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Exploring Discipline Social Identities in an Academic English Program

This project aims to investigate the impact of students' discipline social identities on their learning approach and motivation in an Academic English Program. It explores the benefits of considering multi-disciplinary perspectives and encourages the development of discipline-related social identification.

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Exploring Discipline Social Identities in an Academic English Program

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  1. Project Skills: the perfect balance? Kerith + Georgie

  2. Overview • Influences • Overview of January Intake course and project skills strand • Tasks and questions • Conclusions

  3. EGAP • Students are often interested in topics beyond the scope of their own discipline (Basturkmen, 2003:58) . • All disciplines are multi-disciplinary and considering their own discipline from the perspectives of others in their (multi-disciplinary) class could be hugely beneficial (de Chazal, 2013:143).

  4. ESAP • The EAP teacher ‘will be able to recognise and explore disciplinary differences’ which is demonstrated through the ability to ‘guide students to investigate the genres and expert practitioners of their specific discourse communities’ (BALEAP, 2008)

  5. ESAP • The responsibility of acquiring familiarity with their own disciplines can be left largely with the student (de Chazel:141)

  6. Motivation • Dornyeiand Ushioda’s (2009) model of the ‘L2 Motivational Self System’ • ‘the secret of successful language learners was their possession of a subordinate vision that kept them on track’ (Dornyeiand Ushioda, 2009:25) .

  7. Discipline social identities • ‘The social identity approach [is] seeing oneself as a member of particular social groups, the associated sense of belonging’ (Smyth, et al. 2013).

  8. Discipline social identities …those who identify strongly as a psychology student would be more likely to develop an intrinsic interest in the course, as they are likely to share the normative interests they perceive psychology students to hold, and this would be expressed in a deep approach to learning (Smyth, et al. 2013).

  9. Discipline social identities • Considering these effects and the positive effects found elsewhere of social identity on study continuation (Christ, van Dick, Wagner, & Stellmacher, 2003)… the development of discipline-related social identification is not only a positive educational force, but could also be considered a valuable graduate attribute of tertiary education (Platow, 2012 cited in Smyth, et al. 2013).

  10. Overview of course

  11. Overview of the course cont… • IELTS Range: 5.5 - 6.0. No set minimum for subscores. • Two example ‘lower profiles’ are: • IELTS: Listening 5.5, Reading 5.0, Writing 5.0, Speaking 5.5; • IELTS: Listening 5.5, Reading 6.0, Writing 4.5, Speaking 5.5 • Two example ‘higher profiles are: • IELTS: Listening 8.5, Reading 8.5, Writing 6.5, Speaking 8.0; • IELTS: Listening 9.0, Reading 9.0, Writing 6.5, Speaking 7.5

  12. Overview of the course cont… • 6 Modules over 2 semesters • First semester • Academic Subjects Module • Project Skills Module • Integrated Skills Module • Second semester • Academic Subjects Module • Oral Presentations Module • Integrated Skills Module

  13. Overview of the course cont… • Project Skills • Poster • Workshop as part of a conference • Podcast • Video

  14. Tasks • Look at posters and consider the following: • Can you identify what disciplines the students are from? • What have they learnt about their discipline? Language/content. • What skills were they practising? • What do you think is the theme that links all of the posters?

  15. Questions • Form groups and discuss the following: • How would/could exploration of academic identitieswork in your institution? • What themes can you identify that would work across disciplines? • How could the project be improved?

  16. References Basturkmen, H. (2003). Specificity and ESP Course Design, RELC Journal, 34 (1) p48-63. de Chazal (2012) The General – Specific Debate in EAP: Which case is the most convincing for most contexts?, Journal of Second Language Teaching and Research, 2 (1), p135-148. Dornyei, Z and Ushioda, E. (2009). Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Hamp-Lyons, L. (2005). Editorial for 4,1: Some further thoughts on EAP and JEAP, Journal for English for Academic Purposes, 4 (1), p1-4.

  17. References Hyland, K. (2006) English for Academic Purposes: an advanced resource book, London: Routledge. Smyth, L., Mavor, K. I., Platow, M. J., Grace, D. M. & Reynolds K. J., 2013. Discipline social identification, study norms and learning approach in university students. Educational Psychology. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01443410.2013.822962 [Accessed 25 February 2016].

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