Richard Badger

Changing values: what use are theories of language learning and teaching?

Abstract This paper is a response to the common perception by student teachers that the research and theory courses on their program are overtheoretical and unrelated to classroom practice. While there is some support for a categorical distinction between theory and practice in language education, it is suggested that the beliefs, assumptions and knowledge of teachers are in fact inextricably bound up with what goes on in the classroom. We investigate two groups of student teachers studying at undergraduate and postgraduate level to become teachers of English to speakers of other languages. We examine the extent to which a research and theory course which both groups took in second language acquisition influenced key beliefs which students held relating to language learning during their period of study.

Authenticity, Culture and Language Learning

In philosophy, authenticity has been used with two meanings: one entails the notion of correspondence; the other entails the notion of genesis (Cooper, 1983: 15). As in certain branches of philosophy, language teaching has perhaps clung too long to the first of these notions of authenticity at the expense of the other. This paper reviews four key conceptualisations of authenticity which have emerged in the field of applied linguistics: text authenticity, authenticity of language competence, learner authenticity and classroom authenticity. If any of these types of authenticity is couched exclusively in terms of one usage or the other, it can lead to an impoverishment and objectification of the experience of language learning. Text authenticity can lead to a poverty of language; authenticity of competence can lead to a poverty of performance; learner authenticity can lead to a poverty of interpretation; classroom authenticity can lead to a poverty of communication. This paper proposes that a pedagogy of intercultural communication be informed by a more hybrid view of authenticity as a process of subjectification, derived from the Heideggerian concept of self-concern.

Lecturers' perceptions of lectures

This paper explores how lecturers across a range of subjects perceived lectures. In particular, what did they regard the role of modern technology to be. Twenty‐five lecturers were interviewed, using a semi‐structured schedule. Results indicated a range of views from the lecture as an inspirational address to providing a detailed outline of each point in a related sequence. Nearly all of the sample regarded their main function as transmitting knowledge in some form or other. There was a range of attitudes towards modern technology, from those who refused to use it to passionate advocates of Power Point presentations and advocates of the use of videos of world famous lecturers in the field.

The Real Thing? Authenticity and Academic Listening.

In this article we explore the usefulness of the criterion of authenticity for the selection and evaluation of EAP materials. These materials were specialised listening texts used on a first year undergraduate programme at a U.K. university. Using a student questionnaire and techniques of discourse analysis based on Hallidays concepts of field, tenor and mode, we investigated the levels of difficulty and relevance of materials using four media: published audio tapes, audio recordings of a live lecture, video materials and a short, simulated lecture by the teacher. We found that the texts which related to the students experience and permitted learner interaction appeared to have more potential for language learning than those which merely replicated the discourse of the target situation.

Legal and general: towards a genre analysis of newspaper law reports

Law reports are key texts for law students and so should be key materials for teachers of English for Academic Legal Purposes (EALP). However, there are problems with the use of law reports in the EALP classroom. Firstly, official law reports, as opposed to those that appear in newspapers, have a relatively restricted distribution. Secondly and more importantly, they are long, complex texts unfamiliar to most language teachers, and so the ways in which they should be used in the EALP classroom are not always obvious. One source of clarification is descriptions of law reports. However, most descriptions of the genre have been limited to official law reports, and these descriptions have only covered textual aspects of law reports. As a result, they have tended to overlook the impact of social and cultural elements in the way law reports are used by the legal discourse community. The current study addresses these issues in two ways. Firstly, it focuses on the more widely available newspaper law reports and, secondly, it offers a description which draws on Martins English Text (1992) context of culture in order to identify important social and cultural factors and understand how they might be linked to textual factors. More specifically, as the main purpose for which law students read law reports is to identify the ratio decidendi, the study indicates how the lexico-grammar and text structure of newspaper law reports may guide the identification of the ratio decidendi.

How new students take notes at lectures

Much research has been done on note taking at lectures over the past 75 years. However, in the UK during the past decade students have been admitted without the traditional formal qualifications. The aims of this study were to compare the core academic skill of note taking at lectures of these Wider Access students with both international and conventional students. What were the aims of their note taking? What techniques did they use? Two methods were used: (i) the notes from a lecture of the international and conventional students were analysed according to Hulls categories, as extended by Sutherland; (ii) six students from each group were interviewed on why and how they took notes. The goal of most international students was instrumental: to get an accurate record of the lecture which would help them with subsequent essays and exams. Most of the British students (both Wider Access and conventional) had a similar aim, however a minority of the latter were more likely to see the lecture in addition as a source of references for further reading.

THE SOCIAL COGNITION OF MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO CHILDHOOD EPILEPSY

This article arose out of an engagement in medical communication courses at a Gulf university. It deploys a theoretical framework derived from a (critical) sociocognitive approach to discourse analysis in order to investigate three aspects of medical discourse relating to childhood epilepsy: the cognitive processes that are entailed in relating different types of medical knowledge to their communicative context; the types of medical knowledge that are constituted in the three different text types analyzed; and the relationship between these different types of medical knowledge and the discursive features of each text type. The article argues that there is a cognitive dimension to the human experience of understanding and talking about one specialized from of medical knowledge. It recommends that texts be studied in medical communication courses not just in terms of their discrete formal features but also critically in terms of the knowledge they produce, transmit, and reproduce.

How IELTS Preparation Courses Support Students: IELTS and Academic Socialisation.

IELTS scores are widely used in combination with academic results as a way of judging whether non-English background students should be admitted to degree-level courses in Anglophone contexts. However, successful study at university requires more than language competence and intellectual ability and international students often seem to start from a different place from similarly qualified local students. This study investigated how an IELTS preparation course helped Chinese students taking an Economics A-level course to achieve a similar level of academic socialisation to local students. The participants were six students on the programme, their Economics teacher and their English teacher. The data sets were field notes of the Economics and IELTS classes, interviews with the students and teachers, teaching materials and students’ writing. We found that the IELTS classes helped expand the students’ vocabulary and developed their confidence in speaking. Other features of the courses such as the use of local accents, colloquial language, the ability to use sources, extensive reading and, more generally, independent study were less obviously addressed. Despite these gaps, the students completed their pre-university and university studies successfully, at least partly because of three factors unrelated to the IELTS course: (1) interaction with a range of groups that supported academic socialisation, (2) the Economics teacher’s attitude to the students’ participation and (3) the students’ resources, which meant they were aware of what was needed for academic success, had a desire to succeed and had, or could develop, the appropriate skills for appropriate academic socialisation.

Culture, Language, Pedagogy: The Place of Culture in Language Teacher Education.

The principles of many international language teacher education programmes are grounded in a relatively homogenous set of ‘Western’ cultural values, even though their participants come from a wide range of different cultural backgrounds. This paper addresses some of the issues surrounding the role of culture in language teacher education and discusses the ways in which cultural phenomena are defined and recognised on such programmes. It argues that language teacher education should acknowledge difference on the part of both language teacher educators and participants on language education programmes. Above all, it argues that language teachers need to develop the competence to function in a range of cultural contexts and to be critically aware of the relationship between culture, context and pedagogic practice.