Notes on Towards Intervention in Positive Discourse Analysis by Barlett (2010)

Barlett, T. (2010). Towards intervention in positive discourse analysis. In C. Coffin, T. Lillis, & K. O'Halloran (Eds.), Applied linguistics methods: A reader. (pp. 133-147). London, UK: Routledge.

I. Introduction

Methodology. PDA demonstrates where discourse works and understanding how a particular discourse works through ethnographic approach, i.e. framing texts within a broader description and evaluating the responses of the population in the same community (p. 134; see Insights a).

II. Problem identification: The rise of Critical Linguistics

Critical linguistics. The way people speak to each other is connected with their relative social position. In Critical Linguistics, advances the role of texts in social life.

-Building on Critical Linguistics, PDA concerns to take its findings back to the people involved to “contribute to improving social interaction in various contexts.” (p. 136)

III. Understanding problems: Discourse and socialization

Definitions. “The idea, then, is that the dominant discourses (ways of seeing the world) are maintained invisibly through the everyday discourse (talk in context) of the population…” (p. 137)

IV. Addressing problems: From CDA to PDA

-Intervention can be futile if attacking the dominant values is the goal. It is likely to be ineffective itself.

-Language is powerful in their own context yet reliance on ‘trained linguists’ (having their own advocacies) to provide evaluation on different text and their effectiveness will not develop discourse participants’ “voices”.

V. Living in the solution: The need for common ground

On the positive side, ideology helps community members connect, unite and make sense of their social life for coherence. On the negative side, it serves to make other practices of other communities illogical or inferior. (See Insights b)

VI. Language and powers

a. My dad smoked 40 a day and he was dead by the time he was 52.

b. Smoking is harmful to you and those around.

c. You should really consider giving up smoking.

-Different texts are suitable for the same purpose in different contexts and with different relationships between the speaker and their audience---between societies context link might be different. Different speakers carry more weight in specific contexts.

-Fieldwork in Guyana, South Africa using SFL’s three metafunctions to link aspects of language to social context: ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunction.

-This approach helps participants in the discourse to “rethinking their deeply held view in new and ‘un-naturalizes ways’”. (p. 147; see also Insights c)

Insights:

This article allowed me discover/re-affirm that:

1. the response of both parties, or the effect of discourse thereof, is important to analysis.
2. there is no one right viewpoint opposed to many false ideologies; ideologies unify communities lived by them and overlaps are areas for positive discourse (e.g. getting things done).
3. nurturing areas of discourse that invite sharing and not shifting of powers is a responsible undertaking.

 NOTE: I apologize for using PDA for my own economy. This is not a valid abbreviation for Positive Discourse Analysis. 

Notes on Direct and Indirect Access to Corpora: An Exploratory Case Study Comparing Students’ Error Correction and Learning Strategy Use in L2 Learning by Hyunsook Yoon & Jung Won Jo (2014) pt3

Yoon, H., & Jo, J. W. (2014). Direct and indirect access to corpora: An exploratory case study comparing students’ error correction and learning strategy use in L2 writing. Language Learning & Technology, 18, 96-117.

Conclusion

1. Concordancing helps develop meta-/cognitive abilities as it motivates discovery learning, and finally, autonomous learning.
2. The views presented in the study is ‘tentative’ due to the “exploratory nature and small sample size of the study” (p. 112).
3. This study has pedagogical implications. Specifically, they include directions for teacher regulation of classroom environment, material use, and scaffolding.
4. Training for utilizing the concordance must be explicit.
5. The study pose itself as to have provided “preliminary understanding of EFL students’ learning processes and strategies they will likely to apply in two different uses of the corpora.

Notes on Direct and Indirect Access to Corpora: An Exploratory Case Study Comparing Students’ Error Correction and Learning Strategy Use in L2 Learning by Hyunsook Yoon & Jung Won Jo (2014) pt2

Yoon, H., & Jo, J. W. (2014). Direct and indirect access to corpora: An exploratory case study comparing students’ error correction and learning strategy use in L2 writing. Language Learning & Technology, 18, 96-117.

Findings

1. Learners’ overall improvement of grammatical and lexical knowledge
1. In-/direct access to corpora increased grammatical and lexical knowledge.

Evidence from pre-writing and post-writing evaluations on same writing topic.

Rate of grammatical errors decreased: 9.9% in pre-writing to 6.3% in post-.

Lexical errors from 3.7% to 2.0%.

Learners corrected error present in the pre-writing such as use of articles and verb form/mood.

Mistakes were still observed in post-writing but grammatical and lexical knowledge have increased.

Authors argue that more errors can mean more improvement along the way because of the immediate feedback from the corpus.

Considerations: East Asian pedagogy, which has a strong rote learning methodologies and Confucian philosophical ethic (where the instructor is the master of the teaching material).

2. Learners’ error correction pattern in indirect and direct corpus use
1. Rate of self-correction was higher in the indirect use than in the direct use.

Learners corrected 87% of grammatical errors; 66% of lexical errors by using concordance data on their own.

Learners, when they cannot correct other errors, asked for teacher’s intervention.

The teacher helped learners to correct most of the errors successfully.

While there are suggestions, a pattern of deliberate rejection and continued their lexical errors.

Self-correction rate lower in the direct corpus use. Simple interventions of the teacher helped correct all their errors.

(1)   *butter, sugar and white powder; (third composition, indirect corpus)

(2)   *nonhuman lifestyle in Korea; (seventh composition, direct corpus)

In (1) the student, though she did not know the word ‘flour’, the given examples point her to use ‘flour’ and used it.

In (2) the student looked up ‘human’ and realized he wanted to say ‘humane’. He then started all over again and found the correct negative meaning inflection.

Though (2) took a longer time, they “seemed to naturally acquire new language information”.

Scanning skills is observed in a Young, the highest level student, who did not require teacher’s help. It begs exploration to establish if direct corpus use appeals to learners who are patient, analytic, and fast enough to read and scan data.

Two students, who are lower level, seemed to benefit more from teacher-edited corpus materials. Further exploration is demanded.

                                                              i.      An observation, proficient students easily changed preconceived errant knowledge when pursuing direct corpus access.

                                                            ii.      Lower-level student seemed to benefit more from teacher-edited corpus materials when having conflicting knowledge.

Higher level students tend to defer to their prior knowledge even though it contrasts with the concordance examples. This is shown to be in contrast with low-level students.

High level students exhibited resistance to corrections for lexical errors in the indirect corpus.

Joon, resisted teacher’s explanation with his use of novel expression *not-well planned building arrangements.

3. Learning strategies in indirect and direct corpus use.
1. “Learners adopted learning strategies appropriate for the particular task in the new learning situation. This is a very personal experience to the learner…” (p. 108).

                                                              i.      In both settings: most frequent is cognitive strategy; followed by social strategy.

                                                            ii.      In indirect use: metacognitive strategy (4.9 to 2.5 percent)

Participants coordinate their own learning process toward cognitive.

2. Subcategories of cognitive strategy

                                                              i.      Resourcing: Making use of materials

1.      The “trying-again-if-you-fail strategy”

2.      In indirect use of 15 examples, learners moved to another strategy to solve the problem.

3.      In direct use, they type another word to solve problems.

4.      Suggestion in direct use: training students in using the concordance operations.

                                                            ii.      Application of prior knowledge

1.      If resourcing fails, there is an observable shift to acquired knowledge and logical reasoning.

2.      First, after learners produced an apt prior knowledge they move to evaluation strategies (metacognitive)

3.      Second, when learners have incorrect prior knowledge, teacher intervention is requested.

4.      Third, having no relevant knowledge to the issue at hand, teacher intervention was necessary particularly in direct use.

                                                          iii.      Translation strategy

1.      In indirect use, 10.0 percent; direct 9.4.

2.      Overall, learners skim data which they can easily understand regardless of produced data.

3.      In indirect use, interest in translation is lost because sentences are cut off.

Advocating naturalistic learning environment, indirect corpus must be produced in full sentences.

The data in direct corpus use shows that “a foreign speaker would not confront every from of language use in a native setting” (p. 110).

                                                          iv.      Questions for clarification

1.      In indirect use, learners use various cognitive strategies to correct errors. After a failed analysis, they ask for teacher’s explanation.

2.      In direct use, learners ask the teacher a lot to help them simplify the data, or point our relevant examples.

3.      For two students, question for clarification is “a way to trim their anxiety and elevate their confidence” (p. 111).