A case study of the multiple contextual factors that impact on the reading competencies of grade 3 non-mother tongue speakers of English in a Grahamstown Primary School in the Eastern Cape, South Africa
- Authors: Leander, Elizabeth Alice
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Education, Elementary -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape -- Case studies English language -- Study and teaching (Elementary) -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape -- Case studies Language and education -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape -- Case studies Language policy -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2374 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005913
- Description: This study explores what happens in a reading class where grade 3 learners from specific cultural and ethnic backgrounds are taught to read in a language other than their mother-tongue. The research takes place at a primary school in the Eastern Cape, South Africa where English is the Medium of Instruction (MOI).The report on the findings of this research reveals that the teaching strategies and reading theories of the teacher, the literacy backgrounds of the learners, as well as the language preferences of the parents, are some of the contextual factors that impact on reading. One of the major findings in the study constitutes the debilitating effects of the learners' socio- economic circumstances on their reading performances in the classroom. The socio-political factors that impact on the learners, the teacher, and the school as a social unit, proved to be the factors that are remnants of the Apartheid segregation polices as well as the educational policies of the present government, especially, those pertaining to mother-tongue Instruction. Although it is difficult to generalize from a small-scale study like this, its benefits lie in the evidence that confirms the influence of specific contextual factors on reading proficiencies, the evidence that identifies poor and effective teaching practices and the evidence that elucidate the implications of non-mother tongue instruction. This research may thus serve to raise the consciousness of practitioners in reading instruction, parents and policy makers. , KMBT_363 , Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in
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- Date Issued: 2007
A critical analysis of oppositional discourses of the ideal female body in women's conversations
- Authors: Pienaar, Kiran Merle
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Conversation analysis Women in mass media Self-perception in women Self-perception in adolescence Body image
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2358 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002641
- Description: Socialisation agents such as the popular media and same age female peers construct and reproduce notions of what is physically ideal, feminine and beautiful in a woman (Hesse-Biber 1996). My interest lies in how a group of young women reproduce, contest and possibly transform such notions in conversations with their same age female friends. The study aims to answer the following question: What ideologies are reflected and perpetuated in the discourses associated with the ideal female body? Since notions of what is ideal and beautiful are indeterminate and in perpetual flux, I focus in particular on areas of contradiction and contestation in the body talk conversations. As such, the analysis examines three extracts in which the young women draw on oppositional discourses to construct notions of female beauty. I believe that these extracts represent discursive struggles in relation to the dominant Western ideal of the slim, toned female body, an ideal which more closely resembles a newly pubescent girl's body than the curvaceous, shapely body of an adult woman (Bartky 2003; Grogan 1998). My analysis is based on conversational data collected from sixteen, white adolescent English-speaking women between the ages of fourteen and eighteen who attend a boarding school in Grahamstown. I elicited the body talk data using three stimulus exercises designed to encourage discussion on topics such as the overweight female body, dieting and the ideal body. I selected three extracts from the recorded conversations and used the methodological framework of Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse the data. This framework proposes three interdependent stages of analysis: 1) the Description of the formal features of the text, 2) the Interpretation of the text in terms of the participants' background assumptions, the situational context and the intertextual context and 3) an Explanation of the text in light of the sociocultural context and the text's contribution to the reproduction or transformation of the status quo. Since I was present during the conversational recordings and contributed to the discussions, part of the interpretation stage of analysis critically evaluates how the asymmetrical power relations between myself and the participants influenced the conversations. In this regard, my findings attest to my coercive role in promoting conservative, reactionary discourses which sustain the dominance of traditional ideologies of female beauty and which stifle oppositional ideologies. My interpretation of the extracts also reveals that, in their discussions of topics such as excess weight, female ageing and cosmetic surgery, the young women negotiate alternative conceptions of what constitutes the ideal female body. However, the articulation of an alternative beauty ideal, one which values women of different body sizes and ages is not sustained in the extracts. By discussing the relationship between these alternative constructions and dominant norms of beauty, I show how the prevailing ideal of the youthful, slim, toned female body wins out in the conversations. The interpretation of the extracts also reveals the participants' preoccupation with the pursuit of health and well¬being. In this respect, the young women construct the ideal body as not only slim and youthful, but also healthy. In my explanation of the extracts, I explore the sociocultural factors which have contributed to the rise of the health ethic. In concluding, I argue that the valorisation of the healthy body in the conversations, far from challenging the imperative to be thin, actually reinforces it by constructing dieting as a necessary adjunct to the pursuit of health. From this perspective, the preoccupation with attaining the ideal thin, toned body can be justified in terms of a desire to be healthy.
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- Date Issued: 2007
A study of the summarizing strategies used by ESL first year science students at the University of Botswana
- Authors: Chimbganda, Ambrose Bruce
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: English language -- Study and teaching (Foreign speakers) -- Botswana English language -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- Botswana Science -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- Botswana Language and education -- Botswana College students -- Botswana -- Language
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2341 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002623
- Description: One of the major problems faced by speakers of English as a second language (ESL) or non-native speakers of English (NNS) is that when they go to college or university, they find themselves without sufficient academic literacy skills to enable them to navigate their learning successfully, such as the ability to summarize textual material. This thesis examines the summarizing strategies used by ESL first year science students at the University of Botswana. Using multiple data collection methods, otherwise known as triangulation or pluralistic research, which is a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, one hundred and twenty randomly sampled students completed questionnaires and summarized a scientific text. In order to observe the students more closely, nine students (3 high-, 3 average- and 3 low-proficiency) were purposively selected from the sample and wrote a further summary. The nine students were later interviewed in order to find out from them the kinds of strategies they had used in summarizing the texts. To obtain systematic data, the summaries and the taped interview were coded and analyzed using a hybrid scoring classification previously used by other researchers. The results from the Likert type of questionnaire suggest that the ESL first year science students are 'aware' of the appropriate reading, production and self-assessment strategies to use when summarizing. However, when the data from the questionnaire were cross-checked against the strategies they had used in the actual summarization of the text, most of their claims, especially those of the low-proficiency students, were not sustained. As a whole, the results show that high-proficiency students produce more accurate idea units and are more capable of generalizing ideas than low-proficiency students who prefer to "cut and paste" ideas. There are also significant differences between high- and low proficiency students in the manner in which they decode the text: low-proficiency students produce more distortions in their summaries than high-proficiency students who generally give accurate information. Similarly, high-proficiency students are able to sort out global ideas from a labyrinth of localized ideas, unlike average- and low-proficiency students who include trivial information. The same trend is observed with paraphrasing and sentence combinations: high-proficiency students are generally able to recast and coordinate their ideas, unlike low-proficiency students who produce run-on ideas. In terms of the discrete cognitive and meta-cognitive skills preferred by students, low proficiency students are noticeably unable to exploit pre-summarizing cognitive strategies such as discriminating, selecting, note-making, grouping, inferring meanings of new words and using synonyms to convey the intended meanings. There are also greater differences between high- and low-proficiency students when it comes to the use of meta-cognitive strategies. Unlike high-proficiency students who use their reservoir of meta-cognitive skills such as self-judgment, low-proficiency students ostensibly find it difficult to direct their summaries to the demands of the task and are unable to check the accuracy of their summaries. The findings also show that some of the high-proficiency students and many average- and low-proficiency students distort idea units, find it difficult to use their own words and cannot distinguish between main and supporting details. This resulted in the production of circuitous summaries that often failed to capture the gist of the argument. The way the students processed the main ideas also reveals an inherent weakness: most students of different proficiency levels were unable to combine ideas from different paragraphs to produce a coherent text. Not surprising, then, there were too many long summaries produced by both high- and low-proficiency students. To tackle some of the problems related to summarization, pre-reading strategies can be taught, which activate relevant prior knowledge, so that the learning of new knowledge can be facilitated. During the reading process students can become more meta-cognitively aware by monitoring their level of understanding of the text by using, for example, the strategy suggested by Schraw (1998) of "stop, read and think". Text analysis can also be used to help the students identify the main themes or macro-propositions in a text, and hence gain a more global perspective of the content, which is important for selecting the main ideas in a text. A particularly useful approach to fostering a deeper understanding of content is to use a form of reciprocal or peer-mediated teaching, in which students in pairs can articulate to each other their understanding of the main ideas expressed in the text. As part of the solution to the problems faced by students when processing information, we need to take Sewlall's (2000: 170) advice that there should be "a paradigm shift in the learning philosophy from content-based to an emphasis on the acquisition of skills". In this regard, both content and ESL teachers need to train their students in the explicit use of summarizing strategies, and to plan interwoven lessons and learning activities that develop the learners' intellectual ways of dealing with different learning problems so that they can make learning quicker, easier, more effective and exciting.
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- Date Issued: 2007
The role of achievement motivation on the interlanguage fossilization of middle-aged English-as-a-second-language learners
- Authors: Vujisic, Zoran
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Second language acquisition Language and languages -- Study and teaching Fossilization (Linguistics) Interlanguage (Language learning) English language -- Study and teaching -- Foreign speakers Motivation in education
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2368 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003748
- Description: Second language acquisition (SLA) is seldom entirely successful with adult learners. It has been suggested that all second language (L2) learners, in the process of mastering a target language (TL), develop a linguistic system that is self-contained and different from both the learner's native language and the TL. This system is referred to as 'interlanguage' (lL). In the process of SLA, IL evolves into an ever-closer approximation of the TL, and ideally, a learner's IL should continue to advance until it becomes equivalent to the TL. However, it has been observed that somewhere in the L2 learning process, IL may reach one or more plateaus during which the development of the IL is delayed or arrested. A permanent cessation of progress toward the TL is referred to as 'fossilization'. Researchers in SLA agree that motivation is one of the key factors influencing language-learning success and studies suggest that some language learning motivation may be related to the need for achievement. The purpose of this research was to establish if adult ESL learners are aware of fossilization and, to examine if motivation, and more specifically achievement motivation, is a factor in IL fossilization. The participants in this study consisted of 15 ESL learners in Puerto Rico who had at least eight years of formal ESL training. The instrument used to gather information included a questionnaire to obtain demographical and qualifying data, an 'English Language Proficiency Evaluation' to determine levels of IL fossilization, a 'Measure of Achievement Motivation' to ascertain achievement motive, and individual and group interviews in order to ascertain perception(s) regarding the role of motivation on fossilization and perceptions regarding the barriers to achieving TL competency. The research demonstrated that there is a moderate to strong positive relationship between IL fossilization and achievement motivation, i.e., high achievement motive is correlated to TL competency and descending levels of achievement motive are correlated to ascending levels of IL fossilization. The findings have significant implications for both ESL learning and instruction, and suggest that not all IL fossilization may be permanent.
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- Date Issued: 2007