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Ursula McGowan

Promoting Good Practice Principles Researching a tool for developing ‘ the 4 Ls ’ Life-Long Language Learning. Ursula McGowan. Overview . Students in transition at risk Inadvertent plagiarism Interventions Good Practice Principles Pilot project Conclusions.

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Ursula McGowan

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  1. Promoting Good Practice PrinciplesResearching a tool for developing ‘the 4 Ls’Life-Long Language Learning Ursula McGowan

  2. Overview Students in transition at risk Inadvertent plagiarism Interventions Good Practice Principles Pilot project Conclusions The University of Adelaide

  3. Students in transition at risk • Inadvertent plagiarism(academic integrity breaches) • Don’t know why • Don’t know what • Don’t know how • Similar effects for students in transition, both • Local students • International students • Complexity of academic integrity The University of Adelaide

  4. Inadvertent plagiarism • Local students – Bradley Report • Widening participation • Complexity of academic integrity • Skill set required for academic conventions • Nuances of language to indicate author stance • International students – up to 30% • IELTS entry requirements 6 or 6.5 or 7 • Nuanced language, skill set, complexity The University of Adelaide

  5. Focus on international students on a continuum of issues similar to those for local students, but more readily identified

  6. Students in transition at risk • Complexity of academic integrity not made explicit • Students: • Don’t know why they need to use the literature • Need to be apprentice research writers (McGowan 2010, McGowan & O’Regan 2008) • Don’t know what to cite paraphrase, summarise • Need to see how the conventions function (models) • Don’t know how to write • Need to accelerate their academic literacy development (McGowan 2005) The University of Adelaide

  7. Interventions • Supplementary workshops & consultations • Academic writing centres / resources • Embedded approaches, co-teaching • How do these stack up against Good practice principles? • Issues • Self-access by relatively small minority • Embedded effective but resource intensive (Hunter 2011) • Dependent on ‘champion’(Barthel 2011) The University of Adelaide

  8. Good Practice Principles #6 Development of English language proficiency is integrated with curriculum design, assessment methods and course delivery through a variety of methods #10 Universities use evidence from a variety of sources to monitor and improve their English language development activities (AUQA 2009) The University of Adelaide

  9. Pilot Project August 2010, Postgraduate Diploma Course Intervention: 5 subject-specific academic language development sessions Approach: Genre pedagogy (Cargill & O’Connor 2009, Cope & Kalantzis, 1993, Halliday & Hasan 1985, Halliday & Martin 1993, Martin & Christie (eds) 1997, Swales 1990, 2004 – and many others) The University of Adelaide

  10. Pilot project – Purpose • Develop and test and a self-help tool that is • based on genre analysis • capable of being embedded into curricula • capable of becoming a transferable self-help tool for students for the 4 Ls • Longer-term purpose: • test potential for roll-out across a Discipline, Faculty, University • To support of GPP # 6 and #10: • English language proficiency… integrated with curriculum design, assessment methods and course delivery • Universities use evidence from a variety of sources to monitor and improve their English language development activities The University of Adelaide

  11. Pilot project – Intended Learning Outcomes • In the 5-week program students will be able to • Identify variations in spoken and written genres • Analyse models of academic writing • Pattern their own writing on structure and language derived from analysis of models from their Discipline • Apply tool of genre analysis to writing outside their own discipline The University of Adelaide

  12. Pilot project – Method • Recruitment • research project – voluntary participation • 20 students identified as at risk were invited to join an academic literacy development project • 5 responded, 3 turned up • two more attended from session 2 • Permissions obtained from all participants The University of Adelaide

  13. Pilot project – Method • Crystallised from Sydney School Genre Pedagogy(Halliday & Hasan 1985, Martin, 1997 and many others) • Adapted for individual use: follows patterns set • (a) Use of model text for Genre pedagogy cycle, by Field – Model deconstruction – joint construction – individual construction • (b) Weissberg & Buker (1991) where language is modelled, explained and extracted for each stage of research reports • (c) the simple layout structure by Ballard & Clanchy (1988 Ch7) as the self-help template for analysing stages and extracting language The University of Adelaide

  14. Pilot project – Method Analysis of example article modelled Students guided to: • focus on ‘field’ (content) of the article • identify stages: label ‘what is happening’ at each stage • extract non-content language associated at each stage • start personal ‘dictionary’ of words, phrases and sentence templates that characterise the specific genre Important: find several articles to serve as models Slide 14 The University of Adelaide

  15. Pilot project – Method In class exercise - students practise to: • Pick one phrase or sentence template • Insert content from own previous essay • Compare effect of using extracted language with their own original text (usually written in more informal spoken style) • Discuss and critique the relative merits of using the spoken vs formal academic style • Discuss criteria for personal decision Slide 15 The University of Adelaide

  16. Pilot project – Results • Student comments - positives • This kind of teaching is a priority to all students writing essays, and should be introduce from middle years to postgraduate students. It should be taught according to the students level and their needs. It is a lifelong skill to learn, a must. • Everything given during the workshop was useful especially the samples of academic writing that was handed to us to analysed in order to develop our writing skills • This is what I have been doing but I didn’t know it • You have given us one tiny idea and it has opened p a wide window • It should be the first course to be taught for the international students. This will help them in writing their assignments and to adjust with the ways it is done here in Australia The University of Adelaide

  17. Pilot project – Results • Student comments – barriers • The timing was an obstacle at the beginning of the workshop.The workshop should be done during the day when the energy in man is still fresh. It took me time to adjust towards the evening after I have dissipate much energy during day. However the price is worth it • For me, the obstacles were: not being able to check my email regularly, not having internet access, changing venues, changing timetable The University of Adelaide

  18. Pilot project – Discussion • 5 sessions sufficient to introduce the basics • But required commitment, follow-up exercises • Attendance was • Low, erratic; teaching done by outsider to the course • Intervention was subject-specific but • Remedial, voluntary, in students’ own (additional) time, not assessed - so not ‘valued’ • Intervention was most helpful to two persons who were least in need The University of Adelaide

  19. Pilot project – Discussion in order to write in an academic style, one needs to have been reading within that genre. If there is plenty of time, and students actually do engage in reading, many will eventually absorb enough of the language and structure of what they are reading to reproduce reasonable versions of their own. But these pre-conditions clearly do not apply to a large range of our current students Genre analysis is a self help tool – next step: to embed it into scheduled classes and include language criteria in assessment - and therefore in learning objectives (‘constructive alignment’ - Biggs 1996) The University of Adelaide

  20. Conclusion • Further step proposed • embed within curriculum • subject lecturer involved in teaching • integrated, not remedial • in set contact time • assessed, not optional add-on The University of Adelaide

  21. References AUQA (2009) Good practice principles for English language proficiency for international students in Australian universities, Canberra: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.www.aall.org.au/research (Accessed 28/3/2011) Ballard, B. & Clanchy, J. (1998) Studying in Australia. Melbourne. Longman Cheshire, Barthel, A. (2011) Integrating academic language and learning in curriculum, policy and practices. Pre-conference Workshop, AALL Conference, Adelaide. Biggs, J.(1996) Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. Higher Education 32: 347-364. Cargill, M. & O’Connor , P. (2009) Writing scientific research articles. Strategy and steps. Oxford. UK. Wiley-Blackwell. Christie, F. & J.R. Martin (eds) (1997) Genre and Institutions. London. Cassell. Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (1993). How a genre approach to literacy can transform the way literacy is taught. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), The powers of literacy: A genre approach to the teaching of writing pp1-21. London: Falmer Press. Halliday, M.A.K. & Martin, J. R. (1993). Writing science. Literacy and discursive power. London: Falmer Press. Halliday, M.A.K. & Hasan, R. (1985) Language, Context and Text: language in a social semiotic perspective. Deakin University Press. The University of Adelaide

  22. References Hunter, K. (2011) making disciplinary writing practices an integral part of academic content teaching. Paper presented at the HERDSA Conference. Gold Coast McGowan, U. (2010) Re-defining academic teaching in terms of research apprenticeship. In M. Devlin, J. Nagy and A. Lichtenberg (Eds.) Research and Development in Higher Education: Reshaping Education, 33 (pp. 481- 489)  http://www.herdsa.org.au/?page_id=1371#M (Accessed 15/10/11) McGowan, U. (2005) Does educational integrity mean teaching students NOT to ‘use their own words’? International Journal for Educational Integrity1(1) (http://www.ojs.unisa.edu.au/index.php/IJEI/article/view/16/6 Accessed 15/10/11) McGowan, U. & O'Regan, K. (2008) Avoiding Plagiarism: Achieving Academic Writing. Audio narrated resource for students and staff.  http://www.adelaide.edu.au/clpd/plagiarism/ (Accessed 15/10/11) Swales, J. (1990) Genre Analysis. English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. (2004). Research genres. Exploration and applications. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Weissberg, R. & Buker, S. (1990) Writing up research. Experimental research report writing for students of English. Eaglewood Cliffs. NJ. Prentice Hall Regents. Slide 22 The University of Adelaide

  23. Abstract Local and international students in transition from school to university are at risk of producing written assignments that violate the norms of academic writing and, as a result, of being penalised for an offence under a university’s Academic Integrity Policy. Interventions to assist students in developing their skills in academic writing and appropriate uses of citation and referencing conventions are plentiful and imaginative. They include supplementary workshops, one to one consultations and online or paper-based resources in academic language and learning centres; and embedded programs, including courses where language advisers co-teach with subject lecturers within their disciplines. However, valuable as these interventions can be, they are a small step only in the direction outlined in the Good Practice Principles (AUQA 2009). Individual and small group interventions are only accessed by a small minority of students; and co-teaching approaches are resource intensive and unlikely to be supported by cash-strapped Faculties. This paper reports on the first stage of a piece of research into a discipline-embedded genre-based approach (Halliday & Martin 1993; Cope & Kalantzis, 1993, Swales 2004, Cargill & O’Connor , 2009 – and others) for developing not only students’ skills and language for academic writing within one Discipline, but also the tools for applying their own genre analysis to texts and contexts in a variety of university disciplines, as well as in future employment contexts. The possibilities for, and barriers to achieving implementation of this approach as a university-wide strategy, supported by policy and resourcing (AUQA 2009 p.4) will be outlined and opened for discussion. Key Words: academic language, life-long language learning, genre analysis The University of Adelaide

  24. Contact details Promoting Good Practice PrinciplesResearching a tool for developing “the 4 Ls”: Life-Long Language Learning Ursula McGowan Senior Lecturer, The University of Adelaide South Australia 5005 Email: ursula.mcgowan@adelaide.edu.au Tel: 8313 4745 The University of Adelaide

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