Discursive practices of private online tutoring websites in Russia |
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| Authors: | Olga Kozar |
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| Institution: | Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia |
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| Abstract: | A recent development in English teaching in Russia is the emergence of private online language-tutoring schools, which offer one-on-one lessons by means of audio/videoconferencing. It remains unclear: (1) how these new providers of educational services are presenting themselves to the potential learners; (2) what ideology they tend to drawn on and (3) whether there is sufficient similarity to conceptualise these websites as exemplars of the same genre. This paper employs the tools of critical discourse analysis (CDA), Genre Theory and Appraisal within the Systemic Functional Linguistics to study the language of 17 websites of private online language schools. The study aims to investigate whether the websites exhibit similar discourse and ideology and whether they might belong to the same ‘genre prototype’. The analysis reveals a considerable thematic, structural and rhetorical similarity between the websites and a high presence of neoliberal ideology. |
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| Keywords: | private online tutoring Russia critical discourse analysis marketisation of education language teaching digital genres |
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