DISCURSIVE FEATURE

Meyer and Land suggest that the crossing of a threshold will incorporate an enhanced and extended use of language.
It is hard to imagine any shift in perspective that is not simultaneously accompanied by (or occasioned through) an extension of the student’s use of language. Through this elaboration of discourse new thinking is brought into being, expressed, reflected upon and communicated. This extension of language might be acquired, for example, from that in use within a specific discipline, language community or community of practice, or it might, of course, be self-generated. It might involve natural language, formal language or symbolic language.
                                                                                              Erik Meyer and Ray Land (2005)
In the engineering and the science disciplines this enhanced use of language is often reflected in the student’s acquisition and meaningful use of a professional vocabulary, i.e. free from mimicry. This may be observed in their formal presentations and their response to the subsequent questions and in their changed lanquage in conversations with fellow students:
We have repeatedly seen students who have grasped a local threshold concept themselves enthusiastically and volubly attempt to lift their partners over the same threshold
                              Mick Flanagan and Jan Smith (2008)
                              Writing about engineering students learning to program
threefold schema
References

Meyer, J.H.F. and Land, R. (2005), Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning,
Higher Education, 49 (3), 373-388.

Flanagan, M. T. and Smith, J. (2008), From playing to understanding: the transformative potential of discourse versus syntax in learning to program,
in: Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines, Land, R., Meyer, J.H.F. and Smith, J., (eds), Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, pp 91-104,   [book details].



                                                      
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