bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What should we teach about the spoken language?
Authors: McCarthy Michael
Published: October 2016

This paper sets out to address the problem of just what, from the vast amount of research now available into the spoken language, can and ought to form part of the oral component of a second or foreign language course. Exemplification is principally based on spoken English from the British Isles, but reference is made, where appropriate, to other modern languages. Structural, interactive, generic and contextual constraints are discussed in terms of their implications for teaching, and a core set of features are highlighted. Some results of discourse analysis and conversation analysis are argued as better treated within the domain of cross-cultural studies, and other features of spoken language usually considered within the domain of discourse analysis are proposed for inclusion within the lexico-grammatical areas of the syllabus. Methodological implications are discussed in the final section, where it is argued that traditional ‘presentational’ approaches to language teaching need to be rethought and supplemented by more inductive- and language awareness based activities.
Language teaching = Linguistic imperialism?
Authors: Mühlhäusler Peter
Published: October 2016

Linguistic imperialism is the expansion of a small number of privileged languages at the cost of a large number of others. The language teaching profession is a potential instrument of linguistic imperialism and needs to address the question of the ecological impact of language teaching and to take an ecological view of their profession. An ecological view focuses on areas such as the well being of the inhabitants of a language ecology, and the long term sustainability of the system. The principal task for language teachers as that of empowering their learners by giving them additional knowledge and skills and to cater for the learner’s needs rather than the short-term economic benefits of the teaching institution. Language teachers have to address the question of likely long term outcomes of their practices.
Signifying strategies and closed texts in Australian children’s literature
Authors: Stephens John
Published: October 2016

This paper examines children’s literature as discourse and argues that attention to the textuality of children’s literature discloses a network of signifying strategies which serve to confine texts within a narrow band of socio-cultural values. The language of fiction written for children offers conventionalised discourses by means of which content is encoded. While there are many other books can be and are titled, these are culturally representative. They are symptomatic of the frames used in Australian children’s literature, and in effect disclose how that literature is complicit in the ideological construction of Australian childhood (or, in this case, adolescence). This is part of how children are socialized. Hence the mediators of children’s books focus attention on the ‘truth’-value of theme and content and perpetuate the illusion that discourse is merely transparent.
The applied linguist and the foreign language teacher
Authors: Kramsch Claire
Published: October 2016

Applied linguists invent their domain of inquiry as much as they investigate it and so do language teachers. Several factors make true intellectual dialogue between them difficult. The paper reviews briefly the reasons for the emergence of a discourse problem in language study and then examines the nature of this problem and suggests ways in which applied linguists and foreign language teachers can engage in intellectual dialogue. It is argued that applied linguists and language teachers can understand one another by engaging together in an intellectual exploration of the historical and social forces that have shaped their respective discourses. Ultimately what is important for each to understand is not the different answers they give but the different questions they ask.
Critical literacy, genre and the National Curriculum dilemma
Authors: Crombie Winifred
Published: October 2016

At one time or another most of us have probably been involved in processes we dislike whose outcomes we fear simply to subvert what we assume to be someone else’s agenda. We become involved, for example, in national curriculum planning because we believe we might be able to alter outcomes for the better. We might even believe we can subvert attempts to reinforce cultural norms in the name of ‘standards’ by ensuring that ‘access’ includes access to the ‘genres of power’. If, however, there is no direct relationship between stylistic control and access for marginalised groups to real power, if current approaches to ‘genre literacy’ actually tend to reinforce traditional pedagogical practices and even, in doing so, threaten to reconstitute the cultural deficit model our participation may actually reinforce the agendas we seek to subvert. Is there a possible, positive response to this sort of dilemma? It is argued here that in seeking a healthy fusion of power, applied linguistics is in a position to discover the appropriate response.
Canadian experiences of training linguistically diverse populations for the workplace
Authors: Bell Jill Sinclair
Published: October 2016

It has increasingly become apparent that multicultural workplace programs which focus exclusively on teaching English to immigrant employees are inadequate. This paper draws on recent Canadian research in j o b training programs to question whether the development of English language proficiency has a positive impact on the career prospects of most workplace learners. Some recent research suggests on the contrary that increasing English use can actually have a negative impact on an employee’s work life. The paper goes on to describe some of the newer workplace programs which include anti-racist training and cross cultural awareness for all members of the workplace.
The French CAT
Authors: Burston Jack L. , Harfouch Jeannette , Monville-Burston Monique
Published: October 2016

This paper investigates the empirical validity of the Monash-Melbourne computer adaptive test for French (French CAT), a single parameter Rasch model measurement of underlying morphosyntactic proficiency. It focuses, in particular, on the accuracy of the French CAT as a tool for streaming incoming university students into three levels of a first year (post high school) French course. Psychometric ability estimations of the Rasch model are compared against instructors’ assessment of students’ overall linguistic competence. A comparison is also made between the theoretical confidence interval of predicted abilities and the actual distribution of testee scores. Finally, individual student French CAT scores are correlated with end-of-semester language examination results. In all instances, Item Response Theory, upon which the French CAT is based, is shown to provide a highly valid means of determining linguistic ability for the purposes of course placement. Moreover, given the significant correlation between initial streaming and end-of-semester results, the French CAT is also demonstrated to be a good predictor of short-term achievement.
Membership categorization devices under construction
Authors: Nilan Pam
Published: October 2016

This paper draws upon the sociological tradition of language analysis, specifically Sacks’ work on membership categorisation devices. The paper argues that processes of evaluating and assigning membership of categories within given collectivities may be identified as operating across diverse social contexts. The contexts selected for analysis here include a formal written text, an interview, and a cabaret performance. The participants range from senior University academics to drag queens. It is concluded that the maintenance of social identity boundaries is not just dependent on ‘knowing’ the status of one’s own category membership, but upon accomplishing this membership through the interactional work of hierarchical categorisations in writing and talk.
The development of spelling and word knowledge in older students (Years 5 – 11)
Authors: Goldsmith Peggy
Published: October 2016

Language standards in the community are a recurrent theme of public debate and concern. They are rarely said to be rising, rather, to be falling. However, those in the classroom with the task of assisting students to learn to read and write are not the ones likely to pass judgment or attempt generalisations about standards. The writer investigated older school students’ (Years 5 – 1 1 ) word knowledge in a large scale empirical study. The development of 280 students across the seven grades in spelling and word knowledge was explored and the pattern of use of lower to higher order strategies by those students in their attempts to spell words, write derivations and display syntactic knowledge . There was confirmation that older students gradually make less and less use of lower order strategies in spelling, writing derivations and in use of homonyms in syntactic frames.
Setting/interlocutor-related variation in oral performance of adult ESL learners
Authors: Cholewka Zofia
Published: October 2016

The performance of six adult intermediate second-language learners on an oral task was examined. The subjects, sharing a number of characteristics, e.g. the source language (Polish), performed the same task twice, with two different interlocutors, in two different settings (familiar vs. ‘real-life’). The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of the familiarity of the setting/ interlocutor factors on the subjects’ performance. To analyse the surface structure errors obtained from the two interviews, Selinker’s (1972) error taxonomy was employed, thus yielding five error categories: language transfer, overgeneralization, simplification, communication based and teaching induced errors. The findings revealed that the unfamiliar, ‘real-life’ setting elicited significantly higher proportion of language transfer errors than the same task performed in the familiar environment. It is argued that adult, intermediate second-language learners, in a new, ‘real-life’ social setting, when confronted with an unfamiliar native speaker of the target language, revert to their native language, fall back on their prior knowledge to facilitate the task demands.
The functions of voice in scientific writing in Spanish
Authors: Curnow Timothy Jowan
Published: October 2016

This paper on Spanish for Science and Technology (SST) analyzes the rhetorical functions carried out by the selection of voice — active, passive or se-passive — in five biological research articles in Spanish. It compares these rhetorical functions with those found in French and English scientific papers. Finally it suggests that there may be some universals which can be established on the basis of this comparison, but only through the introduction of an intermediate level of “discourse function” between the levels of rhetorical function and the level of grammatical form.
The acquisition of subject-verb agreement in Arabic as a second language
Authors: Mansouri Fethi
Published: October 2016

The acquisition of complex grammatical structures of a non-cognate language has been reported to be a daunting task for adult learners (Samimy and Tabuse, 1992; Bailey, 1983; Kleimann, 1977). In the case of Arabic morphology, this task is reported to be difficult not only for foreign learners (Bakalla, 1980; Neel, 1980) but also for native speakers (Omar, 1973). The current paper sets out to investigate the nature and the processes involved in the learning of Arabic subject-verb agreement structures by Australian advanced learners. The investigation employs explanations from second language acquisition (SLA) theories as well as from linguistic theories. It is hypothesised that (1) the amount and direction of information encoding (Person, Number and Gender) motivated by certain semantic categories and word order, as well as (2) the availability of discourse cues would influence the learners’ performance in subject-verb agreement tasks. The results reported in this paper indicate that these two factors are significantly important in predicting and accounting for the learners’ final linguistic achievement in this grammatical structure.
Argumentation as an interactional process in conversation
Authors: Liddicoat Anthony J.
Published: October 2016

Argument is a structured phenomenon, the structuring of which is evident in conversational activity. This study begins with speech act analyses of argumentation and examines the was in which idealized models of argumentation relate to the linguistic behaviour of participants in argument as talk. While a speech act understanding of arguments reveals some of the basic principles of the ways in which arguments are constructed as talk, sequencing patterns of arguments are interactionally accomplished. Speakers produce turns which are related to their purpose in talking and which include speech act complexes appropriate for the perlocutionary act of convincing. This limits the range of choices for a speaker in the sequence of interaction. Turns which do not count as appropriate for the task of arguing are accountable.
Maintenance of the Chinese language in Australia
Authors: Wu Siew-Mei
Published: October 2016

This paper discusses the maintenance of Chinese in Australia. It presents the case for the high probability of the maintenance of Cantonese and Modern Standard Chinese (MSC). Some of the factors favourable to the maintenance of Cantonese and MSC include the following: relative numerical strength of the speakers; cultural dissimilarity between the dominant and the minority groups; language as a core value in the minority group; concentration of the minority groups at focal points; interaction patterns of the minority group and change in Australian language policies. These factors are examined in the light of supportive language maintenance institutions that reinforce the high probability of the maintenance of Cantonese and MSC.
The analysis of economics discourse
Authors: Royce Terry
Published: October 2016

In recent years there has been an increase in interest in the analysis of economics discourse by both applied linguists and economists. This paper briefly discusses some of the main protagonists in the debate between economists about their own discourse, and brings together and reviews the significant studies by applied linguists in this area. It suggests that the studies by applied linguists may be grouped according to the categories Micro-studies, Macro-studies, and Educational Studies, and indicates areas of developing interest. It also suggests the need to account for other aspects of economics discourse, areas which seem to be largely ignored in the literature. This paper is of interest to those attempting to analyse economics discourse or the discourse of other social science disciplines in particular, and for those who are interested in discourse analysis in general.
Implementing languages policy at the university level
Authors: Rado Marta , Foster Lois
Published: October 2016

This paper is a sequel to the project which was reported in the article entitled ‘Through the glass darkly? The National Policy on Languages as seen by Tertiary Language Staff (Rado and Foster 1990). In that article, the main concern was with the impact the National Policy may have had on the design of tertiary LOTE courses. This article looks at further developments in selected tertiary LOTE contexts up to July 1994. These developments have been highlighted as of interest for planning future courses.
Language maintenance and language shift in Australia, 1991
Authors: Clyne Michael , Kipp Sandra
Published: October 2016

This paper offers an analysis of the 1991 Census language data in relation to language maintenance and shift. It draws attention to the increased diversity, the rising importance of certain languages of international and regional significance in our population and the variations in maintenance patterns. It demonstrates the variation in language shift across a number of languages and attempts to identify factors responsible for this variation. Interstate differences are also explored. Language shift is compared between the first and second generation, between communities from different countries speaking the same language, and between the 1986 and 1991 Censuses.
Misunderstanding in cross-cultural communication
Authors: FitzGerald Helen
Published: October 2016

This paper examines the spoken discourse of immigrant professionals problem solving in small groups in order to see how different cultural values both influence, and are reflected in, the way a problem is defined and solutions proposed. It also provides evidence that these values are one of the factors that contribute to miscommunication in this type of communication. Three types of miscommunication are identified: misinterpretation of the message because a cultural filter distorts the message; incomplete comprehension because the underlying values are not explicated and the hearers remain unaware of the full implications of the message; and comprehension but misunderstanding and dissonance because the values of the hearers are at variance with the reality of the message. The extent to which the views of individuals conformed to the value systems general ascribed to their cultural background is discussed and instances of individual variance noted. Finally, the implications for teaching and workplace training suggested by these findings are discussed.
Atarashii no kuruma and other old friends – the acquisition of Japanese syntax
Authors: Huter Kirsten I.
Published: October 2016

The following paper presents the first stages of acquisition in Japanese as a second language (JSL). After an explanation of the notion of stages of acquisition, the first four stages will be introduced. Examples of two typical kinds of learner errors will be explained in the light of these stages. It will be demonstrated that the notion of acquisitional stages contributes to the teaching of JSL, because it can explain the occurance of errors and suggest which grammatical errors are correctable, and which grammmatical structures are teachable, at which point in time. The findings presented here are based on data from a longitudinal study that is now in its third year. In that study, oral data from university students of Japanese are being collected.
Pragmatic considerations in court interpreting
Authors: Hale Sandra Beatriz
Published: October 2016

The question of accuracy of interpretation of foreign language court testimonies is one of utmost importance to the court, to the witness and to the interpreter. The adversarial system uses language as its main weapon in the metaphorical battle, and cases are based on the oral evidence of their witnesses. When witnesses do not speak English, the sole responsibility of making that witness understood to the court rests with the interpreter. In the adversarial system, content of testimony is not the only important issue; delivery, style, register are just as important. This is why the idea of ‘literal’ translation has been the preferred option to the legal profession. However, literal translation does not ensure accuracy of interpretation. This paper aims to emphasise that interpreting accurately means interpreting pragmatically. It points out that although different languages may have semantic or literal equivalents, such equivalents may not have the same connotations or may not be appropriate in the same contexts. Interpreting pragmatically means interpreting in a way that the same intention and the same force of the Source Language (SL) utterance is conveyed in the Target Language (TL) utterance, so that the same reaction is achieved in the listeners of both languages. The paper draws on examples from authentic data taken from interpreted proceedings to illustrate the argument.
Word-attack skills in beginners’ Japanese reading comprehension
Authors: Moore Harumi
Published: October 2016

This paper advocates the promotion of teaching word-attack skills, among other reading skills, in a beginners’ Japanese program. The paper argues that even first-year students with limited knowledge of kanji (Chinese characters) can use such strategies successfully, and that formal training in such skills helps foster autonomous readers who approach reading tasks with a positive attitude. The feasibility of teaching word-attack skills to beginners is supported by the results obtained in an experiment conducted in the introductory Japanese course at the Australian National University (ANU). The paper takes a detailed look at various word-attack skills used by students in this experiment, in the light of universal reading strategies as well as strategies specific to reading in Japanese.
Multi-level structure of meaning in a business law tutorial
Authors: Crosling Glenda
Published: October 2016

This paper investigates the tutor’s discourse in a university classroom for a business law tutorial. It is argued that the discourse is structured on several levels. On a deeper level, linguistic models of values underpinning the legal system can be discerned. Sinclair and Coulthard’s classroom taxonomy was applied firstly to the discourse, followed by further investigation of the moves in the exchanges along the lines of Halliday’s interpersonal, ideational and metalanguage components. In addition, characteristics of legal language were explored. It was found that, in combination, these form the medium through which the linguistic models of the legal system are presented. It is suggested that these elements of the discourse play an important role in initiating the students into the subject’s discourse community. It is further suggested that students with less facility and flexibility in English may be positioned less advantageously to benefit from these subtle messages.
An analysis of false starts
Authors: Stebbins Tonya N.
Published: October 2016

This paper considers the various environments in which false starts may be found (turn control, same turn repair and other disfluencies). It is argued that false starts represent disfluencies at many different levels of discourse. Furthermore, false starts occur for a number of different reasons, and serve a number of different functions. This leads to a typology of false starts. As there are several distinct kinds of false starts that can be distinguished, a new set of notational devices for these distinct types of false starts is proposed.
The debate on form-focused instruction
Authors: Dyson Bronwen Patricia
Published: October 2016

An interest in investigating the effect of instruction on interlanguage development prompted me to conduct a study on a small group of adult migrant learners of English. As a first step, the learners were assessed for their stage of syntactic development. This assessment showed that a structure-do-fronted questions – had not been acquired by some of the learners but was one for which they were syntactically ready. Because questioning is an important and complex speech act, the learners were then given instruction which focused their attention on do-fronting. The follow-up assessment indicated that instruction can be successful because the learners acquired do-fronting. The study supports the claim that form-focused instruction can make a difference. It also lends weight to Pienemann’s claim that the effectiveness of instruction depends on whether a structure is learnable for an individual learner. The study shows that form-focused instruction can provide an innovative linguistic focus to communicative language teaching and give important assistance with the second language acquisition of the learners.
Language maintenance among Vietnamese-Australian students
Authors: Ninnes Peter
Published: October 2016

Using the theoretical framework developed by Clyne this paper examines the factors influencing language maintenance among a cohort of secondary school students of Vietnamese ethnic background in Adelaide. It reports on a survey of 197 students who were asked (1) to estimate the extent to which, in Australia, they used Vietnamese when speaking to close others; how often these people used Vietnamese when speaking to them; and how often the students used Vietnamese in certain social contexts; and (2) to rate their ability in written and oral Vietnamese and written and oral English. Variables derived from these measures were then correlated with a number of other demographic, social, cultural and attitudinal factors in order to determine the major influences on language maintenance. Language use was greater with parents and grandparents than with members of the students’ own generation. Vietnamese language was used more in private and ethnic settings such as the home and community events than in public settings. Vietnamese language competence declined and English language competence increased with length of residence. Overall length of residence in Australia and age at which that residence commenced were more influential in language maintenance than ethnic identity or attitudes to cultural maintenance.
The role of sound in reading kanji and kana
Authors: Sayeg Yuki
Published: October 2016

Japanese and Chinese are often labelled as difficult-to-learn languages, due to the fact that their written forms use logographic characters. Students of Japanese frequently have an aversion to learning Chinese characters – calledkanji– claiming that they are ‘too difficult’ or that there are4too many’ of them. This paper aims to examine the role of sound in reading Japanese script Major arguments for semantic vs phonological identification will be examined with a view to determining the relative importance of phonological processes in readingkanjiandkana,and to see if any conclusions can be drawn which may assist the teaching ofkanjito learners of Japanese as a second language.
Discourse and rank
Authors: Perrett Gillian
Published: October 2016

The number of ranks required for an adequate discourse analysis may vary between genres and can be explained with reference to the social purpose of that genre. Stages of generic structure were attributed to eight language testing interviews on the basis of apparent interviewer purpose, and this attribution was subsequently justified by the distribution of speech function types and mood choices between them. A problem in analysing the major section of the interview was whether to model it as a group of recurring elements at the level of stage, at the level of exchange, or at an intermediate level. The intermediate level of transaction was adopted, allowing for an model which recognises the common purpose and speech function patterns of the stage but also allows an account of how conversational exchanges group to construct both dialogic and monologic texts with or without the characteristics of other recognisable genres. Such an analysis is especially useful in assessing learners’ ability to engage in extended conversational discourse.
Assessor accommodation in the V.C.E. Italian oral test
Authors: Cafarella Caterina
Published: October 2016

In oral proficiency tests there are occurrences of trouble in interaction such as misunderstanding, non hearing or lack of understanding which may cause breakdown in communication. Within the context of the question-answer framework of an oral proficiency test this study investigates the interactive nature of spoken discourse between students and assessors when there is trouble in talk as perceived by the assessors, with a focus on how they accommodate to the students. A sample of twenty oral transcripts and tapes of the 1992 Victorian Certificate of Education (V.C.E.) Italian Common Assessment Task (C.A.T. 2) were randomly selected and examined. By using Conversation Analysis methodology the purpose of the study was to investigate in repair sequences types of assessor accommodation – how the assessors modified their utterances – the kinds of trouble perceived by assessors, what triggered assessor accommodation and whether the accommodations facilitated student response and participation. This study has implications for assessor training since it highlights which strategies are most successful for ensuring student understanding, participation and appropriate responses as well as demonstrating why and in which environments assessors accommodate.
Nyangumarta
Authors: Bucknall Gwen
Published: October 2016

This paper attempts to portray the effects of demographic, social and cultural dislocation experienced by members of the Strelley Aboriginal community on shift in language(s) observed during the period 1976 through to 1993. In particular, the effects of individual rather than traditional group actions will be considered. While concentrating mainly on Nyangumarta, as the politically dominant means of communication for this community, this paper also considers the levelling of other Western Desert languages and dialects within the group. Changes in code mixing and the need for English as the language of formal education are considered together with an outline of the resulting implications.
Ellipsis in Mandarin
Authors: Charters A. Helen
Published: October 2016

Overall, learners of Mandarin tend to use overt nouns and pronouns to a greater extent than native speakers (Charters 1996b), but what specifically gives rise to this discrepancy? Differences in the distribution of ellipsis in learner and native speaker texts is investigated: both frequency and discourse contexts of syntactic structures associated with ellipsis are compared. Learners made no errors of ellipsis in structures where ellipsis is grammatically prescribed, nor did they appear to avoid such syntactic structures. In fact, the discrepancy in overall frequencies arises in contexts where ellipsis is optional; it is a consequence not of differing syntactic choices, but of differing pragmatic choices in comparable syntactic contexts. No single syntactic structure emerges as a significant contributor to the different rates of optional ellipsis overall. However, when individual variation is taken into account, it is clear that some learners use ellipsis only in syntactic contexts where it is permissible in English, and most learners use elliptic syntactic structures in a narrower range of discourse contexts than is typical of native speaker use.
Examining the native speakers’ understanding of communicative purposes of a written genre in modern standard Chinese
Authors: Yunxia Zhu
Published: October 2016

This study aims to examine the different attitudes of the native speakers in understanding a written genre of Modern Standard Chinese—sales letters. The examination mainly focuses on the use of formulaic components as they appear in real Chinese sales letters and to compare these with the prescribed advice given in textbooks. To do this, 100 business students and 100 managers were surveyed for their views on appropriate business writing. The divergence of the views of these two groups of native speakers indicates that there is a gap between business teaching and business writing practice. The managers had a good understanding of the communicative purposes of the sales letters, while the students lacked this kind of understanding, which indicates the gap between business teaching and business writing practice.
The contribution of language learning to the development of cultural understandings
Authors: Marilyn McMeniman , Evans Robyn
Published: October 2016

With the continuing demand for Australians to develop second language skills to ensure, in part, the development of cross-cultural understanding, there is a need to examine critically the claim that language learning and cultural understandings are causally related. This paper examines the question of whether cross-cultural competence can exist independently of language expertise, and whether language learning of itself results in cultural tolerance and access to other world views. An examination of existing research, together with an analysis of the popular press in three Australian states, indicates that: (i) the wider community believes that learning a language will result in an understanding of and facility in the target culture; and (ii) languages learned in formal class settings do not necessarily lead to cross-cultural understandings and a lessening of insular cultural attitudes.
The role of language learning in academic education
Authors: Liddicoat Anthony J. , Crozet Chantal , Jansen Louise M. , Schmidt Gabriele
Published: October 2016

Language learning has rarely had a secure place in perceptions of teriary education and is coming increasingly under threat as the result of tightening budgets in Australian Universities. This paper examines the role of language learning as a part of tertiary education. It argues that language learning is of itself an important element in the educational mix of tertiary education and that, as language learning goes beyond learning of the code, it provides aspects of education which are central to modern global concerns. It is argued that the value of language learning, including ab initio learning, in tertiary education can be see through the substance of language learning, the process of language learning and the outcomes of language learning.
English grammar in school textbooks
Authors: Collins Peter , Hollo Carmella , Mar Juliet
Published: October 2016

This paper reports findings from a project involving the critical analysis of English grammar books (and language books with grammatical content) used at Primary and Secondary levels in NSW schools. The books surveyed betrayed a low level of awareness of developments in contemporary linguistics, and in particular, of the ‘structural’ approach to grammatical description. Such an approach, it is argued, has the potential to build on the insights of traditional grammar and to remedy many of its major shortcomings.
A model of citation options
Authors: Buckingham Joanna , Nevile Maurice
Published: October 2016

The practice of citation is indicative of academic discourse. Over the last two decades, a number of papers have explored the language of citation, some directly motivated by concern about poor citation practices among student writers. This emerging interest has given us detailed understanding of specific aspects of citation language, for example verb tense, thematic choice, voice, and the name of the cited author (eg. Swales 1986, Thompson and Ye 1991, Shaw 1992, Thomas and Hawes 1994a, Thomas and Hawes 1994b). However, we do not yet have a tool for analysing citation in terms of the underlying intertextual understandings of academic writers. This paper proposes a model of citation options which relates variation in citation language forms to writers’ ability to control how they position themselves and their texts within a multi-member colloquy that is the academic community, past, present and future. Academic writers use variation in citation language to present knowledge as more or less negotiable, and in so doing control their readers’ engagement on points of controversy. The model is potentially valuable both pedagogically and for analysing specific discourse issues, within and across academic disciplines.
Four adults’ approaches to the learning of Chinese
Authors: de Courcy Michèle
Published: October 2016

The aim of this paper is to present the results of research conducted with four adult learners of Chinese, in order to throw some light on the process of learning Chinese as a second language. The term “process” is used here to refer to operations used by learners to find and/or construct meaning within the context of a particular second language classroom. “Strategy” refers to a single operation which is a feature of the process of meaning construction. Data were collected over a two year period using individual and group interviews, think aloud protocols, classroom observation and learner diaries. The students showed a number of different approaches to learning, not all of which could be classified as “good language learner” strategies. Findings relating to literacy are presented, as well as more general learner strategies. Research implications are that there is still much to be learned about what goes on in immersion classrooms, especially as regards older learners and languages with ideographic scripts.
The structure of the accident news story
Authors: Iedema Rick A.M.
Published: October 2016

This paper presents an overview of 150 years of accident news writing as presented in the Sydney Morning Herald, with the aim of uncovering the genesis of the ‘hard’ news story, and locating the practice of news writing in its historical context. This overview will serve as a grounding for a discussion of current news writing practices in general. Parallels will be suggested between the nature of accident stories on the one hand, and the role and concerns of the print media in modern industrial society on the other. The paper concludes that ‘hard’ news writing is concerned with the recontextualization of socially ‘destabilizing’ events (Iedema, Feez and White 1995), as well as with the rendering relevant of these recontextualizations to a diffuse and generalised media audience.
Tonal facilitation of code-switching
Authors: Ho-Dac Tuc
Published: October 2016

This paper investigates the role in which Vietnamese tones may hold in facilitating code-switching between Vietnamese and English. Stress patterns of English and perceptual pattern of the six Vietnamese tones were compared (Vietnamese assigns one tone to each syllable). The analysis of Vietnamese tones immediately preceding code-switching reveals that there is a statistically significant proportion of the high tone group at the point of switching. This fact, together with the perceptually phonological compatibility between Vietnamese tones of high and mid-level pitch and English stressed vs unstressed syllables, suggests that code-switching tends to be facilitated by the mid-level to high pitch Vietnamese tones.
Language maintenance and language shift
Authors: Rubino Antonia , Bettoni Camilla
Published: October 2016

Patterns of language use by Sicilians and Venetians living in Sydney are here presented with particular attention to the maintenance of Italian and Dialect under the impact of widespread shift to English. Data gathered by questionnaire self-reporting are analysed according to four main variables: domain, linguistic generation, gender and region of origin. Results suggest that the original Italian diglossia between the High and the Low languages is well maintained, as Italian occupies the more public, formal and regionally heterogeneous space in the community, and Dialect the more private, informal and homogeneous one. Among the subjects’ variables, generation predictably accounts for the greatest variation, as both languages are used most by the first generation and least by the second. However, the original diglossia holds well also among the second generation. With regard to gender and region of origin, it would seem that, compared to men, women maintain both languages slightly better, and that, compared to men and Sicilians respectively, both women and Venetians maintain slightly better the original diglossia. We conclude that the position of Italian, although more limited, seems somewhat more solid than that of Dialect, and suggest some reasons for it.
Can the principle of ‘one person – one language’ be disregarded as unrealisttcally elitist?
Authors: Döpke Susanne
Published: October 2016

Early accounts of the achievement of bilingualism in children of dual-language couples stressed the importance of clear language differentiation according to a principle called ‘one person-one language’. This approach has come under attack recently as being elitist and atypical of bilinguals, and largely unrealistic. Proponents of these criticisms fail to see the benefits that knowledge of the factors which can make bilingualism succeed under these conditions can have for families in a diverse range of bilingual situations. The ‘one person-one language’ principle will be conceptualised as successful because it invokes principles of language maintenance relevant for bilingual societies on the level of individual families. This is seen as important in situations where societal support is minimal or non-existent.
Procedural vocabulary as a device to organize meaning and discourse
Authors: Marco María José Luzón
Published: October 2016

Procedural vocabulary has been defined as a type of core vocabulary with low lexicality and high indexicality (Widdowson 1983 1984; Robinson 1989 1992). This paper analyzes the linguistic notion of procedural vocabulary and proposes that several vocabulary concepts described by different authors (e.g. Vocabulary 3, Anaphoric nouns) are part of this type of vocabulary. The paper also discusses the role of procedural vocabulary in discourse and suggests that the concepts of schema and procedure are relevant for the description of this type of vocabulary and its categorization into two types: procedural defining vocabulary and procedural organizing vocabulary. Procedural defining vocabulary is used for negotiating meaning and for defining concepts related to a particular content schema. Procedural organizing vocabulary is concerned with the actualization of formal schemata and contributes to organizing the development of the discourse.
Strategies for assisting students with language difficulties
Authors: Logan Peter , Barthel Alex
Published: October 2016

Three technological courses at UTS – Physical Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Computing Science – have programs which seek to assist students with language difficulties. The three programs are closely related and form part of a continually evolving program to offer language assistance to all students. The strategies developed include: a diagnostic language test, an language Orientation program and a Centre providing language support throughout the semester. All are course specific. This paper documents the different strategies, presents statistics on the performance of the students at entry and after one semester at UTS, and discusses recommendations for future programs.
Using a combined approach to teach Chinese business writing
Authors: Yunxia Zhu
Published: October 2016

This paper sets out to explore how to teach Chinese business writing with a combined approach based on schema theory and genre analysis. Very little research has been done in the area of teaching business Chinese except for the ‘recipe’ style textbook advice which fails to reflect a complete picture of business practice in mainland China. In order to fill this gap, this paper proposes a combined approach and exemplifies its application in teaching the writing of sales letters. The emphasis is placed on the teaching of communicative purposes of this genre. In addition, the learning of business Chinese is viewed as a dynamic process of establishing knowledge structures. The teacher can help the students in this process by providing them with authentic materials and by integrating the views of the enterprise managers.
The structure of callers’ contributions in talkback radio
Authors: Liddicoat Anthony J. , Döpke Susanne
Published: October 2016

This paper examines the ways in which callers structure the message phase of their contributions in which they express a point of view and how expressing a POV in a talkback radio is realized through the interaction of caller and host, and in some cases between the caller, the host and an invited guest. Expressing one’s point of view in a talkback radio segment is an extended turn found in a particular type of institutional talk and has it’s own identifiable structures and features. This particular extended turn contains within it a number of moves, of which only the POV itself is obligatory. Other moves within the extended turn have various functions, some of which are designed to integrate the particular contribution into a sequence of talk while others are designed as convincing strategies in support of the expressed POV.
Animals, embryos, thinkers and doers
Authors: Luchjenbroers June
Published: October 2016

Research into the linguistic descriptions of women have revealed that females tend to be defined in terms of their relationships to men, their appearance and/or sexual attributes, and that women and their activities tend to be trivialised (Pauwels 1987; Thorne et al. 1983). Additional, more recent research into gender representation has revealed dehumanising descriptions of women as food and as animals, such as birds and horses (Hines 1994; Stirling 1987). Such metaphors reflect individually or socially constructed conceptual associations between real-world phenomena that may serve to trivialise or enhance members of a given group. This paper reports on an investigation into lexical representations of men and women in the Hong Kong variety of English. Analysis includes all nominal and verbal descriptors of men and women and the acts performed by them. These descriptors were distributed into semantic classes on the basis of the qualities they reveal about their human referents. Results show that men are conceptualized as pro-active and assertive beings, to some extent born to succeed; while women are under-developed, emotional and in need of protection. The gender metaphors of women are compatible with concepts of both early stages of human development and subhuman entities, such as animals.
Interaction or interrogation? a study of talk occurring in a sample of the 1992 VCE Italian oral common assessment task (cat 2)
Authors: Filipi Anna
Published: October 2016

The study reported in this paper examined turn-taking and sequence organisation in a sample of twenty-one interactions derived from the 1992 Victorian Certificate of Education Italian oral Common Assessment Task. The most common adjacency pair was found to be the question and answer, the assessor having the right to ask questions and the student to answer. Student initiated questions occurred in five environments and only when conditions were created for them to do so. The assessor’s role was to open and close sequences and sections and to initiate topics principally through the question. Two types of sequences were identified, question/answer and expanded sequences. It was found that there were two groups of assessors. Those who predominantly set up question/answer sequences, and those who set up post sequences.
What makes partnership valid? Home-school communication and parent-school partnerships
Authors: Liddicoat Anthony J. , Shopen Glenda
Published: October 2016

Recent work in literacy has emphasised the partnership between parents and schools in furthering children’s literacy development. This paper discusses the nature of this partnership in late primary school and early secondary school learning in Australia and the ways in which information is communicated between the partners. It is argued that, while schools devote a lot of attention to communicating with parents, this communication does not typically become true dialogue. Instead, the communication is always monodirectional with the school communicating messages to parents, but rarely receiving (or attending to) messages from parents. As such, parents come to be viewed by the schools as junior partners in their children’s literacy development and the school view of partnership focuses on moving parents into the school’s framework. At the same time some parents do not see the partnership in the same way as the school and instead locate responsibility for developing basic skills with the school. Attempts to include parents may then be seen as getting parents to do the school’s work. The study concludes that in current practice there is not actual partnership between school and home in the group investigated.