School of Language and Culture

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https://hdl.handle.net/10292/554
The study of language, society and culture is at the core of the broad spectrum of knowledge known as the humanities. AUT's School of Language and Culture focuses on language in its widest sense — creative writing, English and its relationship with new media, translation and interpreting, international studies and the importance of intercultural competencies, discourse analysis and language teaching.

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Browsing School of Language and Culture by Author "Conway, C"

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    Foreign Language Teachers’ Language Proficiency and Their Language Teaching Practice
    (Taylor & Francis, 2013) Richards, H; Conway, C; Roskvist, A; Harvey, S
    Teachers’ subject knowledge is recognised as an essential component of effective teaching. In the foreign language context, teachers’ subject knowledge includes language proficiency. In New Zealand high schools, foreign languages (e.g. Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish) have recently been offered to learners earlier in their schooling, prompting a demand for more foreign language teachers. A nationwide professional development programme for language teachers is building language teacher capacity to meet the demand. Participants on the programme have a range of language teaching subject knowledge. While some have extensive knowledge of their target teaching language but lack formal language teaching qualifications, others are generalist teachers with an interest in teaching a foreign language who are just beginning to develop their subject knowledge. This paper considers teachers’ subject knowledge, that is, their language proficiency. We report on the differences in the classroom practice of teachers with limited subject knowledge, compared with teachers with more extensive subject knowledge. The data were analysed against key aspects of teaching based on the work of Farrell and Richards. The analysis revealed a variance in the number of key aspects the teachers could manage and differences in their level of effectiveness in managing the key aspects. We highlight the importance for teachers with limited levels of target language proficiency of continuing to develop their subject knowledge in order to maximise the language-learning experience for their students.
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    Intercultural competence: encouraging learner reflection
    (Spanish Teachers Association New Zealand Aotearoa (STANZA), 2015-02-20) Richards, H; Conway, C
    Presentation of research findings from a wider study on the development of intercultural communicative language teaching, with recommendations for current language teachers in New Zealand schools. The focus is on the role of learner reflection in the language teaching classroom with key features synthesised from current literature.
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    Intercultural Language Learners: Are You Providing Opportunities for Your Language Learners to Reflect?
    (New Zealand Association of Language Teachers, 2014-12) Conway, C; Richards, H
    As you know, the two strands of Knowledge Awareness - language and culture - have equal weighting in the Learning Languages area of the NZ 2007 Curriculum. This was a paradigm shift in the teaching of additional languages, and to support teachers the Ministry of Education published a report (Newton, Yates, Shearn and Nowitski, 2010) that outlined 6 principles for intercultural communicative language teaching (iCLT). Intercultural language learners develop both the language and ability to engage with the foreign culture (Byram, Gribkova and Starkey, 2002) and interact across cultural boundaries. They are able to see the world through the eyes of others, and also, importantly, look at themselves from the outside (Sercu 2005).
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    Meeting the needs of visiting in-service EFL teachers from China
    (AUT University; VUW, 2007) Conway, C; Richards, H
    Providing short term intensive professional development courses that successfully meet the needs of course participants can be a challenging task. This paper discusses a tailor- made programme for visiting overseas teachers to a New Zealand university. It presents the pedagogical principles underpinning the course, and the considerations and processes taken in designing the course to meet participants’ needs. The paper discuss the extent to which these needs were met on the course as well as looking at how the learning was applied once the teachers were in back in their teaching context in China. It concludes with the language teacher educators’ insights into establishing and meeting needs, the value of reflections and the effectiveness of learning transfer.
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    Reflection and dialogue on postgraduate professional development for experienced language teachers
    (RMIT Publishing, 2013) Conway, C; Denny, HG
    Recent discussion has focused on the benefits and constraints of using and teaching reflection for professional self-development (Farrell, 2007; Volk, 2010). Alongside this is an interest in the value of dialogue in teacher development (for example Edge, 2007). This paper describes the experience of advanced language teachers participating in a reflective practice project undertaken as a paper in a professional master’s qualification in a New Zealand tertiary institution. Using data from teacher participant reflective essays and an end of course evaluation, the paper describes teachers’ growth in reflectivity and notes the role of dialogue in promoting professional development. The paper also explores the extent to which Stanley’s framework (1998) was useful in measuring levels of reflectivity. The researchers found that teachers believed the course promoted their professional development in several ways, and that the activities participants found most helpful were ones that contained an element of dialogic interaction. Participants’ level of reflectivity at the end of the course was high on Stanley’s (1998) framework, but it was necessary to modify parts of the framework for use in this context.
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    Teacher Provision of Opportunities for Learners to Develop Language Knowledge and Cultural Knowledge
    (Taylor & Francis, 2010) Conway, C; Richards, H; Harvey, S; Roskvist, A
    This paper examines a language teacher education professional development programme in New Zealand that draws on the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum. At the heart of the Learning Languages area in the curriculum is communicative competence, with the understanding that communication involves language knowledge and cultural knowledge. The New Zealand Ministry of Education expects that schools will be able to offer all Years 7–10 students the opportunity to learn an additional language in order for them to participate effectively in multicultural settings, both in New Zealand and internationally. To deliver this, language teachers and generalist teachers are being encouraged to undertake professional development. This paper reports on a research evaluation of a Ministry-sponsored language teacher professional development programme. The findings reveal success in increasing teacher understanding of how to develop learners’ language knowledge, because this part of the programme was underpinned by a deep principled knowledge base, and teachers had opportunities to acquire knowledge and participate in a language teaching community. However, teacher understanding of how to increase learners’ cultural knowledge was less successful, because of a lack of a principled knowledge base of intercultural language teaching. We argue that effective professional development programmes need both to be based on deep principled knowledge and to offer learning that involves acquisition and participation.
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