Australian English‐language textbooks: the gender issues

This paper examines the nature and extent of gender stereotyping, both linguistic and pictorial, in a set of 10 Australian English‐language textbooks for intermediate learners. In order to determine how accurately the books reflect the status of women in contemporary Australian society a content and linguistic analysis was conducted, focusing on, amongst other things, the ratio of male to female characters, the portrayal of women and men in social and domestic settings, the use of gender‐inclusive expressions, and the ordering of items in female/male symmetrical constructions. Despite the generally high level of sensitivity to gender issues displayed by most of the writers, the findings suggest that the ideal of a truly balanced treatment of men and women has yet to be achieved.     

Taboos in English

ＩｎＥｎｇｌｉｓｈ ,ｓｏｍｅｗｏｒｄｓｏｒｅｘｐｒｅｓｓｉｏｎｓａｒｅｔｏｂｅａｖｏｉｄｅｄｂｅ ｃａｕｓｅｔｒａｄｉｔｉｏｎｏｒｓｏｃｉａｌｃｕｓｔｏｍｓｔｒｏｎｇｌｙｆｒｏｗｎｓｏｎｔｈｅｉｒｕｓｅ.Ｔｈｅｓｅａｒｅｖｅｒｂａｌｔａｂｏｏｓ.Ｊｕｓｔａｓｖｉｏｌａｔｉｎｇａｃｕｌｔｕｒａｌｔａｂｏｏｃａｎｂｅｑｕｉｔｅｏｆｆｅｎｓｉｖｅ ,ｓｏｉｔｉｓｗｉｔｈａｖｅｒｂａｌｔａｂｏｏ .Ｕｓｉｎｇａｃｅｒｔａｉｎｗｏｒｄｏｒｍｅｎｔｉｏｎｉｎｇａｃｅｒａｉｎｔｏｐｉｃｉｎｐｕｂｉｃｗｏｕｌｄｂｅｓ…     

Creating good citizens in China: comparing Grade 7–9 school textbooks, 1997–2005

Ideological indoctrination is explicit and pervasive in China, with the school curriculum used to mould the spirit and character of adolescents, fulfilling ideological and political purposes. But the exact content varies over time. Comparing two versions of textbooks published in 1997 and 2005, this paper depicts the continuities and change in the curricular discourses centred on the notion of ‘good citizen’. While keeping the official status of socialism and the Party leadership untouched, the new textbooks soften the presentation and packaging of the ideological content, very much in tandem with the soft authoritarianism practised since the post‐Deng era when China has been deeply involved in the processes of marketisation, liberalisation and globalisation. The new textbooks also adopt a stance of greater reconciliation with human rights and global citizenship. While being granted more autonomy and rights, young citizens are still expected to shoulder the mission of national revival and socialist modernisation—very much derived from official policies.     

How do primary school English textbooks teach moral values? A critical discourse analysis

In recent decades, there has been a growing interest in the integration of moral values into language textbooks. This study aims to examine the inclusion of moral values in primary school language textbooks used in a multicultural country, specifically Indonesia. We conducted a critical discourse analysis adopting Martin and White’s (2005) language appraisal theory, Kress and van Leuween’s (2006) visual grammar theory, and Smetana’s (2006) social domain theory (social constructivism) to elucidate the verbal and visual representations of moral values in Indonesian primary school English language (EL) textbooks. The findings show that helping others, being friendly and polite, and tolerance are the most dominant moral values discursively depicted in three primary school EL textbooks in the present study. This suggests that those three values are socioculturally ingrained in Indonesian culture.     

Animals in English Sayings

英语成语里常出现动物的名称。在下面这些例子里,动物的名称已被删去,你能把它们恰当地补充上去吗?试试看:     

Pleasure in Learning English

If you think learning isn‘t interesting, then you can‘t learn well. Let me talk about the pleasure in learning English.     

English in My Eyes

If I were a lovely bird, English would be my wings. A bird can't fly without wings. If I were a fish, English would be the water. A fish can't live without water. If I were a flower, English would be the sun. A flower can't come out without sunshine.     

Changing the Subject: English in London, 1945–1967

Two recent books, English Teachers in a Postwar Democracy: Emerging Choice in London Schools, 1945–1965 and The London Association for the Teaching of English, 1947–67: A History, explore an important period in the development of English as a school subject and in the remaking of the professional identity of English teachers in London.     

The importance of morphological awareness in Korean–English biliteracy acquisition

This study examined the importance of morphological awareness in Korean–English biliteracy acquisition. English is an opaque orthographic system, in which letters and sounds have indirect correspondences. Korean Hangul, on the other hand, is a transparent orthographic system where there are direct letter-sound correspondences. Sixty-five children from Grades 2 to 4 were tested on a set of comparable Korean and English tasks tapping into oral vocabulary, phonemic awareness, morphological awareness, real word reading, and passage reading comprehension. Results showed that morphological awareness explained a significant amount of variance in word reading and reading comprehension within both Korean Hangul and English, suggesting that morphological awareness is important not only in an opaque orthography but also in a transparent orthography. Furthermore, morphological awareness in one language uniquely predicted a significant amount of variance in reading real words in the other language, suggesting that morphological awareness facilitates word reading across different orthographies.     

Creating spaces in a male domain: Sister Principals in Catholic schools, 1850–1974

This paper builds on recent scholarship on the gendered nature of educational work to argue that while conceptualisations of the principalship are underpinned by scholarship and policy assumptions that construct the work of the principal as a male domain, women have responded to opportunities presented by changing historical, political and social contexts, creating professional spaces for themselves as principals in primary and secondary schools within both state and Catholic school systems. It details how in the years prior to 1975, a time when the majority of state primary and secondary schools were led by men, the principalship of New Zealand Catholic schools was a largely female endeavour. The experience of Catholic Sister Principals was framed by the fact that they were women leading schools in a world dominated by men. Implicit in this arrangement were the ecclesiastical authority structures and their subjection to the convent hierarchy. Nevertheless, Sister Principals learned a range of strategies that enabled them to negotiate with Church and religious authorities and to undertake the diverse tasks associated with the leadership of Catholic schools.     

Determining the influence of heterogeneity in graduate institutions on university–industry collaboration policy in Taiwan

In this study, we assumed that organizational heterogeneity is a key factor influencing the effects of university–industry cooperation policy in higher education institutes. Gender difference, faculty position, faculty member nationality, and diversity in academic expertise were considered as the indicators of heterogeneity. One-hundred graduate institutes with doctoral programs were selected from 881 departments offering doctoral programs in Taiwan as our target group. Correlation analysis, regression analysis, and curve estimation according to the concept of Blau’s index were conducted to determine the effects of graduate institute heterogeneity. Gender difference in graduate institutes played a crucial role on the effect of university–industry collaboration. The results reveal that excessive or insufficient differentiation among faculty positions has an adverse effect on university–industry collaboration, presenting both advantages and disadvantages in this case. A Blau’s index value of 0.56 for faculty position differentiation indicated optimal performance in university–industry collaboration. To enhance university–industry collaboration, this study suggests that the optimal fit proportion of faculty numbers in graduate institutes is seven professors to two associate professors to one assistant professor. Diversity in expertise in graduate institutes also indicated improved performance in university–industry collaboration. Determining how to diversify the expertise in graduate institutes is critical for improving performance and must be considered at specific institute level. The findings provide specific strategies for graduate institutes to reallocate their human resources to optimize their performance in this field.     

The role of vocabulary depth in predicting reading comprehension among English monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual children in elementary school

The present study investigated the role of vocabulary depth in reading comprehension among a diverse sample of monolingual and bilingual children in grades 2?C4. Vocabulary depth was defined as including morphological awareness, awareness of semantic relations, and syntactic awareness. Two hundred ninety-four children from 3 schools in a Mid-Atlantic district and 3 schools in a Northeastern school district participated in the study and were assessed at the beginning and end of one school year on a wide variety of language and literacy measures. Bilingual children were assessed in English and Spanish. A latent difference score model that assessed change in a latent indicator of English reading comprehension from Time 1 (Fall) to Time 2 (Spring) was tested with results showing that vocabulary depth measures made significant contributions to initial status, but not change, in reading comprehension over and above between-subjects factors (grade, ethnicity, language status) and baseline control within-subject factors (word identification and vocabulary breadth). There was no added contribution of Spanish language measures to English reading comprehension among the bilingual students.     

Changing a discipline in universities and a subject in schools: British geography in the 1950s–1970s

Geography emerged as an academic discipline in British universities in response to demands for trained teachers of the subject in the country’s burgeoning secondary schools and their curricula formed a seamless transition from one to the other. In the 1960s a major shift in the nature of the academic discipline – often termed the ‘quantitative and theoretical revolutions’ – created a breach between the two, but there were demands from within the university sector for changes to the school subject so that a new seamless transition could be instated. This essay charts the nature of those changes and how they were brought about by the key actors, both individual and institutional. Having created that apparent unity, subsequent changes saw the two educational sectors drift apart, although recent developments have sought to reinstate stronger links.     

The “mission” of nuns in female education in Ireland,c.1850–1950

This article provides a review and critique of scholarship on female education in Ireland, arguing that researchers have provided a consensual narrative in which women religious (nuns) played a central role in providing academic education to girls and higher education to women. The tendency has been to claim the activities of women religious as part of the impetus that drove the organised women’s movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and that brought about a “revolution” in female education. But there remains a need to stand back from this decidedly secular “cause and effect” narrative, and turn a critical eye on the urge which congregations themselves identified as central to their mission in education. This is a revisionist perspective, qualifying and modifying claims made elsewhere by this author, and challenging the way in which the work of nuns in education has been interpreted as a part of the female education “revolution”. Recognising the spiritual impulse within religious orders that found expression in acts of duty, vocation and mission, the article concludes that convent education had purposes that were quite distinct from those prescribed by official “state” education programmes and examination systems, and that these purposes demand greater scrutiny in order to provide a more balanced understanding of female education in Ireland.     

Vowel representations in the invented spellings of Spanish–English bilingual kindergartners

The study compared the invented spelling of vowels in kindergarten native Spanish speaking children with that of English monolinguals. It examined whether, after receiving phonics instruction for short vowels, the spelling of native Spanish-speaking kindergartners would contain phonological errors that were influenced by their first language. Results showed no differences between the two groups on the number of correct short vowel spellings, even though the sounds for four of the five English short vowels do not exist in Spanish. By contrast, differences were observed in the representation of long vowels with a higher rate of error among ELLs. The students had not received explicit instruction in long vowels. ELLs appeared to be trying to represent the diphthongized nature of some English long vowels by spelling long vowels with more than one vowel. The results support the authors’ hypothesis that kindergarten phonics instruction had an impact on the invented spellings of new second language vowel phonemes.     

Authenticity in English Language Teaching

<正> ABSTRACT: Based on an analysis of the deficiency of the traditional ELT in authenticity, this paper puts forward some sug-gestions about how to make our ELT classroom more authentic.