Editorial: Non-themed issue: 2010

The decision to have regular non-themed issues of English Teaching: Practice and Critique was made by way of Board consultation some time ago. As a Board, we believe that the policy of having a panel of guest editors taking control of a “themed” issue has worked well. In many cases, guess editors have worked together for the first time in a common enterprise. In all cases, having panels of guest editors has expanded the reach of the journal, increasing its subscriber base and the number of distinct educational constituencies who view the journal as a desirable target for contributions. It has facilited the journal’s aim of providing “a place where authors from a range of backgrounds can identify matters of common concern and thereby foster professional communities and networks”

Writing Conversations: Metalinguistic Talk about Writing

La place de la grammaire dans les programmes d'apprentissage des L1 et L2 a été longtemps contestée, en particulier dans les pays anglophones, où l'enseignement de la grammaire a été évité pendant plusieurs décennies. Toutefois, ce débat a été dominé principalement par une discussion sur le bien-fondé ou non de son inclusion dans les programmes d'études plutôt que par l'analyse de données probantes. Dans le cadre de nos recherches à l'Université d'Exeter, nous nous sommes écartés de ce débat traditionnel pour examiner dans quelle mesure un enseignement explicite de la grammaire peut aider les apprenants à comprendre comment se constitue le sens du texte écrit. Nos recherches ont révélé qu'un enseignement de la grammaire explicite pouvait être bénéfique à l'amélioration des résultats des apprenants à l'écrit. Cet article vise à inscrire le débat dans un cadre théorique, pour prendre en compte notamment la valeur de la terminologie métalinguistique dans une approche pédagogique de l'enseignement de la grammaire

Editorial: Composition in the English/literacy classroom

The act of writing is a complex task. About that, there is almost complete agreement, whether you are a psychologist, a linguist, a socio-cultural theorist, a teacher, or a student battling with an assignment deadline and a blank page. For the emergent writer in the infant classroom, the challenge of communicating in writing is compounded by the sheer effort of transcription – remembering to put spaces between words, shaping upper and lower case letters, marking sentence boundaries with full stops, and representing words in your head as accurately spelled sequences of letters on the page. For the older writer, the complexity persists, though the challenges change. Although transcribing text onto paper or screen may be less effortful, understanding the expectations of the writing task and imagining the needs of the (implied) reader create different obstacles to effortless composition

Principled Understanding? Teaching the Active and Passive Voice

This article describes some of the misconceptions and confusions in metalinguistic understanding which are established during whole class teaching of the active and passive voice. It draws on findings from a larger study investigating how teachers use talk in whole class settings to scaffold children’s learning. Through a detailed analysis of the teacher’s interactions with her class the article illuminates the significance of clarity in explanations and choice of examples and the importance of secure subject knowledge. It demonstrates how the teaching of metalinguistic knowledge requires more than an ability to identify and define terminology, and how an over-emphasis upon content can lead to a failure to acknowledge the cognitive and conceptual implications of pedagogical decisions.ESR

A MAP for the library portal: through the labyrinth of online information sources

In as little as 25 years, online information provision has been transformed. This has largely been uncontrolled, yet the resources now available offer rich returns for the data-hungry end user. Increasingly, many users require their information immediately and really do not care where it is stored. Such demands, coupled with librarians’ natural tendency to apply order, have led to the development of library portals which aim to solve the problems arising from trying to navigate this labyrinth of information. The MAP portal is one such product. Using the NISO OpenURL standard, MAP offers three main elements – contextual linking via WebBridge, one step “multi” searching using MetaFind and resource authentication through Web Access Management (WAM). Use of this portal at the University of Exeter Library has made a considerable, positive impact on the recent use of online full-text systems and services and the experiences undoubtedly point to a strong future for such interfaces everywhere

Entrepreneurship for Veterans with Disabilities: Lessons Learned from the Field

A 2009 research brief produced for the NTAR Leadership Center, a consortium led by the John H. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Founded in 2007 under a grant/contract with the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, the NTAR Leadership Center's mission is to build capacity and leadership at the federal, state, and local levels to enable change across workforce development and disability-specific systems that will increase employment and economic self-sufficiency for adults with disabilities. This brief examines entrepreneurship as a viable option for veterans with disabilities, particularly those returning from the present-day conflicts in the Middle East. As entrepreneurs, veterans have an array of opportunities to customize their employment, accommodate their challenges, maximize their strengths and skills, and achieve their financial and career goals. This brief takes a close look at one program -- the Entrepreneurship Boot Camp -- and discusses some lessons learned from the operation of this program

Questioning Learning?

This paper draws on observation data from 54 teaching episodes in year 2 and year 6 whole class teaching. It describes the findings of the analysis and illustrates how ‘interactive’, whole-class teaching is characterised by questions requiring predetermined answers. Speculative questions, which invite opinions, hypotheses and imaginings, or process questions, which invite children to articulate their understanding occupy little of the classroom talk arena. Despite national initiatives to develop greater use of whole class teaching with higher levels of interactivity, teachers use questioning to maintain control and to support their teaching, rather than pupil learning. The paper raises important issues about the nature of interactivity in whole class teaching and about the role questions play in supporting and extending pupils’ learning experiences.ESR

Towards a Linguistic Model of Sentence Development in Writing.

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleDrawing on the findings of an ESRC-funded research study,which included a detailed linguistic analysis of a large corpus of writing from secondary English classrooms, this article describes patterns of linguistic deployment at the level of the sentence. Given the limited number of applied linguistic studies which consider writing development in older writers, as opposed to primary aged writers, the paper aims to investigate developmental differences in mastery of the sentence in this older age group. It describes similarities and differences in linguistic characteristics of writing at sentence level according to age and writing ability, and makes connections between the linguistic patterns and effectiveness in writing. The paper illustrates that clear developmental trajectories in writing can be determined which have implications for appropriate pedagogical or instructional designs. Finally, the paper offers a linguistic model of sentence development in writing, and signals the potential significance of linguistic models within a multi-disciplinary approach to writing pedagogy