Discourse-based Approach Research Articles

Developing Formative Teacher Assessment: Knowledge, Practice, and Change

Classroom-based formative assessment by teachers has received a good deal of renewed scholarly and policy interest. The overall aim of this article is to foreground some of the key constitutive issues in this approach to teacher assessment and to suggest possible ways of conceptualizing key epistemological and empirical questions. This discussion raises a number of research and development issues in respect of (a) the conceptual basis of investigating this kind of student-oriented contingent assessment, (b) some methodological questions concerned with classroom-based research, and (c) the need to understand teacher development and teacher change with reference to teacher assessment practice. The concept of construct- referenced assessment (Wiliam, 2001) will be used as a point of departure for the discussion on reconceptualizing and framing the investigation of teacher assessment. A discourse-based approach will be presented in relation to classroom research. The relevance of the work in teacher development and teacher change will be discussed; some of the complexities of teacher development in relation to teacher assessment will be illustrated through data from a teacher professional development program. This discussion has a second language orientation, but many of the arguments will be relevant to language assessment in general.

Developing legal writing materials for English second language learners: problems and perspectives

Although in recent years we have seen a significant increase in the development of resources for legal writing, very few of them are targeted at second language learners. This article reviews currently available legal writing books in terms of their suitability for use in EALP writing contexts. It concludes that, although certain aspects of the available books can be useful, most are generally unsuitable for use in such contexts. Three approaches are then offered for developing legal writing materials that will meet the criteria of suitability. First, the materials can be customized in various ways to meet the needs of second language users studying law in the medium of English. Second, the materials can adopt a more language and discourse-based approach. Third, rather than packaging materials exclusively in book form, they can be made available as a computer-mediated resource bank. This article derives from ongoing work in a 3-year, university-funded project entitled “Improving Legal English: Quality Measures for Programme Development and Evaluation”, based at the City University of Hong Kong.

Discourse-based intervention for word finding in children

A discourse-based, contextual intervention approach for increasing children's word finding proficiency was evaluated. The clinician's role was to (a) identify overt word finding behaviors as they occurred, (2) allow their completion, and (c) provide appropriate feedback, including requests for associative information, requests for clarification, comments to confirm the appropriateness of word choices, and comments to facilitate discourse restructuring. Subjects were three 9-year-old boys with diagnosed language-learning disabilities (LLD) characterized by word finding problems. Intervention proceeded following a within-subjects multiple baseline design involving three tasks: picture-elicited narratives, story-retelling, and conversation on familiar topics. All three subjects exhibited a decrease in the average number of problematic word finding behaviors from initial baseline to posttreatment measurement. Discourse-based intervention provided naturalistic contexts for the study of word finding behaviors, specifically effects of linguistic contexts and effects of task complexity. Learning outcomes: (1) As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to identify and categorize children's overt word finding behaviors as they occur in discourse. (2) As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to discuss various aspects of a contextualized philosophy of learning as applied to language intervention. (3) As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to compare and contrast traditional intervention approaches for improving children's word finding with one discourse-based approach.

Negation in discourse: a text world approach to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22

This article presents a discourse-based approach to negation by applying text world theory to the analysis of negation in the novel Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (1986 [1961]), The model developed for the analysis of negation is based on Werth’s (1999) notion of negation as a subworld which modifies information which is present in the common ground of the discourse. By so doing, negation contributes to the general discourse function of updating information in the text world. Additionally, negation may form part of contradictory structures which, being self-contained units, do not contribute to the updating discourse function but, rather, seem to block the flow of information. The analysis of the functions of negation is framed within a broader framework of stylistic analysis, where the objective is to discuss how the foregrounded nature of negation as a recursive feature in Catch-22 may have a defamiliarizing effect. The argument put forward in this article is that negation plays a crucial role in the expression of a conflict between what is presented as real and what is presented as not real in the fictional world; this conflict, in its turn, has important consequences for the way the story develops and the way major themes of the novel are treated.

Discourse in mba Seminars: Towards a Description for Pedagogical Purposes

The subject of this paper is a data-driven description of student-led discussion in seminars on a MBA course. Qualitative description of the language of discussion is needed on which to base realistic pedagogical materials for EAP. Using evidence from a small corpus of academic seminars, data is presented to illustrate some language features in student-led talk. These features are then considered in relation to syllabus content. The fruitfulness of a discourse-based approach to both the description of formal spoken language genres and to classroom methodology is discussed.

From Sentence to Discourse: Discourse Grammar and English Language Teaching

In this article we argue that there are very good reasons for developing discourse grammars for L2 teaching and exemplify the criteria for moving from sentence-based grammar to the discourse level. The criteria are based on pedagogical and descriptive problems in grammar that sentence-based approaches cannot adequately deal with. We identify key areas in which a discourse grammar might make significant contributions. These include discourse paradigms (in contrast to traditional ones), the solution of problems brought about by post facto rules that fail to generate appropriate choices, different distributions of forms in spoken and written texts, items that make little sense if dealt with in stand-alone sentences, and unresolved grammatical puzzles. We conclude by considering the problems and prospects for L2 teaching in the kind of probabilistic grammar that emerges from a discourse-based approach.

A Discourse-Oriented Approach To ESP

ESP/EAP is essentially concerned with the genre-specific texts students are required to read/write and the kinds of activities they need to participate in. In this paper, we argue that to be effective ESP/EAP teaching and materials must be informed by adequately researched linguistic descriptions of the target genres and texts in general. There are characteristic rhetorical and organisational features and linguistic options which distinguish different genres and, without prior identification of these, ESP teaching will be ad hoc and cannot expect to help learners cope with the demands imposed on them by the need to read and write in their specific disciplines. Successful pedagogy which aims at enabling learners to master these genres must draw on linguistic descriptions which provide insights into the features and organisation of the texts. In this paper, we suggest a discourse-based approach to meet the need for ESP practice which is rooted in an understanding of the communicative purposes of texts and the linguistic manifestations of such purposes. Through an analysis of experimental research articles, we attempt to show that: i) choice of theme in citations can serve as a text organisational device to show the interdependencies and connectedness of the elements making up a stretch of text. ii) the macro-structure of an entire research article can be represented in terms of the generally-recognized Problem-Solution discourse pattern.

A discourse-based approach to the assessment of readability

Assessing the readability of texts is an important task for many administrative and educational programs. However, current readability measures have serious empirical and theoretical flaws that make their use questionable. In this paper we propose two methods of assessing readability that involve analyzing the referential and cohesive structures of a text. We suggest that such measures are theoretically better motivated and, through reconsideration of some anomalous performance results from Duffy & Kabance (1982), that they promise to be more adequate in predicting actual reading performance.

Anglo-American Interaction: Writings of the New Nation and their Reception in British Periodicals

In the last quarter of the XVIIIth century arguing and speculating about the cultural development of the former colonies became a widespread activity among British contributors to the periodical press. This paper, using a discourse-based approach, models the anglo-american relationship on a pattern of social interaction in a communication situation and shows how the dispute, by putting into question not only speech, but also aspects of consciousness, ideology and role, is essentially a social as well as linguistic problem.

A Discourse-Based Approach to Training Grammatical Rules

A Discourse-Based Approach to Training Grammatical Rules