Education Programme
2. carpentry apprentices in managed apprenticeships with the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation (BCITO)
3. engineering technician cadets employed by engineering companies associated with the Institute of Professional Engineers New Zealand’s (IPENZ) Futureintech initiative
The significant learning experiences discussed by participants were detailed and specific to their field. However, those experiences also had many similarities: they almost always revealed the big picture and integrated aspects of practice. They had a memorable, 'no going back' quality. Sometimes they involved painful or counter-intuitive realisations about themselves and their work.
To understand these aspects of capability development, the authors developed the idea of vocational thresholds: transformational learning experiences that do not just involve knowledge and ability to do things but involve a way to be as a GP, carpenter or engineering technician. There are implications for the kinds of experiences learner-practitioners are exposed to, and when, as well as the deliberate practice opportunities provided.
What's the problem with literacy at college? How might everyday literacy be harnessed for educational ends? Based on the first major study of literacy practices in colleges in the UK, this book explores the reading and writing associated with learning subjects across the college curriculum. It investigates literacy practices in which students engage outside of college, and teaching and learning strategies through which these can help support the curriculum. With insightful analyses of innovative practices, it considers ways of changing teaching practices to enable students to draw upon their full potential. Recent research work has challenged the myth of individual student deficit, arguing cogently that people have 'funds of knowledge' from diverse and vibrant cultural roots, and that these have been misguidedly disqualified by the education system. It has claimed that different 'ways with words' can provide valuable resources for learning. However, the empirical exploration of this claim has lagged far behind the theoretical debate. Improving Learning in College resolves this by showing the integrity and richness of the literacy practices of a significant population, not previously the focus of such research: those who take vocational and academic college courses in colleges. It addresses an issue which has not until now been developed within this research tradition: that of how these practices can not only be valued and validated, but mobilised and harnessed to enhance learning in educational settings. This book will interest all teachers, teacher-educators and researchers concerned with post-compulsory education and vocational education in compulsory schooling. © 2009 Roz Ivanič, Richard Edwards, David Barton, Marilyn Martin-Jones, Zoe Fowler, Buddug Hughes, Greg Mannion, Kate Miller, Candice Satchwell and June Smith. All rights reserved.
Prior studies indicate that vocational students’ literacy practices are more demanding than is generally recognised. Employing a view of literacy acquisition as socialisation, we investigated the literacy practices of trades training in Carpentry and Automotive Technology, by interviewing tutors and examined course books and student writing. A register of spoken language was identified, which differed from everyday language in being highly technical, reflecting specialist knowledge and indexing an identity as a member of a trade. Students were found to read a wide variety of texts, including complex professional texts such as Building Standards, Specifications, Codes and manufacturer’s instructions, as well as tutor-produced course books. Writing was less prominent and included assignment questions, and tests and some preparation for professional writing. Further research into the oral practices of vocational study, based on observation of pedagogical practice, is suggested. Implications for vocational pedagogy include a focus on support for reading.
While learning journals (LJs) have been shown to support self-regulated learning strategies, reflection and learning outcomes in academic contexts, few studies have investigated their relevance in vocational education. A mobile and online learning journal (MOLJ) was developed to support reflection on workplace experiences. However, acceptance of the mobile and online learning journal by apprentices and supervisors is not trivial. This study investigated how apprentices use the mobile and online learning journal and why they use it that way. The mobile and online learning journal was developed for apprentices in the field of bakery and contains a recipe book, a smartphone app to take pictures of workplace experiences, and a learning journal for reflection. Apprentices’ workplace supervisors have access to the mobile and online learning journal to provide support and feedback. A mixed method study was conducted with 16 apprentices. Indicators of their use of the mobile and online learning journal were recorded, while reasons for use were studied by questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Four kinds of users of the mobile and online learning journal were identified: Multifunction users, picture takers, learning journal users, and overall low users. The most determining factors for the acceptance and use of the mobile and online learning journal by apprentices were their interest in the use of a smartphone at the workplace, their acceptance of reflection on workplace experiences through the mobile and online learning journal, and supervisors’ participation and provision of feedback. Promoting the use of learning journals by apprentices requires strong guidance in the design of the learning journal as well as support and feedback from supervisors. Taking pictures from the workplace proves useful for learning and sharing experience in vocational training.
This study investigated (a) the lexical demands of academic spoken English and (b) the coverage of the Academic Word List (AWL) in academic spoken English. The researchers analyzed the vocabulary in 160 lectures and 39 seminars from four disciplinary sub-corpora of the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus: Arts and Humanities, Life and Medical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences. The results showed that knowledge of the most frequent 4,000 word families plus proper nouns and marginal words provided 96.05% coverage, and knowledge of the most frequent 8,000 word families plus proper nouns and marginal words provided 98.00% coverage of academic spoken English. The vocabulary size necessary to reach 95% coverage of each sub-corpus ranged from 3,000 to 5,000 word families plus proper nouns and marginal words and 5,000 to 13,000 word families plus proper nouns and marginal words to reach 98% coverage. The AWL accounted for 4.41% coverage of academic spoken English. Its coverage in each sub-corpus ranged from 3.82% to 5.21%. With the help of the AWL, learners with knowledge of proper nouns and marginal words will need a vocabulary of 3,000 and 8,000 word families to reach 95% and 98% coverage of academic spoken English, respectively.
Doing what we do best leads to high levels of engagement and productivity. Educators who capitalize on their strengths daily help students do what they do best by developing a strengths- based approach to education. The principles of strengths-based education include measurement, individualization, networking, deliberate application, and intentional development. Through a parallel process, educators practice the principles of strengths-based education when advising and teaching while students learn to put their strengths to work in learning and social situations. strengths-based educational approach should not be confused with some of the atheoretical fads that have swept through higher education which are only loosely based upon educational or psychological research. In contrast, the underlying principles inherent to strengths- based education are derived from research in several fields, including education, psychology, social work, and organizational theory and behavior. Scholars within each of these disciplines have begun to share lines of inquiries and to develop novel, practical approaches aimed at promoting optimal functioning at both student and campus levels.
In this article, the authors provide an empirically based, social semiotic account of changes in textbook design between 1930 and the present day. They look at the multimodal design of textbooks rather than at image or any other mode in isolation. Their review of 23 textbooks for secondary education in English shows that profound changes have taken place not just in the use of image but equally in writing, typography and layout. Design is no longer exclusively organized by the principles of the organization of writing, but also, and increasingly so, by graphic, visual principles. They explore what these semiotic changes mean for the social organization of design and knowledge production, asking: What is 'English', a subject that supposedly concerns itself with the modes of writing and speech? What has changed in the environment that is set up by the textbook makers for teachers and students to engage in?
Strengths-based advising is proposed as a new lens for higher education, one that enables advisors to see diverse groups of students fulfill their potential and achieve excellence. Based on research from social work, positive psychology, and the business world, this approach enables advisors to identify and build on the inherent talents students bring with them into the college and university setting, teaching students to develop and apply their strengths to new and challenging learning tasks. This explicit focus on students' natural talents builds the confidence and motivation necessary for achievement and persistence in college. We contend that this approach to advising represents a much-needed paradigm shift within higher education.
Scholars and practitioners have increasingly come to recognise the centrality of learner agency in generating learning opportunities. Such agency is most clearly observed in the initiatives that learners take in the language classroom. Despite the importance of learner initiatives, however, a precise and comprehensive understanding of what such initiatives entail remains lacking. Based on a conversation analytic treatment of 160 relevant cases culled from 14 hours of ESL (English as a second language) classroom interactions, I propose an empirically based ‘typology’ of learner initiative. Drawing upon various theoretical assumptions of what promotes learning, I also give preliminary considerations to the kinds of learning opportunities such initiatives generate.
This paper aims at presenting the application of a grid for the analysis of the pedagogic functions of visual images included in school science textbooks and daily press articles about science and technology. The analysis is made using the dimensions of content specialisation (classification) and social-pedagogic relationships (framing) promoted by the images as well as the elaboration and abstraction of the corresponding visual code (formality), thus combining pedagogical and socio-semiotic perspectives. The grid is applied to the analysis of 2819 visual images collected from school science textbooks and another 1630 visual images additionally collected from the press. The results show that the science textbooks in comparison to the press material: a) use ten times more images, b) use more images so as to familiarise their readers with the specialised techno-scientific content and codes, and c) tend to create a sense of higher empowerment for their readers by using the visual mode. Furthermore, as the educational level of the school science textbooks (i.e., from primary to lower secondary level) rises, the content specialisation projected by the visual images and the elaboration and abstraction of the corresponding visual code also increases. The above results have implications for the terms and conditions for the effective exploitation of visual material as the educational level rises as well as for the effective incorporation of visual images from press material into science classes.
In on-demand education, students often experience problems with directing their own learning processes. A Structured Task
Evaluation and Planning Portfolio (STEPP) was designed to help students develop 3 basic self-directed learning skills: Assessing
the quality of own performance, formulating learning needs, and selecting future learning tasks. A case study with 10 first-year
students in the domain of hairdressing was conducted to evaluate STEPP’s use, usability, and perceived effectiveness. Results
from student interviews show that usability and use are influenced by several factors. Students with low prior hairdressing
skills, a weakly developed personal approach to direct their own learning, and an inclination to update STEPP as part of their
weekly routine, use STEPP more frequently than students without these characteristics. Both the supervisor and students who
frequently used STEPP perceived its use as a positive contribution to the development of self-directed learning skills. Furthermore,
this study provides guidelines for the design of development portfolios in on-demand education.
Word lists lie at the heart of good vocabulary course design, the development of graded materials for extensive listening and extensive reading, research on vocabulary load, and vocabulary test development. This book has been written for vocabulary researchers and curriculum designers to describe the factors they need to consider when they create frequency-based word lists. These include the purpose for which the word list is to be used, the design of the corpus from which the list will be made, the unit of counting, and what should and should not be counted as words. The book draws on research to show the current state of knowledge of these factors and provides very practical guidelines for making word lists for language teaching and testing. The writer is well known for his work in the teaching and learning of vocabulary and in the creation of word lists and vocabulary size tests based on word lists.
This article explores the socio-discursive competence of young children in Galician pre-schools. In particular, it deals with the way in which children – aged from 2;10 to 4;05 years – combine embodied actions and verbal resources to co-narrate stories with peers and adults. Using an audiovisual corpus of naturally occurring interactions, we have conducted a qualitative and multimodal analysis, observing how children react to diverse footings and negotiate participation frameworks in multiparty interactions. The findings suggest three progressive stages in the development of socio-discursive competence in which children use different strategies: (a) the stage of interactive proto-narrations, (b) the stage of collaborative narrations and (c) the stage of polyphonic monologue narrations. Our detailed examination reveals (a) a progressive increase in the diversity of the participation frameworks represented by children, as well as in the complexity of the multimodal resources they use, and (b) a rise in children’s grammatical repertoire linked to an improvement in children’s (meta)pragmatic skills.
Students in technical fields use visual as well as verbal modes to express their meaning, employing ways of expressing meaning that are useful later in their professional lives. This study investigates visual meaning in student Builders’ Diaries, journals that are written by carpentry trainees to provide a record of their learning. In professional carpentry practice, Diaries function as a record of building work and are used in planning, billing and record-keeping. For this study, a corpus of 43 Builders’ Diaries, written by apprentices working in industry and by trainees in an educational institution, were analyzed. Findings reveal the role of visual meaning in the Builders’ Diary in developing the professional identity of the students. Compositional regularities were found, including regularities in image–image and image–text relations. These regularities suggest the extent to which our participants, who have no formal training in design, participate in culturally shared understandings of visual meaning.
Knowledge of a trade such as Plumbing involves understanding and use of its technical vocabulary. Trainee plumbers need support for the development of their language as they grow in their knowledge of their profession, and yet little is known about this vocabulary. This article reports on the challenges of dealing with technical vocabulary from the point of view of tutors in a polytechnic in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and analysis of a written corpus (565,881 running words) and a spoken corpus (133,093 running words) of Plumbing developed at the same institution. Technical vocabulary was identified from the written corpus, using frequency principles, a semantic analysis of a rating task for tutors, and checking the corpus and technical dictionaries. A word list of Plumbing was developed, along with a list of technical abbreviations and another of proper nouns. The Plumbing word list covers over 30% of the written corpus and just over 11% of the spoken corpus. Nation’s (2012) BNC/COCA frequency lists were adapted and a vocabulary load analysis found over 8,000 word families plus supplementary lists for 98% coverage of written and 5,000 word families plus supplementary lists for spoken Plumbing texts. The article ends with suggestions for pedagogy and suggestions for future research.
Learners in the trades are faced with learning a large amount of technical vocabulary along with the content of their field, but they do not tend to encounter this language outside their courses of study. This technical vocabulary is a core element in their developing knowledge of their trade and their learner identity. This article focuses first on identifying technical vocabulary in Fabrication using specialised written and spoken corpora, and through extensive checking with experts in the field as well as reference sources. A technical word list of 1079 types was developed, along with a list of common abbreviations and their meanings and a list of proper nouns. The technical word list covers over 30% of the vocabulary in the written Fabrication corpus and just over 9% of the spoken Fabrication corpus. The second part of the article discusses this vocabulary in light of the concept of vocational thresholds and provides suggestions for incorporating the word list into pedagogy, including an apprenticeship approach in which a focus on literacy/literacy acquisition is embedded into content teaching. Suggestions for future research are also included.
This study provides insights into language development in a trades training context in New Zealand. Its key focus is to identify how the acquisition of the specialised words is supported in a primarily practical training environment. Transcribed recordings of 16.5 h of talk on a building site and in theory classrooms, along with interviews with tutors and learners, were analysed to explore the extent and nature of episodes where attention is drawn to the specialised terms and provide insight into strategies for and beliefs about learning these new words. Findings show that both tutors and learners do draw attention to the language they are using, primarily the meanings associated with new forms, mainly through tutor-talk and tutor-learner interaction. This description of how experienced tutors support their trainees' vocabulary acquisition is likely to be of value to new and experienced tutors in trades teaching and beyond.
Cambridge Core - ELT Applied Linguistics - Learning Vocabulary in Another Language - by I. S. P. Nation
Small-group academic interactions, such as tutorials and laboratory sessions, do not often feature in vocabulary or English for Academic Purposes (EAP) research. Yet across many disciplines in tertiary education, students are required to attend and participate in these speaking and listening events. EAP students need to be prepared for them, and their textbooks should help them prepare also. The present study included interview data from lecturers and students which identified specific issues with speaking in small groups in university; corpus-based analysis of tutorials and laboratory sessions which showed large amounts of high frequency vocabulary; and an EAP/ESP textbook analysis showed little focus on vocabulary in tutorials and nothing on laboratories. A total of 176 phrases were suggested in three textbooks as being useful for expressions for speaking in small groups. An analysis of these phrases in the corpus showed that three quarters of these phrases did not appear in the laboratory corpus and two thirds did not appear in the tutorial corpus. Finally, lexical patterns from the corpus were identified and categorised in the same way as existing lists of multiword units in spoken academic English. Implications for pedagogy and materials design are followed by suggestions for future research.
It is important for anyone entering a profession to learn their profession’s specialised language. This is also true of those learning trades such as automotive technology or plumbing. Knowledge of specialised language allows trades professionals to speak to other professionals and read technical material. Although this technical language is new to all students, learning it is harder for students learning in a second language. In this article we provide support for this learning for students from the Pacific Island nation of Tonga, who are studying a trade in English either in Tonga or abroad. In prior work we developed technical word lists in four trades, identifying the technical vocabulary in a 1.6 million-word corpus of course material. In this article, we extend that research by developing bilingual English-Tongan word lists, using culturally appropriate Talanoa methodology to draw on the specialist knowledge of Tongan-speaking trades’ professionals. Translation revealed that numerous technical words do not have a direct translation in Tongan, particularly infrequent English words. It also revealed words with a clear Tongan equivalent, and Tonganised English words. The bilingual word lists will benefit Tongan trades’ trainees in Tonga and those who are migrants to English countries.
Vocational students' writing has received little scholarly attention. This article investigates a key written genre produced by carpentry trainees: the Builders' Diary. This is a professional genre that has been adapted for pedagogical purposes. Both quantitative corpus methods and qualitative methods (interviews and textual analysis) were employed. Our corpus included Builders' Diaries written by students during an initial on-campus year, and ones written during employment in later years. A range of grammatical features was investigated including use of: personal pronouns, passives, imperatives/bare infinitives and obligation modals. Findings indicate a developmental trend from personal narrative writing in the first year reflecting how trainees' identify as carpenters and situate themselves in the profession, to concise impersonal writing in later years as trainees mature into carpentry professionals.
The present chapter takes an interest in instructions and the ways in which sequential analysis under the auspices of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis can contribute to their explication. This interest is explored in four contexts: textual instructions on how to crochet, instructions in textile workshops, feedback in academic supervision, and seminars in dental education. Initially, some general features of instructions are discussed in relation to the textual instructions – the irremediable incompleteness of instructions, how the sense of instructions is found in attempts to follow them, and the ties between instructions and assessment. The remaining three cases are used to highlight some differences with regards to the organization of instructions – how instructions are formulated, how instructions are responded to, the access teachers have to student understanding, what the relevant materializations of competence are, and the temporal organization in which these instructions are embedded. The temporal-material organization of a given setting is something with which both participants and analysts have to contend. How teachers and students do that – how they for instance orient to and manage the essential absence of relevant displays of understanding as a condition of their work – is what that the sequential analysis of instruction sets out to explicate.
This study focuses on the interactional processes by which participants make institutionally relevant some ways to take turns in the classroom, which is one of the first places where youth have to respect institutional constraints regarding their interactional practices. These constraints, which are reconfigured online through conversationalists’ activities, create expectations in terms of interactional competences notably concerning turn-taking, which is important because of the intrinsic link between opportunities for participation and opportunities for learning. I aim to complement the extensive literature which describes turn-taking in the classroom by focusing on the social knowledge that participants interactionally co-produce to place turn-taking strategies on an institutional value-scale and to agree with the ‘right’ way to take a turn in the classroom, in compulsory and post-compulsory schooling (i.e. do competences deployed at the lower level satisfy those promoted at the upper one?). I propose to apply conversation analysis to the study of social representations. By observing the confrontation between the opportunities for participation proposed by the teacher and how students interpret them, I shed light on the recurrent processes of evaluation that participants co-produce and thus social representations of turn-taking which emerge from them.
This paper identifies and discusses various challenges met by apprentices when joining the workplace at the very beginning of their training programme. These challenges have become of interest to policy makers and vocational researchers in a context where transitions from school to work are often seen as problematic experiences with growing numbers of young people dropping out of apprenticeship programmes. In a case study drawn from empirical data referring to the Swiss vocational education system, difficulties in sharing meaning at various levels and in (re)negotiating partici-pation at work are described as typical patterns of interactions between apprentices and expert coworkers who train them. These challenges, it is proposed, are not external to language use, but are deeply mediated by discourse practices, including a variety of semiotic resources. From that standpoint, concepts and methods developed in the field of applied linguistics can be seen as relevant tools for illuminating the complexi-ties associated with workplace learning. The paper explores possible continuities and complementarities between vocational education research and discourse studies and argues for an increased research effort in this field of applied linguistics.
This paper reports a study conducted as part of an ESP/language specialist consultation for an Accounting Department in a tertiary education context. Observations were made of the interaction in first year accounting classrooms in order to provide an understanding of the extent to which and how the accounting lecturers addressed language incidentally during their teaching. Eight hours of classroom interaction were recorded and transcribed. Language-related episodes (transitory shifts of the topic of the discourse from content to language) were identified in the transcripts and analysed. Findings showed that the lecturers frequently initiated such episodes, and that they did so mostly to highlight technical vocabulary and conventional articulation of ideas in the discipline, or ‘accounting speak’.
Prologue Part I. Practice: Introduction I 1. Meaning 2. Community 3. Learning 4. Boundary 5. Locality Coda I. Knowing in practice Part II. Identity: Introduction II 6. Identity in practice 7. Participation and non-participation 8. Modes of belonging 9. Identification and negotiability Coda II. Learning communities Conclusion: Introduction III 10. Learning architectures 11. Organizations 12. Education Epilogue.
Learning journal writing is an effective tool to foster the development of reflective capacity in the context of Vocational Education and Training (VET) if conceived as a collection of descriptions and reflections on real professional experiences. Reporting professional situations in a learning journal outside the workplace in turn fosters the connection between places of learning. Taking into account that collaborative writing with peer-feedback stimulates reflective writing and that comparisons between different professional experience boosts reflection, we conducted a study based on peer-to-peer commenting and revising on a reflective journal entry. Considering that this kind of reflection needs to be properly stimulated and scaffolded, we implemented a 3 × 2 study with three different levels of prompts (low-medium-high) for revision and commenting and two kinds of tool (paper-based vs. computer-based). We measured the improvement of the quality of reflection between the initial drafts and the final revised texts on the basis of the reflective grid by Bain et al. (2002). Results show the impact of scaffolding in medium and high scaffolded conditions, whose texts significantly outperformed the low-scaffolded ones in terms of reflection. Revisions and comments are mostly related to the Reporting and Relating dimensions. Moreover, the study confirms the impact of scaffolding on the number of comments produced by peers in the different conditions, but no mediating effect of comments on the text quality was found. The type of tool used has a significant role in determining the quantity of comments developed.
This research draws on the constructs of mediation from sociocultural theory and mode continuum from systemic functional linguistics to investigate how teacher-student talk in a content-based (science) classroom contributes to learners' language development. The illustrative texts show how two teachers, through their interactions with students, mediate between the students' current linguistic levels in English and their commonsense understandings of science, on the one hand, and the educational discourse and specialist understandings of the subject, on the other. Through this mediation, students' contributions to the discourse are progressively transformed across a mode continuum into the specialist discourse of the school curriculum. The data reveal ways teachers build linguistic bridges to span the two orders of discourse by showing how the interactions provide sites for L2 learning, in terms of the development of the new academic register. The illustrative texts suggest that in interactions that are effective in terms of L2 development, both teachers and learners are active participants in the co-construction of language and curriculum knowledge. The article also argues for the value of qualitative interpretive approaches and grounded knowledge in L2 research that is concerned with teacher development and educational improvement.
The process of apprenticeship is one means of entering a new profession. Along with the technical skills entailed in learning a new job, apprentices need to acquire proficiency in appropriate ways of communicating in order to construct a convincing professional identity. Data collected on a New Zealand building site provides evidence of the extent of the situated learning in which building apprentices engage. Becoming an accepted member of the community of practice centrally involves learning to recognize and respond appropriately to a wide range of differently encoded directives, for instance. But membership also entails developing an understanding of more subtle interactional norms, such as acceptable topics of small talk and appropriate forms and quantities of humour on the job. This article examines evidence that suggests these understandings develop gradually as apprentices move from peripheral to core status in their chosen professional community of practice. We also explore the implications of the analysis for a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of the community of practice framework.
During the academic year 1997–1998, a needs analysis was conducted on the Minneapolis campus of the College of St. Catherine, to determine why many of the ESL students enrolled in the Associate of Science (A.S.) degree nursing program were not succeeding academically. Several procedures, primarily interviews, observations, and questionnaires, were used to gather information about the objective needs of the students, all of whom are immigrants. The course Speaking and Listening in a Health-Care Setting was developed to respond to what was identified as students’ area of greatest difficulty: communicating with clients and colleagues in the clinical setting. The content of the course is divided into four units: assertiveness skills, therapeutic communication, information-gathering techniques, and the role of culture in health-care communication. A variety of methods and materials, drawn primarily from sources for developing health-care communication skills in native speakers, is used to actively engage students in the learning process, with particular emphasis on role plays. The course has been very successful in helping students learn how to communicate more effectively in clinical settings. By helping culturally and linguistically diverse students succeed in their programs, the course is also helping to bring much needed diversity to the health-care professions in the United States.
This article has two goals: to report on the trialling of fourteen 1,000 word-family lists made from the British National Corpus, and to use these lists to see what vocabulary size is needed for unassisted comprehension of written and spoken English. The trialling showed that the lists were properly sequenced and there were no glaring omissions from the lists. If 98% coverage of a text is needed for unassisted comprehension, then a 8,000 to 9,000 word-family vocabulary is needed for comprehension of written text and a vocabulary of 6,000 to 7,000 for spoken text. Résumé L'article a pour objectif de parler des essais menés sur quatorze listes de 1 000 familles de mots tirées du British National Corpus et de l'emploi de ces listes pour évaluer la taille du vocabulaire nécessaire afin de comprendre sans aide l'anglais oral et écrit. Les essais ont révélé que les listes sont adéquatement triées et ne contiennent aucune omission manifeste. Si on doit connaître 98 % des mots d'un texte pour le comprendre sans aide, il faut un vocabulaire de 8 000 à 9 000 familles de mots pour comprendre un texte écrit et un vocabulaire de 6 000 à 7 000 mots pour un texte oral.
This paper argues for the integration of the lexical approach with a data-driven corpus-based methodology in English teaching for technical students, particularly students of Engineering. It presents the findings of the author’s computer-aided research, which aimed to establish a frequency-based corpus of student engineering lexis. The Student Engineering English Corpus (SEEC), reported here, contains nearly 2,000,000 running words reduced to 1200 word families or 9000 word-types encountered in engineering textbooks that are compulsory for all engineering students, regardless of their fields of specialization.The most immediate implication arising from this research is that sub-technical vocabulary as well as Academic English should be given more attention in the ESP classroom. The paper illustrates some sample data-driven instructional activities consistent with the lexical approach, in order to help students acquire the so-called language prefabs, or formulaic multi-word units/collocations, for technical and non-technical uses. The integration of the lexical approach with a corpus linguistic methodology can enrich the learners’ language experience and raise their language awareness, bringing out the researcher in them.
Adult literacy and numeracy: An overview of the evidence
- A Alkema
- J Rean
Technical vocabulary in automotive engineering
- A Coxhead
The technical vocabulary of Carpentry: Loads, lists and bearings
- A Coxhead
- M Demecheleer
- E Mclaughlin
The BNC/COCA word family lists
- I S P Nation
The mind at work: Valuing the intelligence of the American worker
- M Rose
Vocabulary in English in tertiary contexts: Connecting research and learning
- A Coxhead
Unpacking language learning in vocational training. A guide for organisations and resource for tutors
- E Mclaughlin
- A Reid
Bilingual English-Tongan technical word list for carpentry (ELI occasional publication no. 32). School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
- A Coxhead
- F Tu'amoheloa