• Submit Assignments 1 & 2 according to:

• assignment guidelines
• all university regulations to do with originality of your work including:
• acknowledgement of the ideas and words of others using:
• CSU bibliographic and referencing conventions (Value: 90%)
 
• Contribute specifically to designated Forum tutorials (10%) (See Schedule)
• Make at least 3 other contributions to the open Forum (Terms)

Item	Due date	Value		Length
Assignment 1	Monday 10 September 2001	Part 1 15%	Total 45%	1000 - 1500 words
		Part 2 30%		For 2 or 3 lessons
Assignment 2	Monday 12 November 2001	45%		1500 - 2000 words
Forum participation	Throughout session	10% + terms

Value:            Part 1 - 15 %
                        Part 2 - 30 %
                        Total - 45 %
 
Length:           Part 1 1500 - 2000 words
                        Part 2 (for two or three lessons)
                                                                                   

 As an introduction to Assignment 1 please read the following statement and Figure 1 from Lankshear and Snyder with Green (2000):

As Figure 1 indicates, in the case of literacy as much as with any other social practice successive advances in technology have extended the boundaries of what previously was possible. And each technological advance has seen a corresponding change in how we practise literacy and understand its social role (Lankshear and Snyder with Green 2000: 25-26)

Primitive symbol systems      Complex oral language      Early writing     Manuscript literacy     Print literacy     Video literacy     Digital/multimedia/ hypertext literacy     Virtual reality

• Write a brief account of current ideas about the nature of literacies;
• Explain how these ideas are relevant to you as a language teacher.

N.B. Support your essay with references from your study for this subject. Make sure you use your text books together with Module notes and readings and any other wider reading, including books, articles and web publications.)

This assignment also has two parts, A and B.

To achieve Part A of the assignment you are required to:

• join a sub-group of 3 or 4 colleagues on your Forum;
• collaboratively select and organise a small collection of materials (for two or three lessons) for sound classroom language practices suitable for your teaching contexts.
• Submit your joint assignment on the Web for student peers, with a brief (no more than 500 words) explanation of how the materials might be used.

To achieve Part B you are required to submit a hard copy for assessment. In that submission you should:

• include the names of your team members;
• include an introduction to your own section of the the collection which briefly
• details your context and/or teaching interests and goals,
• explains the value of your resources in terms of Part 1,
• explains how your resources might be used in the classroom and
• explains how they complement the collections made by your colleagues (it does not matter if your colleagues are teaching students at different language or curriculum "stages"; you can then be aware of developmental matters);
• conclude your submission with a brief paragraph on the problems and benefits you experienced in completing this assignment

Value:             45%

Length:            1500 - 2000 words
                                                                                   

The roles and responsibilities of a language teacher are complex and shaped by school contexts.
Read the following summaries of broad areas of teaching roles and responsibilities introduced in Module 2 and explored throughout the subject. Choose ONE of the areas listed below which is of most  interest to you and,
 

• if you are in a teaching situation:

• outline your school context;
• elaborate some of the issues in one of the broad areas listed below;
• explain how you might fulfil your roles and responsibilities in the area which you have selected.

• if you are not in a school context, use your reading and study for this subject to explore issues relevant to your selected area.

• Intercultural responsibilities, such as:
• being well informed about the cultural contexts and practices of your school and community
• being familiar with and respecting the language goals and aspirations of your school, employing body and your students
• supporting student, community and institutional relationships and understandings

• School roles, such as negotiating with other school personnel over matters such as:
• the assessment of school language teaching requirements ;
• the development and evaluation of school language goals and policies;
• the selection and procuring of resources;
• the position of community languages within the school;
• the establishment of sound language teaching practices in individual, group and class situations.

• Teaching responsibilities, such as:
• assessing individual student's language needs
• implementing a syllabus;
• choosing  methodologies;
• choosing resources;
• planning and programming;
• designing and presenting lessons;
• evaluating and reporting.

• Research responsibilities and fields, such as:
• establishing an action research model as a foundation for reflective teaching;
• school language needs;
• the power dynamics of your curriculum model and how they might be impacting on student learning;
• the relationship between teacher and student beliefs about language learning;
• institutional and student language learning goals and aspirations

 N.B. Again, support your essay with references from your study for this subject. Make sure you use your text books together with Module notes and readings and any other wider reading, including books, articles and web publications.)

You too should use the chart with circumspection. As I developed it I became aware of how overwhelming it might look, especially if you have not been working with the kind of functional, sociocultural view of language and literacies which are the explicit foundation for this subject. First of all you should recognise that without the chart you will produce assignments with the basic characteristics which are listed. That is the foundation of the theory. That the culture has developed ways of achieving social purposes with texts. For example, we asked our undergraduate students to write and autobiographical account of their language and literacy: they all wrote "recounts". Personal participants, past tense, circumstances of time and place, episodes sequentially organised, time connectives...However, many of the students did have difficulty with the expository essay which required synthesised academic content.  So there is probably a place for the chart and for my lengthy introduction  - which is intended as a revision which recontextualises the corpus of subject within the requirements of the assignments
 

I suggest you should use the chart in three ways:
 
 

1	As some illustration of language and literacy technologies as resources for making specific meanings (which will include cognitive content; communication roles, or interpersonal relationships, attitudinal and evaluative stances (to do with values, usuality, probability and obligation); and well developed, coherent, textual structures.  You should be aware that emphasis on teaching text types should not be mechanical prescriptive exercises. They should always be embedded within  a pedagogy based on an understanding of cultural meaning making resources. If you follow this position, you are less likely to see students, who are not progressing well through the education system, as exhibiting a language deficit. You will understand that the issue is to do with the kinds of language and literacy resources to which the student has access. That places the responsibility more directly on us as teachers to find a way to connect the students' present access to such resources with those available in educational areas of the culture. (See Malin 1994 - Readings).
2	To overview some of the literacy demands of this subject and the kinds of cultural and social resources to which it is connected.
3	As an evaluative, editing, tool. Please remember that the chart is not exhaustive and not prescriptive: it summarises usual structures and features. You can see it as a kind of rough profile of what Cope and Kalantzis call Available Design (Cope & Kalantzis in Cope & Kalantzis (eds) 2000). When we are interpreting a text and find atypical features they are important: they are always bound to specific social purposes which require specific meanings. For example, in a procedure our students expected action verbs at the beginning of each step (command); however, in one of the sample texts on swimming we examined, some commands began with a mental verb, followed by a direct, personal address; and others began with a direct personal address and the verb was preceded by a modal of obligation. For example:  Ensure (cognitive verb) you (pronoun for direct personal address) keep (action verb) your body inclined... Ensure is a mental verb to do with monitoring a personal action. In combination with "you" it was appropriate to the purpose of the text which was an instructional text, designed to build a personal teacher-student relationship between the writer and reader. The reader, without the immediate presence of the teacher had to assume the role of monitor of performance from the beginning of practice.  The other example was, You (personal address) should (modal of obligation) keep (action verb) your arms moving continuously. Again, the atypical features, the personal address and the modal, are to do with the meanings: the construction of a teacher-student relationship which underpins the social purpose of the text.  You might also note that instead of a command which is the typical way the steps of a procedure are staged, the steps for achieving the back crawl stroke, which the text is about, are presented as statements. Not only does the "teacher" transfer evaluative, monitoring, mental processes to the student, but the student is the receiver of information, rather than an order. The power relationship is quite different; the statement is much more respectful than a command would have been. And the modal of obligation in the statement means the action is the best way of doing the stroke. There is a kind of assumption, in the information offered in the statement, that the student will want to do the stroke in the best way. Isn't it a beautiful example of teaching? Where the teacher respectfully transfers the power to the student, and indicates a faith in the student's interest in getting things right? It seems so to me!  In class, the students rewrote the text as a typical procedure and could see how the different grammatical choices made different meanings. Pauline and I shall read your assignments with interest.

 

	Assignment 1		Assignment 2	Forum
	Part 1	Part 2
	15%  (1000 - 1500 words)	30% ( for two or three lessons)	45%  (1500 - 2000 words)
Social Purpose/s 10% + Terms	To present an academic argument, drawing on research and theory to validate a point of view.	a. To select and organise materials to support the development of language and literacies;     b. To explain selections and teaching decisions	To classify and describe a specific learning-teaching context and to explain the kinds of demands the situation makes on the teacher.	Collaborative construction of knowledge
Text Type	Academic exposition	a. Instructional (Perhaps will combine:  procedure, description and explanation for students - and colleagues)   b. Explanation	Report/Explanation	Dialogue
Field: cognitive content	Theory and research on the  nature of literacies	a. Classroom language and literacy resources    b. Multiliteracy theory and research	Teaching and learning contexts and related theory and research	Corpus of language theory and research; personal experiences
Tenor:    Communication roles, expressions of:    attitude, judgement and evaluation;    usuality, probability, obligation	Formal academic positioning of reader and writer	Professional peers and colleagues:    supportive, collaborative	Personalised academic and professional	Friendly, supportive, professional colleagues and peers
Mode: spoken, written, visual, graphs, diagrams, aural, including music	Written: word-processed    (perhaps with graphics and images)	Multimodal - written, perhaps with graphics, images, and computer technologies	Written: word-processed   (perhaps with graphics and images)	Electronic writing
Text structure/stages - features of coherence.    Organisational meanings: organisation of information into coherent given and new, salience patterns, transitional stages       (^:  Sequential organisation)	Thesis statement (macro-theme) ^Introduction outlining, taxonomically,  main points (hyperthemes) of the essay which will  elaborate the thesis statement^ Series of paragraphs organised around statement of hyperthemes each of which will be developed organised illustrations ^Conclusion with some restatement of issues which summates and establishes perspectives^Bibliography.	a) Statement of context (including subject area, Syllabus, ESL scales, as relevant) ^Goals (outcomes) ^materials (resources)^ Linear steps, (for actual teaching) including examples and illustrations of the activities^ conclusions to do with assessment, follow-up ^Bibliography^ Appendices (Usually optional)     b) Identification of  learning context ^sequenced representation of cause and effect relationships (between teaching decisions and academic knowledge and between contributors' materials) ^conclusion	General statement classifying your situation and selected area ^ Introductory paragraph outlining elements of your situation and linking it to selected area ^Series of paragraphs describing and situation and explaining how you have been fulfilling/intend to fulfil those obligations^ Conclusion	General statement classifying your focus^ a paragraph elaborating/desribing/ interpreting the topic    OR   General statement classifying your focus^  series of questions requesting clarification;
Grammatical and language  features	Participants (Subjects and Objects) are likely to be abstractions; highly structured nominal groups, featuring nominalised processes*; relational and mental verbs, some action verbs; some present tense to show usuality and ongoing relevance; causal and resultative connectives (therefore, so, because..);  place, reason and result circumstances; internal referencing; tightly organised sentence structures; lexically dense**.	a. Classificatory statements; commands; specific things as participants in object positions; time connections   circumstances of place, accompaniment (with) and purpose, reason; modals of obligation, possibility and potential (should, ought, might, can); mental and action verbs, simple present and future tenses.   b. participants are likely to be general terms representing humans and things and abstractions related to teaching; perhaps some personal pronouns; action, mental and relational verbs; future and simple present and past tense; modals of obligation and potential; circumstances of place, reason, and time; additive, time and causal connectives.	Some participants (Subjects and Objects) are likely to be abstractions, but personalised participants such as I" and "you" and other human participants represented by general nouns are likely; some nominalisation   circumstances of purpose and reason; causal, additive and sequential connectives.	Personalised participants in subject positions, personal pronouns; personal address; abstractions in object positions; relational, mental and feeling verbs; present tense; or change from past to present;  circumstances of time, place and reason; additive, adversative and  concessional connectives, (and, but, although) between dialogue contributions; complicated, loose relationship between clauses; not lexically dense (more like speech written down than written academic language.