Sandra Gollin Kies
Contact
Projects
Current projects
Language for Specific Purposes by Sandra Gollin Kies and David Hall
The aim of this book, to be published by Palgrave, is to provide teachers and researchers of LSP with an overview of key issues and directions in the field, and resources and guidelines and new directions on teaching and research.
Completed projects
Academic literacy resource for Unistep
Embedding Information Literacy
Teacher Professional Development for South Africa
Masters' Coursework Project, University of Western Sydney, 2004-2005
My PDP (sabbatical) project was to investigate the language and learning needs of graduate coursework students. I conducted literature searches, surveys and interviews within UWS and other Australian universities and also spent time in the USA and Canada. I was a teacher at the English Language Institute Summer program, teaching international graduate students in Law and Business at the University of Michigan, and visited the University of Toronto to investigate academic support programs for graduate students there.
Outcomes
Presentations at University of Western Sydney and Australian Catholic University
The neglected cohort (1 page handout with quotations from students and teachers)
Online materials for students: Academic Writing Skills for Postgraduates: Masters’ Coursework
Academic literacy resource for Unistep, University of Western Sydney, 2003-2004
I proposed and oversaw the development of a comprehensive academic literacy resource (over 300 pages), based on, and extending, materials that teachers of the Learning skills Unit had produced and trialled over several years. Available in hard copy and on the Web for Unistep university preparatory program.
University of Western Sydney, 2003-2004
I managed a $80,000 grant to integrate academic literacy instruction into subjects in Law, Psychology, Industrial Design and Nursing.
Outcomes
A team of teachers from the Learning Skills Unit collaborated with academics in Law, Psychology, Industrial Design, and Nursing to develop academic literacy materials to support assignment writing. Support materials were developedand trialled in all four disciplines.
e.g. in Law, in collaboration with Simon Kozlina I developed a series of modules to be presented via WebCt, to supplement his classroom teaching of analyzing and writing up cases in law.
University of Western Sydney, 2000
Engineering Logbooks for Civil and Environmental Engineering Practice 1 (85001)
Sandra Gollin, The Learning Centre and Peter Berry, School of Civic Engineering and Environment
The impetus for this project was the lecturers’ perception that many engineering students do not know how to express themselves clearly in simple written and spoken English. As more than 60% of students in this school come from households where a language other than English is spoken at home, it was thought that a carefully scaffolded language-based approach would be necessary to address the issue for the majority of students. This project was conceived as a first step in the longitudinal development of the students’ academic literacy in the field of engineering
The aim of the project was to improve first year students’ ability to critically read and summarise engineering related material and to report on it orally.
Outcome
Online tutorial materials
Embedding information literacy project, University of Western Sydney, 1999-2000
This was a collaborative project involving The Centre for Teaching and Learning, the Learning Centre, the Library and academics representing schools of UWS.
outcomes
Hine, A., Gollin, S., Ozols A., Hill, F. and Scoufis, M. 2002. Embedding information literacy in a university subject through collaborative partnerships, Psychology Learning and Teaching, 2 (2), 102-107
Teacher professional development for South Africa, Macquarie University, 1997
I was one of a two-person team of consultants from Macquarie University to visit a consortium of all Black colleges in Pretoria , South Africa.
We conducted needs analysis and assisted consortium staff in preparing an application for education (ESL) development funding from Ausaid.
The goal of the funding application was that Institutional ties would be strengthened between the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, Macquarie University, the NSW Adult Migrant English Service, and four historically-disadvantaged South African black institutions in a consortium headed by Technikon North-West. Reciprocal visits to Australia and South Africa would be made by selected members of staff over a two-year period for the training of consortium teachers in English as a Second Language in vocational areas. Topics would include curriculum design, teaching methodology, materials development and computer-mediated teaching and learning.
Outcome
Aid funds in excess of $135,000 were secured for Macquarie (NCELTR) and Northwest Teknikon.
Framing Student literacy: cross-cultural aspects of communication skills in Australian university settings. Macquarie University, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, the University of Western Australia, 1995-1996
This project, funded by a large grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC), involved researchers from four universities: Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, the University of Western Australia and Macquarie University. The Macquarie segment of the project, Researching Academic Literacies, resulted in five reports.
My role involved assisting in the development of the joint research proposal, and as a member of the research team. The researchers from the Department of Linguistics, NCELTR, and the Centre for Language in Social Life used a multi-dimensional approach involving descriptive, interpretive and explanatory orientations. In particular, we used ethnographic methods and discourse analysis, including systemic functional linguisitcs in investigating academic literacy practices in the schools of computing and psychology.
Outcomes of the entire project were four volumes:
Australian Aboriginal Students in Higher Education. Centre for Applied Language Research, Edith Cowan University
Framing Reading. Centre for Literacy, Culture and Language Pedagogy, Curtin University of Technology
Tertiary Student Writing. Graduate School of Education, University of Western Australia
Researching Academic Literacies. Department of Linguistics, NCELTR, and the Centre for Language in Social Life, Macquarie University. My contribution to this volume was entitled Literacy in a computing department: the invisible in search of the ill-defined.
Computing practices of language and literacy teachers and On-line literacy on line, NCELTR, Macquarie University, 1996-97
These projects were funded by the Commonwealth Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, and were undertaken by Chris Corbel, Manager of the Computer Literacy Centre of the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP), Victoria. The aim was to investigate computer literacy practices and understandings of teachers in the AMEP with the goal of transferring existing literacy skills from paper-based to electronic texts, and to teach new skills for working effectively online.
My role was project manager.
The key outcome was a book: Corbel, C. 1997. Computer literacies: working effectively with electronic texts. Sydney: Macquarie University.
This book was used as a text for an accredited short course run by NCELTR, which I coordinated.
Spoken Discourse Project, NCELTR, Macquarie University, 1990-93
The Spoken Discourse Project was undertaken jointly by the Professional Development Section of the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research and teachers of the Adult Migrant English Program. Teachers and researchers from these and other institutions in Sydney and Adelaide collected, transcribed and analysed natural samples of spoken data. The purpose of the action research was to develop knowledge and understanding of the nature of authentic spoken discourse, and to develop research and teaching approaches that could be used in teaching English to adult migrants.
My role was as an assistant coordinator in the later stages of the project, analysing spoken texts, and in co-writing the book:
"I see what you mean" using spoken discourse in the classroom: a handbook for teachers.
Other outcomes included:
Burns, A., Joyce, H., Gollin, S. 1997. Authentic spoken texts in the language classroom. Prospect Vol 12. No 2. July. Sydney : NCELTR
Gollin, S. 1994. Some Insights from the NCELTR Spoken Discourse Project. Interchange, 23. NSW: AMES .
Workshops for teachers in the AMEP on analysing and teaching spoken discourse
