This study focused on durational cues (i.e., syllable duration, pause duration, and syllable onset intervals (SOIs)) at discourse boundaries in two dialects of Mandarin, Taiwan and Mainland varieties. Speech was elicited by having 18 participants describe events in "The Pear Story" film. Recorded data were transcribed, labeled, and segmented into…

This paper attempts to apply Lung's (2008) model of the discursive hierarchical patterning of cases to a closer and more specific study of Economics cases and proposes a model of the distinct discursive hierarchical patterning of the same. It examines a corpus of 150 Economics cases with a view to uncovering the patterns of discourse construction.…

This paper explores the role of International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) in adult education as one instrument of global civil society to effect social change. Postcolonial theory is utilized to explore the complex relationships between the concepts of "globalisation", "global civil, society", and "adult education for social change". In…

This research studied the use of modals in argumentative written tasks by Form 5 Malaysian secondary school ESL students. The aim of this study was to examine the use of English modals at the syntactic level from data presented in the MCSAW Corpus. The research design comprised a qualitative technique through discourse analysis aided by…

This study looks into the use of reiteration relations in EFL student writing. The aim is to determine the extent to which Moroccan college students rely on lexical cohesion to produce native-sounding texts. Twenty essays written by college students from two different levels were analyzed quantitatively using Halliday and Hasan's (1976) and Hoey's…

This study investigated how the critical language awareness (CLA) framework can be implemented with an emphasis on writing and how English-language learners respond to CLA. The findings suggest that the students directed their attention away from the sole emphasis on reading for learning vocabulary and grammar to other dimensions of texts and…

Living citizenship emerging from reflection on an international educational partnership makes a unique contribution to the field and importantly fulfils the British Educational Research Association aim of improving educational practice for the public benefit. This paper explores the conceptual framework of 'living citizenship' as a means for…

Drawing on the conceptual work of externalisation in comparative education and multi-accentual signs in cultural studies, this article examines how the print news media accentuate "Finnish education" in the process of inserting this external reference into the domestic political discourses around education reform in Australia, Germany…

This article reports on an investigation of family language policies among 37 Albanian immigrant families in Northern Greece within the framework of Spolsky's language policy model. Data collection was based on semi-directed interviews with parents which were analysed using both content and discourse analysis. According to our findings, three…

This study investigated views about children experiencing homelessness held by preservice teachers in an early childhood education program. Thirteen early childhood preservice teachers were actively involved in class discussion, reading, doing class assignments, and visiting homeless shelters as community-based field experience. They were asked to…

This paper problematizes dominant discourses of social mobility. It begins by discussing social mobility from a philosophical perspective before examining current policies on social mobility in the United Kingdom, drawing on data from both recent mobility studies and the contemporary labour market. I then broaden out the discussion by exploring…

Children of binational couples are often raised in the community of one of the parents and, thus, have limited exposure to the language of the other parent. This study focuses on a British/Moroccan family in the UK, where English is the dominant home language and Moroccan Arabic is the "other" language. Analysis of "live"…

The spectre of a food security crisis has raised important questions about future directions for agriculture and given fresh impetus to a long-standing debate about the potential contribution of agricultural biotechnology to food security. This paper considers the discursive foundations for promotion of agricultural biotechnology, arguing that…

As the integration of Internet-based social networking tools becomes increasingly popular in foreign language classrooms, the use of modern communication technologies is particularly critical in the context of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs), where student exposure to the target language and its speakers is usually minimal. This paper…

This study explores the discourse generated by English as a foreign language (EFL) learners using synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) as an approach to help English language learners to create social interaction in the classroom. It investigates the impact of synchronous CMC mode on the quantity of total words, lexical range and…