UCLan Open Journals (University of Central Lancashire)
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Front Matter
No full textThe 3rd International Conference on Modern Foreign Languages, Linguistics and Literature took place in Preston, United Kingdom, on June 20, 2016. The conference was organised with the support of the School of Language, Literature and International Studies (now School of Humanities and Social Sciences) of the University of Central Lancashire, under the umbrella of the Research Excellence Framework, the new system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions (co-ordinated by Dr Michael Thomas). The conference was aimed at giving early-career researchers the opportunity to disseminate their research and to network with other researchers, and it was attended by more than 80 people, among which 33 speakers from different corners of the British Isles, and from abroad, including countries such as Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, USA, Thailand, China and India. The success of the conference is also owed to the excellent supporting team of volunteers who helped out on the day, and especially Dr Oris Tom-Lawyer, Miguel Angel Saona-Vallejos, Mawaheb Khojah and Baetty from the University of Central Lancashire. The conference was also attended by our guest keynote speaker Prof. Hayo Reinders, currently Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Director of the Anaheim University Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in TESOL Program
A survey of students’ perceptions of how English writing instruction is carried out in Norwegian upper secondary schools
Full text linkThis study investigates how Norwegian upper secondary school students attending General Studies perceive how English writing instruction is carried out, their own writing skills and what assessment strategies are applied from a genre-pedagogical perspective. A questionnaire was distributed to15 randomly selected schools, resulting in 522 students responding. The analysis of the current survey reveals that Norwegian upper secondary school students do not feel confident about their English writing skills, neither when it comes to narrative nor argumentative writing, and they perceive writing instruction and feedback practices differently. If practices vary as much as students report here, this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed both in schools and in teacher training institutions, and this article suggests that applying a genre-pedagogical approach to teaching writing could be one solution to ensure more similar practices in line with official guidelines for the Norwegian educational system
Book Reviews
Full text linkGreg Vandy with Daniel Person, 26 Songs in 30 Days: 59 Woody Guthrie’s Columbia River Songs and the Planned Promised Land in the Pacific NorthwestRonald D. Cohen, Depression Folk: Grassroots Music and 62 Left-Wing Politics in 1930s AmericaDarryl Holter and William Deverell, eds., Woody Guthrie 65 L.A. 1937-194
The Idea as a Mechanism in Language Teacher Development
Full text linkIn recent decades two broad but distinguishable approaches to language teacher development have predominated: an informing approach based largely on the transmission of principles of new theory and method; and a responsive approach centering on teachers’ understanding of their own practice. Our study offers the notion of the Idea, as an element of input that can inspire teachers and be appropriated for their own practice, as a means of synthesising the two traditions. Evidence that teacher learning operates at the level of the Idea is presented on the basis of literature, and also from two case studies which examine teacher learning across different language teacher language learning contexts. Based on the observations of the case studies, the paper offers a fully useable characterisation of the Idea, offering the notion as a crucial concept for language teacher development
An investigation of noun frequencies in cohesive nominal groups
Full text linkGeneral purpose academic word lists, such as Coxhead’s (2000) academic word list, are widely used in the teaching English for Academic purposes. However, word frequencies in some micro-level aspects of academic discourse are yet to be determined, such as subject-specific word lists in some areas. This study has generated knowledge of noun frequencies in sentence transitions containing anaphoric lexical references to the preceding sentence. Investigating a corpus of approximately 5.6 million words of academic texts from the Social Sciences and Humanities has led to a list of 71 nouns most frequently used in cohesive nominal groups in these areas. This list was compiled with Antconc (Anthony, 2014) by examining eight syntactic structures containing an anaphoric determiner and noun. The list can be used alongside more general purpose lists to support L2 academic writing development. As well as the main list, two significant sub-lists have been identified: a list of items particularly useful for anaphoric references to a citation and a group of nouns that nominalise processes. Four frequently occurring nouns in the data have been identified as forming partitive constructions with a cohesive aspect enabling the writer to narrow or broaden the range of analysis in the writing. In addition, there is a proposed order in which the eight cohesive structures investigated could be introduced within an EAP syllabus
