MOTIVATION AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES VERSUS ACADEMIC CREDIBILITY IN THE EAST END OF LONDON

1. MOTIVATION AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES VERSUS ACADEMIC CREDIBILITY IN THE EAST END OF LONDON Finding a balance between language and content How tolerant should lecturers be? How different are their evaluations of students’ work? St Andrews University 27.02.2016 ELLIE McCONNELL

2. LEVEL 0 Pre-sessional Students’ work Student E- Plagiarised – 99% - after paraphrasing- 24% Student A – 1. Plagiarised 55%- after paraphrasing -11% Numerous mistakes but clear what she is saying- ESOL student Student D – Very good, fluent text – native speaker – very different types of issues

3. Typical Grammar Diagnostic at Induction Of 70 students on January 2013 intake tested: • 23% satisfactory/good • 30% low to borderline • 47% very weak

4. OPEN ACCESS ROUTE • Bourdieu & Passeron 1977 • The working-class affinities of the students do not map on to academic expectations geared to middle class capital” • This incongruence is at the heart of the struggle to align non-academics with an academic structure.

5. SAME OLD…………… • “The number of working and middle-class students who start undergraduate degrees has sharply increased without offering opportunities for achievement” Euriat and Thélot 2000

6. ARTICLE 26 Article 26 – Declaration of Human Rights “Everyone has the right to education” Young-Scholten and colleagues- the Low–educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition Group (LESLLA) started in 2005

7. Importance of Lecturer Consistency of Assessment Marking RESEARCH AIM METHOD RESULTS CONCLUSIONS

8. AIMS To identify the most common linguistic reasons that students fail or obtain a low mark in an assessment To use the data to standardize acceptable levels of English language use in undergraduates' assessments To compare lecturers’ perceptions with students’ ones, on the same dimensions To lead to a larger debate on where Widening Access HE is going

9. METHOD Questionnaires for both lecturers and students with closed and open sections, hence quantitative and qualitative data on different aspects of students’ writing difficulties from both viewpoints An additional task for lecturers to mark a piece of work and provide justification for their marks

10. RESULTS – MAIN QUESTION

11. RESULTS Q 1

12. RESULTS Q 2

13. Results Q 3

14. RESULTS OF GRAMMAR MARK GIVEN BY LECTURERS

15. A Bit of Fun! LECTURERS VERSUS STUDENTS

16. NUC DEBATE Head “We have varied practice in grading for non-standard English…grading should focus on the content of student work rather than the correctness of their academic English” Lecturer J “ I presume though, that we still need to be in line with the requirement of benchmarks, qualifications and learning outcomes regarding written communications?” Quality Consultant “ I think this is totally wrong…We should be exemplary in our expectations with all of our learners no matter where they are from” Lecturer J “If their work lacks 'structure' and 'coherence' because of language issues, then we cannot (within the terms of the Quality Code, our own regulations or those of the OU) overlook weaknesses in this respect, only if the cause is ESL.”

17. DEBATE CONTINUED… Lecturer C “ Do those benchmarks , qualifications frameworks and learning outcomes apply to non-native speakers of English? We are all aware that there are sensitive periods for language learning/development…” UEA Policy on Proof Readers – “Just as a researcher would expect to have a paper proof read before publication, it is reasonable and sensible for students to seek to haver their assessed work reviewed for syntax, spelling and flow before submission”

18. AUDIENCE’S SUGGESTIONS AND COMMENTS YOUR IDEAS??????????

19. REFERENCES Bourdieu, P. & Passerson, J-C. (1977) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, 2nd Ed. SAGE. EURIAT M., THELOT C., 1995, ... 2000, "Understanding educationalinequality: the Swedish experience", L'Année sociologique, 50(2), pp. 345-382. LANGOUET .+ Gardner, R. C. (1988) Attitudes and motivation. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 9, 135-148. Han,Z. (2004) Fossilization: Five Central Issues International Journal of Applied linguistics, 14, (2), 212-242. McConnell, E. J.(2012) ‘Open Access in H.E. An Open and Shut Case?’ presentation of paper at WDHE Conference Liverpool 2-4 July McConnell, E. J.(2012) ‘Englais’ presentation of paper LGW Conference Leeds 5-6 September McConnell, E.J, (2015) ‘Bridging the Gap- How Wide is Widening HE?’ EATAW Conference Paper Tallinn, Estonia 2015

20. References (cont.) Schumann, J. H. (1975). Affective factors and the problem of age in second language acquisition. Language Learning 25, 205-235. Vujisic, A.Z. (2007), The Role of Achievement motivation on the interlanguage fossilization of middle aged English -as- a second- language learners’ published in LINCOM Europa, Project Line 19. 2009, p.144. Young-Scholten, M. (2015) Who are adolescents and adults who develop literacy for the first time in an L2, and why are they or research interest? Writing Systems Research, 7:1. 1-3 University of East Anglia Learning and Teaching Committee ... https://portal.uea.ac.uk/documents/6207125/6535957/Policy+on... · PDF file _LTQO/Polopoly Web Pages/Taught Programmes/Policy on Use of Proof-Readers (Aug 10) Page 1 of 5 University of East Anglia Learning and Teaching Committee of Senate