Papers

Original investigations into language education, including theoretical perspectives and implications for practice. Any medium accepted.

Results 61 to 62 of 62

The title of this thought piece indicates a dual meaning to challenging scholarship: obstacles to scholarship and contributions to scholarship. The first part of his thought piece explores a range of obstacles to scholarship: conceptual and definitional confusion; hierarchies of scholarship; the problems of impact and the influence of neoliberalism on scholarship, and the relatively low status that scholarship has in universities compared to research. This section is followed by a consideration of what challenging contributions to scholarship might entail because of and despite the obstacles outlined earlier. I consider whether there is a professional duty to make our knowledge (and doubts) available to the wider communities to which we belong. I argue that remaining silent or abstaining from scholarship carries certain risks. We are subject to and part of multiple ‘norm circles’ - norm circles regulate and endorse certain increasingly standardised practices. Scholarship is a means to shape and influence the normative structures that regulate praxis. In order to exert a degree of control over our professional lives an important dimension of scholarship is reflexive critique and advocacy. As reflexive persons and professionals we aim to shorten the gap between what is and what ought to be through articulation of our values and beliefs and praxis. By making our scholarship, however fallible, public we are attempting, through dialogue to transform. In this thought piece I also outline the cognitive capital from scholarship and to argue that there is not only social capital to be gained through scholarship: there is epistemic capital and value in scholarship. I also outline the ways in which we should reconsider the pedagogical relationship with students through scholarship suggesting they have a far more active role to play than so far appears to be the case.

The teaching of certain aspects of Spanish grammar has always been challenging for both teachers and learners. Additionally traditional approaches to the teaching of grammar based on behaviourist views of learning promoting memorization and repetition have been disputed and the need to teach a cognitive grammar that responds to rules that can be understood according to the speaker’s communicative intention and should be reflected upon has been proposed. This article is aimed at showing two activities, which have been designed using digital tools with the purpose of helping undergraduates studying Spanish at the University of Leeds to reflect on the grammar. On the one hand, the digital tool Twine has been used for creating a game-like story in which learners need to reflect on the difference between simple past and past continuous in Spanish. A second task has been proposed in which learners need to watch some videos showing different uses of the modes indicative and subjunctive in context and then share on a discussion board their hypothesis about grammar use. Both these activities are intended to promote and facilitate the learner’s reflection and understanding of the grammar. On the other hand it is also the aim of this article to show that a blended-learning design constitutes the ideal framework to promote such a teaching and learning approach to the grammar based on reflection. Both traditional teaching through lectures and online tuition by using digital learning environments show benefits and constraints. However, a combination of both traditional and online tuition enhances the learner experience by facilitating the understanding of the grammar while also developing the learner’s strategies for autonomous learning.

Papers

Challenging scholarship: A thought piece

Thinking the grammar: Teaching a cognitive grammar using digital tools in a blended-learning context

Search results for “”