Mark Garner

Is the Feedback in Higher Education Assessment Worth the Paper It Is Written on? Teachers' Reflections on Their Practices.

Perceptions of the role and efficacy of written feedback in teaching and learning among teaching staff in British higher education institutions have not been extensively researched. In the present study 48 lecturers in one university and from a cross-section of disciplinary backgrounds were interviewed with respect to their lived experiences with writing assessment feedback. Like most universities, theirs has a stated commitment to academic excellence by, among other things, ensuring timely and useful feedback on assignments. The findings suggest, however, that institutional policies and departmental practices related to formative assessment in this respect are not having the intended effect. Teachers have varied perceptions and beliefs about the purposes of written feedback, and are uncertain about what it achieves and what use students make of it. Far from enhancing written feedback, innovative practices and procedures have created new problems for teachers. There is a clear need for continuing research in this area.

A framework for the evaluation of patient information leaflets.

Background  The provision of patient information leaflets (PILs) is an important part of health care. PILs require evaluation, but the frameworks that are used for evaluation are largely under‐informed by theory. Most evaluation to date has been based on indices of readability, yet several writers argue that readability is not enough. We propose a framework for evaluating PILs that reflect the central role of the patient perspective in communication and use methods for evaluation based on simple linguistic principles.

Sociolinguistic minorities, research, and social relationships

This paper suggests elements of an agenda for future sociolinguistics among minority groups, by seeing it as a mutual relationship that involves benefits to researcher and researched. We focus on two aspects of the relationship. One is the political, economic and social benefits that can accrue to a minority group as a result of the research. Research planned and conducted along with the minority group can result in knowledge and other outcomes that are of direct benefit to the group, and can help to ensure that short-term advantages are not gained at the cost of long-term problems. The other is the role of ethical commitment in the research itself. Universities and other bodies have designed ethical procedures that can be used as more than restrictions or an administrative hurdle. They can, in fact, operate as a blueprint for good-quality research. We argue that as sociolinguists we must engage, through commitment to the people we study, with the moral and ethical issues, which are inseparable from the study itself. Such engagement results in more profound scholarship, since as they are expressed by and within the communitys discourse, the resulting descriptions will exemplify more closely the issues we are trying to describe.

Preaching as a Communicative Event: A Discourse Analysis of Sermons by Robert Rollock (1555-1599)

Abstract In 1999, Mary Morrissey called for interdisciplinary collaboration in research into early modern sermons, based on a common interest in sermons as discourse. Interdisciplinarity, however, can develop only on the basis of a systematic analysis of sermons as communicative events. All discourse is situationally embedded; analysis seeks to establish how the linguistic makeup of a sermon is related to the preachers objective of communicating in a way that was situated, appropriate, and meaningful to the hearers. It thus helps to explicate the relationship between the sermon as text and its social, historical, literary, and theological settings. This article presents a methodology for such analysis, using a simple framework that embodies both language and communication. Sermons by the Scottish theologian, Robert Rollock, form the corpus of the analysis. It identifies clear patterning of linguistic forms and communicative acts, which are then examined in the light of the preachers theological, hermeneutical, and pastoral concerns.

Editors' Introduction to ‘Sociolinguistic Research – Who Wins? Research on, with or for Speakers of Minority Languages’

This collection is based on a number of papers presented at a colloquium held at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 15 , at Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, Britain, 1 4 April 2004. The colloquium was jointly convened by the authors. The purpose was to foreground an area which, hitherto, seems to have received scant attention within sociolinguistics circles. Presenters explored and debated the functions and social impacts of sociolinguistic research as a background to examining a range of ethical and methodological issues in sociolinguistic research. The colloquium was concerned with contacts between researchers and researched communities and the ways in which these result in modes of change (in contrast to change that occurs without the presence or intervention of researchers) and how these contacts necessarily concern issues of ethics, power, control and access to information. The session drew together researchers with a range of interests and experience, whose work can broadly be described as ‘the sociolinguistics of minority groups’. By minority groups, we mean linguistic communities that are minorities for political rather than demographic reasons; for example, because they may not share (or even participate) in the majority (national) culture, or are perceived as racial or ethnic minorities. Such designations raise issues of context and power reflected in the question: ‘who benefits from sociolinguistic research, the observer or the observed?’ In the opening paper, ‘Players and Powers in Minority-group Settings’, John Edwards sets the scene, picking up the themes of the panel outline. He contends that the notion of winning (not usually associated with academic research) is appropriate where and when it comes into contact with the ‘real world’, and that ethics are necessarily related to issues of power. Edwards looks at rationales for research among minority groups and considers its consequences, with particular reference to language maintenance, and the ways these connect with issues of power and empowerment. He goes on to outline a framework within which research, especially majority minority contact, takes place, as well as describing briefly the dynamics of language