Browsing by Author "Dippold, D."

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Open Access
Talking about talk: tutor and student expectations of oracy skills in higher education
(Routledge, 2021-03-23) Heron, M.; Dippold, D.; Hosein, A.; Sullivan, A. K.; Aksit, Tijen; Aksit, Necmi; Doubleday, J.; McKeown, K.
Although participation in academic speaking events is a key to developing disciplinary understanding, students for whom English is a second language may have limited access to these learning events due to an increasingly dialogic and active higher education pedagogy which places considerable demands on their oracy skills. Drawing on the Oracy Skills Framework we explore disciplinary tutors’ and students’ expectations of oracy skills required for disciplinary study. An analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data found that disciplinary tutors placed importance on the cognitive dimension of oracy skills such as argumentation and asking questions, whilst students placed importance on linguistic accuracy. The findings also suggest that tutors and students lack a shared metalanguage to talk about oracy skills. We argue that a divergence of expectations and lack of shared terminology can result in compromising students’ access to valuable classroom dialogue. The paper concludes with a number of practical suggestions through which both tutors and students can increase their understanding of oracy skills.
Open Access
Tutors’ beliefs about language and roles: practice as language policy in EMI contexts
(Routledge, 2021-09-06) Heron, M.; Dippold, D.; Akşit, Necmi; Akşit, Tijen; Doubleday, J.; McKeown, K.
It has been well established that for all students, but particularly second language (L2) English speaking students, academic English speaking skills are key to developing specialist terminology and disciplinary content in an English as a medium of instruction (EMI) context. However, what is less clear in many contexts is the institutional language policy necessary to guide and support both L2 English speaking students and disciplinary tutors. In this paper, we focus on disciplinary tutors’ beliefs of language and their roles with respect to language support to surface implicit and covert language policies. We argue that in the absence of explicit policy, showcasing the range of tutor perspectives and practice around language support can provide a way forward in explicating good practice and highlighting an approach in which all stakeholders take responsibility for supporting students’ academic speaking skills in an EMI context.