%0 Journal Article
%T Strategic Use of English to Study Science: A Perspective from Communities of Practice
%A Aneta Hayes
%A Nazia Al-Amri
%J ISRN Education
%D 2014
%R 10.1155/2014/728153
%X This research is underpinned by the sociocultural perspective of communities of practice which situates learning and students¡¯ use of strategic actions to achieve the desired goals in the practices of their communities. Strategic use of the English language is the focus of this study and the aim of this research was to establish whether differences in the strategic use of writing skills in English exist between students of various educational backgrounds. A self-reporting questionnaire on the writing strategy use was distributed among 94 students enrolled in the Foundation Year in one university. The questionnaire items were classified into subgroups, including cognitive, metacognitive, social, affective, compensation, memory, and negative strategies. The results showed that no differences exist among students in all groups in terms of the overall strategy use and in each questionnaire subgroup. Data was analysed using the Mann-Whitney U test and the Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance. All results were statistically insignificant. The findings from this study have implications for the theory of communities of practice, suggesting that sources of student choices regarding the use of English skills to study science might be related more to their individual agency rather than specific communities of practice. 1. Introduction The study reported here is part of an on-going research project seeking an understanding of factors that play a role in the transition of Bahraini students to Higher Education. This research is underpinned by the sociocultural perspective of communities of practice (CoP) which situates learning and student use of strategic actions to achieve the desired goals in the practices of their communities [1]. The entire research, therefore, focuses on the various aspects of societal and school structures that define learning, viewing learners from different schools as members of separate communities of practice. The notion of communities of practice was developed by Etienne Wenger [1]. According to Wenger [1], ¡°practice is the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise¡± (page 45). This means that practice within a community gives meaning to what we do. This practice also leads to the development of a certain approach to learning and a learner identity in which students will have to negotiate when moving between different communities of practice (ibid). Identity work is therefore central in CoP for it is seen as a barrier or facilitator in the process of crossing boundaries between
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.education/2014/728153/