"It just doesn't sound right": Spracherhalt und Sprachwechsel bei deutschen Kirchengemeinden in Cole County, Missouri : Resultate einer Spurensuche

M.A. University of Kansas, Germanic Languages and Literatures 2002A major focus of current sociolinguistic research is the issue of minority language maintenance and language shift. German-American speech islands, existing well into the twentieth century, are providing a valuable basis for such research. This thesis presents the results of research involving twenty-one church congregations in Cole County, Missouri, with a German heritage and representing five different denominations: Roman-Catholic, German-Methodist, Evangelical-Lutheran (Iowa Synod, Missouri Synod} and German-Evangelical. Its goal is to comprehend the process of language shift in these congregations and bring out its dominant influential factors. To achieve that goal, publications and records of the congregations were analyzed in the following four categories: church services, parochial and Sunday schools, church clubs, official records and public relations. Combined with some information gained through interviews with and questionnaires from older church members, those written sources provided data on the general timeline and the factors influencing language shift, and finally, the way the congregations with their members saw and see themselves: as Germans, German-Americans or Americans. These data were compared to the statistics of the denominations and previous research. The results show clearly that the First World War is just one of many factors,·but not the·major reason of language shift in those German-American congregations. Though it may have initiated the change in some cases or was even being "used" as such an initiator, I am suggesting that shift in language use and cultural perception cannot happen without changes in the social and demographic structure of the immigrant communities. Apart form that, diminishing institutional support leads to language loss as well as loss of cultural awareness. Those results being extracted, the research also offers valuable insight into questions of ethnicity and identity and is a basis for future work in these areas

Interaction for learning in the Anglophone university classroom: Mastering interactional challenges through reflective practice

In the internationalised classroom of the Anglophone world, tutors as well as students face the challenge of negotiating the norms of classroom interaction which frequently remain opaque, potentially leading to feelings of alienation and lost learning opportunities. After reviewing the literature on academic classroom talk in international and multilingual/multicultural settings, this paper uses episodes from one UK higher education classroom and the retrospective comments by the classroom tutor to discuss the challenges faced by students and tutors in today's "internationalised" Anglophone university. It ends by suggesting that the principle of "reflective practice", if implemented in staff development courses and in courses for all members of the classroom community, can train students to use spoken academic language more effectively in the internationalised Anglophone university. The paper further hopes to be able to bring together the discourses on internationalisation used in applied linguistics and education studies in the interest of more intensive collaboration between the two fields of research

Intercultural capability: exploring first year HE students' reflections on and experiences of their higher education experience

This round table discussion presents the initial stages of a cross-institution project exploring the reflections and expectations of first year international and home students. This study aims to capture students' early experiences in higher education (HE), their sense of 'belonging' and development of intercultural capabilities embedded in international-home student interactions. This is the first study to adopt Sen's (1992) 'capability approach' as a means of framing exploration of these intercultural capabilities. Results are intended to shed light on the processual development of intercultural capabilities during students' first year in HE, and their perceptions of how these contribute to their employability. Although this discussion is based on one joint proposal developed by the research team, several themes emerge which may be of interest to HE academics and practitioners concerning 'Student Experiences', 'Employability, Enterprise and Graduate Careers' and 'Learning, Teaching and Assessment'

Tutors’ beliefs about language and roles: practice as language policy in EMI contexts

It has been well established that for all students, but particularly second language (L2) English speaking students, academic English speaking skills are key to developing specialist terminology and disciplinary content in an English as a medium of instruction (EMI) context. However, what is less clear in many contexts is the institutional language policy necessary to guide and support both L2 English speaking students and disciplinary tutors. In this paper, we focus on disciplinary tutors’ beliefs of language and their roles with respect to language support to surface implicit and covert language policies. We argue that in the absence of explicit policy, showcasing the range of tutor perspectives and practice around language support can provide a way forward in explicating good practice and highlighting an approach in which all stakeholders take responsibility for supporting students’ academic speaking skills in an EMI context

Taking ELF off the shelf: Developing HE students' speaking skills through a focus on English as a lingua franca

This paper explores how principles derived from English as a lingua franca (ELF) research (e.g. accommodation, strategic competence) can provide insights into the speaking demands of group work in Anglophone EMI settings which includes native speakers as well as non-native speakers. The paper maps data gathered through interviews with first year undergraduate students against Mercer et al.’s (2017) oracy framework. It shows that students draw on a combination of linguistic, cognitive, physical and social & emotional skills, many of which align with ELF principles. However, current frameworks of support for speaking demands in HE (EAP and academic skills) lack focus on dialogic speaking, pay little heed to ELF findings and cater for native speakers and non-native speakers separately despite their needs being similar. The paper argues that a focus on ELF can contribute to the development of speaking support which sits at the centre of students’ academic journey and encourages better interactions between native and non-native speakers

Faces, roles and identities in argumentative discourse : the development of facework strategies by L2 learners of German

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Faces, roles and identities in argumentative discourse : the development of facework strategies by L2 learners of German

This thesis presents a developmental account of facework strategies in L2 argumentative discourse.  From an individual perspective, face denotes how speakers want to be seen in terms of their social role(s) and personal qualities; from a social perspective, face is the image that is actually conveyed to others. Data were gathered from learners of German at three different levels of proficiency by means of argumentative discourse tasks and retrospective interviews, and interpreted within the framework of face as well as from a linguistic/psycholinguistic perspective.  The results of the analysis show that linguistic limitations and processing constraints cannot alone explain the observed developments.  Instead, the desire to be seen as a good L2 speaker appears to be playing an important role.  Learners actively tried to make the task easier for themselves by using strategies that contributed to accuracy and fluency, eased processing and helped avoid potential pitfalls.  This suggests that learners acted not only within a ‘discussion frame’ in which it would be important to present a positive self-image based on the opinions expressed in the discussion and the manner of their presentation, but also within an overlapping ‘language task’ frame. The thesis contributes to the field of interlanguage pragmatics by providing a theoretical framework for the interpretation of face alongside notions of identity, thereby moving it away from politeness and social appropriateness.  By suggesting that learners act according to an internal context that they have set for themselves, it provides an integrated account of psycholinguistic/linguistic and individual/social approaches to second language acquisition.</p

A turn to language: How interactional sociolinguistics informs the redesign of prompt:response chatbot turns

This paper discusses how a microlevel linguistic analysis, using interactional sociolinguistics as an umbrella framework and drawing on analytical concepts from politeness theory and conversation analysis, can be used to advise chatbot designers on the interactional features contributing to problematic human user engagement as part of a consultancy project. Existing research using a microlevel linguistic analysis has analysed human user:bot interactions using natural language. This research has identified a central role for language which promotes sociability between the machine and users in the alignment of their goals and practices. However, there is no research currently which discusses how a microlevel linguistic analysis can help identify how the discursive construction of alignment and affiliation within prompt:response chatbots supports social presence and trust. This paper addresses this gap through an analysis of a database of prompt:response chatbot interactions which identified problematic sequences involving misalignment and disaffiliation, undermining human users’ trust and sense of social presence within the interaction. It also reports on how the consultancy project suggested changes to the programming of the chatbot which have potential to lead to improved user engagement and satisfaction

How Dialogic is the Online Space? A Focus on English Speaking Skills

In the spring of 2020, English language teachers around the world were forced to rapidly start teaching in a completely online space, often with relatively little experience of online teaching, and with few opportunities for preparation. Recognising the centrality of speaking for learning, this study investigated affordances of teaching speaking online, a relatively unexplored area. Fifty-two language teachers in higher education contexts internationally completed a survey. Drawing on a framework of dialogic teaching, the findings show that teaching speaking online offers some unexpected affordances relating to the dialogic teaching principle of supportive teaching. In addition, teachers reported being able to use the online space for purposeful planning of online lessons. However, the online space is less conducive to enabling reciprocal, deliberative, and cumulative classroom talk, key features of higher education discourses. We end the paper with practical recommendations for how to ensure that dialogic teaching dimensions are not lost in an online space