Chapter 7 examines how secondary school action groups, established by students in their respective schools, played a crucial role in mobilizing teenagers against the extradition bill by tapping into and leveraging their latent social capital. Utilizing Instagram as a platform, these groups facilitated connections among students within and across schools, often by capitalizing on their schools’ identities and leveraging various sources of social capital tied to those identities. This enabled loose and fragmented social networks can be mobilized in social movements, provided that they can activate their latent social capital.

This chapter shifts the analysis to the macro-structural (discourse unit) level. Short-text MDA reveals five dimensions at the discourse unit level (ten distinct functions). This chapter deals with the first three dimensions. The analysis begins with a brief discussion of the first dimension before exploring in depth the second and third dimensions. Throughout the analysis is guided by an exploration of prototypical discourse units – those discourse units most strongly associated with either side of a dimension. This allows an exploration of the roles of the L1 and the L2 speakers in the use of the functions as well as the interaction between discourse unit function and task, level of proficiency and attainment in the examination. These early studies show that that discourse unit functions are sensitive to task in particular and that the role of the examiner in the examination may be seen to vary through discourse unit functions as the proficiency of the L2 speaker increases. The chapter also remarks on links between micro-structural discourse functions and those at the macro-level.

In this chapter the final two dimensions of the TLC are analysed. The four discourse unit functions within those dimensions are once again approached via prototypical discourse units, and task, level of examination and grade of exam are considered as potential sources of variation. Importantly, Narrative emerges in this chapter as a function at the macro-structural level. The analyses show variation by task, level of exam and attainment, and show clearly how the scaffolding behaviour of the examiner influences the selection of micro-structural discourse functions that have an impact on the macro-structural functions present. The chapter argues for the salience of the cooperative principle from Gricean pragmatics as a key organising principle in the discourse observed.

This chapter shifts focus to consider to what extent the behaviours viewed in Chapters 3 and 4 were unique to learners. This is achieved by using a new corpus, the TLC L1 corpus, which is composed of the same exam as in the TLC corpus. However, in this case it is L1 speakers sitting the exam. This allows us to see an overlap between the discourse unit functions selected by L1 speakers undertaking the same tasks as the L2 speakers. The role of micro-structural features, specifically grammatical features, in forming similarities and differences between the two sets of examinees (L1 and L2 speakers) is considered. As part of this, the chapter focuses in on four particular grammatical features – demonstrative determiners, numeral nouns, passives and relative clauses – which seem to link discourse unit to proficiency in the TLC to the extent that they generate differences between discourse unit functions when the TLC and TLC L1 are compared. The chapter also considers, however, the normative nature of the analysis undertaken and notes that individual learners’ performance may vary from the norms examined.

In this chapter we explore a manually annotated subset of data from the corpora studied in this book, which have been analysed to show the presence of narratives as understood by researchers studying this concept. In this narrative study we return to an exploration of differences arising from L1 and cultural background and, inter alia, conclude that cultural background may have an important role to play in the frequency and nature of narrative. In drawing such conclusions, we refer, where appropriate, to existing research on SLA and narrative. Overall, the study suggests that, while there are similarities between L1 and L2 narrative use, there are also differences, some attributable to the learner, others to the task/context in which the data was gathered.

Among the rhetorical pleas that follow most instances of public dissatisfaction is the call for more or better accountability. Accountability is a lauded notion, a “golden concept” that is considered widely as critical to the success of democratic government. Such pleas, I will argue, are misplaced. Rather than starting from the premise of accountability as an idea that no one can be against, I consider the possibility that accountability undermines the very notion it ostensibly promotes: self-government. The concept of accountability in modern political theory is tied more closely to the emergence of an impersonal administrative state than it is to the hopeful horizon of a democratic one. In practice and in theory, it is a concept of irresponsibility, a technological approach to government that provides the comforts of impersonal rationality.

This chapter introduces Spark, a data processing engine that mitigates some of the limitations of Hadoop MapReduce to perform data analytics efficiently. We begin with the motivation of Spark, introducing Spark RDDs as an in-memory distributed data structure that allows for faster processing while maintaining the attractive properties of Hadoop, such as fault tolerance. We then cover, hands-on, how to create and operate with RDDs, distinguishing between transformations and actions. Furthermore, we discuss how to work with key–value RDDs (which is more like MapReduce), how to use caching to perform iterative queries/operations, and how RDD lineage works to ensure fault tolerance. We provide a great range of examples with transformations such as map vs. flatMap and groupByKey vs. reduceByKey, discussing their behavior, adequacy (depending on what we want to achieve), and their performance. More advanced concepts, such as shared variables (broadcast and accumulators) or work by partitions are presented towards the end. Finally, we talk about the anatomy of a Spark application, as well as the different types of dependencies (narrow vs. wide) and the limitations on optimizing their processing.

How do we define creativity? Studies of laypersons’ beliefs tend to find that people focus on malleability, aesthetic taste, insight, and curiosity. Experts, however, propose that for something to be creative it should be both novel or original and task-appropriate or useful. Although other criteria have been proposed, none has been as thoroughly adapted. After discussing why definitions do matter, I shift to theories that categorize creativity. I cover the classic model of the four Ps (Person, Product, Process, and Press) and then highlight a newer model that incorporates a sociocultural influence, the five As (Actor, Artifact, Action, Audience, and Affordances).

This chapter outlines the rationale for the volume as well as its scope and structure. The theoretical and empirical bases for the study of corrective feedback as well as ways to employ corrective feedback in second language instruction are presented first followed by the aims of the book, its target audience, and a description of the book’s structure and content.

A strong role for gendered differences in communication has long been substantiated by sociolinguistic research. It is thus likely that gender also plays a role in how second language feedback is given by teachers and peers and how it is received by language learners. We provide an overview of the limited body of research examining the impact of gender on second language feedback. While several studies have shown differences in how learners receive oral feedback from male and female teachers and peers, conflicting results have been found, and little research has considered the role of gender in written corrective feedback. Further research is needed to clarify the role of gender on feedback, which cannot be understood without consideration of the complex interplay among learner gender, interlocutor gender, culture, task, and context. We call for (1) increased research in diverse educational and cultural contexts, (2) research that considers the role of gender in feedback provided in written as well as oral language use, (3) developmental studies investigating whether descriptive differences impact learning, and (4) consideration of the role of gender that goes beyond binary divisions, adopting qualitative and critical discourse analysis perspectives to understand how gendered language socializations impact second language feedback.