3. Linguistic Ethnography

This study is a linguistic ethnographic investigation of the characteristics of teacher talk in an English for Medical Purposes (EMP) class at one of the medical colleges in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Teacher talk is an important element in classroom interaction and it has direct and indirect implications on the students’ learning. In classroom interaction, students and teachers are in a state of dynamic interactions. If not carried out tactfully, classroom interactions can affect learning process in several ways such as failure to engage in learning process and inappropriate teacher’s instructions. This study employed an eclectic qualitative methodology which incorporates principles of Linguistic Ethnography. Data generation took place in the entire Semester One of the academic years 2017/2018. The data in this study were obtained from10 classroom observations. Informal chat with the teacher was carried out towards the end of each observation session to get further clarification of what had happened during the observation. The teacher talk was found to be dominant in classroom interactions. The teacher talk had high frequency of self-repetition and paraphrasing. The teacher accepted students’ ideas and avoided criticism. The teacher praised the students and offered both positive and negative feedback. This study concludes that teacher talk still serves as a useful source for classroom input despite the buzz of learner-centered approach which demands reduced teacher talk in the classroom.

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The Effect on Learning Objectives and Outcomes of Students’ Inability to Develop Language Competencies for Appropriate Communication at the Undergraduate Level

English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies ◽

10.22158/eltls.v2n3p64 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2 (3) ◽

pp. p64

Author(s):

Casimir Adjoe ◽

Rosemary Kimani

Keyword(s):

Learning Outcomes ◽

Undergraduate Students ◽

Random Sampling ◽

Writing Skills ◽

Learning Objectives ◽

Communication Studies ◽

Undergraduate Level ◽

English Writing ◽

Linguistic Ethnography ◽

Language Competencies

The ability to communicate is a skill needed for beneficial learning outcomes. It is likewise needed for functioning in our connected world and spaces. However, undergraduate writing still gives the impression of poor English writing skills and inadequate communication. The paper takes a linguistic ethnography approach to examine the effects of poor English writing skills on the learning objectives and communication of undergraduate students. Using a random sampling of 37 examination scripts of Communication Studies students and their analysis through a revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives, the study suggests that poor English writing skills and the inability to communicate are likely among the effects of the inability of undergraduate students to acquire competence at the comprehension, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation tasks needed to enable them compose knowledge and meaningful messages as well as to communicate them. The study, therefore, suggests the need for investigating practical steps that can be taken to assist students with poor English writing competencies and skills to access knowledge and be able to produce knowledge in their learning situations, and further still, be able to communicate their knowledge as competently as possible without an overemphasis on grammatical correctness as the goal.

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