scholarly journals Maori Language Use in New Zealand Secondary Schools: What Are the Issues for Teachers and Students?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Janie Tito

<p>The aim of this study was to examine the issues surrounding Maori language use in secondary schools. This was to test the hypothesis that the learning experience for Maori students is influenced by a school's responsiveness to Maori needs. In particular the focus was on the use of te reo Maori e.g. pronunciation. It was found that when features of te ao Maori are reflected positively in secondary school practices, values and environment, the overall learning experience may be enhanced and become more positive for Maori students. Ultimately such practice has the potential to reduce the disparity between Maori and non-Maori educational achievement. The prevalence and quality of Maori language learning opportunities during and after teacher training, is currently not meeting the needs of students and teachers. This shortcoming requires further research and investigation. This mixed method qualitative study followed kaupapa Maori research principles and ethics. It incorporated interviews, repeated focus groups and surveys. Participants were teachers and Maori students from selected Wellington secondary schools. The sixty-four student participants raised issues around teachers and their teaching practice. They saw teachers as important role models for positive attitudes and behaviours towards te reo and tikanga Maori. In particular, correct language use and pronunciation was important. The small sample of teachers reported a variety of concerns. One frequent complaint was their lack of knowledge in using te reo and few chances to learn and improve. This study identified a need for more professional development programmes and educational policy to be introduced in secondary schools, which include aspects of Maori language and tikanga learning. This would help address some of the difficulties faced by teachers when using te reo in the classroom and improve overall teaching and learning for Maori students.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Janie Tito

<p>The aim of this study was to examine the issues surrounding Maori language use in secondary schools. This was to test the hypothesis that the learning experience for Maori students is influenced by a school's responsiveness to Maori needs. In particular the focus was on the use of te reo Maori e.g. pronunciation. It was found that when features of te ao Maori are reflected positively in secondary school practices, values and environment, the overall learning experience may be enhanced and become more positive for Maori students. Ultimately such practice has the potential to reduce the disparity between Maori and non-Maori educational achievement. The prevalence and quality of Maori language learning opportunities during and after teacher training, is currently not meeting the needs of students and teachers. This shortcoming requires further research and investigation. This mixed method qualitative study followed kaupapa Maori research principles and ethics. It incorporated interviews, repeated focus groups and surveys. Participants were teachers and Maori students from selected Wellington secondary schools. The sixty-four student participants raised issues around teachers and their teaching practice. They saw teachers as important role models for positive attitudes and behaviours towards te reo and tikanga Maori. In particular, correct language use and pronunciation was important. The small sample of teachers reported a variety of concerns. One frequent complaint was their lack of knowledge in using te reo and few chances to learn and improve. This study identified a need for more professional development programmes and educational policy to be introduced in secondary schools, which include aspects of Maori language and tikanga learning. This would help address some of the difficulties faced by teachers when using te reo in the classroom and improve overall teaching and learning for Maori students.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-218
Author(s):  
Ilham Mansour ◽  
Azza Mansour

Social media has increasingly been used in higher education classrooms as educators lean on technology to mediate and enhance their teaching and learning process. This study aims to explore students’ perceptions and attitudes towards the use of social media as an effective academic tool. 149 Undergraduate Saudi female students, enrolled in four courses at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, were surveyed about their attitude towards the use of Twitter in classroom interactions, as well as, their perceptions regarding the use of social media in teaching practice. Findings indicate that, in general, students have positive attitudes toward using Twitter for academic purposes. Additionally, students favorably perceive that Twitter facilitates knowledge sharing, collaborations, and interactions in the classroom but to a lesser extent enhancing their sense of learning. This study sheds light on the potential opportunities of the use of Twitter in the classroom, and what benefits could it bring to the teaching and learning process in higher education that may affect the quality of the students’ learning experience.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick De Graaff

In this epilogue, I take a teaching practice and teacher education perspective on complexity in Instructed Second Language Acquisition. I take the stance that it is essential to understand if and how linguistic complexity relates to learning challenges, what the implications are for language pedagogy, and how this challenges the role of the teacher. Research shows that differences in task complexity may lead to differences in linguistic complexity in language learners’ speech or writing. Different tasks (e.g. descriptive vs narrative) and different modes (oral vs written) may lead to different types and levels of complexity in language use. On the one hand, this is a challenge for language assessment, as complexity in language performance may be affected by task characteristics. On the other hand, it is an opportunity for language teaching: using a diversity of tasks, modes and text types may evoke and stretch lexically and syntactically complex language use. I maintain that it is essential for teachers to understand that it is at least as important to aim for development in complexity as it is to aim for development in accuracy. Namely, that ‘errors’ in language learning are part of the deal: complex tasks lead to complex language use, including lexical and syntactical errors, but they are a necessary prerequisite for language development.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone L. Calabrich

<p class="apa">This research explored perceptions of learners studying English in private language schools regarding the use of mobile technology to support language learning. Learners were first exposed to both a mobile assisted and a mobile unassisted language learning experience, and then asked to express their thoughts on the incorporation of mobile devices into the language classroom. The mobile assisted tasks involved learners posting a review online based on a real past experience, as well as using web-search engines to gather enough information to plan a hypothetical trip. Findings revealed overall positive attitudes amongst the students surveyed. Arguments in favour of the incorporation of mobile technology in the language classroom included: the possibility of having access to a range of materials superior in both quality and quantity when using mobile devices to access the Internet, among others. However, a significant amount of scepticism towards Mobile Assisted Language Learning emerged. Arguments against suggested that the format of presentation, rather than the type of task, seemed to constitute a motivational factor that played a psychologically significant role to some of the learners.</p>


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin K. Hill ◽  
Jill W. Fresen ◽  
Fawei Geng

Lecturers in higher education often consider the incorporation of web technologies into their teaching practice. Partially structured and populated course site templates could aid them in getting started with creating and deploying webbased materials and activities to enrich the teaching and learning experience. Discussions among instructional technology support staff and lecturers reveal a paucity of robust specifications for possible course site features that could comprise a template. An attempted mapping from the teaching task as understood by the instructor to the envisaged course website properties proves elusive. We conclude that the idea of an initial state for a course site, embodied in a template, remains useful and should be developed not according to a formula but with careful attention to the context and existing pedagogical practice. Any course template provided for the use of lecturers should be enhanced with supporting instructions and examples of how it may be adapted for their particular purposes.Keywords: course template; learning platform; pedagogical dimensions; course site properties(Published: 17 December 2012)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012, 20: 18665 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0.18665


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Steve Leichtweis

Universities are increasingly being expected to ensure student success while at the same time delivering larger courses.  Within this environment, the provision of effective and timely feedback to students and creating opportunities for genuine engagement between teachers and students is increasingly difficult if not impossible for many instructors, despite the known value and importance of feedback (Timperley & Hattie, 2007) and instructor presence (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2010).  Similar to other tertiary institutions, the University of Auckland has adopted various technology-enhanced learning approaches and technologies, including learning analytics in an attempt to support teaching and learning at scale.  The increased use of educational technology to support learning provides a variety of data sources for teachers to provide personalised feedback and improve the overall learning experience for students.  This workshop is targeted to teachers interested in the use of learning data to provide personalized support to learners.  Participants will have a hands-on opportunity to use the open-source tool OnTask (Pardo, et al. 2018) within some common teaching scenarios with a synthetically generated data set.  The facilitators will also share and discuss how OnTask is currently being used in universities to support student experience, teaching practice and course design.  As this is a hands-on workshop, participants must bring a laptop computer to work with the online tool and the prepared scenarios.  References   Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2010). The first decade of the community of inquiry framework: A retrospective. The internet and higher education, 13(1-2), 5-9. Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of educational research, 77(1), 81-112. Pardo, A., Bartimote-Aufflick, K., Shum, S. B., Dawson, S., Gao, J., Gaševic, D., Leichtweis, S., Liu, D., Martínez-Maldonado, R., Mirriahi, N. and Moskal, A. C. M. (2018). OnTask: Delivering Data-Informed, Personalized Learning Support Actions. Journal of Learning Analytics, 5(3), 235-249.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Larsen-Freeman,

AbstractRepetition is common in language use. Similarly, having students repeat is a common practice in language teaching. After surveying some of the better known contributions of repetition to language learning, I propose an innovative role for repetition from the perspective of complexity theory. I argue that we should not think of repetition as exact replication, but rather we should think of it as iteration that generates variation. Thus, what results from iteration is a mutable state. Iteration is one way that we create options in how to make meaning, position ourselves in the world as we want, understand the differences which we encounter in others, and adapt to a changing context.


ReCALL ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
TUIJA LEHTONEN ◽  
SIRPA TUOMAINEN

This article discusses the applications of the theory of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) to teaching and learning a foreign language, in this case, one of the ‘Less Commonly Taught Languages’, Finnish. The ‘Virtually Finnish’ project was based on the idea of creating a larger, virtual Finnish learning community among the second-year Finnish language students in five US universities during the fall semester, 2001. CSCL was chosen as a base, as its principal goal is to aid the learners in sharing and distributing their knowledge to the whole learning community. In addition to discussing the set up and the content of the project, the students’ feedback about their language learning experience in the CSCL-environment will be examined. Furthermore, the conclusions, and the realization of our goals from the perspective of CSCL, as well as the students’ feedback on the collaborative process will be discussed. Based on the knowledge gained from limited feedback, a discussion of tools to aid language students in becoming a part of motivating and authentic collaboration projects on-line will be discussed. Looking at the students’ work on-line, as well as the feedback received, it was realized that certain skills crucial for communication have been neglected in teaching. Furthermore, it was realized that teaching on-line learning strategies in addition to teaching the target language is crucial. Future plans, and ideas for research in the area of CSCL will be shared in anticipation of inspiring others to undertake further research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Ruth Martyn

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a key construct in Business English teaching in universities in China today. While there is a plethora of articles on implementation in European contexts, there is limited evidence in the literature of the teaching/learning experience in other foreign language learning environments—despite its wide application in, for example, south-east Asia and China in particular. As CLIL programs have been developed in a variety of ways to meet the unique needs of learners and societal expectations, the context of teaching and learning is critical. This paper focuses on the perceptions and learning experiences of students in a first year, first semester course, Introduction to Contemporary Business, in a Chinese university. Lesson observations, questionnaires, and interviews explore the experience of learners. While most students found the course very challenging in their first semester, they met the challenge. Coping with both language and content is always a double challenge: most students found their Introduction to Contemporary Business their most difficult course, yet they perceived it as manageable and worthwhile. Students coped with the difficulty level in two main ways: either by spending much time in review and translating the textbook prior to class, or by focusing on the teacher’s PowerPoint slides after class—as they considered these were the key points and the textbook was too difficult. Suggestions for a closer integration between language and content within CLIL courses are offered, such as a case-task-based approach, a greater variety of input, and the role of content teachers in English enhancement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 718-726
Author(s):  
Turki Alsolami ◽  
Nashwa Saaty

The paper examines the integration of technology into various language learning aspects, mainly how technology can enhance language learning and teaching. The focus is on selected studies that highlight the significant role of technology in promoting higher levels of motivation, enhancing language input, contextualizing the language learning process through access to various cultural materials, improving learners’ L2 attitudes and enhancing better language teaching instruction.  In examining these areas, we hope to provide pedagogical insights that would help practitioners and curriculum developers to utilize technology in an effective way to promote a better language learning experience. 


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