The development of an appropriate authorial voice is considered to be fundamental to successful academic writing in the target language. Voice research in second language (L2) writing, therefore, seeks to delineate voice salience in L2 academic texts, the relationship between voice and high quality academic writing, the second language writer's…

While there is widespread agreement on the expected benefits of hands-on access to corpora for language learners, reports abound of the difficulties involved in realising those benefits in practice. A particular focus of discussion is the challenge of transferring the skills of the corpus linguist to learners, so that they can explore this type of…

In this paper, I narrate highlights of my long process of learning and teaching English as a foreign language in mainland China and Australia, presenting a picture of the practices of learning and teaching English in mainland China from the bottom up. Over the past 50 years, English learners in mainland China, as Gao Yihong has written, have…

This paper investigates the extent of electronic dictionary use by language learners in an Australian university. All students in the study are formally enrolled in language courses across ten languages at first, second or third year level. The study places a particular emphasis on gauging student perceptions of the beneficial aspects of…

Schools in Australia are sometimes described, categorised and defined by their locations. These statistical geographical categorisations help to determine how funding is allocated. They help to determine the types of teachers that are recruited, what kinds of teachers are attracted, how they much they are paid. Geographical categories can create…

Objects that sit between intersecting social worlds, such as Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) tests, are "boundary objects"--dynamic, historically derived mechanisms which maintain coherence between worlds (Star & Griesemer, 1989). They emerge initially from sociopolitical mandates, such as the need to ensure a safe and efficient…

The Australian field of English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching is globally respected for its research and practice achievements over a period of some 30 years. However, this essential field of pedagogy is being diluted in the current Australian reform agenda which is firmly founded on a traditional vision of English as first language, and…

Enactment of policy on diversity and learning in Australian schools is evident in "diversity talk" in daily discourses of school teachers. From policy documents to daily staffroom conversations, there is extensive use in contemporary Western educational discourse of ethnolinguistic categories. The categorization of students to groups on…

This paper seeks to explore the extent of definite article usage variation in several varieties of English based on a classification of its usage types. An annotation scheme based on Hawkins and Prince was developed for this purpose. Using matching corpus data representing Inner Circle varieties and Outer Circle varieties, analysis was made on…

This paper reflects on a team translation project on Aboriginal culture designed to enhance university students' intercultural communication competence and understanding through engaging in an interactive team translation project funded by the Australia-China Council. A selected group of Chinese speaking translation students participated in the…

While numbers, data and statistics have been part of the bureaucracy since the emergence of the nation state, the paper argues that the governance turn has seen the enhancement of the significance of numbers in policy. The policy as numbers phenomenon is exemplified through two Australian cases in education policy, linked to the national schooling…

This paper explores the practicum experience of a group of bilingual student-teachers who taught Chinese using English to learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in Western Sydney schools. Specifically it explores how these student-teachers used English as the instructional language in class and what strengths and weaknesses they…

This report presents the "English Language Proficiency" (ELP) and Employability Framework", which has been designed to inform and support higher education institutions' (HEIs) policies and practices on ELP and graduate employability. The "Framework" was developed through a review of the national and international…

This study identifies a unique context for exploring lay understandings of language testing and, by extension, for characterizing the nature of language assessment literacy among non-practitioners, stemming from data in an inquiry into the registration processes and support for overseas trained doctors by the Australian House of Representatives…

The role of conversational interaction in second language research has increasingly been seen as playing a facilitative role in second language learning. As such there have been a number of studies focussing on different types of interaction, including feedback such as recasts, and their potential role in second language learning. In this study,…