Margaret Franken - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Margaret Franken

Smart CALL: Personalization, Contextualization, & Socialization, 2022

We propose a “smart” language learning system for students to acquire domain-specific vocabulary ... more We propose a “smart” language learning system for students to acquire domain-specific vocabulary while taking an online course. F-Lingo, a browser plugin, works on top of the FutureLearn MOOC platform to provide learners with opportunities to study the words, phrases, and concepts that are important to the course topic. F-Lingo comprises three components. The Material Gathering component crawls the web pages of the MOOC course the student has chosen, collecting the entire textual content (with some exceptions). The Vocabulary Extraction component identifies domain-specific words, phrases, and concepts, and hyperlinks in the MOOC page to draw the student’s attention to them. Clicking a link displays a dialog window in which lexico-grammatical features, and definitions, of the extracted items can be studied, including illustrations in example sentences retrieved from external resources such as Wikipedia and FLAX. The Progress Tracking component records the clicks that students make on...

RELC Journal, 2018

Lexical bundles, recurrent multiword combinations in a register, are extremely common and importa... more Lexical bundles, recurrent multiword combinations in a register, are extremely common and important discourse building blocks in academic writing. An increasing number of studies have investigated lexical bundles in academic writing in recent years, but few studies have explored L2 learners’ interpretations of their own bundle production, particularly sentence initial bundle production. Investigating the sources that have appeared to influence learners’ choices and knowledge of bundles is important as it complements what we know about the structural and functional features of lexical bundles and provides useful first-hand information for second language writing pedagogy. The present study interviewed five Chinese postgraduate students to probe possible reasons for their use of the typical sentence initial bundles identified in the self-built Chinese Masters and PhD thesis corpora. The interviews revealed diverse explanations including interlingual transfer, classroom learning, notic...

The paper is informed by a research study exploring middle leadership as experienced by Chair-per... more The paper is informed by a research study exploring middle leadership as experienced by Chair-persons of Departments within one faculty in a university in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is argued that middle leadership in higher education needs to be understood as a highly complex relational endeavour, characterised by compromises that are negotiated amidst leadership structures, hier-archies and relations. The focus on leadership as first and foremost relational provides a frame for critically examining the nature and complexities inherent in the lived reality of middle leadership. Relational leadership is conceptualised as encompassing four inter-related dimensions. These are derived from data and respectively centre on structure and power; trust and credibility; learning; and discursive relations. We suggest that each dimension provides a productive lens through which the complexities and challenges of middle leadership can be explored. Throughout the emphasis is that for middle leader...

need for teachers to be prepared to meet the needs of English as an additional language (EAL)2 st... more need for teachers to be prepared to meet the needs of English as an additional language (EAL)2 students in New Zealand schools more effectively. This paper offers a number of principles to guide policy, practice and teacher development. The paper draws on Alton-Lee’s (2003) best evidence synthesis of quality teaching for diverse students, and Franken and McComish’s (2003a, 2003b) observations and analysis of provisions for EAL students in New Zealand schools. The principles, grounded in second language and literacy acquisition research, point to the need to provide particular enabling conditions for the literacy development of EAL students if they are to achieve as well as their English-speaking peers.

Asia Pacific Education Review, 2016

Abstract Higher education has seen increasing educational mobility as students finance themselves... more Abstract Higher education has seen increasing educational mobility as students finance themselves or get financial support from their families to study abroad (Shields Comp Educ Rev 57(4):609–636, 2013; Verbik and Lazanowski in World education news and reviews. http://www.wes.org/educators/pdf/StudentMobility.pdf, 2007). Another significant source of support, particularly for students in developing countries, is that from international aid scholarships. This research presents the reported experiences of 15 Tongan postgraduate scholars who successfully completed overseas postgraduate studies. The study focuses on the perceptions of qualifications and of scholars, as well as knowledge utilisation and knowledge resituation in and beyond the workplace. Knowledge utilisation, sometimes referred to as knowledge management, is how others support returnees’ to share and make use of their knowledge; while knowledge resituation is a personal and individual process in which knowledge gained in one context is tuned to and made use of in a new context (Eraut in Expertise development: the transition between school and work. Open Universiteit, Heerlen, pp 52–73, 2004a, Pedagogy and practice. Culture and identities. Sage, London, 2008; Franken 2012). Given the challenges the scholars faced, we advocate for a more explicit recognition of what knowledge and skills returning scholars bring home, and a more proactive and strategic use of these by their workplaces in particular.

Supporting collocation learning with a digital library Extensive knowledge of collocations is a k... more Supporting collocation learning with a digital library Extensive knowledge of collocations is a key factor that distinguishes learners from fluent native speakers. Such knowledge is difficult to acquire simply because there is so much of it. This paper describes a system that exploits the facilities offered by digital libraries to provide a rich collocation-learning environment. The design is based on three processes that have been identified as leading to lexical acquisition: noticing, retrieval and generation. Collocations are automatically identified in input documents using natural language processing techniques and used to enhance the presentation of the documents and also as the basis of exercises, produced under teacher control, that amplify students ’ collocation knowledge. The system uses a corpus of 1.3 B short phrases drawn from the Web from which 29 M collocations have been automatically identified. It also connects to examples garnered from the live Web and the British ...

International Conference on Computers in Education, 2002. Proceedings.

This article discusses an undergraduate secondlanguage writing course that incorporated web confe... more This article discusses an undergraduate secondlanguage writing course that incorporated web conferencing. The study was informed by a sociocultural research approach known as activity theory [2]. Student reflective diary entries posted over ten weeks to the web conference helped identify features that supported or detracted from collaboration, peer evaluation and the coconstruction of academic text. Employing activity theory, we outline two course objectives (collaborative writing and peer evaluation) and discuss the use of student feedback to modify web conferencing support.

is a senior lecturer at Faculty of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. Her research interests in... more is a senior lecturer at Faculty of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. Her research interests include computer assisted language learning, mobile language learning, supporting language learning in MOOCs, digital libraries and natural language processing.

The current paper draws on the findings of two recent research reports commissioned by the New Ze... more The current paper draws on the findings of two recent research reports commissioned by the New Zealand Ministry of Education (Alton-Lee, 2003; Franken & McComish, 2003) in order to generate a synthesised statement of characteristics of quality teaching for students for whom English is not the first language (referred to from here as NESB students) in New Zealand schools. Alton-Lee (2003, see Ministry of Education website, www.minedu.govt.nz) provides a synthesis of research-based evidence addressing the nature of quality teaching in schooling for the full range of diverse students. In this work, diversity encompasses “many characteristics including ethnicity, socio-economic background, home language, gender, special needs, disability, and giftedness” (Alton-Lee, 2003, p. v). Because her synthesis addresses diversity in the student population, she focusses on what is common to diverse students and thus does not specify particular conditions that pertain to any one sub-group of divers...

The paper outlines a professional development programme for secondary school teachers of te reo M... more The paper outlines a professional development programme for secondary school teachers of te reo Mäori (under the auspices of Te Hiringa i te Mahara) conducted by a language teacher educator and an expert in Mäori bilingualism and biliteracy. While the principles underpinning the programme reflect a strong task-based orientation, the programme approached development needs for the teachers from the point of view of understanding “enabling conditions” (Franken, Rau, Ngata & Parata, n.d.) for effective language learning and teaching (see also Ellis, 2005), rather than understanding task based learning and teaching per se. The programme drew on the current practices of the teachers and made use of epistemology of Mäori language and Mäori language learning. The paper presents observations from monitoring data collected during the programme supporting the claim that such an approach to the professional development of language teachers promotes a strong knowledge base and pedagogical reason...

Values and Virtues in Higher Education Research

Research on second language teaching and learning has to date focused primarily on the major skil... more Research on second language teaching and learning has to date focused primarily on the major skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking but has treated them as relatively separate areas of investigation. By contrast this research investigates the role of one skill, speaking, in the performance of another, writing. The study investigates the effect of an instructional sequence that aimed to prepare upper high school students (Form 6/Grade 12) to write better argument essays. The sequence was experienced by the students in two ways. One way was for students to engage in talk with a peer before and during writing. The other way was for students to work in a solitary way. Qualitative data analysis compared the writing scores gained by students on two sets of variables: one to indicate the quality of text in general terms (Hamp-Lyons, 1986) and the other to indicate quality of text in terms of specific features of argument: claims, elaboration of claims, grounds and elaboration ...

TEXT

Research into academic literacy demands on postgraduate students, particularly at the doctoral le... more Research into academic literacy demands on postgraduate students, particularly at the doctoral level, has increased significantly in the last decade or so. Academic literacy is often configured in relation to students needing to understand the conventions of the discourse community and being able to respond to the challenges associated with the practices, skills, and particularly the text forms associated with it. While this is of value in guiding pedagogical support and interventions, it must be complemented with an understanding of the students themselves: what they bring to the community and learning context in terms of prior knowledge and expertise, what they personally find challenging in knowledge terms, and how they respond to the challenges. This requires us to 'go behind the textual'. A productive framework for this analysis is the work of Eraut (2000, 2003, 2004, 2008), which encompasses a view of discourse community or group membership, considers challenges arising from transitions to different communities or situations, and focuses on how knowledge demands shift and change. This paper presents data from international students representing knowledge transitions and challenges in masters research study, as the students plan their research, write about (or 'codify') their planning, and write about it in the form of a thesis. As the data shows, challenges and successes in these transitions impact on a student's developing identity as a researcher, and also on the likelihood of successful completion and aspirations to engage in further research.

English for Specific Purposes

Leadership in Higher Education from a Transrelational Perspective

The Journal of AsiaTEFL

Asian migrants 1 that settle in countries like NZ learn English in the hope of accessing mainstre... more Asian migrants 1 that settle in countries like NZ learn English in the hope of accessing mainstream society. However, this process presents many challenges to their identities and their sense of self worth. This paper explores one migrant's journey. The case study of "Jessica" used a narrative approach to investigate her identity construction in trying to get entry to a degree programme. The study focuses on significant events collected from eight in-depth interviews over a period of eleven months. In the process of being originally denied entry to university, then later accepted, Jessica negotiated the negative and limited identity imposed on her, reconstructing her identity as a university student and successful language learner with increased self-value. The findings indicate the significance of imposed identities on self-value, the importance of identity negotiation and the close link to a sense of belonging in mainstream society. Journeys such as Jessica's hopefully make policy makers and language education providers aware of the importance of the sense of self when supporting migrants who are language learners.