Volume 11, Issue 1 (2010)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10289/18077

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He Puna Kōrero: Journal of Māori and Pacific Development (Vol. 11, Issue 1)
(Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato, 2010-02)
He Puna Kōrero: Journal of Māori and Pacific Development, Volume 11, Issue 1.
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Should Pacific and Pacific Rim countries get on board the bandwagon?
(Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato, 2010-02) Crombie, Winifred
For many bureaucrats, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has an almost irresistible appeal. All that users have to do, apparently, is read its approximately 200 pages (plus appendices) and they will “find ... all [they] need to describe [their] objectives, methods and products” (Council of Europe (CoE), p. xii). Having done that, they will be in a position to “overcome the barriers to communication . . . arising from . . . different educational systems” and “facilitate . . . mobility through . . . mutual recognition of qualifications” (p. 1). The CEFR has some very influential advocates, both within and outside of Europe. Investment in it is extensive in some areas of the world. It emerges out of an organisation whose ethical credentials are beyond question, one that has been responsible for some interesting innovations in the area of language education. In such a context, it is not surprising that many countries outside of Europe, including Pacific and Pacific Rim countries, are developing an interest in it. On the basis of a close reading of the CEFR, this article concludes that it has considerably less to offer than it claims and, therefore, advises language educators in Pacific and Pacific Rim countries, particularly those involved in the teaching of indigenous languages, to be extremely cautious about adopting the approaches it recommends too readily.
Discourse relations, semantic relations and English in academic settings
(Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato, 2010-02) Paltridge, Brian
This paper describes the use of the notions of discourse elements, discourse relations and semantic relations in the teaching of English in academic settings. The paper provides an overview of these notions as well as makes suggestions for how they might be drawn on in the teaching of English for academic purposes. Working with these notions can help students create the kinds of texts they need to be able to produce in their courses of study as well as give them strategies they can draw on for reading and writing texts in their future academic and professional lives.
What’s in a name? The sense of reference, the rigidity of designators and the history of causes when determining the names of the two main islands of Aotearoa/New Zealand
(Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato, 2010-02) Parker, Martin
The New Zealand Geographic Board recently revealed that the two main islands of Aotearoa/New Zealand have never been officially named. The revelation made both national and international news and led to a large number of publicly aired comments on the matter, suggesting that something so fundamental and seemingly innocuous as naming is in fact likely to generate a good deal of controversy, no more so than in a bicultural/bilingual context. This paper will examine the phenomenon of naming from a number of angles. After discussing a layperson’s idea of what is meant by the meaning of names, we shall attempt to apply a number of theoretical models from the field of Language Philosophy to the case of the main islands of Aotearoa/New Zealand: the Descriptivist approach of Frege and Russell, Kripke’s Rigid Designators, and Causal Grounding theory. We shall conclude that, in the case of applying the first two of these, there is a question mark over whether any of the current names for the two islands, both Māori and Pākehā, are in fact names at all; in terms of applying the theory of Causal Grounding, we are drawn to the conclusion that in history lies the key to the future.
Operationalization of genre as a categorizer of academic and professional texts: A review of construct validity in six landmark studies
(Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato, 2010-02) Bruce, Ian
This study reviews the application of genre theory to the classification of texts in six landmark studies, specifically in relation to the issue of construct validity. The genre theories that the studies draw upon include: North American New Rhetoric (more recently termed Rhetorical Genre Studies), genre theory influenced by Systemic Functional Linguistics and the English for Specific Purposes approach. The operationalization of genre in each study is examined using a framework of knowledge categories drawn from the dual social genre/cognitive genre model of the author (Bruce, 2005, 2008b). The findings indicate that the central genre-identifying element in the reviewed studies is some form of schematic or move structure to account for the staging of content within texts. While some studies associate the schematic structure with contextual, socially-constructed knowledge, others attempt to relate its stages to what are seen as genre-characterizing, linguistic features. However, what appears to be lacking in the three theories is a comprehensive, integrated approach to account for the socially constructed, general rhetorical and linguistic elements of genre knowledge. The findings of this study emphasize the developing nature of genre theory and research, and appear to support the need for a multi-faceted approach to genre in order to operationalize adequately so complex a phenomenon.
Super-size your control of language: Inter-propositional relations as a tool for textual analysis in language learning
(Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato, 2010-02) Johnson, Diane
In what might be considered traditional approaches to language teaching and learning, the focus is often on lexical or syntactic issues and instruction is often limited to phrase, clause or sentence. While learning at this level is important, it is also the case that learners, in developing a high degree of control of their target language, need to be taught skills that will give them the capacity to decode and encode complete texts of a variety of types in a variety of contexts. While, over the last two decades, some researchers have made some useful suggestions about approaches to the issue of above-sentence-level language control, they generally make little reference to the role of mental operations in textual comprehension. Against a background of Crombie’s work on inter-propositional relations, the overall objective of this paper is to demonstrate, with reference to a specific example, the extent to which an interpropositional approach provides a potentially rich methodological tool for language teachers and a mechanism for promoting in-depth comprehension of texts.
Intra-propositional relations and their signalling: An investigation of authentic Māori texts
(Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato, 2010-02) Whaanga, Hēmi
I report here on one part of a research project that involved the investigation of a range of authentic Māori texts in terms of two types of meaning relation – those that operate within propositions (‘intra-propositional relations’) and those that link propositions or groups of propositions (‘inter-propositional relations’). The focus here is on intra-propositional relations (relationships within propositions). On the basis of the comparison of a number of intra-propositional relational models, a new model which draws inspiration from the work of Crombie is proposed and applied to a corpus of texts written in Māori, the emphasis being on the ways in which these relations are signalled in Māori.

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