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This article presents the culmination of the first author's experience of work at a Deaf Education Centre in Aotearoa New Zealand, alongside the themes stemming from a literature review on wellbeing and the development and maintenance of social and emotional skills for deaf students in both mainstream and special education. The predominant themes identified suggest inconclusive outcomes for students being placed in mainstream or special education in terms of wellbeing and its components such as belonging, identity, and the development of social and emotional skills. Areas for ongoing development and research are outlined, including a need to ascertain the student voice in future research and intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lexical variation abounds in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) and is commonly associated with the introduction of the Australasian Signed English lexicon into Deaf education in 1979, before NZSL was acknowledged as a language. Evidence from dictionaries of NZSL collated between 1986 and 1997 reveal many coexisting variants for the numbers from one to twenty in NZSL. This article reports on an empirical investigation of how the use of variants for numerals is associated with social factors of age, region, and gender. Results confirm that age group is the strongest factor in variation and that region also plays a role. The analysis of illustrative cases of number variation reveals sociolinguistic processes of social differentiation and changing lexical usage in the NZSL community. Findings provide comparative data on aspects of number variation reported in the closely related British Sign Language. (Contains 10 tables and 2 notes.)

New Zealand research suggests that CAM use by GPs has decreased, while referral to CAM practitioners by GPs has increased, and that patients often do not tell their health practitioners when they are using CAM. The New Zealand Medical Council has developed guidelines for GPs who use CAM. However, there is no research in New Zealand that looks at how patients and GPs respond to CAM issues in the consultation. This paper uses data collected for two research projects on doctor-patient interaction. For this research, consultations between 105 patients and nine GPs were video-recorded. In this data set, all doctors but one were 'orthodox' and to some degree reserved judgement on CAM, albeit remaining cautious in how they made this evident. Patients on the other hand demonstrated a variety of strategies to get CAM on the agenda, and GPs were careful to couch any criticism in such a way as to protect the 'face' of patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this illustration, we present a transcription and discussion of the variety of English spoken by people of European descent in New Zealand. Locally, such people are referred to as being Pākehā, using the Māori word. Pākehā speech is illustrated here in the speech of three educated women. Thus some of the features which might be expected from New Zealanders do not occur in these recordings, although the speakers are all clearly New Zealanders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article describes the application in a teaching context of results from research undertaken as part of the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project. Our earlier analyses examined the ways in which nurses communicate with patients in a busy Wellington hospital ward. The results formed the basis of an innovative classroom practice programme with students enrolled in the Bachelor of Nursing degree in Auckland for whom English is an additional language (EAL). Following a brief outline of the methodology used to collect the data, and a summary of relevant key points from the analyses, we describe the ways in which materials were used to familiarise EAL nursing students with areas of prospective communicative challenge. A number or classroom exercises and activities were devised using the genuine interactions recorded between nurses and patients as a starting point, with the aim of raising awareness of the importance of pragmatic and socio-cultural considerations in ward interaction, as well as improving spoken fluency. The paper concludes with some brief evaluative reflections on this pedagogical approach, and its implications for student learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lexical variation abounds in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) and is commonly associated with the introduction of the Australasian Signed English lexicon into Deaf education in 1979, before NZSL was acknowledged as a language. Evidence from dictionaries of NZSL collated between 1986. 1997 reveal many coexisting variants for the numbers from one to twenty in NZSL. This article reports on an empirical investigation of how the use of variants for numerals is associated with social factors of age, region, and gender. Results confirm that age group is the strongest factor in variation and that region also plays a role. The analysis of illustrative cases of number variation reveals sociolinguistic processes of social differentiation and changing lexical usage in the NZSL community. Findings provide comparative data on aspects of number variation reported in the closely related British Sign Language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]