Completed Students

The following are some past research students who were members of RCLC:

• Judith Gould | 2009
  
  'The interaction between developmental assessment, deficit thinking and home language in the education of Aboriginal children: A community case study'
  

• Beata Webb | 2007
  'Possession in Polish discourse'
  
  Linguistic possession deals with the ways the concept of possession is expressed in a language. Linguistic possession is a complex phenomenon difficult to define due to its high variability within particular languages and cross-linguistically. Possession has attracted much attention from linguists, particularly in the last 20 years, but studies of possession in Polish are few and far between. This thesis has two broad aims: firstly, to study the syntactic structures encoding possession in Polish written discourse in order to examine possessive constructions employed in a variety of contexts, and secondly to examine the semantic features of the possessive constructions in Polish as they appear in a corpus of actual written language use. Results showed that only a few possessive constructions are commonly used to express possession semantically, with attributive possession being most commonly used, then predicative, external and lexical. Findings also showed that Polish makes several distinctions in the way it encodes possession. Thus, Polish differentiates between inalienable and alienable, permanent and non-permanent, physical and temporary possessive notions.
  

• Masanori Matsumoto | 2006
  'Persistence in Japanese language study at tertiary institutions in Australia'
  
  This study investigates how learner's motivation affects their persistence in or termination of the learning of Japanese. It was assumed that there are many motivational variables, such as the purpose of study, the strength of commitment, their attitudes towards the target language and languages in general, their cultural/linguistic background, their interest in Japanese language and culture, gender, and the learning environment, which may affect learner's persistence differently, depending on their level of study. Results from questionnaires administered at the being and the end of students' course of study showed that motivation is not something fixed in the learners' minds, but may change during the process of learning, and that motivational factors vary according to levels of language proficiency. Five important factors were identified: continuous appraisal of student's progress, the student's sense of investment in their language study, development of culture-based intrinsic interest in the language, the learners' self-efficacy and how this relates to the real demands of their study and students' cultural/linguistic distance from Japanese, educational background and gender and how these factors affect their sustaining motivation.
  

• Marie-Claire Gilberte Patron | 2006
  "Un annee entre parentheses" - French academic sojourners in Australia: The impact of social and cultural dimensions of acculturation and repatriation on perceptions of cultural identity'
  
  This thesis has now been published as: Marie-Claire Patron (2007) Culture and Identity in Study Abroad Contexts: After Australia, French without France.
  
  The phenomenon of French Academic Sojourners coming to Australia is relatively recent, as in the past, French students have traditionally been involved in European exchange programmes. When sojourners enter a new society with distinctive cultural norms and values, it stands to reason that identity changes as a result from intercultural contact between visitors and host society members, as identity transformations occur in response to temporal, cultural and situational contexts. Adjustment to an unfamiliar culture necessitates changes in cognition, attitudes and behaviour, without which culture shock and acculturative stress may occur. This dissertation was based on three themes: culture shock, reverse culture shock and cultural identity issues. Of significance was the notion of perceived identity because the issues in this study revolved around the way respondents think about themselves rather than developing an external view of other's identities. Results showed that although students had chosen to live outside of France, they still saw themselves in terms of 'Frenchness'. Results also showed that students were largely ill-prepared for their journey to Australia. Clearly, pre-departure preparation from participating institutions and the individuals themselves, both on a linguistic and psychological level can be seen to impact significantly on the adaption experiences of academic sojourners.