MOTIVATION AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
VERSUS ACADEMIC CREDIBILITY IN THE
EAST END OF LONDON
Finding a balance between language and content
How tolerant should lecturers be?
How different are their evaluations of students’ work?
St Andrews University
27.02.2016
ELLIE McCONNELL
LEVEL 0
Pre-sessional Students’ work
Student E- Plagiarised – 99% - after paraphrasing- 24%
Student A – 1. Plagiarised 55%- after paraphrasing -11%
Numerous mistakes but clear what she is saying- ESOL
student
Student D – Very good, fluent text – native speaker –
very different types of issues
Typical Grammar Diagnostic at
Induction
Of 70 students on January 2013 intake tested:
1. 23% satisfactory/good
2. 30% low to borderline
3. 47% very weak
OPEN ACCESS ROUTE
 Bourdieu & Passeron 1977

The working-class affinities of the students do not
map on to academic expectations geared to middle
class capital”
 This incongruence is at the heart of the struggle to
align non-academics with an academic structure.
SAME OLD……………
 “The number of working and middle-class students
who start undergraduate degrees has sharply
increased without offering opportunities for
achievement”
Euriat and Thélot 2000
ARTICLE 26
 Article 26 – Declaration of Human Rights
“Everyone has the right to education”
Young-Scholten and colleagues- the Low–educated
Second Language and Literacy Acquisition Group
(LESLLA) started in 2005
Importance of Lecturer Consistency
of Assessment Marking
RESEARCH
AIM
METHOD
RESULTS
CONCLUSIONS
AIMS
 To identify the most common linguistic reasons that
students fail or obtain a low mark in an assessment
 To use the data to standardize acceptable levels of
English language use in undergraduates' assessments
 To compare lecturers’ perceptions with students’
ones, on the same dimensions
 To lead to a larger debate on where Widening Access
HE is going
METHOD
 Questionnaires for both lecturers and students with
closed and open sections, hence quantitative and
qualitative data on different aspects of students’
writing difficulties from both viewpoints
 An additional task for lecturers to mark a piece of
work and provide justification for their marks
RESULTS – MAIN QUESTION
RESULTS Q 1
Lecturers
A=14
B=2
C=2
D=1
E=1
Students
A=7
B=7
C=8
C=2
E=6
RESULTS Q 2
Lecturers
Don’t understand 8
Understand 6
Students
Don’t understand 6
Understand 15
Results Q 3
Students
INCONSISTENT
MARKS
Yes 9
No 12
RESULTS OF GRAMMAR MARK
GIVEN BY LECTURERS
A Bit of Fun!
LECTURERS
VERSUS
STUDENTS
NUC DEBATE
 Head “We have varied practice in grading for non-standard
English…grading should focus on the content of student work rather
than the correctness of their academic English”
 Lecturer J “ I presume though, that we still need to be in line with the
requirement of benchmarks, qualifications and learning outcomes
regarding written communications?”
 Quality Consultant “ I think this is totally wrong…We should be
exemplary in our expectations with all of our learners no matter
where they are from”
 Lecturer J “If their work lacks 'structure' and 'coherence' because of
language issues, then we cannot (within the terms of the Quality
Code, our own regulations or those of the OU) overlook
weaknesses in this respect, only if the cause is ESL.”
DEBATE CONTINUED…
 Lecturer C “ Do those benchmarks , qualifications frameworks and
learning outcomes apply to non-native speakers of English? We are all
aware that there are sensitive periods for language
learning/development…”
 UEA Policy on Proof Readers – “Just as a researcher would expect to
have a paper proof read before publication, it is reasonable and sensible
for students to seek to haver their assessed work reviewed for syntax,
spelling and flow before submission”
AUDIENCE’S SUGGESTIONS AND
COMMENTS
YOUR IDEAS??????????
REFERENCES
 Bourdieu, P. & Passerson, J-C. (1977) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture,
2nd Ed. SAGE.
 EURIAT M., THELOT C., 1995, ... 2000, "Understanding educational inequality: the
Swedish experience", L'Année sociologique, 50(2), pp. 345-382. LANGOUET .+
 Gardner, R. C. (1988) Attitudes and motivation. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 9,
135-148.
 Han,Z. (2004) Fossilization: Five Central Issues International Journal of Applied
linguistics, 14, (2), 212-242.
 McConnell, E. J. (2012) ‘Open Access in H.E. An Open and Shut Case?’ presentation of
paper at WDHE Conference Liverpool 2-4 July
 McConnell, E. J.(2012) ‘Englais’ presentation of paper LGW Conference Leeds 5-6
September
 McConnell, E.J, (2015) ‘Bridging the Gap- How Wide is Widening HE?’ EATAW
Conference Paper Tallinn, Estonia 2015
References (cont.)
 Schumann, J. H. (1975). Affective factors and the problem of age in second
language acquisition. Language Learning 25, 205-235.
 Vujisic, A.Z. (2007), The Role of Achievement motivation on the interlanguage
fossilization of middle aged English -as- a second- language learners’ published in
LINCOM Europa, Project Line 19. 2009, p.144.
 Young-Scholten, M. (2015) Who are adolescents and adults who develop literacy
for the first time in an L2, and why are they or research interest? Writing Systems
Research, 7:1. 1-3
 University of East Anglia Learning and Teaching Committee ...
https://portal.uea.ac.uk/documents/6207125/6535957/Policy+on... · PDF file
 _LTQO/Polopoly Web Pages/Taught Programmes/Policy on Use of Proof-Readers
(Aug 10) Page 1 of 5 University of East Anglia Learning and Teaching Committee
of Senate