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The recent implementation of The Victorian Curriculum F-10: EAL requires content teachers who teach EAL students to be familiar with the revised EAL curriculum for the purposes of planning and developing approaches to assist learners' development in English. In the literature and in curriculum frameworks, word knowledge is considered an important aspect of EAL students' learning. However, little is known about what pedagogical practices teachers across the curriculum perceive as being important, and use, in developing EAL students' vocabulary. In this study, we investigated linguistically responsive vocabulary teaching in a Year 7 science class. Our aim was to elucidate teachers' perceptions and practices in teaching vocabulary in science. The qualitative case study drew on principles of linguistically responsive instruction (LRI), which refers to practices for meeting the needs of students in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. Analysis of interview and classroom data from an EAL teacher and a science teacher revealed a range of LRI practices for developing word knowledge based on understanding the distinction between conversational and academic language, language learning principles, responsive teacher talk, plurilingual awareness, and the importance of social interaction for learners. We offer recommendations for a whole school approach to LRI, adaptation to online LRI, and curriculum development.

Researcher roles as insiders and outsiders are important in qualitative studies. Yet, the roles and perspectives of insider and outsider researchers working collaboratively in transnational learning contexts have received little research attention. This paper reports on a small-scale qualitative project that explored our research collaboration as insiders and outsiders. We investigated three undergraduate Chinese international pre-service teachers' academic experiences in one Australian university. The doctoral student researcher, as an insider who shared language and culture with the participants, undertook in-class observations and semi-structured interviews with the three participants while the outsider researchers developed and guided the overall project. In the course of data analysis, and using a reflexive lens, we were given insight into how our distinct cultural and linguistic identities and positionings steered our interpretations and enriched them as we made sense of them. In so doing we became aware of the ways in which our research plans and our own roles and dispositions were dynamically shaped and shifted as we worked with our participants and with each other. In this way, our research plan itself was changed while the process of interpreting the data became enriched and inspired confidence.

This study explored the language practices of a small group of international Chinese students in an anglophone Higher Education context where English was the medium of instruction. The context was the first year of an early childhood education course at an Australian university. Building on findings from research in conversation analysis on language alternation and medium of interaction, the analyses sought to unveil the students' classroom verbal and nonverbal practices as they switched between Mandarin and English. Findings show that students' preferred medium was monolingual: English for discussing taskwork and Mandarin for resolving disagreement or confusion, establishing understanding, and selecting a speaker. Alternation to Mandarin was accompanied by whispering and the embodied actions of 'hiding' behind the laptop while co-occurring laughter was used to signal a language switch or to index trouble or a delicate situation. These findings suggest that language choice was not simply a practice for restoring the preferred medium. Rather the students continued to speak Mandarin until the interactional motivation for its use was completed, which legitimized the use of their shared language. The paper ends with recommendations to inform pedagogy that is sensitive to the linguistic needs of international students in Higher Education in anglophone contexts.

This paper reports on a small scale study of category building in the context of English language learning. The data for the current study is derived from the interviews with two students, one from China and the other from Mongolia, in two schools in Melbourne. The study uses Membership Categorization Analysis to give an account of identity by examining how categories of English language learner emerge and shift during the course of the interviews. The categories established by the participants in the two interviews were constructed around different attributes belonging to the category of international student. These emerged as a series of categorical binaries including international student and local student, language competence and language deficit, mainstream English and English as an Additional Language (EAL), and home country and Australia. As the participants took part in the interview, they moved towards accounts that integrated multiple viewpoints resulting in dynamically shifting categorisations. Through these categories, it was also possible to show how students were invited to display their learning and knowledge of English, and to give accounts of their English language development.

Based on various sources of data collection for a qualitative research project, the study reported in this paper set out to examine four teachers' and sixteen students' perceptions of a multiple-draft/multiple-party feedback approach to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) student writing. This approach had been implemented as a trial in a tertiary setting in Vietnam. Three sources of feedback at three phases were provided. These included (1) peer/group written and oral feedback on the students' first drafts, (2) a teaching assistant's written and oral feedback on their second drafts and (3) the lecturer's written feedback on their final drafts. Content analysis of the data revealed that all participants valued this multiple feedback approach because of its practicality and the quality of the feedback which participants believed contributed to writing improvement. Based on the participants' reactions, the study highlights the potential of multiple-draft/multiple-party feedback practices for improving English language writing in a tertiary context.

This paper presents a case-study exploration of how federal and state government policy and Education Acts are interpreted and enacted at school level through the implementation of the International Student Program in Victoria, Australia. Understanding policy and its enactment as multi-layered and often "messy" to frame through our analysis, we examine interview data, key statements from policy documents and media reports. This case-study of the challenges arising from the enactment of ISP policy in a particular inner-city Australian secondary school context, provides a unique view of the challenges government schools encounter from government, school, and student perspectives.

This article discusses family language policy and the tensions between mothers' and children's language beliefs in two Vietnamese immigrant families in Melbourne. These tensions have frequently been discussed from the parental perspective, but it is less common to include the children's voice. We draw on a larger in-depth qualitative study of family language policy in Vietnamese families living in Australia to explore the language beliefs of both children and adults. Employing Fitzsimmons-Doolan's [2018. "Language Ideology Change Over Time: Lessons for Language Policy in the U.S. State of Arizona and Beyond." TESOL Quarterly 52 (1): 34–61. doi:10.1002/tesq.371] notions of pro-multilingual and pro-monolingual ideologies and Bourdieu's [1986. "The Forms of Capital." In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by J. G. Richardson, 241–258. Greenwood Press] concept of capital, we explore family language policy from the perspectives of both children and their mothers, and show how these perspectives are associated with each other. Findings reveal the pro-monolingual stance of the children in opposition to the pro-multilingual stance of their mothers where the children and their mothers appeared to attach different degrees of value to English and Vietnamese. The findings reinforce the complexities in realising family language policy across languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article adopts the methods of conversation analysis to track the details of three English as a foreign language novice teachers' language alternation practices in a Vietnamese tertiary context. The analyses focused on teacher instruction-giving in the pre-entry and main instructional phases of lessons. Findings show that language alternation was an important tool in the organisation of the teachers' instructional talk to pursue student response and establish understanding. A key and recurring finding is that teachers started their instructions or pre-instructions in English but quickly switched to Vietnamese, often without providing any wait time for students to respond. The study also provides empirical evidence for students' reticence but suggests that this may well be the result of teachers' own instructional practices.

The International Student Program (ISP) in Australian secondary schools has in recent times drawn public attention. Despite this attention, there is a paucity of research about the challenges faced by schools in developing and sustaining these programs. The study reported in this paper explores the ISP in an independent metropolitan secondary school in Victoria with a high enrolment of international students. Using positioning theory, the study analysed the self- and other-positionings of an EAL teacher, a STEM teacher and two international students on a range of issues germane to the ISP and academic language. Findings confirmed past research that content teachers feel a lack of confidence in addressing these students' language needs. In adding to the literature, the study found that content teachers feel a responsibility for these students and that the international students positioned themselves as successful language learners as well as students with gaps in their academic language.

This paper reports the study of the agency of children aged 10–14 in their language practices as they interacted with their family members. The study was located in a Vietnamese migrant community in Victoria, Australia. In using a thematic, interactional analysis combined with a relational approach to agency, it was found that children’s agency emerged on a continuum which ranged from a more negative end of the continuum – manifested through the children’s explicit resistance to parental requests for home language use – to a more positive end of the continuum – manifested through their flexible linguistic repertoire in accommodating their interlocutors’ needs. Findings also suggest that the linguistic practices in the family domain surfaced as dynamic co-constructions to reflect the adults’ and children’s constant (re)negotiation in their everyday language practices in the home, which was also influenced by other factors such as children’s linguistic competence and the families’ linguistic norms. The study builds on previous findings on the relational nature of children’s agency by bringing attention to the different manifestations of children’s agency that arise in situ as they interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the methods of conversation analysis, the opening sequences of a map task in the interactions of sixteen children aged seven to twelve were analyzed. The analytical concerns driving the study were who started, how they started, and how children dealt with differential access to information and the identification of phases within the opening. It was found that all participants oriented to the instruction-giver as the one to start, even when the information-follower commenced the task. With respect to how to start, the older children produced a question and answer sequence or a try-mark to establish a common starting point. Five of the eight younger children inferred a common starting point on the map. Three recurring phases were identified: readiness to begin established through a discourse marker, location of the starting point, and actual instruction. The findings are discussed with reference to the importance of interaction in referential spatial tasks.

The Assessment of Language Competence (ALC) certificates is an annual, international testing program developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research to test the listening and reading comprehension skills of lower to middle year levels of secondary school. The tests are developed for three levels in French, German, Italian and Japanese, and at two levels in Chinese and Indonesian. There is a mixture of target language and English questions in the Level 2 and 3 tests. Some teachers have raised this as a concern in the belief that all questions should only be offered in English for the sake of fairness. Their view is that the tests are unduly difficult when they are designed with questions in the language. Arising from this concern, the aim of the research to be reported in this paper was to investigate the effects of the language of the question on student performance. We drew on data from a trial test and a final listening test, a questionnaire administered to students to gauge their perceptions of the tests and an examination of public documentation about the ALC. For the statistical analysis, we used Item Response Theory for calibrating items and for comparing item difficulty estimates, and fit statistics to verify how well items with English and target language question formats worked together. We found that where the questions involved listening for simple, explicitly stated information, students found the items in the target language relatively easier. In questions that required students to listen for global meaning, language choice either did not matter or tended to favour items in English rather than the target language. Furthermore, each of the six tests with some items in English and others in the target language showed a high level of reliability and fit to the single latent scale, indicating that items were functioning consistently regardless of the language of the test question. (Contains 1 table, 5 figures and 3 notes.)

The study to be reported in this paper examined the work accomplished by "mm" and "mm hm" in the interactions of a parent and his daughter aged 0;10-2;0. Using the findings of Gardner (2001) for adults, the analysis shows that "mm" accomplished a range of functions based on its sequential placement and prosodic features, whereas "mm hm" was much more restricted to its use as a continuer. The principal concern of the study, however, was to investigate how the child treated these tokens in next turn position. It was found that she was able to display her acceptance or rejection of the response and that she had acquired a stock of conversational resources to do so. Included in the stock were the ability to initiate self and other repair, to correct, and to initiate a new topic to mark completion of a sequence. It is argued that through these actions the child was offering a display of her understanding of sequential connections and appropriateness of fit, and importantly what she deemed to be a sufficient response. The paper ends with a discussion of the child's emerging knowledge as it is revealed in the minutiae of interaction.