Welcome to the 2009/2010 LLED Seminar Series. The Series consists of two streams: Research Seminars and Apprenticeship Seminars. The seminars are scheduled for occasional Thursdays, from 12:30-2:00 p.m. in the DLC, Ponderosa F room 103. Presentations will be approximately 30-40 minutes, followed by time for questions and answers.

The LLED Research Seminars are an opportunity for faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars to introduce/showcase their recent scholarly work to the LLED community. Everyone is invited to attend; graduate students in particular are strongly encouraged to take advantage of the opportunities the Research Seminars afford. Those interested in presenting their work (faculty, students, and visitors) should contact Steven Talmy. (Abstracts from last years' research seminars can be found here and here.)

The LLED Apprenticeship Seminars are intended to provide support to graduate students (new and continuing students) as they engage with LLED and UBC scholarly communities, and respective disciplines in language and literacy education. Topics for these seminars will be determined by graduate students in consultation with the Graduate Peer Advisors. (Abstracts from last years' apprenticeship sessions can be found here.)

If you have any questions, please contact Steven Talmy.

Thursday, November 19 (12.30-2PM – DLC, Ponderosa F 103)
Globalization and language learning in rural Japan: The role of English in the local linguistic ecology
Dr. Ryuko Kubota, LLED

In a globalized world, English is often considered to be the most useful lingua franca for intercultural communication. However, globalization has also increased ethnic and linguistic diversity in local EFL communities, challenging this assumption. This presentation draws on a qualitative study of a small Japanese community with a growing number of non-English-speaking immigrants, largely from Brazil but also from China, Peru, Korea and Thailand. I analyze interviews with three Japanese female volunteer leaders who are teachers and learners of English and two Japanese male workers who study Portuguese in order to support the local Brazilian migrant workers. I investigate how they view and engage in local linguistic diversity and how this is related to their subjectivities and to their experiences in learning and using English. The presentation highlights emergent themes and offers pedagogical implications of the local linguistic ecology for the teaching and learning of English for global communication.

Thursday, October 1 (12.30-2PM – DLC, Ponderosa F 103)
Appropriate versus inappropriate textual borrowing: Perspectives of students and instructors
Dr. Ling Shi, LLED

This study explores whether certain words from source materials need to be acknowledged in student writing. A total of 75 participants (20 undergraduates, 28 graduates, 27 instructors) at a North American university were interviewed to comment on five examples of language re-use in some undergraduate research papers. Chi-square tests suggest a significant difference in the citation decisions among undergraduates, graduates and instructors for only one of the five examples. No significant differences were found between participants in humanities/social sciences and sciences, and between students who spoke English as a first and second language. Participants’ comments focused on how they valued and distinguished between words and ideas, and between words representing special concepts and words forming a grammatical structure. There were also differences in how individuals placed specific words on a continuum from special or newly coined words to those that had almost entered into the general lingua in a subject area.

Electronic literature is defined by the Electronic Literature Organization as a class of “works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer” (ELO, 2006, n.p.). It includes genres such as hypertext fiction, reactive poetry, blog novels, Flash fiction and poetry, generative art, installation, code poetry, and so on. This presentation considers the features of such multimedia literary forms through an examination of two examples and contemplates the value of such literature for critical literacy education.

Studies show that children’s literature can and does affect the language (Cunningham, 2002) and cultural awareness (Cullinan & Galda, 2002) of the children who have these books read to them. However, there have been no studies of the potential for written New Zealand English, in particular the use of Maori loanwords in children’s picture books, to influence the language use of adults, nor the potential for children’s picture books to affect the adults’ knowledge of Maori culture. This paper will examine these questions by reporting on themes from semi-structured interviews with four parents after reading a set of 13 picture books which use a high frequency of Maori loanwords (Daly, 2007) to their children for a period of a month. Adult readers reported changes in both receptive and productive use of Maori loanwords used in the books, and increased knowledge of Maori culture.

• Winter 2008/09 Research Seminars Term 1

• Winter 2008/09 Research Seminars Term 2

• Winter 2008/09 Apprenticeship Seminars