2021 Virtual Graduate Student Symposium

“The Day after an #AmberAlert Day”: An analysis of discursive constructions of the Canadian wireless emergency broadcast system

In 2017, it was mandated that Canadian emergency alerts—including Amber alerts, which solicit the public’s assistance in locating abducted children—be distributed to all wireless devices (i.e., cellphones and tablets) (CRTC, 2016). Amber alerts have been met with particularly negative feedback since this system’s implementation, prompting civilian complaints to the emergency phone-line 911 which strains police resources at the most pivotal moments of child abduction cases (Shum, 2019). Moreover, researchers have criticized the use of Amber alerts for locating abductees due to ethical and practical concerns (e.g., Griffin, 2010; Sicafuse and Miller, 2010; Creel, 2015). This mixed-methods study addresses these issues by posing the following questions, which examine Amber alerts as rhetorical discourse: What are the constraints of the rhetorical situation of Amber alerts? How do individual members of the Canadian public discursively construct the aims, intentions, and effectiveness of Amber alerts? A corpus of Amber alert texts is considered in the frame of rhetorical situation (Bitzer, 1968). Further, a corpus of internet posts is examined using qualitative thematic analysis. The findings of these initial analyses were foundational in the development of a questionnaire probing Canadian civilians’ experiences with the newly implemented Amber alert system. Overall findings indicate that rhetorical constraints may negatively influence the effectiveness of Amber alerts; for instance, the use of police jargon may make the texts inaccessible to the intended audience. Recommendations for further development of the emergency alerting system are provided with the aim of improving public safety outcomes.

Uncharted territory: A lexical profile of action-adventure video games

English classrooms, particularly in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context, may have difficulty providing learners with the quantity of input required to foster significant vocabulary gains (Munoz, 2014). One avenue to address this issue in second language acquisition (SLA) is to promote extensive contact with the target language beyond the classroom. This extramural engagement with the language is often in the form of extensive reading programs, reading practices in which learners engage in reading for enjoyment, rather than reading to learn grammatical forms (Waring & Nation, 2004). SLA researchers have recently investigated alternative avenues of extramural linguistic exposure, such as in the watching of television and films (Webb and Rodgers, 2009b). One such medium, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) video games, remains a relatively unexplored source of language input (Schmitt, 2020). Previous investigations indicated that the lexical demands, present in a generalized sample of COTS video games were not accessible for many language learners, as the video games possessed lexical demands beyond the most frequently occurring vocabulary items (Rodgers & Heidt, 2020). Since little is known about the vocabulary present in COTS video games, this corpus-based analysis seeks to address this gap by conducting a lexical profile of the dialog present in seven video games of the action-adventure genre. Using the program VocabProfiler (Cobb, 2020), the lexical profile indicates that video games of the action-adventure genre possess vocabulary demands lower than previous research. These preliminary findings suggest that COTS video games may prove to be a potential source of linguistic input beyond the classroom context.

Contexts and constructs: Implications for the testing of listening in pilots’ communication with air traffic controllers

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) published the Language Proficiency Requirements for pilots and air traffic controllers (ATCOs) in 2003. Since 2008 (later extended to 2011), these aviation professionals have had to demonstrate their ability to speak and understand the language used in radiotelephony communications. Research has shown that there is lack of clarity regarding what needs to be assessed in terms of the English used in this context (Douglas, 2014; Emery, 2014; Kim & Billington, 2016; Kim & Elder, 2015; Monteiro, 2019; Read & Knoch, 2009). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the nature of the listening tasks performed by pilots as an essential step in test development and validation. This explanatory sequential mixed-methods study (Creswell, 2015) elicited questionnaire responses from 156 pilots (Phase 1) and subsequently interviewed six aeronautical English experts (Phase 2) to better understand the characteristics of the listening tasks that pilots undertake during radiotelephony communications. Descriptive statistical analyses were carried out to investigate the quantitative data. Descriptive coding was performed to analyse the qualitative data. The findings were then merged. They provide information that may usefully inform the development of the listening test construct and the test specifications.

“Let’s Talk about Your Lesson”: Genre Analysis of Teacher Trainers’ Feedback in an EFL Context

English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teacher education has been the focus of multiple studies (e.g. Ali & Al-Adawi, 2013; Ayvaz-Tuncel & Çobanoğlu, 2018). Of particular importance in this education is the process of providing teacher trainers’ observational feedback on the trainees’ classroom performance. So far, no research has investigated teacher trainers’ observational feedback on EFL in-service teacher trainees’ performance. This qualitative study draws on theories of Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) and situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) to investigate the social situation of teacher trainers’ observational feedback. In RGS, genre is defined as typified rhetorical action based in recurrent situations (Miller, 1984; Paré & Smart, 1994). The study investigates the genres of teacher trainers’ spoken and written observational feedback provided in the context of an EFL teacher training program in Egypt. Through document analysis, audio recorded observational feedback meetings, and semi-structured interviews, this study develops an understanding of teacher trainers’ practices and EFL trainee teachers’ perspectives on observational feedback. In addition, it investigates the construction and transmission of pedagogical knowledge in an educational institution. Early findings suggest that trainers’ spoken and written observational feedback is governed by the criteria designated by the school management. The study shows that trainees gain membership in their Communities of Practice (COP) (Wenger, 2005) through experimenting with their own teaching and being taught how to teach. The implications of this study will further the current understanding of the construction and communication of pedagogical knowledge in an EFL workplace context.

“I can’t because…”: Strategies in forming the speech act of refusals of native English speakers and non-native English speakers in entry level customer service positions in Canada

Being able to refuse – decline requests, offers, invitations or suggestions – is necessary in the workplace. Native English speakers (NES) and non-native English speakers (NNES) often use different strategies to form the speech act of refusals (e.g. Riddiford & Holmes, 2015); these differences may lead to unintentional tension and hostility. Teaching refusals would be beneficial to NNES, as pragmatic errors are often perceived more negatively than other language-related errors (Neilson, et al., 2002). Previous studies on refusals have uncovered the strategies people use when forming a refusal, and a typical order in which these strategies are used, depending on the situation (e.g. Beebe, et al., 1990; Salazar-Campillo, 2013). The present study investigates the refusal strategies used by NESs (n = 5) with Canadian customer service experience and NNESs (n = 5) working in customer service, as a sizeable part of NNESs in Canada working in customer service. Six role-plays were conducted to determine the refusal strategies used by both groups. Follow-up stimulated recall interviews (SRI) provided some insights into the participants’ use of these strategies. Role-play analysis show both groups share the most used strategies: direct refusal, provide an explanation, and offer an alternative. The NNESs were less likely to follow a typical order and more likely to not form a refusal. During the SRIs NES were more concerned about workplace expectations, and the difficulty of refusing compared to the NNES. Pedagogical implications for language learners working in customer service in an English based environment are given based on the results.

Losing rage: Cross-cultural critical discourse analysis and archiving desecration of the Quebec flag

Critical discourse analysis examines discourses present in a society, however crosscultural and crosslingual discourse is much less studied. Understanding discourses across cultures and languages is important, such as the well known sociocultural and political divides in Canada between Anglophones and Francophones. The event of a Quebec flag’s desecration in Brockville, Ontario, around the time of the federal and provincial debates over the constitutional amendments of the Meech Lake Accords, offers an opportunity to examine the long lasting differences in discourse between anglophone and francophone Canada, including through the continued memory of the event itself. The event raises questions of how discourse and archival maintenance vary between anglophone and francophone sources in the context of the same event. The research utilizes multimodal critical discourse analysis and digital humanities resources such as online news archives, reverse image search tools, and public blogs. Online records of the event are utilized as data to analyze the context of where mentions of the event appear and what discourse exists around the event. The disparity in the documentation and discussions of the event belie the rift of understanding and ideologization of the event in anglophone and francophone Canada. The variation in derived meaning, ideological motive, and maintenance in memory are significant and demonstrate the importance in crosscultural and crosslinguistic discourse analysis in multicultural and multilingual social spaces like Canada.

Increasing employability through Essential Skills Online: An evaluation of a workplace literacy tool

Since the positive correlation between literacy levels and stable employment was found in the International Adult Literacy Survey (OECD & Stats Can, 1995), there has been an increase in workplace training. However, there has not been adequate efforts to improve adult literacy (Taylor, Evans, & Mohamed, 2008). Consequently, the average literacy level of Canadian adults remains lower than the international average (PIAAC, 2015). To help increase the workplace literacy of adults with low literacy, an online workplace training tool called Essential Skills Online (ESO) was developed to help users increase their workplace literacy and numeracy skills. This study evaluated ESO using a developmental utilization-focused evaluation (Patton, 2010; Patton, 2012) and consultations with industry experts about possible directions ESO can take as it continues to develop. Although this case study evaluation consisted of three phases – the pre-evaluation, field evaluation, and consulting industry experts – the focus of this presentation will be on the field evaluation that took place in an Essential Skills Program in a fairly remote Indigenous community. The evaluation found that the users enjoyed using ESO, but improvements could be made to the user design experience and parts of the pedagogical content. ESO’s development could also benefit from more collaboration with the organizations using it. If the recommended changes are made, ESO could contribute to increasing the workplace literacy of adults to improve their overall employability.