The aggressive internationalization of Canadian universities and increased immigration to Canada over the past 20 years have resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of second language (L2) students in Canadian universities. However, little is known about the factors that influence academic acculturation of L2 students or about the role of English for academic purposes (EAP) instruction in their acculturation process. This study examined L2 university students' perceptions of academic acculturation and the role of EAP instruction by means of interviews conducted with 56 L2 students at three Canadian universities. Findings suggest that the students who characterized their academic engagement as successful had typically developed more strategic learning and social skills as part of their acculturation process. Implications are drawn for the importance of aligning students' agendas for learning (i.e., their perceptions of needs) with EAP programs.
This article explores the role of students’ prior, or antecedent, genre knowledge in relation to their developing disciplinary genre competence by drawing on an illustrative example of an engineering genre-competence assessment. The initial outcomes of this diagnostic assessment suggest that students’ ability to successfully identify and characterize rhetorical and textual features of a genre does not guarantee their successful writing performance in the genre. Although previous active participation in genre production (writing) seems to have a defining influence on students’ ability to write in the genre, such participation appears to be a necessary but insufficient precondition for genre-competence development. The authors discuss the usefulness of probing student antecedent genre knowledge early in communication courses as a potential source for macrolevel curriculum decisions and microlevel pedagogical adjustments in course design, and they propose directions for future research.
This article explores the multimodal nature of teaching university mathematics in international contexts. It focuses on the 'cinematic' art of teaching, applying a multimodal approach in the analysis of the pedagogical genre of 'chalk talk' as embodied disciplinary practice. The research draws on rhetorical genre studies and theories of situated learning and communities of practice. The data considered for the study consist of audio/video recorded lectures, observational notes, and semi-structured interviews collected from 50 participants teaching in 7 countries. Participants differ in linguistic, cultural, and educational backgrounds, teaching experience, and languages they use for instruction. The study suggests that a multimodal treatment of chalk talk as an embodied disciplinary pedagogical practice of teaching mathematics in the undergraduate lecture classroom allows researchers to further uncover the complexity of this genre. Better understanding the embodied pedagogical practices of the international mathematics CoP may lead to new insights regarding disciplinary-specific pedagogies.
key wordsgenre, multimodal analysis, disciplinarity, professional practice, university mathematics multimodal communication The cinematic art of teaching university mathematics: chalk talk as embodied practice Janna Fox and Natasha Artemeva C a r l e t o n U n i v e r s i t y , C a n a d a
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