The ability to write according to the conventions and forms of disciplinary academic writing is essential to success at university. Meeting the demands of quality academic writing is a challenge to the increasing number of English Second Language (ESL) students worldwide, from undergraduate to postgraduate level , who choose to study and publish in English. In particular, postgraduate students in South African universities struggle with the rigours of dissertation writing. Drawing on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theory of collaborative learning in a community of practice (CoP), an exploratory, qualitative inquiry was undertaken to examine the support given by six selected South African higher education institutions (HEIs) to promote the development of academic writing skills among master’s and doctoral students. Data were gathered from a purposeful sample of 10 expert informants through interviews, email communication , and scrutiny of institutional websites. Findings deal with academic writing skills as the core competence necessary for full participation in the academic CoP; the nature of postgraduate student engagement with core members of the CoP, such as supervisors and language experts; and the availability and efficacy of a range of intra-organisational resources, including informal and formal peer interaction with those who have more expertise in writing, books, manuals, visual representations , and technological tools, to develop academic writing among postgraduate students. Based on the findings, recommendations are made for ways in which institutions can strengthen, enrich , and extend the CoP to support academic writing skills of ESL postgraduate students.
{"title":"Supporting the development of postgraduate academic writing skills in South African universities","authors":"S. Schulze, E. Lemmer","doi":"10.5785/33-1-702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5785/33-1-702","url":null,"abstract":"The ability to write according to the conventions and forms of disciplinary academic writing is essential to success at university. Meeting the demands of quality academic writing is a challenge to the increasing number of English Second Language (ESL) students worldwide, from undergraduate to postgraduate level , who choose to study and publish in English. In particular, postgraduate students in South African universities struggle with the rigours of dissertation writing. Drawing on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theory of collaborative learning in a community of practice (CoP), an exploratory, qualitative inquiry was undertaken to examine the support given by six selected South African higher education institutions (HEIs) to promote the development of academic writing skills among master’s and doctoral students. Data were gathered from a purposeful sample of 10 expert informants through interviews, email communication , and scrutiny of institutional websites. Findings deal with academic writing skills as the core competence necessary for full participation in the academic CoP; the nature of postgraduate student engagement with core members of the CoP, such as supervisors and language experts; and the availability and efficacy of a range of intra-organisational resources, including informal and formal peer interaction with those who have more expertise in writing, books, manuals, visual representations , and technological tools, to develop academic writing among postgraduate students. Based on the findings, recommendations are made for ways in which institutions can strengthen, enrich , and extend the CoP to support academic writing skills of ESL postgraduate students.","PeriodicalId":43109,"journal":{"name":"Per Linguam-A Journal of Language Learning","volume":"144 1","pages":"54-66"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89046421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In addition to a large body of evidence supporting the relevance of the home environment for literacy development, tests of cognitive-based skills are commonly employed to predict literacy acquisition. The Test of Emergent Literacy (TEL) has been designed to account for the early interaction of children with their literate environment as predictor of prospective literacy achievement at school, for which there is a scarcity of appropriate language assessments. In contrast to most conventional literacy tests, the TEL bases its construct on a communicative perspective on language. The development of the first English draft of the TEL involved the production of an assessment of emergent literacy at preschool level. The principles of responsible test design as articulated by Weideman (2014) served as a primary framework for the design and initial validation of the TEL. The evaluation of eight experts and the results of the pilot of several subtasks with 54 South African, English-medium preschool learners (aged five to six years ) whose home language is not English, support the theoretical justification of the design, its high level of reliability, and the effectiveness of the instrument, besides the social requirements for tests (fairness, utility, efficiency) to which the TEL also conforms. Potential test refinements may further increase the reliability, effectiveness, and efficiency of the test.
{"title":"The initial validation of a test of emergent literacy","authors":"S. Gruhn, A. Weideman","doi":"10.5785/33-1-698","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5785/33-1-698","url":null,"abstract":"In addition to a large body of evidence supporting the relevance of the home environment for literacy development, tests of cognitive-based skills are commonly employed to predict literacy acquisition. The Test of Emergent Literacy (TEL) has been designed to account for the early interaction of children with their literate environment as predictor of prospective literacy achievement at school, for which there is a scarcity of appropriate language assessments. In contrast to most conventional literacy tests, the TEL bases its construct on a communicative perspective on language. The development of the first English draft of the TEL involved the production of an assessment of emergent literacy at preschool level. The principles of responsible test design as articulated by Weideman (2014) served as a primary framework for the design and initial validation of the TEL. The evaluation of eight experts and the results of the pilot of several subtasks with 54 South African, English-medium preschool learners (aged five to six years ) whose home language is not English, support the theoretical justification of the design, its high level of reliability, and the effectiveness of the instrument, besides the social requirements for tests (fairness, utility, efficiency) to which the TEL also conforms. Potential test refinements may further increase the reliability, effectiveness, and efficiency of the test.","PeriodicalId":43109,"journal":{"name":"Per Linguam-A Journal of Language Learning","volume":"1 1","pages":"25-53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77280739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Medadi E. Ssentanda, Kate Huddlestone, F. Southwood
This paper aims to explain the trend of mother tongue (MT) education in Uganda by examining particularly government’s practices towards MT education. MT education was (re)introduced in Uganda in 2006/2007 due to disappointing literacy acquisition by learners with the hope of improving literacy skills among particularly rural children. Based on data gathered from rural government and private schools in rural areas, this paper questions what exactly it is that government seeks to reclaim, restore and/or rejuvenate in Uganda’s education system via MT education.
{"title":"The politics of mother tongue education: The case of Uganda","authors":"Medadi E. Ssentanda, Kate Huddlestone, F. Southwood","doi":"10.5785/32-3-689","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5785/32-3-689","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims to explain the trend of mother tongue (MT) education in Uganda by examining particularly government’s practices towards MT education. MT education was (re)introduced in Uganda in 2006/2007 due to disappointing literacy acquisition by learners with the hope of improving literacy skills among particularly rural children. Based on data gathered from rural government and private schools in rural areas, this paper questions what exactly it is that government seeks to reclaim, restore and/or rejuvenate in Uganda’s education system via MT education.","PeriodicalId":43109,"journal":{"name":"Per Linguam-A Journal of Language Learning","volume":"42 1","pages":"60-78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81034781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In bilingual classrooms, content is often learned simultaneously with a new language. Recent applied linguistics research has identified shifts in discourse made by teachers and learners as they work towards these two goals. Departing from a sociocultural perspective on teaching and learning, this study assumes learners and teachers bring rich and diverse linguistic repertoires to the classroom. This paper examines selected episodes of discourse shifts which took place in a week-long mathematics enrichment programme run by a non-government organisation in rural South Africa. In this Xhosa-English bilingual context, I undertook a small-scale ethnographically-informed case study in which evidence of and comment on discourse shifting was collected in the form of video and audio recordings of lessons and interviews with participants. The focus of the analysis is on the translanguaging strategies (especially register meshing) of the teacher and a learning facilitator as they work to make the curriculum accessible to the learners. The argument made in the paper is that the unidirectional notion of discourse shifting from more everyday, spoken, home language discourses to more discipline-specific, written, English discourses is not adequate in explaining the complex multidirectional shifting apparent in my data.
{"title":"Discourse-shifting practices of a teacher and learning facilitator in a bilingual mathematics classroom","authors":"R. Tyler","doi":"10.5785/32-3-685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5785/32-3-685","url":null,"abstract":"In bilingual classrooms, content is often learned simultaneously with a new language. Recent applied linguistics research has identified shifts in discourse made by teachers and learners as they work towards these two goals. Departing from a sociocultural perspective on teaching and learning, this study assumes learners and teachers bring rich and diverse linguistic repertoires to the classroom. This paper examines selected episodes of discourse shifts which took place in a week-long mathematics enrichment programme run by a non-government organisation in rural South Africa. In this Xhosa-English bilingual context, I undertook a small-scale ethnographically-informed case study in which evidence of and comment on discourse shifting was collected in the form of video and audio recordings of lessons and interviews with participants. The focus of the analysis is on the translanguaging strategies (especially register meshing) of the teacher and a learning facilitator as they work to make the curriculum accessible to the learners. The argument made in the paper is that the unidirectional notion of discourse shifting from more everyday, spoken, home language discourses to more discipline-specific, written, English discourses is not adequate in explaining the complex multidirectional shifting apparent in my data.","PeriodicalId":43109,"journal":{"name":"Per Linguam-A Journal of Language Learning","volume":"3 1","pages":"13-27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82742726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper reports on a literacy pilot project which investigated the use of multilingual reading books and the pedagogical strategies that were employed by one bilingual teacher and her assistant to teach literacy in a linguistically diverse Grade 1 classroom in a primary school in the Western Cape, South Africa. Data were collected by means of classroom observations and semi-structured interviews to understand the teacher’s literacy instruction, reflecting her understanding of the multilingual pedagogical approach as a means of fostering learners’ biliteracy skills. Through the lens of the social constructivist theory and the notion of biliteracy, this paper argues that bilingual competence does not necessarily translate to biliteracy if the teaching approaches and learning materials are not systematically and adequately used to support learners’ listening, oral, reading and writing skills in different languages in an integrated and holistic manner in multilingual classrooms. It concludes that, despite the progressive South African Language-in-Education Policy which supports additive multilingualism, classroom practices continue to reinforce monolingualism in English, which deprives the majority of learners of meaningful access to literacy in different languages as they do not exploit the socio-cultural and cognitive capital embedded in the learners’ home languages for additive bilingual and biliteracy competence.
{"title":"Literacy for All? Using multilingual reading stories for literacy development in a Grade One classroom in the Western Cape","authors":"A. Prosper, V. Nomlomo","doi":"10.5785/32-3-662","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5785/32-3-662","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports on a literacy pilot project which investigated the use of multilingual reading books and the pedagogical strategies that were employed by one bilingual teacher and her assistant to teach literacy in a linguistically diverse Grade 1 classroom in a primary school in the Western Cape, South Africa. Data were collected by means of classroom observations and semi-structured interviews to understand the teacher’s literacy instruction, reflecting her understanding of the multilingual pedagogical approach as a means of fostering learners’ biliteracy skills. Through the lens of the social constructivist theory and the notion of biliteracy, this paper argues that bilingual competence does not necessarily translate to biliteracy if the teaching approaches and learning materials are not systematically and adequately used to support learners’ listening, oral, reading and writing skills in different languages in an integrated and holistic manner in multilingual classrooms. It concludes that, despite the progressive South African Language-in-Education Policy which supports additive multilingualism, classroom practices continue to reinforce monolingualism in English, which deprives the majority of learners of meaningful access to literacy in different languages as they do not exploit the socio-cultural and cognitive capital embedded in the learners’ home languages for additive bilingual and biliteracy competence.","PeriodicalId":43109,"journal":{"name":"Per Linguam-A Journal of Language Learning","volume":"61 1","pages":"79-94"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83943422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Writing is key to assessment in university contexts and hence students need to be empowered to effectively function in subject-specific writing environments. In this regard, it is important that students take charge of their own writing development. Hence, the concept of self-direct writing is relevant in this context. The aim of this article is to explore students’ perceptions and practice of self-directed writing and to thereby also evaluate the use of an open-ended questionnaire, an existing self-directed learning questionnaire and student essays as sources of self-directedness in terms of writing. Through these surveys and document analysis diverse, but complementing, results could be drawn. The responses in this study reflect the importance of scaffolding and support provided externally (through lecturers, writing laboratories, facilitators and peers) as well as internally (through reading and continuous writing). Although self-directedness was not very prominently mentioned by the students in the open-ended questionnaire, evidence of a move towards self-directedness in writing was observed. Furthermore, the results of the self-rating scale of self-directed learning showed that most of these respondents regarded themselves as self-directed learners. The document analysis of the essays showed improvement from the first year to the third year. It is also clear that self-directed writing can only be achieved through the facilitation of writing about topics of students’ choosing, promotion of metacognitive strategies around writing as well as adequate peer and lecturer support, feedback and assessment.
{"title":"A journey towards self-directed writing: a longitudinal study of undergraduate language students’ writing","authors":"Jako Olivier","doi":"10.5785/32-3-686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5785/32-3-686","url":null,"abstract":"Writing is key to assessment in university contexts and hence students need to be empowered to effectively function in subject-specific writing environments. In this regard, it is important that students take charge of their own writing development. Hence, the concept of self-direct writing is relevant in this context. The aim of this article is to explore students’ perceptions and practice of self-directed writing and to thereby also evaluate the use of an open-ended questionnaire, an existing self-directed learning questionnaire and student essays as sources of self-directedness in terms of writing. Through these surveys and document analysis diverse, but complementing, results could be drawn. The responses in this study reflect the importance of scaffolding and support provided externally (through lecturers, writing laboratories, facilitators and peers) as well as internally (through reading and continuous writing). Although self-directedness was not very prominently mentioned by the students in the open-ended questionnaire, evidence of a move towards self-directedness in writing was observed. Furthermore, the results of the self-rating scale of self-directed learning showed that most of these respondents regarded themselves as self-directed learners. The document analysis of the essays showed improvement from the first year to the third year. It is also clear that self-directed writing can only be achieved through the facilitation of writing about topics of students’ choosing, promotion of metacognitive strategies around writing as well as adequate peer and lecturer support, feedback and assessment.","PeriodicalId":43109,"journal":{"name":"Per Linguam-A Journal of Language Learning","volume":"74 1","pages":"28-47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82043369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In post-apartheid South Africa, writing centres exist in almost every university to address the academic writing needs of students. At Stellenbosch University Writing Lab, writing consultants use collaborative learning and peer feedback in their work with writers in one-to-one consultations. As part of a larger research project about how students in a Health Professions Education Master’s degree responded to different types of feedback, our study focuses on whether the feedback received in a writing consultation compares to, or differs from, the feedback from the class group members. Our findings suggest that in general the students were open to interventions such as writing consultations. Furthermore, peer feedback from both a class group member as well as a writing consultant was experienced as useful. The study further shows that the consultants’ approach to giving feedback was in line with the pedagogy practised in writing centres. The article concludes with measures that were implemented to address uncertainties identified in the study. We recommend that the purpose of consultations be clarified to lecturers, that consultations be integrated in the writing process before the assignment is marked and, to minimise role confusion, that consultants describe to students the way consultations work at the beginning of the consultation.
{"title":"From autopsy to autonomy in writing centres : postgraduate students' response to two forms of feedback in a health professions education module","authors":"S. Daniels, R. Richards","doi":"10.5785/32-3-644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5785/32-3-644","url":null,"abstract":"In post-apartheid South Africa, writing centres exist in almost every university to address the academic writing needs of students. At Stellenbosch University Writing Lab, writing consultants use collaborative learning and peer feedback in their work with writers in one-to-one consultations. As part of a larger research project about how students in a Health Professions Education Master’s degree responded to different types of feedback, our study focuses on whether the feedback received in a writing consultation compares to, or differs from, the feedback from the class group members. Our findings suggest that in general the students were open to interventions such as writing consultations. Furthermore, peer feedback from both a class group member as well as a writing consultant was experienced as useful. The study further shows that the consultants’ approach to giving feedback was in line with the pedagogy practised in writing centres. The article concludes with measures that were implemented to address uncertainties identified in the study. We recommend that the purpose of consultations be clarified to lecturers, that consultations be integrated in the writing process before the assignment is marked and, to minimise role confusion, that consultants describe to students the way consultations work at the beginning of the consultation.","PeriodicalId":43109,"journal":{"name":"Per Linguam-A Journal of Language Learning","volume":"24 1","pages":"48-59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89476464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The majority of South African universities are faced with the challenge of teaching subject-specific academic literacy in English to linguistically diverse student groups, while the academic literacy lecturers themselves display a variety of first languages and linguistic repertoires. Over the past 50 years, a major consideration in L2 teaching has been whether to focus only on the target language (the L2), or to allow the first languages of the learners into the L2 classroom as linguistic and cognitive resources, while retaining the focus on the target language. This article departs from the premise that the language focus (either multi- or monolingual) is not crucial, but rather how L2 learning is scaffolded. A scaffolding framework is derived from Van Lier’s (2004) model and Walqui’s (2006) socioculturally embedded strategies for improving the performance of students’ learning of subject content in their second language, namely modelling, bridging, building schema, contextualisation, re-presenting text and developing metacognition. In the article, I demonstrate that Walqui’s six techniques can be adapted to accommodate monolingual as well as bi-/multilingual dimensions of teaching an L2, and can be justified with reference to Van Lier's four-quadrant model. I conclude that a scaffolding approach to teaching language and content in an integrated way is part of any good language pedagogy. However, scaffolds should ideally be designed within a multisemiotic mindset and aimed at producing lasting cognitive gains.
{"title":"Designing linguistically flexible scaffolding for subject-specific academic literacy interventions","authors":"A. Carstens","doi":"10.5785/32-3-690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5785/32-3-690","url":null,"abstract":"The majority of South African universities are faced with the challenge of teaching subject-specific academic literacy in English to linguistically diverse student groups, while the academic literacy lecturers themselves display a variety of first languages and linguistic repertoires. Over the past 50 years, a major consideration in L2 teaching has been whether to focus only on the target language (the L2), or to allow the first languages of the learners into the L2 classroom as linguistic and cognitive resources, while retaining the focus on the target language. This article departs from the premise that the language focus (either multi- or monolingual) is not crucial, but rather how L2 learning is scaffolded. A scaffolding framework is derived from Van Lier’s (2004) model and Walqui’s (2006) socioculturally embedded strategies for improving the performance of students’ learning of subject content in their second language, namely modelling, bridging, building schema, contextualisation, re-presenting text and developing metacognition. In the article, I demonstrate that Walqui’s six techniques can be adapted to accommodate monolingual as well as bi-/multilingual dimensions of teaching an L2, and can be justified with reference to Van Lier's four-quadrant model. I conclude that a scaffolding approach to teaching language and content in an integrated way is part of any good language pedagogy. However, scaffolds should ideally be designed within a multisemiotic mindset and aimed at producing lasting cognitive gains.","PeriodicalId":43109,"journal":{"name":"Per Linguam-A Journal of Language Learning","volume":"8 1","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84935983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Certain language structures and skills continue to develop after the age of school entry. The present study sought to establish whether directly targeting the development of such complex language structures and skills in comprehension and production can be successful among older, school-going children. The data for the present study comprise four case studies of children with language learning problems, including language comprehension problems: one 5, one 6, and two 7 years of age. Relevant parts of the Receptive and Expressive Activities for Language Therapy (Southwood & Van Dulm, 2012) were used during six to eight language stimulation sessions. Substantial gains were seen when comparing pre- and post-stimulation language assessment results on the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (Seymour, Roeper, & De Villiers, 2005). The implication is that direct targeting of specific later developing language structures and skills can render the desired results, well after their usual age of acquisition, even among children with language comprehension problems and within a limited number of sessions. Given the relationship between language skills and the development of reading skills, the findings have implications for the literacy development of Foundation Phase learners who enter school with underdeveloped language skills.
某些语言结构和技能在入学年龄后继续发展。目前的研究试图确定是否直接针对这种复杂的语言结构和技能的发展理解和生产可以成功的年龄较大的学龄儿童。本研究的数据包括四个有语言学习问题的儿童个案研究，包括语言理解问题:一个5岁，一个6岁和两个7岁。语言治疗的接受和表达活动(Southwood & Van Dulm, 2012)的相关部分被用于6 - 8个语言刺激会话。在比较语言变异诊断评估的刺激前和刺激后的语言评估结果时，可以看到实质性的收获(Seymour, Roeper， & De Villiers, 2005)。这意味着，直接针对特定的后期发展的语言结构和技能，即使在他们通常的习得年龄之后，甚至在有语言理解问题的儿童中，在有限的课程中，也能取得预期的结果。鉴于语言技能与阅读技能发展之间的关系，研究结果对语言技能不发达的基础阶段学习者的读写能力发展具有启示意义。
{"title":"Unlocking later developing language skills in older children by means of focused language stimulation","authors":"F. Southwood, O. V. Dulm","doi":"10.5785/32-2-650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5785/32-2-650","url":null,"abstract":"Certain language structures and skills continue to develop after the age of school entry. The present study sought to establish whether directly targeting the development of such complex language structures and skills in comprehension and production can be successful among older, school-going children. The data for the present study comprise four case studies of children with language learning problems, including language comprehension problems: one 5, one 6, and two 7 years of age. Relevant parts of the Receptive and Expressive Activities for Language Therapy (Southwood & Van Dulm, 2012) were used during six to eight language stimulation sessions. Substantial gains were seen when comparing pre- and post-stimulation language assessment results on the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (Seymour, Roeper, & De Villiers, 2005). The implication is that direct targeting of specific later developing language structures and skills can render the desired results, well after their usual age of acquisition, even among children with language comprehension problems and within a limited number of sessions. Given the relationship between language skills and the development of reading skills, the findings have implications for the literacy development of Foundation Phase learners who enter school with underdeveloped language skills.","PeriodicalId":43109,"journal":{"name":"Per Linguam-A Journal of Language Learning","volume":"52 1","pages":"30-46"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85882711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
T. V. Dyk, H. Louw, Déogratias Nizonkiza, K. V. D. Poel
The present study examines the relationship between productive knowledge of collocations and academic literacy among first year students at North-West University. Participants were administered a collocation test, the items of which were selected from Nation’s (2006) word frequency bands, i.e. the 2000-word, 3000-word, 5000-word bands; and the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000). The scores from the collocation test were compared to those from the Test of Academic Literacy Levels (version administered in 2012). The results of this study indicate that, overall, knowledge of collocations is significantly correlated with academic literacy, which is also observed at each of the frequency bands from which the items were selected. These results support Nizonkiza’s (2014) findings that a significant correlation between mastery of collocations of words from the Academic Word List and academic literacy exists; which is extended here to words from other frequency bands. They also confirm previous findings that productive knowledge of collocations increases alongside overall proficiency (cf. Gitsaki, 1999; Bonk, 2001; Eyckmans et al., 2004; Boers et al., 2006; Nizonkiza, 2011; among others). This study therefore concludes that growth in productive knowledge of collocations may entail growth in academic literacy; suggesting that productive use of collocations is linked to academic literacy to a considerable extent. In light of these findings, teaching strategies aimed to assist first year students meet academic demands posed by higher education and avenues to explore for further research are discussed. Especially, we suggest adopting a productive oriented approach to teaching collocations, which we believe may prove useful.
本研究考察了西北大学一年级学生的生产性搭配知识与学术素养之间的关系。搭配测试采用Nation(2006)的词汇频带，即2000词、3000词、5000词频带;和学术词汇表(考克斯黑德，2000)。搭配测试的分数与学术素养水平测试(2012年实施的版本)的分数进行了比较。本研究结果表明，总体而言，搭配知识与学术素养显著相关，这也在选择项目的每个频带中观察到。这些结果支持了Nizonkiza(2014)的发现，即掌握学术词汇表中的单词搭配与学术素养之间存在显著相关性;这里扩展到其他频段的单词。他们还证实了先前的研究结果，即对搭配的生产性知识随着整体熟练程度的提高而增加(参见Gitsaki, 1999;发出巨响,2001;Eyckmans et al.， 2004;Boers et al.， 2006;Nizonkiza, 2011;等)。因此，本研究得出结论，搭配的生产知识的增长可能会导致学术素养的增长;这表明，搭配的有效使用在很大程度上与学术素养有关。根据这些发现，本文讨论了旨在帮助一年级学生满足高等教育提出的学术要求的教学策略和探索进一步研究的途径。特别是，我们建议采用一种以生产为导向的方法来教授搭配，我们相信这可能是有用的。
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