Faculty of Arts Asia Institute

This is a progress report on research into using translation as an effective method in a foreign/second language class. The author had an opportunity to teach an advanced Japanese foreign language class where translation was a dominant methodology. This report includes a) research into translation use in the past; b) first approach to translation as a teaching methodology: adaptation of approaches used in translation courses; c) feedback from the trial; and d) further investigation into using translation as a second language teaching methodology. Considering translation was used as the main teaching methodology, the author attempted to adapt general approaches in the vocational translation courses to the course for the first time. The questionnaire survey into the initial application of translation into the class found potential range of the students’ expectations for the subject. The author found diversities of their first and second language abilities. The students’ work demonstrated likely errors they would still make even after consulting dictionaries and ‘translation aids’. The experience offered the author to see ‘translation’ in wider perspectives. The author will discuss possible further development of act of translating as a teaching methodology in the advanced level second/foreign language class.

The Aceh Research Training Institute (ARTI) was established in response to the devastation caused to institutions training young Acehnese by the tsunami of 26 December 2004. The project is a three-year commitment between Indonesian and Australian universities as part of the AusAID Aceh Rehabilitation Program (ARP).

The primary activity of ARTI is an intensification of research capacity building in the form of research training at the Aceh Research Centre (Pusat Latihan Penelitian Ilmu Sosial dan Budaya - PLPISB) of Unsyiah in Banda Aceh. The PLPISB has a long and continuing history as an active research centre. Its recently refurbished building and annex provide seminar, library, office and some accommodation facilities for ARTI.

This project aims to explore Allusion and Intertext in the West African Islamic Militant Arabic poetry of Sokoto Jihad or Sokoto Caliphate in its form and content. It will analyse several poetic key features in this poetry of 18th and 19th centuries’ Nigeria. The broad context is that of the pre-colonial period. It will also survey the key influence of Arabian poetry on West African Arabic poetry. This influence will be demonstrated by reading and analysing relevant texts in which I will examine the linguistic, thematic and structural intertextuality between the West African Arabic poetry and selected Arabian poetry. I will highlight the importance of number of issues related to role of West African Islamic literature in determining the group dynamics, in maintaining cultural identity and creating group feelings through intergroup participation and mutual influence.

Thanking appropriately in a certain situation in a given culture requires profound knowledge about relevant linguistic expressions, social norms and convention, and how situational factors are interpreted in a given situation. Knowing how to respond to a given thanking also requires the same. However, the cross-cultural research on communicative acts of thanking has been given too little attention, and the research ever carried out suffer from a theoretical bias. This project will investigate what language practices are considered as thanking in Japanese and Australian society. Japan Foundation Fellowship was granted to allow Dr Jun Ohashi to carry out a field study in Japan where he collected a large number of naturally occurring thanking episodes in Japanese.

This project is the first systematic investigation of dialect diversity in Javanese, the language with the most native-speakers in Southeast Asia. Through the innovative integration of comparative-historical and typological methodologies, we will examine phonological, lexical, and grammatical variation in Javanese dialects, make a genetic classification, and reconstruct pre-Javanese. This will be done by distinguishing between historical retentions, dialect-specific innovations and changes through language contact. This study will also shed new light on the typological evolution of Javanese, the honorific speech registers, the socio-historical relationships between Javanese regions, and the mechanisms behind language contact in Indonesia.

Michael Ewing with Margaret Florey, Simon Musgrave, Betty Litamahuputty, Nikolaus Himmelmann

This project aims to document five previously undescribed languages: Allang ( Ambon Island), Haruku ( Haruku Island), the language spoken in the villages of Amahei, Makariki, Ruta, and Soahuku ( Seram Island), Nusalaut ( Nusalaut Island), and the language spoken in the villages of Tenga-Tenga, Tial, Tulehu, Liang and Waai ( Ambon Island). A cross-linguistic analysis of several grammatical aspects of these Central Moluccan languages will test current theories of contact and shift through an innovative comparative analysis of data from speakers in the homeland and the Dutch diaspora. Outcomes will include grammars these five undescribed languages and crucial new insights about language cognition and simplification. Improved knowledge of this closely-neighbouring region will strengthen Australia's Asia-Pacific relations.

The grant is to understand the experience of infertility and assisted conception in Thai society through case studies of rural and urban couples experiencing infertility, a study of private IVF clinics, and an examination of ‘reproductive tourism’ for fertility treatment. The current proposal continues Dr Whittaker’s ongoing interest in the social and moral meanings of women’s bodies and reproductive health.

This project examines the introduction of collaborative learning into a beginner’s Japanese language course through students’ satisfaction (perceived achievement) and teacher’s assessment (their course achievement). Collaboration appears to have promising benefits for tertiary education. A substantial number of studies on collaboration in school education have reported encouraging outcomes while some have identified potential problems. Action research is employed for this project to look into an application of collaborative learning to the actual classroom. The research includes planning of the introduction of collaborative project leaning to the language course, details of the actual introduction process, and discussion of what was observed through questionnaire survey of students, their journals, and course achievement. The comparison between students of different achievement levels in the project and course will be the focus of this project to obtain insights into their collaborative learning.

This project aims to explore the Quranic presentation of the story of the Prophet Noah and his people. In particular, it examines the purposes behind the variations and similarities in the story in various surahs. The study focuses on three fundamental aspects: linguistic or stylistic variations; religious or moral purposes that determine a particular linguistic or stylistic register and contextualize the story within a particular surah; and the extent to which the style serves the objectives of that surah in particular and the objectives of the Quran in general.

This project examines the challenges Islam presents its adherents in the modern world in regard both to its theological doctrines and its moral and ritual law. In particular, it investigates the degree of flexibility shown in the decision-making of Muslim religious leaders in Australia as they support their communities in adapting to the norms of the wider society while remaining faithful to the tenets of Islam. It takes into account the leaders' ethnic backgrounds, the emphases of their training, and where it was received. It will advance our understanding of their role in shaping the rapidly growing Muslim presence in Australia.

The lower Yangtze delta region of China, encompassing the Shanghai region and surrounding counties, is one of the most highly modernised areas of China. This project aims to investigate traditional oral performance and ritual culture within the social context of the region. Many of these traditions are in rapid decline, others have been transformed by the needs of the new commercial and tourist economy. Anne McLaren has been working on the oral and ritual culture of the region, especially Nanhui county, Shanghai, since the early 1990s in collaboration with Chinese scholars. Ongoing projects include the bridal laments of Nanhui and surrounding areas, marriage by abduction (qiangqin), levirate marriage in the delta in pre-modern times, and the narrative songs of the Wuxi area. Issues explored in this project include:

• The revival and commercialisation of selected aspects of the popular tradition.
• Marriage systems of the poor as reflected in popular performance.
• Ritual as part of ‘women’s work’.
• The grievance rhetoric of Chinese women, including Women’s Script (Nüshu) compositions.

The grant is to conduct a systematic qualitative study of the factors influencing family formation in Australia. Family formation is defined as embracing the forming and sustaining of relationships, having children within relationships and the timing of associated events. The qualitative techniques employed will focus attention on the meanings, interpretations and diverse subjective experiences of individuals, couples and families.

This study aims to produce one of the first in-depth studies in English of pop cultures in Indonesia within the broader context of new Asia. It will examine post-1998 popular cultures as significant sites and modes of articulation of competing aspirations, fantasies, fears, anxieties among millions of ordinary Indonesians. The fall of the New Order authoritarian government (1998) has left a very fluid political situation, marked by a fierce contest for the nation’s sense of identity and direction for its future. Intersecting area and cultural studies, this study will make contribution to both, illuminating aspects usually absent in mainstream analyses.

This project seeks to investigate the national and regional dynamics of radical Islam in Indonesia, which has re-emerged following the collapse of the authoritarian New Order regime in 1998. Liddle (1996) predicted that radical Islamic movements would appear in a more open political climate given that "they would have many more political resources, in mass acceptance of their ideas, organization, allies, media, and access to politicians". The Bali bombing tragedy of 12 October 2002, in which Australians were the majority of the victims, has occurred at a time when the number of Muslim radical groups in Indonesia has been growing.
Moreover, it has been found that the architects of the tragedy are apparently affiliated to a radical Islamic movement.

This research has several aims, which are as follows:

1. To examine the events and ideas that have contributed to the radicalisation of Islam in Indonesia, and the factors (domestic and
   international) that have triggered its most recent manifestation.
2. To examine in detail the leading Islamic radicals in various regions of Indonesia, including the socio-economic background of their followers, resulting in a broad classification of the motives behind their actions.
3. To discover the various media (violent and non-violent) employed by Islamic radicals to advance their goals, and to discover their sources of funding.
4. To document the discourses developed by Islamic radicals regarding the existing world order and their strategies for changing it.
5. To trace the connections the Islamic radicals may have made with previous movements and similar international groups, and to investigate the relationships they may have developed with serving politicians and military officers.
6. To anticipate the impact of these radical groups on the region and the world arena.

This project explores relationships between vocabulary knowledge and text comprehension in a case of Japanese as a second/foreign language. The aim of the research is to explore relationships between learners’ 1) vocabulary knowledge, 2) comprehension of main ideas of text; and 3) overall comprehension of text. More vocabulary knowledge they have, they are expected to understand text better. This project explores this relationship further in a case of second/foreign language learning.

This research examines reading comprehension of Japanese text by advanced learners of Japanese. The aim of the research is to explore what differences are seen, and what contributes to those differences in advanced learners’ comprehension. The differences are sought in 1) their vocabulary comprehension of the text, 2) the amount of information (idea units) of the Japanese text they retrieved immediately after reading it, and 3) the depth of comprehension of the text or integration of the ideas into the theme by each learner.

t is expected that the findings from the analyses – vocabulary knowledge and text recall - will provide in-depth insights into advanced learners’ Japanese reading text comprehension, particularly regarding the points raised above. These insights should contribute greatly to understanding Japanese text comprehension by advanced learners (which is an often neglected area of Japanese teaching) and provide pedagogical guidance for improving their comprehension further to near-native proficiency.

Disasters divide as well as unite communities, governments, and nations. Post disaster reconstruction, moreover, is often prone to political and ideological manipulation. My project will examine the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and subsequent reconstruction process as an arena of political, ideological and cultural opportunity and contestation. It will document how individuals and organizations attempted to use the reconstruction process to not only influence the rebuilding of Tokyo but to shape, in a much more significant sense, national reconstruction. My findings will form a cornerstone of a revolutionary new approach in disaster studies that illustrate how state actors and individuals use catastrophes for political and ideological purposes.

The Zhuang are a Tai-speaking people and the most populous of China’s minority peoples. Traditionally they used a modified version of the Chinese character script to write their own language. The aim of this project is to provide the wherewithal for a decipherment of the old Zhuang character script, to present evidence for the age of the script, and to describe the social and political conditions that gave it birth and influenced its development.

The Zhuang are a Tai-speaking people and the most populous of China’s minority peoples. Traditionally they used a modified version of the Chinese character script to write their own language. The aim of this project is to provide the wherewithal for a decipherment of the old Zhuang character script, to present evidence for the age of the script, and to describe the social and political conditions that gave it birth and influenced its development.

This project will work on a dying language spoken in a remote mountainous area in western Hunan, China. It will describe how a Chinese dialect has developed in an unusual contact situation surrounded by genetically unrelated languages, e.g. Hmong, Gelao and Tujia, while retaining an extremely archaic core of Chinese features. The objectives are to find out what the grammar and cultural history of Waxiang can reveal about the evolution of Chinese, to precisely identify its Archaic Chinese strata to advance our understanding of language evolution for Sinitic.

Medicine markets can be seen both as a place for commercial exchange and as a site for the display of cultural values connected with traditional Chinese medicine and its role in Chinese history.

The research project is based on fieldwork investigations of medicine markets in China. It will investigate medicine markets from a comparative perspective, and will explore both the way in which they are articulated into a local set of medical practices and the way in which they are integrated into the wider, national marketing system for traditional medicines in China.

The purpose of "Virtual Babel" project is to create an online community for second language learning purposes. The community will occupy space in virtual reality (VR) designed and developed with Adobe Atmosphere, a Web-authoring tool for creating 3D environments. As the project matures, the web-based 3D community will be joined by learners, native speakers, and experts in other parts of the world. "Virtual Babel" will create opportunities for target language immersion, as language learners and other members of the community collaborate to accomplish naturalistic tasks requiring communication and negotiation, such as designing VR space and organising various social and educational events.

VR environment will provide a learning experience difficult to achieve in conventional classrooms for language learners. It will provide an interactive arena for constructionist learning (Resnick, 1995), a place where language learners can engage in learning while creating products that are meaningful to them and their electronic community. VR has the potential to provide an environment where learning through social activity, willingness to play with language and creating meaningful interactions, will provide an ideal medium for language learning classes.

In the Zhuang-speaking areas of western and central Guangxi, we find an unusual variety of religious practitioners, working variously in competition with each other or in concert. These include female spirit mediums, vernacular priests (mogong), ritual masters (shigong) of the Meishan tradition, and Taoist priests (doagong) of a self-styled Maoshan lineage. The aim of this project is to document the textual and performance traditions of these four kinds of religious practitioner in a single locality, and to trace patterns of interconnection and mutual influence through a close study of oral and written texts. More broadly, the project explores processes of sinification and localisation, and topics such as textuality and oral performance, shamanism and theatricality, and the poetics of formulaic verse. A central question is the extent to which material from local oral traditions has been incorporated into Taoist repertoires, and vice-versa. Our contention is that processes of indigenisation are just as important in undertanding the actual practice of Taoism in local communities as processes of sinification.