Little attention has been paid to the use of collaborative writing to improve learners essay writing at
Saudi universities. The current study aims to examine the extent to which collaborative writing is more
or less significant in improving learners skills in writing as opposed to individual work in class.
This research study focuses on the advantages of collaborative writing in class to improve EFL learners
proficiency in essay writing. In the field of applied linguistics, this issue is an interesting area to
investigate. To what extent is collaborative work more or less significant than individual writing in
improve learners skills in essay writing? The researcher chose 20 L2 male students in level three
majoring in English at Imam University, College of Languages and Translation in Saudi Arabia.
To collect data, the researcher utilized four researcher-made instruments: an EFL essay writing test,
error correction writing test, open-ended questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews. The data was
collected from the participants using a mixed method technique that combines qualitative and
quantitative analysis in a unique treatment. The data of this study was found to be very significant,
which will open room for wide research in collaborative writing as a good method to adopt in teaching
EFL writing.
Email: Mansour.alammar@ul.ie
This paper focuses on an ongoing study of the 'Gaeltacht' areas of An Rinn and An Sean Phobal in
County Waterford. The aim of the study is to establish the distinctiveness of this area in terms of the
use of Irish as one of the primary modes of communication. The research seeks to identify and explain
the reasons for this reflexive use of language as a form of socio-cultural behaviour that continues
despite external processes that have caused language shift in other similar sized areas. The area of
focus comprises two contiguous places that can be identified by their designations as parishes and
which, together, are also formally designated as Gaeltacht na nDise. The term Gaeltacht denotes
areas where Irish is, or was, the main spoken language of a substantial number of the local population;
these areas are also defined by Government order. However, Gaeltacht areas are not the product of
statutory regulation. Rather, they are vestigial examples of the predominance of Irish as a spoken
language. Historically, Irish was supplanted as the spoken language in response to the process of
colonisation and this happened remarkably quickly but it is equally noteworthy that the replacement
of Irish with English was not complete with the former surviving as the primary language in a number
of locales. One of the main commonalities between areas in which Irish endured is that they tended
to be characterised by geographical remoteness and marginalisation from hubs where more
favourable socio-economic conditions/circumstances prevailed. This study investigates why Irish has
survived in one such community. The paper will outline the study design which includes the following
four phases of data-collection: 1) a household survey (2015); 2) 2 focus groups (2016); 3)
questionnaires to schools (2016); and 4) interviews with people from both parishes, chosen randomly
(2017).
Email: Caitriona.Breathnach@mic.ul.ie
Burns, Denise, Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection, School of Policy
and Practice, Dublin City University.
a literature survey with each partner country researching assessment literature in their own
country
a toolkit developed from the findings in the four languages piloted in each country.
Dissemination will include a module for pre-service teacher education. An external evaluator will
give a report which will be included in the final report to be published in the four languages in 2019.
Dr. Martin Brown, Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection, School of Policy and
Practice, Dublin City University. martin.brown@dcu.ie
Professor Joe OHara, Director: Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection, School
of Policy and Practice, Dublin City University. joe.ohara@dcu.ie
Professor Gerry McNamara, Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection, School of
Policy and Practice, Dublin City University. gerry.mcnamara@dcu.ie
Email: denise.burns@dcu.ie
E-mail: santhi1@eircom.net
The framework applies models of reader engagement contrastively in order to measure equivalence
and investigate the extent to which English-language based models can successfully be applied to
languages other than English. Equivalence of questions and reader pronouns is measured through a
convergent corpus-based contrastive functional analysis, tested for different types of equivalence
such as frequency, distribution, form, word class and sentence length. The preliminary results of this
research indicate evidence of strong similarities and important differences in the use of questions and
reader pronouns as reader engagement, contributing to the literature on the culture and nature of
academic writing in English, French and Spanish. Pedagogically, the attested examples in multiple
languages, acquired from the corpus approach, can be useful in illustrating grammatical structures
used to pose questions and include readers in research. Furthermore, this approach can demonstrate
the application of comparable corpora to the teaching of English for academic purposes, and its French
and Spanish counterparts, francais langue acadmique and el Espaol con fines acadmicos.
E-mail: niall.curry@ul.ie
The aim of this research was to explore the impact of home based learning activities on young
childrens language and cognitive development. The data were drawn from the Growing Up in Ireland
study, a nationally representative longitudinal birth cohort study. We examined whether different
types of learning activities affect scores on a development index when the infants were 9 months, and
on standardised reasoning and vocabulary tests when the children were aged 3 years. We also
controlled for other factors such as the educational level of the parents and whether the child is in
regular non-parental childcare. We found evidence that language activities such as reading and talking
to the infant have a modest but statistically significant effect on cognitive development as young as 9
months. Similarly, at 3 years of age reading is associated with higher reasoning and vocabulary scores
but other learning activities such as games, songs, painting, counting and reciting the alphabet have
mixed effects. We consider the implications of the findings for government and educational policy.
Title: Multimodal Fluency and the Art of Remembering: Using the Graphic
Novel to Assimilate Traumatic Memories.
In accordance with the provisions of this years IRMSS contributions that explore language, learning
and culture as counter-intuitive, alien, and as variables of social analysis are invited. Given this
inclusive spectrum of parameters the expanding field of multimodality makes for a very suitable fit.
According to Gunther Kress and Jeff Bezemer multimodality attempts to provide a framework where
all modes are treated as one integrated domain that constitute the cultural and semiotic resources of
a community and amongst which no hierarchy of prioritisation exists. In this interdisciplinary and
multimodal spirit I will use the graphic novel to explore how negotiating a medium that consists of
multiple modes can provide a highly effective tool for the assimilation and/or restoration of traumatic
and indeed alien memories. To do this I will use Ari Folman and David Polonskys Waltz with
Bashir. Not only does this novel document Folmans attempts to treat his own counter-intuitive
manifestation of post-traumatic stress disorder but it also affords the multimodal student with a
variance of resources through which to explore key psychoanalytic terms that play an important role
in the resolution of memory loss and combat trauma. To expand on the multimodal potential of
analysing a condition through as many modes as possible this presentation will then be complemented
by a brief comparison of the novel to the animated feature of the same name, which adds a further
distinctive mode to the overall domain, that being sound. I will introduce this approach by way of
contextual examples taken from another well-known graphic memoir of war time atrocity, Art
Spiegelmans Maus. Thus, a contextual analysis of both novels will be used to theorise the benefit of
visualising traumatic memories while at the same time conveying compelling narratives by way of
navigating an integrated domain capable of exploiting the full potential of multiple modes of
communication.
Email: imissairplanes@hotmail.com
Title: The role of fathers in early childhood caregiving and home learning
activities
The aim of this study is to explore the role of fathers in childrens cognitive and socio-emotional
development in early childhood. While much is known about the maternal role in the home learning
environment and in caregiving behaviour, less is known of fathers role in these areas. This study draws
on data from a large birth cohort study, Growing Up in Ireland, to investigate fathers roles in early
childhood care and activities. Data from 11,134 young children were collected when they were 9
months, 3 years and 5 years of age. Preliminary findings showed that when the children were aged 9
months, fathers were involved in many activities of a caregiving nature such as bathing and feeding
the infant as well as activities that aided cognitive and socio-emotional development such as reading
to and playing with the infant. However, when the children were five-years-old, mothers were more
likely than fathers to read to their children and listen to their childrens reading. The findings are
discussed in relation to supporting childrens cognitive and socio-emotional development and may
have implications for parenting practices and government policy.
Email: jiangxin6@163.com
Title: What can research on education injustice represent? What does it do?
In this paper, Karl will examine the lived ethics and politics of conducting and disseminating research
on education and social injustice. It is possible to assert a set of normative, moral principles on
research conduct and dissemination, and such principles are institutionalised in various codes.
However, drawing on his research on racisms, religious discrimination and sexualities in Irish
education contexts, Karl will outline how the lived everyday reality of research exceeds these
principles in both creative and problematic ways. He will draw on Michel Foucaults work on the
normalising power of discourses, or bodies of knowledge, and Judith Butler on performative citation,
to argue for a form of research community that practices intensive, yet open-ended analyses, which
defy neat categorisations and reifications of dis/advantage apparent in education policy and practice.
Finally, he will examine the merits of post-representational, feminist and Deleuzian research genres
that ask not just what our research findings are, and perhaps more significantly, what our research
does.
Liu, Yuying, Centre for Applied Language Studies (CALS), School of English and
Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, P.R. China
Without the study of culture, second language acquisition is not complete (Paige and Stringer, 1997).
While teaching culture raises learners awareness of the target culture and their own home culture, it
gives them an intercultural competence (Kramsch, 1997, p. 231). This research contributes to the
vibrant global conversation among professionals about the ways of developing learners intercultural
competence. The study aims to provide insights into the current teaching practices in developing
intercultural competence through teaching Irish culture in the English for Speakers of Other Languages
provisions in the Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board of Ireland where the overall
educational goal is to facilitate the successful integration of newcomer adult learners into Irish society.
As there were only four coursebooks of Irish origin in 2008 (Mishan, 2008) and 97 per cent of teachers
lack appropriate training in teaching English as a second language including developing learners
intercultural competence (Lyons and Little, 2009), this research study pays particular attention to how
teaching materials support teachers and learners in developing learners intercultural competence in
an Irish context. Data collection consists of quantitative and qualitative content analyses of the
materials in use, a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with the teachers as well as a
participatory action research approach for gathering data from the learners. The investigation also
involves the exploration of the state-of-the-art literature on culture, intercultural competence and the
cultural content of teaching materials. This study aims to offer a recommendation for an Irish national
framework for materials that are to develop newcomer adult learners intercultural competence in an
Irish context and it intends to help teachers incorporate Irish culture into their materials effectively
and appropriately.
This research project will inform the development of an online language diagnostic resource for Irish
at university level, aimed at supporting and improving students language awareness and promoting
efficient, independent language learning. This project investigates students ability to self-assess
language proficiency, comparing these results with a corpus of writing samples from the same cohort.
A mixed-methods approach is used. Qualitative methods are used to compare responses concerning
motivation and self-assessed language proficiency (questionnaire concerning motivation and self-
assessed competence level) with quantitative results (error analysis focusing on grammar in written
work), which are benchmarked against the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
(CEFR) competency descriptors. Students will reflect on CEFR-based Can do statements, as used by
the Association of Language Testers of Europe (ALTE), to answer the following question:
Email: kate.neachtain@gmail.com
This presentation will draw on themes of heritage language education and culture-bound language
attitudes, via an exploration of receptiveness to Spanish language learning in New Mexico. The
research underlying the article was carried out by the presenter within three school districts in New
Mexico, a South Western U.S. state with protracted historic ties to the Spanish language yet which
nonetheless struggles to develop Spanish language proficiency within its school going population.
Drawing from mixed-method sourced data collected over a seven month period in 2016 in three
school districts within New Mexico, the paper discusses the stratified views of high school students,
teachers, parents, educators and community members to Spanish language use in New Mexico,
explores concepts of identity that Spanish language evokes in the sampled population, traces the
historic and cultural factors that have impacted on attitudes to the use and learning of Spanish in New
Mexico and makes suggestions on how these research findings can be used by language-planners to
improve outcomes for language learners in the United States and beyond. Finally, data findings will
be discussed in terms of their illumination of the role of family and community engagement in the
cultivation of native, heritage and second languages.
Brolchin, Conchr & Ceallaigh, T.J., Mary Immaculate College, Limerick
Title: Language Choices and Ideologies in Irish-medium Education
A key tenet of immersion education affirms the need to communicate, create knowledge and explore
school environments, predominantly through a prescribed target language, which usually happens to
be pupils L2. Some scholars have questioned the efficacy of completely separating languages for
teaching and learning however, and have called for a more fluid approach to languaging that
incorporates using pupils L1 as a learning resource (Cummins, 2008; Garca, 2011). This presentation
highlights certain tensions between total immersion ideologies on the one hand, that seek to protect
and promote a prescribed, minority language and a translanguaging philosophy on the other hand, in
which pupils are afforded the freedom to engage with content and communicate more fluidly, by
utilizing their full linguistic repertoire. Such tensions become all the more heightened, in contexts
where unequal power imbalances exist between the primary languages of the program (Garca, 2011),
as is the case in Gaelscoileanna and Gaeltacht schools. Using a case-study methodology incorporating
interviews, semi-structured classroom observations and focus groups, we explore how these
translanguaging/immersion tensions get played out in four senior immersion classes, and attempt to
unpack some of the ideologies underlying observed pedagogical practices. Initial findings appear to
show a reticence towards embracing a more cross-linguistic, integrated language approach to
immersion education in which pupils are encouraged to language in their L1, in order to unlock
learning efficiencies. Furthermore, although practitioners see a translanguaging approach as holding
potential benefit for certain cohorts of pupils in other language programs, it is often perceived to be
unsuitable in the minority language immersion contexts of this study. We conclude, that this
reluctance is being driven primarily by anxieties around the perceived fragility of Irish, vis-a-vis the
omnipresence of English in pupils lives, coupled with, a lack of expertise in cross-linguistic pedagogical
practices, such as those espoused in development stages of Irelands Integrated Language Curriculum
(Cummins & Duibhir, 2012). Finally, opportunities for professional development across the
continuum of teacher education are outlined and areas for further research are explored.
One of the many changes, or turns, in linguistics research, since the 1970s, has been the empirical
turn, where introspection on language was superseded by empirical investigations. Within this new
paradigm, corpus linguistics (CL) has become the main methodology (Taavitsainen and Junker 2015).
This methodological dominance has happened within a matter of a few decades and this has been in
tandem with technological leaps in data storage and analysis software. Within its development, corpus
linguistics has spread its application to many sub-fields of linguistics as well as remaining a robust sub-
field in its own right. As del and Reppen note, however, some subfields are more amenable to
corpus-linguistic methodology than others (2008: 1). Pragmatics is one of the sub-fields to take on
this data-driven empirical methodology even though it already had established means of collecting
empirical (elicited) data, mainly through Discourse Completion Tasks (DDLs) and role-plays, especially
in the context of the study of contrastive second language pragmatic competence (Blum-Kulka et al.,
1989). Bringing a CL methodology to pragmatic studies is not without its challenges, as this paper will
discuss. The default analytical approach inherent in CL is to move quantitatively from frequencies of
forms to their functions. In other words, it takes a primarily form-to-function approach to analysing
data. For those involved in the study of pragmatics, and especially speech acts, the norm is to work in
the opposite direction, starting with a quest to investigate a specific pragmatic function and, through
means of carefully designed elicitation tasks, to work from the function under investigation to the
forms which are typically used, in a function-to-form approach. In the context of corpus pragmatics
methodology, this paper will look at how form-to-function approaches can be balanced with function-
to-form approaches.
Email: anne.okeeffe@mic.ul.ie
On foot of the observation by Clancy (2016: 172) of the need for a comparison of unscripted intimate
discourse with media representations of such discourse as a locus for future research, this paper seeks
to address the question as to what extent the intimate contexts of radio advertising in Ireland
represent naturally occurring intimate discourse. This paper highlights the usefulness of a corpus-
based approach in addressing this question. The research examines the use of the vocative in the
context of radio advertising in Ireland through the analysis of a corpus of ads broadcast on an Irish
radio channel. This linguistic item is examined in terms of its occurrence and functions in the distinct
components of the ad, the Action (comprised of context-based dialogic interaction, designed to
imitate discourses of everyday informal interaction (Lee 1992:172-3)) and Comment (commonly
monologic, decontextualised and associated with the slogan or voice of authority (Sussex 1989)).
Comparisons are made between the findings from studies of naturally occurring Irish English data and
those of the radio ad corpus, with a view to determining how the occurrence and function of this
linguistic item reflects unscripted intimate discourse in the Irish context.
As the majority of schools operate a system of rolling enrolment, these learners may find themselves
seeing grammatical and lexical topics that they have never encountered before, while still needing the
time to master more basic linguistic content. This can be very demotivating for learners, but often
schools do not have the resources or the student numbers to deliver an A0 or beginner course in
order to bring these learners up to speed. The A0 syllabus which I designed is a 20 hour programme
designed for autonomous study, delivered fully online via an e-learning platform using original
materials and videos, but can easily be adapted to the classroom or as a blended learning course.
The usefulness of Corpus Linguistics (CL) as a tool for the investigation of language use has become
increasingly obvious over the last few decades. By means of computerized software, this discipline
allows for the application of a scientific approach to linguistic research which provides quantitative
and qualitative empirical data on language use, patterns, and developments which simple intuition
could never discern. Although controversial, literary dialects can function as linguistic evidence, seeing
as their use of orality to infuse realism into books can also provide insight into potential linguistic
developments (Hodson 2014: 200). Traditionally, research conducted in terms of fictionalized Irish
English (FIrE) has either concentrated on the use of this literary dialect by specific writers or on the
use of particular features (Sullivan 1980; McCafferty 2009; Amador-Moreno 2015, among others).
However, few academics have looked at the use of this literary dialect systematically using corpora
(Hickey 2003, Cesiri 2012, and Connell 2014), and none have look at its use in contemporary literature.
Thus, my PhD thesis investigates the use of FIrE in a corpus of contemporary IrE literature that I
compiled, i.e. Corpus of Fictionalized Irish English (CoFIrE), which consists of 16 works of fiction and
contains over 1 million words. Despite the considerable help corpus analysis tools offer researchers,
building a DIY corpus can also be an arduous task. From selecting and digitizing the books to creating
a reliable coding system, among other issues, building CoFIrE was challenging, yet the advantages of
using it far outweigh the drawbacks. In this paper, therefore, I discuss the strengths and weaknesses
of building a corpus of contemporary Irish English fiction.