2024 Steve Kirk: Shifting from student to staff development: Reflections on recontextualising LCT

The big picture challenge: Closing the attainment gap for underrepresented student groups at Durham University in the UK.
The focus here: Encouraging lecturers to embed academic literacy work into their own teaching practices.
The teaching challenge: Shifting from recontextualising semantic gravity with students to enacting a broader toolbox of LCT concepts for the academic development work with disciplinary staff.
Talk focuses: Steve reflects firstly on lessons learned from enacting semantic gravity with students across disciplines to teach academic writing and with teachers of EAP. He then reports on the initial interventions for departmental staff. These enact the semantic plane from LCT, together with Talmy’s (2009) model of genre.
Takeaways: You’ll see how the semantic plane can be used as an educational tool.