PolyU IR Collection: ENGL Theses

Gender and occupational knowledge : the effects of rater variability on the assessment of ESP oral performance

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Gender and occupational knowledge : the effects of rater variability on the assessment of ESP oral performance

Authors: Liu, Weiwei

Abstract: The overarching aim of the research is to find out empirically the effects of rater variability on the assessment of ESP oral performance, and provide empirical evidence for the possible interaction between individual rater variables. Specifically, this research intends to explore the effects of rater variability on the assessment of ESP oral performance on eight types of speaking tasks, with a focus on the variability in two rater variables -occupational knowledge and gender. Besides, it intends to examine whether or not there is an interaction between raters' level of occupational knowledge and gender in the assessment of ESP oral performance on each of these types of speaking tasks. It also sets out to investigate whether the impacts of rater variability on the assessment of ESP oral performance are consistent across various types of oral task. The research was motivated by (1) Erdosy's (2004) view that rater variability in performance assessment is inherent as "raters are individual persons with personal characters" (p. 1), (2) Gerrig and Zimbardo's (2009) view that most human behaviours vary with the specific context in which they take place. and (3) the highlighted importance of background knowledge in Douglas' (2000) construct of specific purpose language ability. Based on Bynate's (1987) taxonomy of speaking tasks, the research consists of eight parallel studies, each exploring the issue of rater variability in the assessment of ESP oral performance on one specific type of speaking task. The data for this research were collected from 360 rater participants. Based on the finance or accounting qualifications they held, the 360 participants were categorized into three occupational knowledge groups: good mastery group (raters with an accredited senior qualification), basic understanding group (raters with an accredited junior qualification), and no understanding group (raters with no accredited qualification). Based on raters' gender, the three groups of raters were subsequently divided into six subgroups. Raters assessed 30 Chinese students' ESP oral performance on eight types of speaking tasks. Both holistic and analytical scales (pronunciation, fluency, task fulfillment, grammar and vocabulary) were employed in the research. To determine whether there were statistically significant differences among different groups of raters in the assessment of ESP oral performance, ratings of different rater groups were subsequently analyzed by repeated measure two-way ANOVA with two between-subject factors (raters' gender and level occupational knowledge) and a single within-subject factor at 30 levels (the 30 speech samples). Interviews were also held with some of the participants to provide further information that would help explain and substantiate the quantitative results.; The research showed that both raters' gender and their level of occupational knowledge would affect the assessment of ESP oral performance, depending on the specific testing context. The quantitative analyses of ratings of ESP oral performance revealed that in the assessment of ESP oral performance on each type of oral tasks, significant effects of the two rater variables would be identified only when particular rating scales were used. Meanwhile, the quantitative results also showed that the rating scales that would result in significant effects of the two rater variables on the assessment of ESP oral performance varied with the task type. These findings indicate that the effects of raters' gender and their level of occupational knowledge on the assessment of ESP oral performance are context-specific. The specific testing context can be defined by two factors: the type of oral task that is used to elicit the ESP oral performance and the rating scale that is used to assess the performance. The interaction between raters' gender and level of occupational knowledge in the assessment of ESP oral performance was also found to be context-specific, depending on both the rating scale and the task type. Both the effect size and the effect direction of the interaction were found to vary with the specific testing context. The findings of the present research, based on which an improved model of assessment of ESP oral performance was proposed, may contribute to a better understanding of the impacts of rater variability on the assessment of ESP oral performance. The research may also contribute to the design and improvement of rater training programs and the interpretation and proper use of scores of speaking assessment.

Description: xxiii, 860 p. : ill. ; 30 cm.; PolyU Library Call No.: [THS] LG51 .H577P ENGL 2011 Liu

Call centre communication : an analysis of interpersonal meaning

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Call centre communication : an analysis of interpersonal meaning

Authors: Wan, Yau Ni

Abstract: A call centre telephone interaction requires the Customer Service Representative (CSR) to maintain a good interpersonal interaction with the customer. The present study was motivated by concerns relating to complaints and lack of effective training materials in the call centre industry. The aim is to find typical interpersonal features which are used by the CSR and the customer to make meanings at points of negotiation in the call centre conversations. The theoretical framework draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), and in particular the present study applies research related to the semantics of exchange structure (Halliday, 1985, 1994), register variables (Martin, 1992, 1999), generic analysis (Martin & Rose, 2008), voice quality (van Leeuwen, 1999), Appraisal items (Martin & White, 2005), in particular, Graduation resources (Hood, 2006; Hood & Forey, 2008). The present study consists of a multimodal analysis of the spoken interaction itself and paralinguistic voice quality features of transcribed conversations. In Phase I, 100 English calls from the Call Centre Communication Corpus Research were studied to formulate the research questions, to determine the sample size and to plan the data collection procedure for the main study. In Phase II, 20 representative calls with complex negotiation were selected and transcribed among about 2000 calls of English conversations from an insurance call centre in the Philippines. Information from non-participant observation and interviews with call centre managers, supervisors and CSRs during call centre visits in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and the Philippines were used to understand the call centre industry from an insider's perspective. The outcomes of this study are twofold: 1) an attempt is made to contribute to applied linguistic knowledge; and 2) this in-depth analysis is to support the training and linguistic service offered by the call centre industry. The findings from the present study offer insights into the world of the global phenomenon of call centre discourse.

Description: ix, 472 p. : ill. ; 30 cm.; PolyU Library Call No.: [THS] LG51 .H577P ENGL 2012 Wan

A critical genre study of written professional discourse

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Title: A critical genre study of written professional discourse

Authors: Ip, Chuen-ching

Abstract: Quantity surveyors are experts in the management of construction costs and contracts in the real estate and construction industry. They belong to a professional discourse community and use language as a form of discursive and social practice to manifest their professional knowledge and relationships with others in the context of their profession legitimized by their professional institutions, as well as the consumerism and managerialism inherent in their work organizations. These institutional forces shape the forms and meanings of their language use. The present study aims to investigate the discursive behavior and competence of quantity surveyors in Hong Kong by means of a critical genre analysis of a corpus of English workplace letters (the Hong Kong Quantity Surveying (QS) Corpus) produced by a group of eight quantity surveyors working in a government office. These professional letters are written and read during the project life that involved consultancy agreements and building contracts, and are mainly addressed to quantity surveying consultancy firms, tenderers and contractors. While quantity surveyors are usually considered to be concerned more with their disciplinary and professional practices than discursive practices, and linguistic analysts are inclined to focus on textual characteristics, this study pays equal attention to both the professional and linguistic resources and practices. This study also discusses the use of a range of communicative and linguistic strategies adopted by quantity surveyors to achieve both context-dependent communicative goals and the transformation of professional and organizational ideologies. This research goal is achieved by using Bhatia's (2004) multidimensional and multi-perspective framework to analyze the genre of Quantity Surveying letters from "textual", "socio-cognitive", "ethnographic" and "socio-critical" perspectives, while Biber's (1988 and 1995) multidimensional analyzes of variation in English, a corpus-based empirical approach, is complementarily employed in this study to retrieve linguistic data from the QS Corpus for analysis, interpretation and explanation.; Analysis of the QS Corpus shows that the communicative purposes in the quantity surveying discourses are primarily directive, procedural, checking and monitoring. The directive and procedural discourses are related to the delivery of prerogatives and guidelines which are routine in nature, and many of their communicative letters are standardized, whereas the checking and monitoring discourses are concerned with expressing evaluations and comments which are spontaneous. The QS letters are found to be highly informative, interactive, and written in formal, firm and direct language to encode messages, and their move patterns are formulaic. Each move has its own content and style to fulfill specific communicative functions with characteristic language use. However, the lexico-grammar and textualization of the moves vary across communicative purposes. The QS letters also have a dense level of intertextual and interdiscursive resources which are strategically employed by the letter writers to accomplish specific communicative goals. This study finds that the quantity surveyors intimate the norms and beliefs of the government office in their language use and gradually cultivate the expectations of conventionalized genres. The quantity surveyors understand the role they play in societal discourse, and strategically transform their professional and organizational ideologies through linguistic manipulations. This research contributes to studying professional communication in real-life contexts, particularly in the quantity surveying profession which has not yet been researched. It has successfully integrated the study of register-specific linguistic features (Biber, 1988 and 1995) and critical genre analysis (Bhatia, 2004). The findings will inform novice and expert professionals' and students’ understanding of "the conventionalized patterns of knowledge, beliefs and experiences" (Bhatia, 1993: 183) of the quantity surveying community in genre construction and comprehension, offer them an agenda for continued development, and most importantly, raise their awareness of the importance of "discursive competence" (Bhatia, 2004: 144) in workplace communication.

Description: xv, 627 p. : ill. ; 30 cm.; PolyU Library Call No.: [THS] LG51 .H577P ENGL 2010 Ip

Postgraduate students' reading of disciplinary academic texts in a second language : an activity theoretical analysis of textual actions and interactions

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Postgraduate students' reading of disciplinary academic texts in a second language : an activity theoretical analysis of textual actions and interactions

Authors: Tchigaeva, Svetlana

Abstract: Advanced academic literacy has recently attracted a significant amount of attention from second language researchers who, among other issues, have been interested in how postgraduate students, by engaging in text-mediated activities, socialize into and expand their participation with disciplinary communities of practice (Belcher, 1994; Blakeslee, 1997; Casanave, 2002; Johns and Swales, 2002, and others). The interest in advanced academic literacy has been preceded by the growing recognition of the importance of the notion of context within literacy research in general. In L2 reading research, though the importance of context has been acknowledged, few studies have actually defined and/or analyzed context in any systematic ways. Drawing on previous research for its theoretical and methodological principles, this PhD study aims to contribute to two major research areas: to L2 reading research by adapting activity theoretical tools and systematically using them in a study of reading-in-context, and to advanced academic literacy research by analyzing reading within the broader context of postgraduate education. Taking a naturalistic research approach, the study captured eleven reader's individual reading experiences through qualitative data collection methods, such as observations, in-depth interviews, think-aloud protocols, and collections and examination of texts, read as well as written. The framework used for the analysis of the rich data was developed on the basis of activity theory (Vygotsky, 1978; Leontev, 1978; Engestrom, 1999) and led to the analysis of reading at three levels-operations, actions, and activity systems.; The analysis was conducted in three phases: (1) all the cases were analyzed for emerging themes; (2) four cases were selected for in-depth analysis and presentation in the thesis; and (3) the remaining cases were revisited in order to analyze the common themes across them. The analysis of the four case studies revealed that postgraduate reading, when it is studied in contexts of its natural occurrence, is at the same time individual yet deeply social. It extends beyond the interactions between an individual reader and a single text to include multiple texts, semiotic modes, objects of the environment, and people. The cross-case comparison across the eleven cases led to the identification and analysis of three major themes: intertextuality, multimodality, and the situatedness of postgraduate reading in social interactional networks. Based on the analyses, the study concludes that advanced academic reading involves: (1) an ability to recognize and rely on the intertextual nature of academic texts; (2) an ability to understand and utilize multiple semiotic modes which comprise disciplinary texts; and (3) an ability to see reading as an opportunity to engage in furthering participation with disciplinary and professional communities, as well as to rely on prior experiences with multiple communities in dealing with multiple texts.

Description: xvii, 375 p. : ill. ; 30 cm.; PolyU Library Call No.: [THS] LG51 .H577P ENGL 2005 Tchigaeva