Afsa

Reviewing Articles under the Issue of Making Sense of Discourse and Developing Discourse Competence Topic Title  : The Use of Discourse Markers among Mandarin Chinese Teachers, and Chinese as a Second Language and Chinese as a Foreign Language Learners Researchers : Pei-Shu Tsai and Wo-Hsin Chu Source           : Applied Linguistics 2015: 1–29 Oxford University Press 2015 doi:10.1093/applin/amv057 http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ Objectives    : Elaborating on the insights gained from past studies. The present study further analyzed the frequency and function of these markers produced by Chinese teachers, as well as CSL (Chinese as a second language) and CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) learners during online Chinese language courses. Problem       :1. What is the relationship between the use of DMs and language learning? 2. Does the frequency of DMs reflect a Chinese learner’s verbal ability? 3. ...

Reviewing Articles under the Issue of Making Sense of Discourse and Developing Discourse Competence  Topic Title    : Learning to Say What You Mean in a Second Language: A Study of the Speech Act Performance of Learners of Hebrew as a Second Language Researcher    : Shoshana Blum-Kulka Source             : Applied Linguistics, III(1), 29-59 Oxford University Press doi:10.1093/applin/iii.1.29 Objectives      : Investigate the acquisition of knowledge about the performance of indirect speech acts in a second language for three purposes: 1)  to provide techniques for assessment of advanced levels of communicative competence in a second language 2)  to try and develop a model for a comparative cross-cultural analysis of speech-act performance across languages 3)  to show the difficulties in the acquisition of complex forms of linguistic and social interference in a second language...

Title      : Against the Standards: Analyzing Expectations and Discourse of  Educators regarding Students with Disabilities in a Kindergarten   Classroom Researcher   : Fernanda T. Orsati Year of Publication     : 2014 Source   : Hindawi Publishing Corporation Education Research International Volume 2014, Article ID 325430, 10 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/325430 Summary : The present study critically examines the informal labeling of students with disabilities based on their behaviors which they do not comply with school rules, especially the rules established for social environments and relationships in the classroom in a kindergarten classroom and its consequences for their education. The construction of early learning and young children’s capabilities has been significantly influenced by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in defining the “right time” for reading and pressuring “schools to prepare children for t...

Title      : The Role of Teachers’ Future Self Guides in Creating L2 Development Opportunities in Teacher-Led Classroom Discourse: Reclaiming the Relevance of Language Teacher Cognition Researcher     : Magdalena Kubanyiova Year of Publication     : 2015 Source   : The Modern Language Journal, 99, 3, (2015) DOI: 10.1111/modl.12244 C 2015 The Modern Language Journal Summary : This study examines the missing link in this line of inquiry, which concerns ways in which language teachers interpret and enact principles of beneficial TLD (Teacher-LED Discourse) in their everyday instruction and what shapes this enactment. The aim is to account more fully for the role of the teacher as “the practical link between SLA research and classroom practice” (Crookes, 1997, p. 93) and extend the current focus on pedagogic purposes of teacher–student interaction to consider a fuller range of inner resources that guide language teach...