Disciplinary registers in a first-year program

Abstract

With notable exceptions, few studies of teaching and learning of scholarly registers and genres to users of English as an additional language focus on curriculum. For a contextualized understanding of register-curriculum relations, this study investigates disciplinary registers in the Academic English Program at Vantage College, a new alternative-entry, first-year program at the University of British Columbia, Canada. In integrating content and language instruction, the curriculum adopts systemic functional linguistics as the informing theory of language. Program registers and their relations are investigated using Matthiessen’s (2015) context-based register typology. This novel case study highlights register-curriculum relations in key aspects, including discipline-specific variation in register instruction, planned learning trajectories, faculty collaborations, and relations between English for general and specific academic purposes.

Performance Operating Units and Meaning: Fusion Theory and Writing Pedagogy

“…Linguistic research enhances our knowledge of the ways people use language, and the relationships between writing and cognitive development are being reexamined [24]. In the United States, with the exception of our traditional composition classes, the style of language is often viewed through a sociolinguistic lens that relates it to register [24], [25]. Work in linguistics therefore provides a fuller understanding of the cognitive effects of writing and its interactional use in social reinforcement broadly understood.…”

Metaphor Comprehension and Engineering texts: Implications for English for Academic Purpose (EAP) and First-year University Student Success

“…As such, the goal is not to avoid the use of metaphoric language, which would be an impossible task. However, awareness coupled with EAP curricula addressing metaphor comprehension could be the answer in helping to bridge the gap (e.g., Ferreira & Zappa-Hollman, 2019).…”

“…Existing literature demonstrates the benefits for English L2 students of developing metaphoric competence (e.g., Hoang, 2014;Littlemore, 2001a;Low, 1988) and the difficulties they have in recognizing, correctly interpreting, and producing metaphors in English (e.g., Danesi, 1995;Gunderson et al, 1988;Kathpalia & Carmel, 2011;Littlemore, 2001b). However, with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Duff et al, 2015;Ferreira, 2020;Ferreira & Zappa-Hollman, 2019), metaphor comprehension is often conspicuously absent from English as a second/ additional language (ESL/EAL) and EAP curricula (Littlemore & Low, 2006). This small-scale, mixed methods study aims to shed light on the impact of metaphoric content in engineering reading material encountered by first-year university students.…”

The Development of Students' Assessment Literacies as They Transition to University: An Exploratory Case Study

“…As Beynen (2020) pointed out, students may be socialized into some disciplinary norms in their high school studies, but expectations are often different, if not more advanced in university, especially in courses and programs that are not offered at the secondary school level. In addition, recognizing and learning to use to the academic language conventions specific to individual disciplines provide additional challenges for students whose first language is not English or the primary language of teaching and administration (e.g., Beynen, 2020;Cheng & Fox, 2008;Crossman & Pinchbeck, 2012;Duff, 2010;Ferreira & Zappa-Hollman, 2019;Keefe & Shi, 2017;Nguyen et al, 2019;Van Viegen & Russell, 2019).…”