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International education constitutes a key industry in Australia and international students represent a third of university students at Australian universities. This paper examines the media representation of international students in terms of their English language proficiency. The study applies Critical Discourse Analysis to the multimodal data of an episode of a current affairs TV program, "Four Corners," and social media comments made to the episode. Using Social Actor Analysis, the study finds that the responsibility for declining standards at universities is assigned to international students through representations of their language use as problematic. This is supported by the visual representation of international students as different. By systematically mapping out the English-as-a-problem discourse, the paper finds that the media representation of language proficiency and language learning is simplistic and naïve and the social media discussion reinforces this. This further contributes to the discursive exclusion of international students.

The National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) has been a key tenet of Australian education policy since its launch over a decade ago. Print media coverage of NAPLAN and myschool.edu.au, which displays and compares NAPLAN results across Australia, has played a role in both reporting and shaping this aspect of education policy. This paper uses a corpus-assisted approach to map print media representations of NAPLAN over the first decade of the Program, from 2008 to 2018. Building on previous work on NAPLAN and the print media (Mockler, 2013, 2016), it draws on a corpus of almost 6,000 articles from the Australian national and capital city daily newspapers published between 2008 and 2018. It charts the discursive shifts that have taken place over this period as NAPLAN has transitioned in the public space from a diagnostic tool seen to be useful to educators, to a comparative tool seen to be useful to parents and the general public, and more recently to a contested tool seen to have narrow or limited utility.

Until relatively recently, financial planning typically involved investment advisers advising relatively wealthy and financially literate individuals about where to place their abundant disposable incomes. Today, many financial planners are focused on advising individuals with modest incomes and little understanding of finance how best to manage their financial affairs in anticipation of retirements that could last for decades. The domain of financial planning discourse, despite the profession's remarkable growth, is virtually unexplored territory in terms of studies conducted using applied linguistic analytic tools. This paper sheds light on the social purpose of financial planning consultations and their realization through their generic structure. A dataset of 10 authentic recorded telephone-based financial planning consultations was established and analysed for generic moves using Halliday and Hasan's (1985) generic structure potential. Using the generic structure potential (GSP) as a basis for evaluating the achievement of intended social purpose, and identifying a problem in the move sequencing and the common omission of a key component, we suggest strategic discursive modifications that would improve outcomes for all stakeholders. Implications for professional and academic training are discussed.

While most language-planning and policy (LPP) studies have focussed on language decisions made by government bodies, in recent years there has been an increased interest in micro-level language planning in immigrant contexts. Few studies, however, have used this framework to retrospectively examine the planning decisions of religious institutions, such as "ethnic" churches. This paper explores the language decisions made by the Lutheran church in Australia between 1838 and 1921.The study is based on archival research carried out in the Lutheran Archives in Adelaide, South Australia. The paper draws attention to the complex interrelationships between language, religion and identity in an immigrant context. (Contains 2 endnotes and 1 table.)

This paper reports on a study of peer interaction in ten foreign language (FL) classes, six secondary and four primary, over a period of four months. The focus of this paper is the nature of peer interaction, including the purposes of second language use, and language choice. The data, comprising observation, audio and video recordings of five lessons from each of the classes, and interviews with learners, indicates multiple uses peers make of their time together, and different potential outcomes for learning. The findings suggest second language use varies in purpose and includes both formulaic pattern practice and communication of new information or ideas, and at the same time creates a context for the co-construction of language and a grappling with form-meaning connections in the target language. By exploring peer interaction as a context for second language use and development, this research brings together different perspectives on interaction and second language acquisition and builds on recent calls for a greater awareness of the interdependence of social and cognitive factors in the process of language learning. (Contains 1 figure, 2 tables, 9 excerpts, and 2 endnotes.)

This paper explores the language used by Australian Football League (AFL) footballers and Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) journalists in their post-match interviews broadcast on ABC (774 Melbourne) radio. From Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), Appraisal is used to investigate the evaluative language expressed by the AFL footballers in their exchanges with ABC journalists. Despite the many applications of linguistics to media discourse, especially within SFL, this research is the first to analyse the language of Australian athletes in their post-match interviews. It is found that irrespective of the result of the game, ABC journalists and AFL footballers maintain a neutral stance by countering expressions of positive Attitude with negative Attitude, as well as employing Graduation and Engagement resources that reduce authorial endorsement. These findings are summarized and discussed, including reference to neutralism from Conversation Analysis. The paper goes on to claim that the tenor between AFL footballers, ABC journalists and the broadcast audience makes it difficult for AFL footballers to express authoritative evaluations. The ultimate aim is to show that AFL footballers do well to negotiate a particularly challenging register. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)

From its inception in 1977 until its last year of publication by an Australian publisher in 2015, the "Australian Review of Applied Linguistics" featured over 700 articles related to applied linguistics. This publication history provides a unique resource for tracing the scope and change of the applied linguistics landscape in Australia over the last four decades. While the journal design and format have naturally undergone some changes in this time, in this paper we consider the nature of the articles themselves, whether there have been changes in coverage or emphasis, and what this can tell us about the history of and the changes in applied linguistics in Australia. Our analysis of the articles focuses in particular on two independent dimensions- the sub-field of applied linguistics and the particular language under focus in each article--and the changes in frequencies of each of these over time.

Within the Australian education system, Aboriginal students' use of non-standard English features is often viewed simplistically as evidence of non-attainment of literacy and oral-English milestones. One reason for this is the widespread use of assessment tools which fail to differentiate between native-English speakers and students who are learning English as a second language. In these assessments, non-standard English features are framed as "mistakes" and low scores taken as evidence of "poor" performance. This paper will contrast a mistake-oriented analysis with one that incorporates knowledge of the students' first language. It will clearly show that when consideration is given to the first language, a more nuanced picture of English proficiency emerges: one that is attuned to the specific second language learning pathway and thus far better placed to inform both assessment and classroom instruction.

Overlap in conversation is a well-established area of conversation analysis research (e.g. Jefferson 1983; Schegloff 2000) which can reveal how participants orient to transition relevance places. This paper presents an analysis of overlap in the mixed (Garrwa, Kriol and English) language conversations of two indigenous Australian women as part of a larger study of turn-taking practices in indigenous conversations. Walsh (Walsh 1995) made some observations about Aboriginal conversational style, for example that they may enter a conversation without attending to the talk of others. His observational claims are empirically examined here in the context of our data. We find that the overlapping talk in our data follows many patterns similar to English speakers' talk, including transition space overlap (cf. Jefferson 1983) and simultaneous starts. The most important difference we found was overlap onset occurring shortly after the closure of the transition space, reflecting disattendance by speakers to the content, but not the timing, of each other's talk. Overall, however, we find that the turn-taking of these two women is overwhelmingly orderly, and deviations from orderliness can mostly be accounted for by their orientation to points of possible completion and rules of turn-taking as described by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974). (Contains 2 endnotes.)

In the context of low fertility and Australia's ageing population, a national longitudinal telephone survey, "Negotiating the Life Course" (NLC), asks women about their childbearing intentions. This paper uses conversation analysis (CA) to examine interaction between an interviewer and respondents on one NLC question about the likelihood of having children, Question 165. The analysis focuses on excerpts from troubled interviews, making transparent the task of negotiating responses acceptable to the interviewer and shedding light on problems inherent in the question for older women and women for whom prediction is difficult. Analysis shows the trouble to result from lack of congruence in the purposes of the researcher and the respondent: the researcher asks about likelihood, whereas the respondent tells her own story. (Contains 1 figure and 4 endnotes.)

Classroom discourse analysis has contributed to understandings of the nature of student-teacher interactions, and how learning takes place in the classroom; however, much of this work has been undertaken in teacher-directed learning contexts. Student-centred classrooms such as problem-based learning (PBL) approaches are increasingly common in professional disciplines such as the health sciences and medicine. With the globalisation of education, health science and medical education, PBL classrooms are often sites of considerable linguistic and cultural diversity, yet little is known from a classroom discourse perspective about the language demands of PBL. This paper examines the ways in which the students and tutor negotiate and construct meanings through language in one first year physiotherapy PBL tutorial at an Australian university, with a particular focus on the ways in which the discourse is regulated in a student-centred learning environment. The analysis of the classroom discourse is underpinned by Halliday's systemic functional linguistics. The findings provide a description of the linguistic resources students draw on to co-construct and negotiate knowledge, as well as show how the tutor, with minimal strategic interventions, scaffolds the students' learning. The findings also suggest that the PBL environment can be a challenging one for students whose cultural and language backgrounds are different from that of the classroom. (Contains 11 tables and 1 endnote.)

Most studies in the field of synchronous Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) deal with interactions between language learners, while interactions between native speakers (NS) and learners have not been explored to the same extent, particularly to ascertain whether chatting with NS can provide a pedagogically sound bridge to conversation. Through the analysis of interactions within a NS Italian chatline, this paper considers whether the chatline environment can act as a bridge to conversational Italian by providing the same opportunities for second language acquisition reputedly offered by face-to-face interaction. Italian NS chatline discourse is analysed for its conversational "flavour" by considering variety of Italian, range of topics, questions, discourse markers, feedback tokens and negotiations. The findings of this study suggest that NS chat discourse can provide learners with exposure to colloquial and regional varieties of Italian, which are generally unavailable in language textbooks. Furthermore, NS chatline discourse offers learners a type of informal conversational practice which also includes negotiation of meaning, thus confirming its role in promoting language learning. (Contains 3 notes.)

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) has been a key tenet of Australian education policy since its launch over a decade ago. Print media coverage of NAPLAN and myschool.edu.au , which displays and compares NAPLAN results across Australia, has played a role in both reporting and shaping this aspect of education policy. This paper uses a corpus-assisted approach to map print media representations of NAPLAN over the first decade of the Program, from 2008 to 2018. Building on previous work on NAPLAN and the print media (Mockler, 2013, 2016), it draws on a corpus of almost 6,000 articles from the Australian national and capital city daily newspapers published between 2008 and 2018. It charts the discursive shifts that have taken place over this period as NAPLAN has transitioned in the public space from a diagnostic tool seen to be useful to educators, to a comparative tool seen to be useful to parents and the general public, and more recently to a contested tool seen to have narrow or limited utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classroom discourse analysis has contributed to understandings of the nature of student-teacher interactions, and how learning takes place in the classroom; however, much of this work has been Undertaken in teacher-directed learning contexts. Student-centred classrooms such as problem-based learning (PBL) approaches are increasingly common in professional disciplines such as the health sciences and medicine. With the globalisation of education, health science and medical education, PBL classrooms are often sites of considerable linguistic and cultural diversity, yet little is known from a classroom discourse perspective about the language demands of PBL. This paper examines the ways in which the students and tutor negotiate and construct meanings through language in one first year physiotherapy PBL tutorial at an Australian university, with a particular focus on the ways in which the discourse is regulated in a student-centred learning environment. The analysis of the classroom discourse is underpinned by Halliday's systemic functional linguistics. The findings provide a description of the linguistic resources students draw on to co-construct and negotiate knowledge, as well as show how the tutor, with minimal strategic interventions, scaffolds the students' learning. The findings also suggest that the PBL environment can be a challenging one for students whose cultural and language backgrounds are different from that of the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]