‘ Let ’ s keep it informal guys ’ – The Effects of Teacher Communicative Strategies on Student Activity and Collaborative Learning in Internet-based English Courses

Tatjana Atanasoska Mother Tongue Education and Identity In Sweden all children in principal have the right to mother tongue education through the educational system. In my magister thesis I analyze the role that mother tongue education plays for the identity construction of the pupils. The National Agency for Education in Sweden has stated in their syllabus for compulsory school that the pupils should “strengthen the self-esteem and identity, and acquire dual cultural affiliation” through mother tongue education. I shall focus especially on the multilingual identity of children and teenagers (aged 10-14 years) and consider how it is affected by mother tongue education. In my talk I will present some preliminary findings from an interview study with a small number of pupils and try to uncover patterns of connections between mother tongue learning and identity constructions. Kristy Beers Fägersten & Jonathan White Discourse Strategies and Power Roles in Student-led Distance Learning The assertion of identity and power via computer-mediated communication in the context of distance or web-based learning presents challenges to both teachers and students. When regular, face-to-face classroom interaction is replaced by online chat or group discussion forums, participants must avail themselves of new techniques and tactics for contributing to and progressing interaction, discussion, and learning. During student-only chat sessions, the absence of teacher-led, face-to-face classroom activities requires the students to assume leadership roles and responsibilities normally associated with the teacher. This situation raises the questions of who teaches and who learns; how students discursively negotiate power roles; and whether power emerges as a function of displayed expertise and knowledge or rather the use of authoritative language. In this descriptive study, we examine a corpus of task-based discussion logs among students of distance learning courses in English linguistics. The data reveal recurring discourse strategies used by students for the purpose of 1) negotiating the progression of the discussion sessions, 2) asserting and questioning knowledge, and 3) assuming or relinquishing power and responsibility. The data contribute to a better understanding of how working methods and materials can be tailored to distance learning students, and how such students can be afforded opportunities or even more effectively encouraged to assert their knowledge and authority. Judith Casey Language Identity and Power in Puerto Rico: A Unique Bilingual ESL/EFL Classroom Environment Since 1898, the language identity of Puerto Ricans has been closely tied to the unresolved political status of this small Caribbean island. Today, as US citizens, Puerto Ricans struggle with the conflict between their desire to maintain their Spanish language heritage while embracing the need for English in order to participate fully in the global economy. Our students are at the focus of this societal dilemma. Forward thinking and practical, many students view English as a tool that will ensure their success in the job market. But for other students, the concept of mastering the English language presents a serious challenge to their identities. Thus, in Puerto Rico, English has status as the language of the powerful USA and power as the global language of science and commerce; students know that English is the L2 language most learned by the global community. But Spanish also has power, not only as our students’ heritage but as a world language that is used by 300 million people. This situation provides the background for continuous code-switching in our English courses at the University of Puerto Rico, resulting in complex issues surrounding the benefits and drawbacks of L1 use in the classroom. Mats Deutschmann & Carita Lundmark ‘Let’s keep it informal guys’ – The Effects of Teacher Communicative Strategies on Student Activity and Collaborative Learning in Internet-based English Courses The paper explores the types of communicative strategies used by teachers in Internet courses of academic English, particularly during the initial stages of course activity. The second part of the study investigates the effects of these communicative strategies on student activity and throughput. The courses, which are entirely conducted in virtual learning environments without physical meetings, are part of the Bachelor program (A-C level) of English at Mid Sweden University. The pedagogic design of the courses is based on collaborative learning, which presupposes a communicative environment with positive interdependence and interaction, where knowledge is shared by students questioning and challenging each other. Consequently, the teacher’s role in setting communicative norms which encourage an environment of high acceptance, where students feel that they can express their opinions freely, is of outmost importance. The research presented here uses linguistic paradigms from the domain of language pragmatics to show how the use of different speech acts, word choice and styles used by teachers contribute in creating high/low formality discourse, which in turn affects such factors as social distance and power relations, and then goes on to analyse the effects of different strategies on student activity. Quantity and clarity of information are two additional parameters investigated. Frances Giampapa Teacher and Student Identities as Pedagogy: Voices from inside a Canadian School Globalization on the world stage expresses itself locally in Canadian urban schools in the form of rapidly increasing linguistic and cultural diversity. Currently, in Toronto schools, more than half the student population comes from non-English-speaking homes. Based on the emerging findings of a Canada-wide project entitled From Literacy to Multiliteracies: Designing Learning Environments for Knowledge Generation within the New Economy (Early, Cummins & Willinksy 2002), this paper focuses on issues of identity, power and language through multiliteracy practices (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) in a multilingual, multicultural Toronto school. Drawing from teacher and student interviews, I explore how a minority teacher enters into a dialogic interaction with her students where her identities and her students’ identities are negotiated (Hall & du Gay, 1996; Norton 2000; Pavlenko & Blackledge 2004) through the creation of dual language ‘identity texts’ (Cummins, 2004) that is, any student artifact whether it be multimodal, visual or text-based that provide a venue for students to express themselves and to see their identity reflected back to them and to a wider audience. These identity texts take on greater meaning for both teachers and students and can be seen as a form of ‘resistance’ challenging the educational power dynamics when put in direct contrast to the provincial-wide, test-driven curriculum model of teaching. Claudia Finkbeiner Empowering Students in the Language Classroom: Identity, Language and Culture (Plenary) This presentation is about the complex role of power in the foreign language classroom. Power is very often exercised through language. Therefore, the topic has to be tied down to the language classroom participants and their status in the educational setting. The focus of attention will be the learner in relation to his and her peers and his or her foreign language teachers. The learner is regarded as an individual in a heterogeneous classroom that often seems to be perceived as a homogeneous one. I will discuss the topic of ”Empowering students in the language classroom” by clarifying the terms identity, language and culture as well as power. During the presentation I will highlight the important factors of learners’ acculturation processes as well as the impact of the perception of the self and other. For foreign language teaching it is important that we dive deep and explore the hidden dimensions of identity, which lie in culture and language. Identity and power are often used in a military and manipulative context. In the foreign language classroom we have to make sure not to use them in this sense of domination, supremacy, extreme control or command. I will try to exemplify how settings can be created that make active use of ability, license, and agency: ability as a learner to act in a self-determined way and ability as a teacher to identify who the students are, to learn about their language(s) and culture(s), and to pass on to them language and culture. This will be exemplified by different methods, such as the LMR-plus approach, the language awareness and cultural awareness approach. Christine Helot Becoming an Empowering Educator: a Critical Approach to the Relationship between Language, Power and Identity (Plenary) This paper aims to explore the notion of empowerment in relation to primary language education in the multilingual classroom and the inclusion of minority languages and cultures. Based on the analysis of a three year school project in Alsace, France, where primary teachers invited parents to collaborate to a language awareness project, the presentation will show : 1) how new identities can be negociated when the home languages of children become a learning resource for all pupils in the mainstream classroom 2) how traditional and implicit relationships of power can be transformed when parents become real partners in a pedagogical project and when the knowledge of minority languages is legitimised by the school. Following Cummins’s (2001: 16) definition of empowerment as ”the collaborative creation of power“, we shall give examples of different strategies in the primary classroom which enable teachers and pupils to make learning transformative, i.e. to create a zone of transformation where the cultures of teachers and pupils meet. As explained by Shor (1992: 204) ”Empowering education takes place in a symbolic frontier, a development borderland between the teacher’