Sue Wharton

Invisible Females, Incapable Males: Gender Construction in a Children’s Reading Scheme

There is now a considerable body of research into issues of gender representation in children’s literature. This is no doubt partly due to the perceived importance of such representation for children’s social and psychological development. In this paper I analyse gender representation in one stage of a reading scheme which is currently popular in early years education in the UK. I make use of two complementary discourse analysis techniques, and show how they create very different perspectives on male and female gender. By sharing this work with teachers and teacher educators, I hope to contribute to an increased awareness whose benefits will ultimately accrue to the children who read the books.

Presenting a united front: assessed reflective writing on a group experience

Assessed reflective writing is increasingly common in UK higher education. Students writing in this mode are typically required to narrate their experiences, evaluate their performance, investigate associated emotions, and comment on what has been learned. In this paper I focus on assessed reflective writing by students on an MA TESOL course who are required to write individual reflections on a process of working in a group to produce teaching materials. This task places particular demands on the writer. Like other students writing reflectively, they need to manage complex self presentation: to appear honest about relative successes and failures, to show evidence of appropriate reflection, and to indicate desirable learning. Because they are reflecting on a group experience, they also need to differentiate themselves from their work group in their account, and to reflect critically on others as well as on themselves. My focus in this paper is on the ways they manage these additional demands. I first examine the relative frequency with which writers refer to themselves and their work group, and then examine the content of self-referential and group-referential statements. Finally, I examine semantic patterns in the data and draw conclusions regarding possible reasons behind student writers’ choices about how to represent themselves and others.

Reflection in university and the employability agenda: a discourse analysis case study

Abstract In UK universities, reflection is promoted not only for its intrinsic value but also for instrumental purposes, for students to gain and demonstrate skills and attributes which are valued by employers. In this paper, I examine reflective writing produced by students seeking an award offered by the careers department of one university. By looking at the evaluative language choices made by the student writers, I shed light on some of their practices regarding self-representation and their articulations of experience. I provide a critical account of what reflective writing looks like in this particular setting, and interpret this in the broader context of the goal to foster reflection among higher education students. I argue that the reflective writing engendered by this particular context and task is different in key respects from the reflection which is commonly advocated as an element of personal, professional or academic development.

Genre Exploration: A Frame for Understanding and Teaching Social Work Writing in Botswana

In Botswana, social workers are trained via a Bachelors degree or a Diploma in social work taught at the university. Their training includes professional writing and yet both new social workers and their managers report that new social workers experience significant difficulties when writing professional documents. This study looks at the issue from two perspectives. Firstly, it offers a detailed description of some of the texts which professional social workers in Botswana write, and the circumstances in which they do so. It finds that the documents studied are highly intertextual; that they exhibit certain regularities in terms of pragmatic moves through which they achieve a communicative purpose; and that language choices indicate a variety of positions which the social worker may adopt towards the client. Based on our description, we then discuss a pedagogic approach designed to help social work students gain their own critical understanding of the texts which they will write, and so be better prepared for the demands of the professional writing practices of which the texts form a part.

Professional writing : description of the writings of social workers in Botswana

The main purpose of this study is to identify the professional writing needs of undergraduate students studying social work in the University of Botswana. In order to do this, it seeks to analyse the types of texts produced by social workers in their professional setting, to find out what relationship exists between the writing done by professional social workers and the writing taught in the dedicated English Language Support unit at the University of Botswana, and to explore the similarities and differences between the documents written by the students and those produced by professional social workers. It also examines current approaches to teaching writing in the University, with the aim of identifying the writing needs of social work students and exploring how these can be effectively addressed.

Connecting discourses: academic and professional worlds

The overall co-ordinators of this seminar were Steve Mann and Sue Wharton. C. K. Jung was web co-ordinator, and the supporting committee was made up of Tilly Harrison, Duncan Hunter, Stefanie Stadler, Fei Chuang and Tim Kelly. Approximately 27 people attended, from institutions in Austria, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the UK.

Centre for Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick

The Centre for Applied Linguistics was established in 1983 and has grown from a relatively small teaching unit to a large centre engaged in a wide variety of activities under the broad heading of Applied Linguistics. Our work includes English language teaching, teacher education, undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in applied linguistics, development of teaching and research resources, and small- and large-scale research.