Using video recorded data from naturally occurring educational activities including student group meetings and classroom interaction at international baccalaureate programmes acquired within the CALPIU project at Roskilde University and at the University of Southern Denmark, I investigate students’ acquisition and display of academic competencies in multilingual university environments. Through Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, I consider academic competencies as interactionally accomplished phenomena that are negotiated on a moment-to-moment basis. Within this theoretical framework, my research questions aim to achieve an understanding of academic competencies in multilingual environments as well as to describe how students manage to display their academic competencies in concrete situations in such environments and how the acquisition and display of academic competencies in multilingual environments influence students’ identities and their apprenticeship and admission into academic discourse communities.

Until now, my research has focused primarily on group work situations when students produce speech as if it were text read aloud. The speech produced as text read aloud is heard as a possible addition to their written project report. This practice I call the ‘read aloud voice (RAV)’. In my analyses I consider the ‘read aloud voice’ as a component in students’ displays of understanding in the interactional accomplishment of academic practices and ultimately their academic literacy seen as mastery of a secondary discourse (Gee 1990) and as legitimate peripheral practice (Lave & Wenger 1991).

References:

Gee, James P. 1990: Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourse. London, New York: Routledge.

Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger 1991: Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract

Student displays of academic competencies in the international university: The read aloud voice

Between Tradition and Change: The Future of English in the Light of Globalisation, Trans-culturalism and Internationalisation at University of Southern Denmark, Kolding, October 11-12 2011

Student displays of academic competencies in the international university: How to manage epistemic authority at CALPIU’12: Higher Education across Borders: Transcultural Interaction and Linguistic Diversity, Roskilde, April 1-4 2012

Presentations

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