Current Issues in Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Teacher Development : Research and Practice [1 ed.] 9781443887366, 9781443882590

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Current Issues in Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Teacher Development

Current Issues in Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Teacher Development: Research and Practice Edited by

Christina Gitsaki and Thomaï Alexiou

Current Issues in Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Teacher Development: Research and Practice Edited by Christina Gitsaki and Thomaï Alexiou This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Christina Gitsaki, Thomaï Alexiou and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8259-3 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8259-0

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ............................................................................................ viii List of Figures.............................................................................................. x List of Appendices ..................................................................................... xii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................ xiii Preface ..................................................................................................... xvii Christina Gitsaki and Thomaï Alexiou Issues in Teacher Education and Professional Development Chapter One ................................................................................................. 2 The PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project: Strengthening Teacher Education in the Amazon Region Nilton Varela Hitotuzi, Luiz Percival Leme Britto, and Maria Luiza Fernandes da Silva Pimentel Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 20 A Contextualized Report on the Impact of Pre-Service Training on Language Teachers in Taiwan Diane Johnson Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 35 Collaborative and Reflective Supervision for Professional Development and ELT Innovation in a Japanese Upper Secondary School Context Hideo Kojima Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 53 A Study of Teacher Reflection in a Community of Practice for Professional Development Ping Wang, Christina Gitsaki, and Karen Moni

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Table of Contents

Issues in Teacher Identity and Teacher Cognition Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 72 Eliciting Language Teachers’ Narratives of Practice for Professional Growth Robyn Moloney and Lesley Harbon Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 85 Professional Identity and English Language Teaching in a DisciplineSpecific Context Mimi Nahariah Azwani Mohamed, Karen Moni, and Carmen Mills Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 104 Non-native English Teachers’ Cognitions about Language Pedagogy Shigeru Sasajima Issues in Second Language Curriculum and Materials Development Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 120 Exploring Discrepancies between Beliefs and Practices in ESL Curriculum and Syllabus Design Anthea Fester and Diane Johnson Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 140 Complexity Approach to Language Teaching and Learning: Moving from Theory to Potential Practice Elaine Ferreira do Vale Borges Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 164 On the Cusp of Quality Teaching and Learning of English in Rural Schools in South Africa Muchativugwa Liberty Hove Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 190 Bridging the Gap between General English and English for Specific Purposes at a Japanese Medical University Minako Nakayasu

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Issues in the Second Language Classroom Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 212 CLIL Classroom Interaction Challenges: Translanguaging and Genre as Pedagogic Tools? Ylva Sandberg Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 228 Students’ Perception of (In)Civility toward Groupmates Harumi Kimura Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 246 Developing Foreign Language Identities through Autonomy-Oriented Pedagogy Tero Korhonen Issues in Second Language Acquisition Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 264 The Impact of Classroom Practices on Young Learners’ Acquisition of Subject-Verb Agreement in Vietnam: A Pilot Study Vi Thanh Son Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 285 Vocabulary Uptake from Peppa Pig: A Case Study of Preschool EFL Learners in Greece Thomaï Alexiou Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 302 Measuring Child Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition through Immersion in School James Milton and Shadan Roghani Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 324 The Challenges in Achieving Globalization through English Language Learning in Japan: A Focus on Elementary Schools Rie Adachi Contributors ............................................................................................. 345 Index ........................................................................................................ 352

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1-1: Table 1-2: Table 3-1: Table 3-2: Table 4-1: Table 4-2: Table 7-1: Table 7-2: Table 7-3: Table 8-1: Table 8-2: Table 8-3: Table 8-4: Table 10-1: Table 10-2: Table 10-3: Table 10-4: Table 10-5: Table 11-1: Table 11-2: Table 11-3: Table 11-4: Table 11-5:

TEFL-Pibidians’ activities in partner schools. TEFL-Pibidians’ outputs in 24 months. List of CRS sessions. CLILTA Instruction for Unit 1 Going into Space. Key codes, and examples of teacher reflection-on-action in the CoP. Key codes and examples of teacher reflection-inanticipation in the CoP. Japanese NNS English teachers’ cognitions on teaching and teacher education. Characteristics of LTC on good foreign language teaching. The interview and observation data: Complex classroom dynamics. I think it is very important to have a syllabus document for each course that I teach. What participants would do if not provided with a syllabus document for a course. Participants’ awareness of the content of parallel skills courses. Percentage of participants who would include particular genres at particular levels or who did not respond. Morphological and syntactic deviations at the onset of the English language course. Distribution of resources in three impoverished rural schools in selected provinces. Language syllabus unit developed to teach aspects of speeches. Students’ questions that helped shape and refine the unit. A student’s response to the writing prompt. Activities students found beneficial. Skills students want to develop further in the future. List of articles and student preferences. Students’ feedback in the open-ended items. Students’ resolutions and expectations.

Current Issues in Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Teacher Development

Table 13-1:

Table 14-1: Table 15-1: Table 15-2: Table 15-3: Table 15-4: Table 16-1: Table 16-2: Table 17-1: Table 17-2: Table 17-3: Table 18-1: Table 18-2: Table 18-3: Table 18-4:

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Summary of items, means, standard deviations, and factor loadings for One-Factor Solution for the Pair/Group-work Incivility Scale. Types and amounts of data collected. English S-V agreement (Adapted from Pienemann, 1998, p. 124). Participant organization (total percentages of time spent at the lesson). Content analysis using COLT. Learners’ stage of acquisition based on the stages of ESL acquisition by Pienemann (1998). Vocabulary types and tokens in the Peppa Pig episodes. Mean scores and standard deviations for all episodes. X-Lex vocabulary scores divided by frequency band among the 4 participants. X-Lex scores from the three test versions taken by Participant A. X-Lex scores in immersion learners, a bilingual and a monolingual child. The number of English classes in Grades 5 and 6. Cronbach alpha for each attitudinal dimension at the beginning and at the end of the school year. Summary of fit statistics for the two models of ‘communicative attitudes with outsiders’. Relationships between ‘communicative attitudes with outsiders’ and other attitudinal subscales using path analysis for the two models.

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1-1: Figure 1-2: Figure 1-3: Figure 1-4: Figure 1-5: Figure 1-6: Figure 6-1: Figure 7-1:

Figure 8-1: Figure 8-2:

Figure 8-3: Figure 8-4: Figure 8-5: Figure 9-1: Figure 9-2: Figure 9-3: Figure 9-4: Figure 9-5: Figure 9-6:

The Brazilian Amazon region. Western Pará (WP). The Municipality of Santarém in Western Pará. PLIP’s team. TEFL-Pibidians’ participation in academic events. Comparison between hours of instruction received by student teachers at UFOPA. The process of translating the university objectives into course learning outcomes. A complex network model regarding the nature of NNS English teachers’ cognitions (Source: Sasajima, 2012, p. 260). Does the institution where you work have an overall curriculum for the English courses it offers? If you used a textbook from a particular series with a group of first year students, would you select the next highest level textbook from the same series for the same students when they are in their second year? Percentage of respondents who would include vocabulary at different levels. Percentage of respondents who would include language structures at different levels. Percentage of respondents who would include tasks at different levels. The Alive textbook series. Grammar as a living component of language (Source: Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 94). Mistake as a characteristic of oral interaction (Source: Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 130). Using reading ESP technique and grammar-based practice (Source: Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 94). Using listening ESP technique and genre-based instruction (Source: Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 84). Using grammar-based practice and task-based instruction (Source: Menezes et al., 2013, p. 151).

Current Issues in Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Teacher Development

Figure 9-7: Figure 9-8: Figure 9-9: Figure 9-10: Figure 9-11: Figure 10-1: Figure 11-1: Figure 11-2: Figure 11-3: Figure 11-4: Figure 11-5: Figure 15-1: Figure 17-1:

Figure 17-2: Figure 17-3: Figure 17-4: Figure 18-1:

Figure 18-2:

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Using genre-based instruction (Source: Menezes et al., 2013, p. 111). Giving dynamicity to the classroom (Source: Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 23). Promoting students’ autonomy (Source: Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 37). Providing language social practices (Source: (Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 122). Bringing out students’ multiple identities (Source: Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 145). Conceptualising effective syllabus development for EFAL (Source: Hove, 2011, p. 210). Curriculum coordination. Mindmap. Handout (Steve Jobs). Handout (Kampo). Students’ overall impression of the course. Picture of people’s jobs (Source: Let’s go by Nakata et al., 2000). Frequency profile in English native and bilingual speakers (Source: Milton & Treffers-Daller, 2013, p. 162). Example of the X-Lex test (Source: English version from Milton, 2009, p. 254). X-Lex vocabulary scores divided by frequency band among the four participants in graph format. Mean X-Lex scores for Participant A between February and July. Growth in foreign residents and foreign students in Japan. Based on the data from the Ministry of Justice (2014) and Japan Student Services Organization (2014). Structural equation modeling of Japanese young learners' communicative attitudes at the start and the end of the school year.

LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix 10-A: Reading text for assessment tasks.

comprehension-based

language

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

3SG-s 4Cs A ALT Aux bio CALTL CAPES

CAPS CAS CDS CELEPI

cf. civ CL CLIL CLILTA CLT CNPq COLT CoP CRS CT E EAL

Third Person Singular -s Content, Cognition, Communication, and Culture/Community Activity Assistant Language Teacher Auxiliary Biology Complexity Approach to Language Teaching and Learning Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements Complex Adaptive System Complex Dynamic Systems Centre for Applied Linguistics Studies and EFL Teacher Education Centro de Estudos em Linguística Aplicada e Educação de Professores de Inglês como Língua Estrangeira confer Civics Collaborative Learning Content and Language Integrated Learning CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning)-Type Approach Communicative Language Teaching Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching Community of Practice Collaborative and Reflective Supervision Complexity Theory Episode English as an Additional Language

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EAP EFAL EFL EGP EL ELF ELT EMP ESL ESP  FAPEMIG FL GE GUSSA HOTS HRT ICC IDEB JTE L1 L2 LGY2011

LOTS LTC LTCI MA ma MANOVA Max MEC MEXT Min NCS Neg NGO

List of Abbreviations

English for Academic Purposes English as a First Additional Language English as a Foreign Language English for General Purposes English Language English as a Lingua Franca English Language Teaching English for Medical Purposes English as a Second Language English for Specific Purposes Eco-‡‹‘–‹…›ŽŽƒ„—• Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais Foreign Language General English General Upper Secondary School for Adults Higher-Order Thinking Skills Homeroom Teacher Intercultural Communicative Competence Basic Education Development Index Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica Japanese Teacher of English First Language Second Language “Läroplan, examensmål och gymnasiegemensamma ämnen för gymnasieskola 2011” /Curriculum for the Swedish Upper Secondary School Lower-Order Thinking Skills Language Teacher Cognition Language Teacher Cognition Inventory Master of Arts Mathematics Multivariate Analysis Of Variance Maximum Ministry of Education (Brazil) Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Japan) Minimum National Curriculum Statements Negation Non-Governmental Organisation

Current Issues in Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Teacher Development

NNS NP NPCSC OECD PCK PD PDE PhD PIBID

PIBID/LetrasInglês Project PISA PLIP PLO PMI PNLD PQP PSET PT RQM Sch SEM SGHS SL SLA SVO TA TALIS TC TEE TEST TEFL TEFLPibidians TESL TEYL TIFF

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Non-Native Speaker Noun Phrase National People’s Congress Standing Committee Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Pedagogical Content Knowledge Professional Development Education Development Plan Plano de Desenvolvimento da Educação Doctor of Philosophy Institutional Grant Programme for Teaching Initiation Programa Institucional de Bolsa de Iniciação à Docência The PIBID Project involving student teachers of the TEFL undergraduate course of the Federal University of Western Pará Programme for International Student Assessment PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project Programme Learning Outcome Plus-Minus-Interesting Textbook National Program (Brazil) Praise-Question-Polish Primary School English Teacher Processability Theory Retrodictive Qualitative Modelling School Structural Equation Modelling Super Global High School Second Language Second Language Acquisition Subject Verb Object Teaching Assistants Teaching and Learning International Survey Teacher Cognition Teaching English in English Test Teaching English as a Foreign Language The undergraduate TEFL student teachers that are engaged in the PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project Teaching English as a Second Language Teaching English to Young Learners The Toronto International Film Festival

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TL Topi UFOPA UNESCO UO VLT WP WTC Y/N

List of Abbreviations

Target Language Topicalisation Federal University of Western Pará Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation University Objective Vocabulary Levels Test Western Pará Willingness to Communicate Yes/No

PREFACE

It is our distinct pleasure to present this volume on Current Issues in Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Teacher Education: Research and Practice. The volume is a collection of selected papers, the majority of which were presented at the 17th World Congress of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA), which was held on August 1015, 2014 in Brisbane, Australia. The volume is divided into five sections. The first section comprises four chapters addressing Issues in Teacher Education and Professional Development. Chapter One by Nilton Varela Hitotuzi, Luiz Percival Leme Britto and Maria Luiza Fernandes da Silva Pimentel describes the achievements and challenges of a collaborative project between preservice English teachers, school teachers and coordinators in an effort to improve the quality of teacher education in the Amazon region in the north of Brazil. In Chapter Two, Diane Johnson brings to light the challenges and shortcomings of a teacher training program in Taiwan. In Chapter Three, Hideo Kojima discusses the implementation of collaborative reflective supervision in order to assist a secondary school teacher to become a reflective practitioner in a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) context in Japan. Critical reflection is also the subject of Chapter Four where Ping Wang, Christina Gitsaki and Karen Moni provide evidence from an in-service professional development program in China based on a Community of Practice (CoP) model. The next section in the volume deals with Issues in Teacher Identity and Cognition. In Chapter Five, Robyn Moloney and Lesley Harbon discuss the use of narratives with foreign language teachers in Australia as a tool for exploring language teacher knowledge, practice and identity. In Chapter Six, Mimi Nahariah Aswani Mohamed, Karen Moni and Carmen Mills highlight the professional identity construction process of a Malaysian university teacher of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). In the last chapter of this section, Chapter Seven, Shigeru Sasajima explores non-native English teachers’ cognitions and thoughts about their pedagogy. The third section in the volume, Issues in Second Language Curriculum and Materials Development, consists of four papers. In Chapter Eight, Anthea Fester and Diane Johnson highlight the challenges and shortcomings

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Preface

of English as a second language (ESL) curricula in five different countries. In Chapter Nine, Elaine Ferreira do Vale Borges provides an example of how a series of teaching materials used in primary and secondary schools in Brazil can support the implementation of the complexity approach to language teaching and learning. In Chapter Ten, Muchativugwa Liberty Hove reports on a cooperative syllabus design project for the teaching of English in under-resourced secondary schools in South Africa. Chapter Eleven by Minako Nakayasu presents the development of course materials for teaching English to Medical students in Japan. The next section presents Issues in the Second Language Classroom from teachers’ and students’ perspectives. In Chapter Twelve, Ylva Sandberg focuses on teachers’ interaction challenges in the CLIL classrooms in Sweden. In Chapter Thirteen, Harumi Kimura explores how Japanese learners of English perceive and deal with their peers’ uncivil behaviors and attitudes when working in pairs or groups in the second language classroom. In Chapter Fourteen, Tero Korhonen examines how Finnish adult second language learners construct their foreign language identity in an autonomy-oriented foreign language context. The final section of this volume presents Issues in Second Language Acquisition. In Chapter Fifteen, Vi Thanh Son examines young Vietnamese learners’ acquisition of English subject-verb agreement as a result of classroom language instruction. In Chapter Sixteen, Thomaï Alexiou presents evidence of the significant contribution of comic series in preschool English learners’ receptive vocabulary development in Greece. Vocabulary acquisition is also the subject of investigation in Chapter Seventeen, where James Milton and Shadan Roghani measured the vocabulary growth in a young Persian learner of English after one year in an immersion program in Britain. The final chapter, Chapter Eighteen by Rie Adachi is an investigation of the development of Japanese elementary learners’ communicative attitudes and intercultural skills as a result of English language instruction. All the papers included in this volume underwent a rigorous selection process through a double-blind peer review process that involved a number of notable academics. Through this process the 18 papers presented here were selected. These papers underwent further review and editing before being published in this book. Below is the list of academics (in alphabetical order) who were involved in the double blind review process:  Aggeliki Deligianni Hellenic Open University, Greece Helene Demirci Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE

Current Issues in Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Teacher Development

Alexia Giannakopoulou Melanie Gobert Elena Griva Marina Mattheoudakis James Milton Josephine O’Brien Angeliki Psaltou-Joycey Nicos Sifakis Areti Sougari Evangelia Soulioti Kosmas Vlachos Keti Zouganeli

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Hellenic Open University, Greece Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE University of Western Macedonia, Greece Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Swansea University, Wales, UK Zayed University, UAE Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Hellenic Open University, Greece Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece University of Edinburgh, UK Hellenic Open University, Greece National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

The volume covers research projects, issues and contexts from around the world and it is hoped that it will be of use to both new and seasoned researchers in the field of Applied Linguistics. Teacher educators, language teachers and language policy makers will find this volume equally useful as the papers address current issues in language education. Christina Gitsaki and Thomaï Alexiou



ISSUES IN TEACHER EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER ONE THE PIBID/LETRAS-INGLÊS PROJECT: STRENGTHENING TEACHER EDUCATION IN THE AMAZON REGION NILTON VARELA HITOTUZI, LUIZ PERCIVAL LEME BRITTO, AND MARIA LUIZA FERNANDES DA SILVA PIMENTEL

Abstract Teacher education in Brazil is a complex issue for many reasons, some of which include the challenges of the school teaching profession in the country, ranging from low salaries, crowded classrooms and lack of adequate technology to overload of work and little or no opportunity for continuing professional development. As a result, many bright-minded students refuse to embrace the teaching career, and in-service teachers tend to become demotivated. This has caught the attention of education authorities who, in recent years, have been implementing a number of programmes to attract young people to the profession, and strengthen teacher education throughout the country. One example of such initiatives is the Institutional Grant Programme for Teaching Initiation (PIBID). Currently, PIBID can be implemented on demand in universities that offer teacher education undergraduate courses. At the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA), for instance, the PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project involved, from 2012-2014, twenty-four undergraduates in a Teaching English as a Foreign Language course (TEFL-Pibidians), six school teachers and two coordinators. This paper presents a summary of the achievements and challenges of this project in an attempt to enhance the quality of teacher education in the Amazon region. Ultimately, we expect

The PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project

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that this partnership results in teachers who are better prepared to cope with the singularities of the state school arena in the north of Brazil.

Introduction The Brazilian Amazon is a complex region that poses many challenges for local, national and international leaders both for its importance in the global sphere and for the inevitability of the effects of any strategic action on its inhabitants, who reject the idea of being left behind in the developmental process of the country. On the one hand, there is the necessity to preserve and to implement sustainable projects so that the local people can have a dignified way of living. On the other hand, because these people feel they lag behind in terms of infrastructure, education, healthcare, communication and other benefits that are second nature to many citizens of developed countries, there is an urge towards economic progress even if it means the depletion of natural resources and green areas. To cope with these issues, the Brazilian government must invest in education and international cooperation. Knowledge of foreign languages plays a pivotal role for communication with the world. This seems to be a major reason why, in recent years, the Brazilian government has been investing more substantially in the teaching of English as a foreign language throughout the country. English is the current language of international expression, despite Ostler’s (2010) prediction of its inexorable decline from this status. Despite the Brazilian government efforts, the investments in the area of additional language teacher education are still insufficient as are those in teacher education in general throughout the country. According to a report of a survey carried out in 2013 by a non-government organization called Todos pela Educação (All for Education), on the situation of education in Brazil, the scenario is very bleak in the north of the country. In this region, which is known as the Amazon region (see Figure 1-1), there are about 81.9% lower secondary-school (Year 6 through to Year 9) in-service teachers delivering lessons on subjects to which they have received no qualification whatsoever. For Amazonian lower secondaryschool students, this means four years of schooling with less than 20% of qualified teachers in their classrooms. This scenario does not change much when upper secondary school is considered in the report, which indicates that about 55% of upper secondary school teachers in the north are not qualified to teach the subjects they do. This is yet another reminder that Brazil has not been able to cope with the demands in the area of teacher education in general,

4

Chapterr One

especially inn the Amazoon region, wh hich is considdered one of the most important reegions in thee world for its i biodiversitty, water and d mineral resources. W When it comess to additionall-language teaacher educatio on, things are even woorse in this paart of the cou untry. For insttance, in Western Pará (Figure 1-2), which is inhabited i by 1,227,695 peeople (IBGE– –Instituto Brasileiro dde Geografia e Estatística,, 2010), the Federal Univ versity of Western Parrá (UFOPA) iss one of the on nly two goverrnment institu utions that offer a camppus-based Teaaching of Eng glish as a Foreeign Languagee (TEFL) undergraduaate course for the entire region.

Figure 1-1: The Brazilian Am mazon region.

Figure 1-2: W Western Pará (W WP).

The PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project

5

To cope with this and many other problems in the area of education in the country, the Brazilian government created a comprehensive and rather ambitious project, the Education Development Plan, also known as PDE. This document states that by 2020 all teachers from government-funded schools will be offered free continuing education in the subjects they teach (Brasil, 2011). As previously shown, the report presented by the NonGovernmental Organisation (NGO) Todos pela Educação makes this target appear nothing more than wishful thinking. Nevertheless, one has to admit that, against all odds, the Brazilian government has taken some initiatives geared towards pre- and in-service teacher education in a national scale, the Institutional Grant Programme for Teaching Initiation (PIBID), being one of them.

The Institutional Grant Programme for Teaching Initiation - PIBID PIBID was launched by the Brazilian government in 2007 through the Regulatory Ordinance No. 38 (Brasil, 2007), and was implemented by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). The attachment to the Ordinance No. 260 (Brasil, 2010, p. 6) lays out the objectives of this programme (translated by the author): 1. to support undergraduate initial teacher education courses to supply teachers for basic education (at primary and secondary school levels); 2. to contribute to the enhancement of the teaching profession; 3. to improve the quality of teacher education at undergraduate level by promoting the integration of higher education with basic education; 4. to provide opportunities for participants of undergraduate initial teacher education courses to be familiarised with the environment of government-funded schools, develop their creativity and take part in methodological, technological and teaching practices that are both innovative and interdisciplinary, aiming to overcome problems found in the teaching-learning process in partner schools; 5. to support basic education government-funded schools, involving their teachers in the education of future teachers, making them protagonists in the process of initial teacher education; and, 6. to contribute to the articulation between theory and practice, which are necessary for initial teacher education, increasing the quality of academic actions in undergraduate initial teacher education courses.

There is no doubt that these objectives project the desire of a process of preparation of future basic education teachers that is well grounded in theory and practice, providing undergraduates with plenty of opportunities

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Chapter One

for reflection first and foremost about whether or not they should pursue a teaching career. If they do choose to embrace the profession, the reflective process continues, focusing on how to cope with classroom and other problems related to their profession. It is expected that awareness of what is actually happening in the school environment and initial attempts to deal with student learning difficulties and some other classroom related problems, informed by theory, will ultimately help them to become better qualified teachers, thus able to contribute to the provision of high quality schooling for basic (primary and secondary) education students. Currently, all federal and state universities as well as some private higher education institutions can apply for the PIBID programme. Each candidate institution has to submit a master project that can incorporate several sub-projects from different undergraduate initial teacher education courses. Participants of these courses joining PIBID receive a monthly grant which is equivalent to approximately US$200, which is not much, but can help keep them focused on their academic tasks for at least eight hours a week apart from their classroom and other undergraduate duties.

The PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project The PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project (Henceforth PLIP) is part of UFOPA’s PIBID master project, entitled ‘Education for the Integration of the Amazon’. This project incorporates 10 sub-projects, which comprise all undergraduate initial teacher education courses offered by the university. The sub-projects are developed in government-funded basiceducation partner schools in Santarém (see Figure 1-3), a municipality located in Western Pará, which is part of the state of Pará. In these partner schools, the teachers involved in the sub-projects act as mentors of the TEFL-Pibidians (i.e., the TEFL undergraduate students who are engaged in the PIBID programme) and help them to become familiarised with the daily routine of the teaching profession. More specifically, each mentor is responsible for a group of three to five student teachers. The mentor meets the group on a regular basis to help them: (a) prepare micro lessons; (b) share his or her own lesson plan with them; (c) develop teaching materials; (d) discuss matters related to the group’s participation in extracurricular activities that are part of the school calendar; or (e) plan their participations in open houses either held by the school where the mentor works, by UFOPA, or by other institutions.

The PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project

7

Figure 1-3: The Municipality of Santarém in Western Pará.

PLIP is coordinated by the Centre for Applied Linguistics Studies and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Teacher Education (CELEPI), which is linked to the Language Arts Programme of the Institute of Education Sciences of UFOPA. As a whole, this sub-project aims to contribute to the continuing education of the mentors involved in it and the proper qualification of new generations of English teachers. Ultimately, the objective is to make them partners of UFOPA in its basilar mission of promoting scientific, economic and social development in Western Pará and, consequently, key players in the integration of the Amazon to the axis of the development process of Brazil from a sustainable perspective. Specifically, PLIP aims (Hitotuzi, 2012), on the one hand: 1. to create opportunities for undergraduates so as to experience the school environment from the perspective of the educator in order to help them become familiar with the complexity of teaching practice; 2. to encourage them to engage in reflective practice through the exercise of articulating theories that are appropriate in the university with the reality of the Foreign Language classroom in the partner schools; 3. to provide them with opportunities to gain teaching experience through the development of activities and teaching strategies under the guidance of their mentors in the partner schools;

Chapter One

8

4. to enable them to contribute to the development of the students and consequently to the improvement of the quality of learning of English in the partner schools; 5. to encourage them to propose solutions to difficulties encountered in the context of the classroom or in the school environment in general to galvanise their interest in scientific research; and, 6. to offer them a range of possible lines of investigation leading to their end-of-course papers.

On the other hand, the project aims to encourage school teachers who act as mentors of TEFL-Pibidians (Hitotuzi, 2012): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

to reflect on their practice as educators; to develop innovative language teaching and learning strategies; to develop teaching materials in cooperation with TEFL-Pibidians; to link theory and practice through teaching and the search for solutions to the difficulties identified in the school environment; to contribute to improving the quality of education of new basiceducation EFL teachers; to stimulate their students to learn English; to collaborate to increase the Basic Education Development Index (IDEB) in their school (IDEB is used to gauge educational quality by combining the performance of students in standardized exams at the end of educational stages (Year 5 of primary school, Year 9 of lower secondary school and Year 3 of upper secondary school) with information on the productivity of individual schools. Each school is provided with a set of targets for improvement by IDEB, but it is the school, with the help of the state or municipality authorities, which has to develop its own strategic improvement plan–a plan to optimize the quality of learning in the school. The federal government of Brazil, through the Ministry of Education, gives more autonomy to those schools which are rated as high performers, and grants more aid to the ones which are considered low performers. The scale levels of IDEB are aligned with those of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), which means to say that the statistics are restricted to student performance in reading, mathematics and science (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2010); and, to actively participate in the affirmation of government-funded schools as cultural arenas. In these educative environments, through a dialectical process, the students are able to acquire power and transform themselves, or acquiesce to the legitimacy of market interests. Alternatively, they can choose to adhere to the synthesis of these phenomena and become participants in the production and circulation of knowledge.

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9

In addition, students, school teachers and faculty involved in this subproject are encouraged (Hitotuzi, 2012): 1. to discuss issues related to the process of foreign language teaching and learning, such as teaching conditions, technological resources and pedagogic materials; 2. to describe the situation of English teaching and learning in the partner schools; 3. to diagnose possible causes of difficulties in learning the target language presented by basic education students; and, 4. to produce reports on experiences and share PLIP results through talks, posters and papers at academic events either held by UFOPA or by other higher education institutions.

It is believed that the achievement of these goals is not only feasible, but also necessary so that the quality of English teaching and learning in government-funded schools is improved in the region.

Impact Analysis of the PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project The PLIP metrics presented here covers data collected during a period of 24 months, since the implementation of the sub-project in August 2012. The data are divided into six macro-categories, namely, 1) PLIP’s team; 2) Students reached by the project in partner schools; 3) TEFL-Pibidians’ activities in partner schools; 4) TEFL-Pibidians’ outputs; 5) TEFLPibidians’ participation in academic events; and 6) Impact on TEFL undergraduates.

PLIP’s Team and Students Reached by the Project in Partner Schools The organisation of PLIP is conducive to responsibility sharing among the participants. The team constitute a network that works in tandem, including two coordinators, six mentors, 1,165 students from seven partner schools, and 24 TEFL undergraduate grantees from UFOPA (Figure 1-4).

Chapter One

10

CELEPI 2 coordinators

Partner school 1: - 1 mentor - 195 students

1 team leader (TEFL-Pibidian)

2 TEFL-Pibidians

Partner school 2: - 1 mentor - 436 students

1 team leader (TEFL-Pibidian)

4 TEFL-Pibidians

Partner schools 3: - 1 mentor - 278 students

1 team leader (TEFL-Pibidian)

2 TEFL-Pibidians

Partner school 4 - 1 mentor - 56 students

1 team leader (TEFL-Pibidian)

4 TEFL-Pibidians

1 team leader (TEFL-Pibidian)

3 TEFL-Pibidians

1 team leader (TEFL-Pibidian)

3 TEFL-Pibidians

Partner schools 5 & 6

1 mentor - 150 students Partner school 7: - 1 mentor - 50 students

Figure 1-4: PLIP’s team.

In relation to the large number of school students reached by the subproject, as demonstrated in Figure 1-4, the workload of the six mentors is somehow alleviated by the fact that these 1,165 students are spread across seven partner schools. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that, in the north and in other regions of Brazil, a school teacher may deliver lessons to 20 different classes in a week. Considering that, on average, 40 students are placed in a single class, at the end of an ordinary week, the teacher may have taught 800 students. Thus, ultimately, having PIBID undergraduates to assist them in their classrooms can also be an incidental way of decreasing their overall workload. The TEFL undergraduate grantees are divided into six small groups; each team has a leader reporting directly to the mentor of the group and to the CELEPI coordinators. As part of the assessment process of the subproject as a whole, the coordinators collect individual reports of the PLIP activities carried out by both the mentors and TEFL-Pibidians every six months. Informed by the objectives of the sub-projects, these activities are planned by each group of TEFL-Pibidians and their respective mentors.

The PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project

11

TEFL-Pibidians’ Activities in Partner Schools TEFL-Pibidians are undergraduates in a four-year TEFL course offered by UFOPA. They normally join the sub-project and thus begin engaging in the activities in the partner schools after their first year at university. The activities in which they are involved in the schools are selected to maximise exposure to the routines of school teachers, and they include: delivering micro lessons under the supervision of their mentor; assisting the mentor in the classroom; helping students with learning difficulties; collaborating in the organisation of and participating in open houses promoted by partner schools; and organising and delivering workshops and mini-courses together with the mentor. Although TEFLPibidians have to dedicate at least 16 hours per week to PLIP, they spend only one-third of these hours in the partner schools–the other two-thirds are used in activities such as meetings with coordinators and mentors, group discussions, report writing, reading, and academic events at UFOPA and at other institutions. Overall, from August 2012 to July 2014, TEFL-Pibidians had 266 meetings with lower and upper secondary school students from the partner schools–these meetings include micro teaching, teaching assistance and other activities in which they have direct contact with the students from the partner schools. They implemented 10 small projects aiming at helping students from the partner schools develop cultural awareness, thinking, and the four macro skills in the target language, namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing. Additionally, they had 195 meetings with their leaders (a TEFL-Pibidian in charge of the other TEFL-Pibidians in a partner school) and 107 meetings with their mentors. In total, TEFLPibidians carried out 578 activities in the partner schools in 24 months (see Table 1-1). TEFL-Pibidians’ participation in their mentors’ classrooms as teaching assistants (TA) provides an opportunity for them to experience the school environment from an angle that is different from the one they are used to as students. It also helps them to understand the network of complexities of their future career, and perceive it not as a farfetched achievement, but as an on-going process which has already started. This early experience of their profession is further reinforced by the fact that, as TA, they are allowed by their mentor to implement small projects, which are written in partnership with and advised by the CELEPI coordinators, and supervised by their mentors.

12

Chapter One

Table 1-1: TEFL-Pibidians’ activities in partner schools. TEFL Pibidians' activities in partner schools: Number of meetings with students Number of projects implemented Number of planning meetings (grantees alone) Number of planning meetings with mentor Total activities in the partner schools Note. Sch = School

Sch 1

Sch 2

Sch 3

Sch 4

Sch 5/6

Sch 7

Total

53

58

38

53

50

14

266

3

2

1

2

1

1

10

20

72

24

63

2

14

195

22

21

23

25

2

14

107

43

96

34

106

37

42

578

Project implementation is another opportunity for them to exercise reflection and for them to articulate the theoretical knowledge they are acquiring at university with classroom practice. These small projects consist of pedagogical interventions meant to test teaching strategies and materials for effectiveness. The interventions are informed by the literature in two different ways. Dewey’s (1963) advocacy of learning grounded in experience and the mediating role of the teacher and Freire’s (2007a) critical pedagogy provide a more theoretical rationale for the projects, whereas Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), an approach that integrates content and language learning (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010), offers a more procedural contribution to their development in the classroom. Implementing them seems to galvanise TEFL-Pibidians’ interest in research and provide them with the kind of teaching experience they need to become mature professionals. As a preparation for their pedagogical interventions, TEFL-Pibidians meet regularly both with and without mentorship. The mentors and the CELEPI coordinators have strategically allowed them to have some planning meetings on their own. On such occasions, the group leaders are in charge of conducting the meetings. This strategy is yet another opening for TEFL-Pibidians to develop autonomy, independent thinking and professional maturity. Far from being a novelty, it resonates with the principles of the progressive schools already existing in the first quarter of the twentieth century:

The PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project

13

“To imposition from above is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity; to learning from texts and teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of isolated skills and techniques by drill, is opposed acquisition of them as means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal; to preparation for a more or less remote future is opposed making the most of the opportunities of present life; to static aims and materials is opposed acquaintance with a changing world.” (Dewey, 1963, p. 19-20)

These activities are representative of the effort of those involved in the implementation of PLIP to encourage TEFL-Pibidians to help their mentors confront the problems identified in their classrooms, and stimulate them to use research as a tool for teaching and professional development. Meanwhile, they can capitalise on the experience obtained in the partner schools to generate academic works. Ultimately, the PLIP team have played an important role in the attempt to enhance the quality of English teaching and learning in the municipality of Santarém.

TEFL-Pibidians’ Outputs and Participation at Academic Events One important dimension of the Institutional Grant Programme for Teaching Initiation is the incentive it gives for undergraduate grantees to disseminate the results of their small projects and impart their partnerschool experiences at academic events throughout the country and sometimes even abroad. Thus, grantees who have papers or posters accepted to be presented at congresses, seminars and the like, receive financial support from the programme for that. It has been noticed that this benefit galvanises TEFL-Pibidians into adopting a more professional approach to their academic tasks and the activities in which they are engaged in the partner schools. But, to better appreciate the value of this incentive, it is necessary to have at least a panoramic understanding of the geography of the region where these grantees live and operate. Encompassing seven of the 26 states of the federation, the north of Brazil is a region of continental dimensions. The fact that it could contain 15 United Kingdoms or 29 countries the size of England gives an idea of the geographical immensity of this region. One peculiarity about it is the existence of many rivers, brooks and lakes, which makes it difficult for people to travel by land. So, they are left with two options in terms of means of transportation: they either travel by water or by air. Even so, their choice is constrained by their financial situation. If, on the one hand, they choose a navio recreio (the riverboat people take to go from one

14

Chapter One

place to another) because it is cheaper, they can take days to get to their destinations. On the other hand, in case they can afford to pay for an air ticket, the flight to some destinations lasts less than an hour. But, the problem with this fast track is that the cheapest return air ticket is sometimes more expensive than their monthly salary. As all TEFL-Pibidians are based in the municipality of Santarém, for them to attend an academic event even in the nearest capital city (either Belém or Manaus), they need much more money than the value of their monthly grant to cover expenditure on participation fees, accommodation and transport. So, the PIBID financial support is more than welcome because sometimes it is enough for them to pay at least for their return air tickets and the events’ fees. In the period under analysis, TEFL-Pibidians participated in a number of local and national academic events, at some of which they had the opportunity to share the results of the projects they implemented in the partner schools. As demonstrated in Table 2-2, they managed to publish 15 abstracts and 4 papers; they also presented 12 academic posters, and gave 33 talks. Additionally, they produced 17 unpublished academic reports and developed 58 unpublished pedagogic activities. Table 1-2: TEFL-Pibidians’ outputs in 24 months. PLIP grantees' outputs: Number of published abstracts Number of published papers Number of poster presentations Number of talks Number of academic reports Number of pedagogic activities developed Total outputs Note. Sch = School

Sch 1

Sch 2

Sch 3

Sch 4

Sch Sch Total 5/6 7

2

4

3

6

0

0

15

0

3

0

1

0

0

4

2 5

3 10

3 10

4 4

0 3

0 1

12 33

4

3

6

4

0

0

17

7 20

22 45

13 35

5 24

10 13

1 2

58 139

Promoting the showcase of TEFL-Pibidians’ works is an important contribution to the fulfilment of a number of specific objectives of the PIBID/Letras-Inglês project, since they involve discussions about issues,

The PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project

15

which are related to EFL teaching and learning, the description of the teaching/learning context they experience, and reflections on possible solutions to problems their mentors face in the classroom. Moreover, the grantees’ presentations of their research outputs in themselves constitute a fulfilment of some of these specific objectives. Apart from the opening for TEFL-Pibidians to showcase the results of their pedagogical interventions, academic events also provide them with opportunities to enhance their teaching education through a number of workshops, mini-courses, lectures, seminars, colloquia, conferences, and even English language immersion programmes. Under the category ‘academic event’ we have also included the funded research project in which they take part and the meetings with their coordinators (see Figure 1-5). In these events they are also encouraged to present their thoughts on assigned readings, in order to help them acquire theoretical knowledge which is considered essential for their education as future teachers and researchers. The fusion of these two roles, as implied here, is also advocated by Freire (2007b, p. 29) (translated by the author): “[…] being a researcher is not a quality or a way of being or acting that adds to the teaching profession. A culture of inquiry is ingrained in the nature of teaching practice. What is needed is that the teacher recognises and assumes himself as a researcher in his continuing education.”

In the 24 months following the start of the sub-project in 2012, TEFLPibidians’ research outputs amounted to 139 academic works distributed among the categories listed in Table 1-2. Additionally, in the same period, they had 82 participations at academic events (see Figure 1-5). These figures indicate a reasonable level of commitment to preparation for their future career. This is also observed in the comparison between the average hours of instruction per year a TEFL-Pibidian receives with those received by a TEFL undergraduate who is not part of the project (Figure 1-6). A TEFL-Pibidian receives more hours of instruction per year than a non-Pibidian TEFL undergraduate. That is a considerable number of hours of incremental training which can make a substantial difference in terms of qualification for their teaching career, since most of these extra hours of instruction consist of theoretical and practical work directly related to their future role in the education system.

16

Chapterr One

Number of funded researchh projects

1

Nuumber of meetinngs with CEL LEPI/PLIP coordinators Numbber of English im mmersion programmess

34 1

Number of miinicourses Number of w workshops

13 7

Number oof seminars, conngresses, colloquia, rround tables andd lectures

26

i academic eveents. Figure 1-5: TEFL-Pibidians’’ participation in

Increm mental training a TEFL-Pibidian received per year Averagge hours of instru uction for nonPibidiann TEFL undergraduates per year Averagee hours of instrucction for TEFLPibidians per year

960 844 1804 1

Figure 1-6: C Comparison betw ween hours of instruction receeived by studen nt teachers at UFOPA.

For som me, the numbers displayed d in the figurres and tablees in this section abouut UFOPA’s TEFL-Pibidia T ans’ activities in the partneer schools under the m mentorship of six s English laanguage schoool teachers miight seem modest, connsidering the 24-month 2 timee span of impllementation off the subproject undder analysis. Neverthelesss, any rigoroous analysis of these metrics has to include praactical limitattions and the ccontext in wh hich these student teachers find them mselves, nameely the Amazzon region, paarticularly

The PIBID/Letras-Inglês Project

17

in respect to mobility, infrastructure, access to information and the region’s unique sociocultural and geographical features.

Conclusion The argument sustained throughout this chapter is that, despite the existence of formidable problems concerning teacher education in the country, the Brazilian government has been trying to improve the quality of education. Amongst other initiatives, the Ministry of Education has invested in initial and continuing teacher education, PIBID being one of the programmes at the forefront of these investments. We have also maintained that the ultimate goal of UFOPA’s PIBID master project is to contribute to the sustainable development of the Amazon, a critical region for the preservation of life on the entire planet. As embryonic as it appears to be, the positive impact of PLIP in the education of EFL teachers, as demonstrated by the figures and tables in this chapter, is a realistic addition to the desired development of this region. However, when we focus on the specific contribution that PLIP can provide to the region, which involves creating a community of English-speaking Amazonians who are able to use this language, not simply as a mode of expression, but also as an instrument for trade and exchange of technological and scientific knowledge with people from different parts of the globe, we notice that more attention has to be paid to EFL teacher education and teaching conditions in government-funded schools in this part of the country. Raising the quality of EFL teaching in state schools in the Amazon is not an impossible task. It will nevertheless require more political will on the part of the Brazilian government, and a great deal of effort and commitment to change from school teachers themselves. At any rate, some basic measures will have to be taken if the quality of EFL teaching is to be enhanced in the region. One such measure is valuing the teaching profession, which includes ample opportunities for professional development; substantial reduction in the number of classes and students per class a teacher can take; more time for lesson preparation and assignment marking; higher salaries; and better working conditions in terms of infrastructure (e.g., proper classroom acoustics and airconditioning systems, adequate technology for foreign language teaching in the classrooms, well-equipped libraries, and high-speed Internet access).

18

Chapter One

We recognise, however, that these measures represent only a partial contribution towards improving the quality of education in this region. The problems that we have in our education system appear to be ingrained in the fabric of our society. Moreover, they are of different natures and dimensions. They constitute an intricate structure that seemingly needs to be addressed as a whole if real qualitative change is to occur in the education of northern Brazilians.

Acknowledgement Funding for the PIBID/Letras-Inglês project that led to the production of this chapter was provided by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES).

References Brasil. (2007). Portaria normativa nº 38, de 12 de dezembro de 2007. Diário Oficial [da] República Federativa do Brasil, Poder Executivo, Brasília, DF, 13 dez. 2007. Seção 1, 39. —. (2010). Portaria nº 260, de 30 de dezembro de 2010. Diário Oficial [da] República Federativa do Brasil, Poder Executivo, Brasília, DF, 3 jan. 2011. Seção 1, 6. —. (2011). Projeto de lei do plano nacional de educação (PNE– 2011/2020). Comissão de Educação e Cultura. Brasília: Edições Câmara. Coyle, D., Hood, P., & Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL: Content and language integrated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dewey, J. (1963). Experience and education. New York: Collier Books. Freire, P. (2007a). Educação como prática da liberdade (30th edition). São Paulo: Paz e Terra. —. (2007b). Pedagogia da autonomia: Saberes necessários à prática educativa. (36th. ed.) São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Hitotuzi, N. (2012). Contribuições para a Formação de Novos Professores de Inglês na Região do Oeste do Pará. Projeto para o Edital PIBID n° 011/2012/CAPES. Programa de Letras do Instituto de Ciências da Educação/Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará. Unpublished Document. IBGE–Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. (2010). Censo 2010. Retrieved from: http://censo2010.ibge.gov.br/

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OECD. (2010). PISA 2009 Results: What students know and can do– Student performance in reading, mathematics and science (Volume I). Retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264091450-en Ostler, N. (2010). The last lingua franca: English until the return of Babel. London: Penguin.

CHAPTER TWO A CONTEXTUALIZED REPORT ON THE IMPACT OF PRE-SERVICE TRAINING ON LANGUAGE TEACHERS IN TAIWAN DIANE JOHNSON

Abstract The beliefs and practices of contemporary language teachers who have undergone professional training are expected to reflect some of the major changes and developments that have been reported in the literature on language teaching and learning. To determine whether this is actually the case, a large-scale research project was initiated at the University of Waikato in New Zealand a decade ago. Twelve PhD students have conducted research involving over 1,200 teachers of five different languages in a number of different countries. Each of the research students has used a mixed method approach that combines questionnaire-based surveys with semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. Their findings overall suggest that language teacher training has little impact on teacher beliefs and practices. This is clearly demonstrated in a study involving teachers of English in primary schools in Taiwan. Of the 166 teachers who took part in a widely-focused survey, 20 submitted videos of sample lessons for analysis and 10 participated in semi-structured interviews and completed a questionnaire focusing on language teacher training. None of these 10 teachers believed that their trainers understood the needs of young learners in Taiwan or that their training had any practical use in the classroom. The lessons submitted were strongly teacher-focused and translation-dominated, showing little impact of the main changes and developments that have taken place in the literature on language teaching and learning since the 1970s. This indicates a need for research that focuses directly on the nature and content of language teacher training programmes.

Impact of Pre-Service Training on Language Teachers in Taiwan

21

Introduction The research in focus constitutes one small part of a larger research project (see further details below) involving teachers of a number of different languages. Its particular focus was on a sample of teachers of English in primary schools in Taiwan. The aim was to determine the extent to which the beliefs and practices of these teachers, all of whom had participated in pre-service training programmes, reflected some of the major changes and developments in the teaching of additional languages that have taken place since the mid-20th century and, conversely, the extent to which they reflected attitudes and practices that were widespread during the heyday of grammar translation and/or of audio-lingual theory. Any tendency towards the latter would suggest either that the training itself reflected attitudes and practices that have been largely discredited and are, in addition, out of line with the relevant national curriculum (which recommends a communicative orientation) or that the training programme had failed to have any substantial impact on the existing predispositions of trainees. Either way, it would suggest that there is a need for research that focuses directly on training programmes and those who provide them; this is of particular importance in view of the fact that, as Chu (2006) has argued, the quality of teacher training determines the quality of teaching and the quality of teaching is critical to successful learning.

Background There have been a number of major changes and developments in the teaching of additional languages since the heyday of grammar translation, an approach to language teaching which emerged at the end of the 18th century. The two fundamental characteristics of grammar translation were a focus on grammar as the organizing principle of learning programmes and on translation as evidence of mastery of the target language (Neuner & Hunfeld, 2003). Grammar translation, often in modified form, is still used in many parts of the world (see, for example, Decke-Cornell & Küster, 2010; NeSmith 2012). This is possibly due, in part, to the minimal demands it places on teachers (Richards & Rogers, 2001). However, grammar translation had already been challenged in the late 19th century when advocates of what came to be referred to as the ‘Reform Movement’ began to develop an approach, referred to as the ‘Direct Method’, that prioritized oral interaction (Howatt, 1984). Some advocates of this approach recommended that the target language should be the primary

22

Chapter Two

medium of instruction; others did not (Howatt & Widdowson, 2004). The reformists failed initially to make a significant impact on language teaching, partly because language teachers had little access to training (Decke-Cornill & Küster, 2010) and partly because of the inherent conservatism of public schools (Howatt, 2009). However, the development of behaviourism within psychology and of structuralism within linguistics later in time, provided the new approach with a theoretical rationale and, in the development of substitution drilling (Neuner & Hunfeld, 2003), with a specific teaching method. Even so, the major advances in language learning that had been expected did not materialize and enthusiasm began to wane (Decke-Cornill & Küster, 2010). At around the same time, both behaviourism and linguistic structuralism themselves were severely criticised and the notion of ‘communicative competence/competencies’ began to emerge and develop in a way that took account of the sociallyembedded nature of linguistic communication and drew upon developments in pragmatics and discourse analysis. In association with this, the idea of developing an approach to language teaching that involved learners in meaningful and authentic communication began to emerge. ‘Communicative Language Teaching’ (CLT) was initially largely associated with an avoidance of any structural focus. Now, however, a weaker version in which structures are taught inductively is more common (Howatt, 1984). Although the concept of CLT emerged in the West and has been promoted by the Council of Europe (2001), many educational authorities in other parts of the world, including the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, have developed national curricula that promote CLT in some form (Her, 2007). Even so, there is a growing body of evidence that indicates that many language teachers are wholly unfamiliar with it (NeSmith, 2012), misunderstand it (Karavas-Doukas, 1996), understand it in a general sense but are unable to put it into practice (Feryok, 2010), or simply reject it sometimes expressing the belief that it is impractical in real classrooms (Chia, 2003; Wilbur, 2007). There are many different possible reasons for this widespread lack of fit between national curriculum recommendations and teachers’ beliefs and practices. These include lack of preparation time (O’Donnell, 2005), the expectations of students and their parents and guardians (Borg, 2003; O’Donnell, 2005), the backwash effect of University entrance examinations (Brown & Wada, 1998; Butler & Iino, 2005; Nishino & Watanabe, 2008; O’Donnell, 2005; Rapley, 2009; Sato & Kleinsasser, 2004), and, in some cases, the tension between traditional cultural norms and approaches to education and the pressure to conform to Western models (Canagarajah, 1999 & 2005; Harumi, 2011; Ramirez &

Impact of Pre-Service Training on Language Teachers in Taiwan

23

Boli, 1987). While all of these things impact heavily on the methodological decisions made by language teachers, something that may be equally important, perhaps even more so in some cases, is the nature of the language teacher training that they have experienced. There is widespread agreement among trainees that there is often no relationship, or a very weak one, between the theoretical instruction they receive in pre-service training programmes and the practical realities of teaching (Spada & Massey,1992). Even so, some research does appear to indicate that pre-service training programmes can have a significant positive impact on teaching (Adams & Krockover, 1997), particularly in relation to the practicum component of such programmes (Smagorinsky, Cook & Johnson, 2003; Urmston, 2003). Where it does not, there is a range of possible reasons, including, for example, the fact that trainees’ beliefs and practices may be strongly rooted in folk psychology (Lightbown & Spada, 1993) and/or may reflect their own experiences as language learners (Crandall, 2000; Holt Reynolds, 1992). In fact, some training programmes may actually reinforce beliefs and practices that have been largely discredited (NeSmith, 2012). In 2005, English language became a compulsory subject from Grade 3 (age 9) across Taiwan. However, even before that date many elementary schools had already introduced English classes for children from Grade 3 and training institutions had already begun to prepare the teachers for the new teaching task ahead of them. In connection with this, a number of research projects were conducted in order to evaluate the efficacy of preservice teacher training programmes in the lead-in period to full implementation of the new curriculum development. They did not present a highly positive picture. Thus, for example, Shih, Yeh and Chang (2000), who surveyed 756 trainees in the Primary School English Teacher (PSET) training programme at 17 institutions across Taiwan, found that although many of the participants expressed general satisfaction with overall course content, many also expressed concern about the lack of authentic teaching practice (that is, teaching practice that took place in real classrooms and involved real students). Furthermore, they believed that some trainers lacked relevant experience and understanding of the professional context in which they (the trainees) would be operating. In a later project, Shih (2001) conducted a questionnaire-based survey of a further 234 trainees, conducting follow-up interviews with 28 of them. Overall, the trainees felt that they were not given appropriate guidance on aspects of English language teaching (ELT) and, like the trainees in the earlier project, believed that some trainers lacked relevant experience and understanding of what is involved in teaching English to young learners

24

Chapter Two

(TEYL). Other research projects (for example, Chen & Liaw, 2001; Chu, 2006; Lou, 2003) report similar misgivings among trainees who have taken part in PSET training programmes. The research reported here was conducted after the full implementation of the plan to introduce English to Taiwanese students in Grade 3. As in the case of the studies previously referred, it was underpinned by a focus on language teacher cognition, that is, on the interaction between the mental and the observable components of teacher behaviour (Clark & Peterson, 1986), or, more specifically, on “what language teachers think, know and believe – and . . . its relationship to teachers’ classroom practices” (Borg, 2006, p. 1). In particular, the focus was on the extent to which the training a sample of Taiwanese teachers have experienced has encouraged and helped them to accommodate to the national curriculum requirement for communicatively focused language teaching.

The Study The present research represents one part of a larger long-term research project involving applied linguistics PhD students enrolled at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. In that research project, now in its 10th year, the focus has been on the teaching and learning of five different languages – English, French, German, MƗori (the indigenous language of New Zealand) and Hawaiian (the indigenous language of Hawaii) - in a range of different educational settings in ten different countries/areas - the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hawaii, France, Japan, Korea, and Syria. To date, twelve PhD students have been involved, as have over 1,200 teacher participants. Each of the PhD students has used the same mixed methods approach in focusing on the teaching and learning of one particular language in one particular context. Each has sought to determine (a) the impact of language teacher training on language teachers, and (b) the extent to which the beliefs and classroom practices of the language teachers involved reflect changes and developments that have taken place in the teaching of additional languages since the heyday of grammar translation and, in particular, since the 1970s (see, for example, Fester, 2014; Her, 2007; Lin, 2010; NeSmith, 2012; Nock, 2014; Parchwitz, 2015; Umeda, 2014; Valax, 2011; Wang, 2008; Yu-Chang, 2007).

Impact of Pre-Service Training on Language Teachers in Taiwan

25

Research Methods The research in focus here was conducted two years after the requirement to teach English from Grade 3 was introduced in Taiwan. The researcher used a mixed method approach, in which, questionnaire-based surveys were combined with semi-structured interviews and classroom observation (Wang, 2008). A sample of Taiwanese teachers who taught English to primary school students was surveyed using a questionnaire designed to elicit data about their professional background, training, beliefs about the teaching of English, preferences in relation to overall approach to teaching and teaching methods, and the types of teaching materials (including textbooks) used (Wang, 2008). Of the 166 teachers who took part in an initial survey, 20 (self-selected) submitted videos of sample lessons taught by them for analysis and 10 (self-selected) completed a second questionnaire that focused specifically on their language teacher training experiences and then participated in semistructured interviews. The decision to use semi-structured interviews as a data gathering tool was prompted by Spada and Massey’s (1992) discussion of the problems associated with questionnaire responses and teacher recall, particularly their observation that initial questionnaire responses could be misleading. Although the teacher training-focused questionnaires contained memory enhancement lists to support and prompt teacher recall, the possibility of probing beyond the initial questionnaire data was considered important, allowing for the addition of a great deal of detail; hence, the development of a much more nuanced overall picture than would have been possible within the context of the limitations of a questionnaire. Each of the ten teachers in the group, who completed the second questionnaire and took part in interviews, had between two and eight years of experience teaching English in Taiwan, all of them were females and they were officially recognized as being qualified in TEYL. Four of the group had completed the PSET training programme, each in a different location; three had completed a 4-year degree that included primary teacher training (with a TEYL specialization); two had a Primary Teaching Certificate (with a TEYL specialization), and one had completed a Local Government Training Program, which lasted one week. As part of the training-focused questionnaire, the teachers were asked to give responses to questions on issues such as: • •

their qualifications and teaching experience; the training programmes in which they had participated;

Chapter Two

26

•

•

the content of their training programmes (including, for example, whether they had included text book selection, evaluation and use, analysis of the relevant national curriculum document, teaching observation, and a teaching practicum); and their perception of the impact and usefulness of their training.

In the interviews, further details about the nature of the training programmes experienced by the teachers were sought. If, for example, a research participant had indicated that the training programme she had undertaken contained a practicum, she was asked questions about exactly how the practicum was conducted and assessed. The twenty teaching videos were reviewed in relation to a number of focus points, including the nature of the achievement objectives (if detectable), the extent of teacher talking time, the ways in which the target language and the students’ native language (including translation) were used by both teachers and students, and types of tasks and activities in which the students were engaged. Six of the twenty lessons were transcribed and subjected to in-depth detailed analysis. The lesson data were then reviewed in light of the data collected from questionnaires and interviews in order to determine the extent to which participants’ stated beliefs appeared to be consistent with their actual classroom practices. The findings of the Taiwan-based research project in focus here are discussed in their own right below before being related to the findings of other studies that have constituted part of the larger research project.

Results and Discussion Five of the interviewees reported that their pre-service training programmes had involved no teaching observation component and three of the remaining five noted that although they had observed other trainees teaching, they had not observed practicing teachers in a real classroom. So far as the teaching practicum is concerned, two of the interviewees indicated that no teaching practicum was included as part of their preservice training. Of the remainder, three had been involved in teaching practice on only one occasion. In each of these cases, the interviewees reported that the teacher trainer was not present during their teaching practice sessions. Where there were follow-up reports on teaching practice, these were normally in oral form and the information provided, rather than being individualized, took the form of a series of general comments to the

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class as a whole. An illustrative extract from one of the interviews is included below: “I taught a real whole class only once during my pre-service training. That was at the end of the course: Teaching Observation and Teaching Practice. The whole course lasted only 36 hours and most of it was made up of lectures – talking about teaching practice, not doing it, so how could we have more time to practice teaching? I decided what to teach. There are no specific criteria. I taught and the feedback was just a mark without any other written comments.”

One explanation for this state of affairs may be, as one of the interviewees observed: “Some of the trainers are university professors. They probably know something about theory, but they did not provide what we need to teach real classes.”

Whatever the reason, the fact that not all of the pre-service training courses attended by the participants included teaching observation and a practicum and the fact that both of these, where they were included, were not necessarily considered by the participants to have been of any real value is disturbing. It was not only in the area of teaching observation and practice that the pre-service training programmes that the interviewees had participated in appear to have been less than satisfactory. When asked what they had learned about ways of introducing new concepts, none of the interviewees could provide examples beyond the translation of new terms and concepts into Chinese and/or the use of pictures and realia for new and generally concrete words. When asked what they had learned about grading the target language they used in class, six of the ten reported that they had been given no advice at all about this. The other four said that they had simply been given a handout that was intended to cover the area. As indicated by the following illustrative extract from one of the interviews, most of the interviewees, all of whom thought of themselves as highly proficient users of the target language, appeared to believe that it is not necessary for language teachers to grade their own use of the target language in class unless their own level of proficiency in the language is poor: “I don’t think that language teachers need to be trained in classroom language if the teacher is good at English.”

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Even if this were the case, the sample lessons provided were not such as to suggest that the teachers need have no concerns about their proficiency level as the following extracts from one of the lesson transcripts indicates: Teacher: “You have to talking the sentence; Next turn will girls; Teacher will show you how teacher and student look like; I give each the number; Sky are blue.”

Whatever language teachers believe about their own target language proficiency, they are likely to agree that learners in the same class may sometimes vary widely in terms of their overall proficiency and specific competencies. Even so, all of the interviewees indicated that the only advice they had been given in their pre-service training programmes on the subject of dealing with this was that they should consider dividing their students into ‘co-operative learning groups’. Furthermore, while all of the interviewees had been made aware during their training that their learners may have different learning style preferences, none of them had been given advice about how to manage this within the classroom. Only four of the interviewees claimed to have been taught anything about designing teaching materials during their pre-service training. When questioned further, none could give a single example of what they had been taught. In addition, although all ten of the interviewees indicated that they used textbooks, only two of them said that their pre-service training programmes had included advice on textbook selection and evaluation and none of them had been given any guidance on using and adapting textbook materials. One of the most disturbing aspects of the interviewees was the interviewees’ responses to questions about teaching approach and methodology. While all ten of them claimed that there was a methodology component in their pre-service training programmes, it was clear that the substance of this part of their training had varied widely from programme to programme. However, whatever the actual content, none of them believed that this component had proved useful for their subsequent classroom practice. In addition, although the Taiwanese national curriculum documentation recommends CLT, only three of the interviewees reported having been introduced to CLT as part of their training programme and most of them thought that CLT simply meant using English as the medium of instruction in the classroom. Furthermore, although there are at least eleven references to the teaching of reading and writing in the relevant section of the national curriculum document, only three of the interviewees indicated that they had been taught anything

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about the teaching of reading and writing in their training programmes and the majority’s opinion was that learning about the teaching of reading and writing was unnecessary. What emerged, overall, from the training-focused questionnaires and the semi-structured interviews was that none of the teachers involved believed that i) their pre-service training had any practical use, ii) their trainers understood the needs of young learners at primary level in Taiwan, and iii) there was a satisfactory balance between theory and practice in the training course they had undertaken. In view of this, it was not surprising to find that the sample lessons supplied for analysis were found to be problematic in many ways. They were largely teacher-dominated, with teacher talking time making up between 70% and 95% of class time and with translation, often accompanied by repetitive drilling, playing a central role. Instructions and explanations were generally lengthy and sometimes confusing. In all of the lessons, there was heavy reliance on translation and in the very few cases where students were asked to complete a task (tasks which almost never involved the communication of authentic information for a genuine purpose), there was generally insufficient time for them to engage properly with the work. In this context, the students often appeared to be confused and off-task (or in some cases actually asleep). In the words of one of the research participants: “Communicative language teaching is very hard to implement because some of the teachers are not well trained and their language ability is questionable. I invited three other teachers in my school to join this interview. They refused because they think they are not well trained and their English is not good enough. They don’t know how to teach English communicatively.”

Conclusion The Taiwan-based study reported here was the first in a number of studies, each of which has used similar research methods to investigate the same or similar issues but with reference to the teaching of a range of languages (English, French, German, MƗori and Hawaiian) in a range of different types of institution (pre-schools, primary and secondary schools and tertiary level institutions) in ten different countries/areas (the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hawaii, France, Japan, Korea, and Syria). In all cases, the majority of those research participants who had had training in language teaching regarded that training as being unsatisfactory in a number of important respects, noting, in particular, a lack of appropriate balance between theory and practice. Irrespective of

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whether the teachers involved in the research had qualifications and training in the area of language teaching, and irrespective of the nature of the teaching resources available to them, the majority were found to teach in a way that involved some combination of aspects of grammar translation and audio-lingualism that focused on explanation of grammatical phenomena. Neither language teacher training nor the huge amount of research on language teaching and learning that has taken place since the middle of the last century appear to be having more than a very marginal impact on the practices of language teachers. In fact, even in cases where, for example, teachers involved in the studies attempted to put into practice what they understood to be the principles underlying communicative language teaching, the result was often lessons that were both confused and confusing. What all of this suggests, is that there is an urgent need to reconceptualize and re-focus language teacher training and to think carefully about the qualifications and expertise required of teacher trainers. While McDonough (2002, p. 134) has noted that “[just] as teachers have to learn to teach, so do supervisors have to learn their role”, Waters (2002, p. 225) has noted that “[there] appears to be strikingly little empirical research concerning the expertise of the teacher educator, both outside as well as within the language teaching field”. No attempts to make changes to teacher training programmes are, however, likely to have much positive impact on teaching in the absence of a much closer liaison among academic researchers, teacher trainers and language teaching professionals than has typically been the case in the past. Unfortunately, this is likely to prove difficult to achieve at a time when academic staff world-wide are evaluated largely on the basis of research outputs rather than research outcomes (in the form of, for example, demonstrable positive changes to professional practice).

References Adams, P. E., & Krockover, G. H. (1997). Beginning science teacher cognition and its origins in the preservice secondary science teacher program. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34(6), 633-53. Borg, S. (2003). Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do. Language Teaching, 36(2), 81-109. —. (2006). Teacher cognition and language education: Research and practice. UK: Bloomsbury Academic.

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Brown, C. M., & Wada, M. (1998). Current issues in high school English teaching in Japan: An exploratory survey. Language, Culture and Curriculum,11(1), 97-116. Butler, Y. G., & Iino, M. (2005). Current Japanese reforms in English language education: The 2003 “Action Plan”. Language Policy, 4(1), 25-45. Canagarajah, A. S. (1999). Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Canagarajah, A. S. (2005). (Ed.). Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum. Chen, C. L., & Liaw, M. L. (2001). The effects of elementary school English teacher education program on pre-service teachers. The Proceedings of Tenth International Symposium on English Teaching (pp. 27-39). Taipei, Taiwan: English Teachers’ Association. Chia, S. C. C. (2003). Singapore primary school teachers' beliefs in grammar teaching and learning. In D. Deterding, A. Brown & E. L. Low (Eds.), English in Singapore: Research on Grammar (pp. 117127). Singapore: McGraw Hill. Chu, S. C. (2006). English teacher preparation programs: Teacher college vs. private college. Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on English Teaching and Learning in the Republic of China (pp. 243258). Taipei: Kuan Tang International Private. Clark, C. M., & Peterson P. L. (1986). Teachers’ taught processes. In M.C. Wittrock (Ed). Handbook of Research on Teaching (3rd ed.) (pp. 255296). New York: Macmillan. Council of Europe. (2001). Common European framework of reference: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crandall, J. (2000). Language teacher education. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 20, 34–55. Decke-Cornill, H., & Küster, L. (2010). Fremdsprachendidaktik. Eine Einführung. Tübingen: Narr. Feryok, A. (2010). Language teacher cognitions: Complex dynamic systems? System, 38(2), 272-279. Fester, A. M. (2014). Changing perspectives on syllabus design in ELT: Textbook trends and tertiary teacher decision-making. Doctoral thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from: http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/2241 Harumi, S. (2011). Classroom silence: Voices from Japanese EFL learners. ELT Journal, 65(3), 260-269.

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Her, J. (2007). The globalization of English: Its impact on English language education in the tertiary education sector in Taiwan. Doctoral thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Holt-Reynolds, D. (1992). Personal history-based beliefs as relevant prior knowledge in course work. American Educational Research Journal, 29(2), 325-349. Howatt, A. P. R. (1984). A history of English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. (2009). Principles of approach. In K. Knapp, B. Seidlhofer & H. Widdowson (Eds.), Handbook of foreign language communication and learning, Vol. 6 (pp. 467-490). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Howatt, A. P. R., & Widdowson, H. G. (2004). A history of English Language Teaching (2nd Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Karavas-Doukas, E. (1996). Using attitude scales to investigate teachers' attitudes to the communicative approach. ELT Journal, 50(3), 187-198. Lightbown, P., & Spada, N. (1993). How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lin, H. (2010). Genre, academic writing and e-learning: An integrated tertiary level Taiwan based study. Doctoral thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Lou, W. H. (2003). A study of one EFL pre-service program in Taiwan. Doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. McDonough, J. (2002). The teacher as language learner: Worlds of difference. ELT Journal, 56(4), 404-411. Neuner, G., & Hunfeld, H. (2003). Methoden des fremdsprachlichen Deutschunterrichts. Eine Einführung (9 ed.). Berlin: Langenscheidt. Nishino, T., & Watanabe, M. (2008). Communication-oriented policies versus classroom realities in Japan. TESOL Quarterly, 42(1), 133-138. NeSmith, R. K. (2012). The teaching and learning of Hawaiian in mainstream educational contexts in Hawai’i: Time for change? Doctoral thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Nock, S. J. (2014). Te whakaako i te reo MƗori i te kura auraki tuarua i Aotearoa nei: Kei tua o te awe mƗpere. The teaching of te reo MƗori in English-medium secondary schools in New Zealand: Beyond the mask. Doctoral thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. O’Donnell, K. (2005). Japanese secondary English teachers: Negotiation of educational roles in the face of curricular reform. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 18(3), 300-316. Parchwitz, J.A. 2015. The teaching of German as an additional language in tertiary institutions in Taiwan. Doctoral thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.

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Ramirez, F. O., & Boli, J. (1987). The political construction of mass schooling: European origins and worldwide institutionalization. Sociology of Education, 60(2), 2-18. Rapley, D. (2009). Japanese public junior high school policy and reality. In A. M. Stoke (Ed.), JALT 2008 conference proceedings (pp. 1-13). Tokyo, Japan: JALT. Richards, J. C., & Rogers, T. S. (2001). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Sato, K., & Kleinsasser, R. C. (2004). Beliefs, practices, and interactions of teachers in a Japanese high school English department. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(8), 797-816. Shih, Y. H. (2001). Evaluation of the MOE primary school English teacher training program. English Teaching and Learning, 26(1), 86-107. Shih, Y. H., Yeh, H. N., & Chang, V. W. (2000). ഻ሿ㤡䃎ᑛ䋷ษ䁃䃢〻 䂅ՠ⓷ ধ䃯ḕ. [An evaluation survey of the primary school English teacher training Program]. A research project report, Ministry of Education, R. O. C. Smagorinsky, R., Cook, L., & Johnson, T. (2003). The twisting path of concept development in learning to teach. Teachers College Record, 105(8), 1399-1437. Spada, N., & Massey, M. (1992). The role of prior knowledge in determining the practice of novice ESL teachers. In J. Flowerdew, M. Brock & S. Hsia (Eds.), Perspectives on Second Language Teacher Education (pp. 23-37). Hong Kong: City Polytechnic. Umeda, K. (2014). The teaching of English in secondary schools in Japan: From curriculum to the classroom. Doctoral thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Urmston, A. (2003). Learning to teach English in Hong Kong: The opinions of teachers in training. Language and Education, 17(2), 112137. Valax, P. (2011). The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: A critical analysis of its impact on a sample of teachers and curricula within and beyond Europe. Doctoral thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Wang, W. (2008). Teaching English to young learners in Taiwan: Issues relating to teaching, teacher education, teaching materials and teacher perspectives. Doctoral thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Waters, A. (2002). Expertise in teacher education: Helping teachers to learn. In K. Johnson (Ed.), Expertise in second language learning & teaching (pp. 211-228). New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Wilbur, M. L. (2007). How foreign language teachers get taught: Methods of teaching the methods course. Foreign Language Annals, 40(1), 79101. Yu-Chang, J. (2007). The role of children's literature in the teaching of English to young learners in Taiwan. Doctoral thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.

CHAPTER THREE COLLABORATIVE AND REFLECTIVE SUPERVISION FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND ELT INNOVATION IN A JAPANESE UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL CONTEXT HIDEO KOJIMA

Abstract The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) is currently working to promote an English education reform plan from the elementary to lower/upper secondary education stage as a response to globalization (MEXT, 2013). The study reported in this chapter aimed to examine to what extent collaborative and reflective supervision (CRS) could assist a graduate student and upper secondary school teacher of English as a foreign language (EFL) in introducing Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) into her school and enhancing her professional development. In order to promote individual and institutional improvement of English language teaching (ELT), as well as to develop students’ critical thinking skills and interpersonal communication skills, the graduate student implemented a CLIL-type approach (CLILTA) to ELT in her daily classes through the integration of ‘4Cs’ as a core principle: content, cognition, communication, and culture/community. A variety of qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed in relation to her CLILTA instruction. In spite of various constraints on CLILTA practice, she managed to play her role as a reflective practitioner and researcher with the support of CRS and through collaboration with her students and

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fellow teachers. A critical factor for a successful innovation in ELT is to enhance cohesive and professional relationships among colleagues who are part of a community of practice.

Introduction Attempting to establish an educational environment that corresponds to globalization, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) is currently working to incrementally promote educational reform. In particular, MEXT would like to introduce English language teaching (ELT) as a new subject in elementary schools and further advance English education in lower/upper secondary schools (MEXT, 2013). Moreover, MEXT has designated over fifty schools as Super Global High Schools (SGHSs). These schools are expected to nurture well-grounded students who will create changes or new values and lead in each field of the globalized society. In constructing the necessary frameworks for a new English education, MEXT also puts stress on fostering English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ pedagogical and interpersonal skills so that they can develop students’ communicative competence and autonomy more effectively. Thus, EFL teachers are required to make efforts to develop their professional competence collaboratively and autonomously in their different communities of practice. The teachers in this study are also involved in this reform because their school was selected as a SGHS by MEXT for a period of five years since 2014. It should be noted that their professional development needs to be “directed toward both the institution’s goals and the teacher’s own personal goals” (Richards & Farrell, 2005, p. 9). In the present study, the author (supervisor) implemented collaborative and reflective supervision (CRS) and examined to what extent CRS could assist a graduate student and upper secondary school EFL teacher, ‘Ruriko’ (pseudonym), in promoting her professional development and in implementing a CLIL-type approach (CLILTA) for innovation in ELT in her school context.

Background Social constructivism has been studied by many educational psychologists who are concerned with its implications for teaching and learning. In social constructivism, knowledge is constructed proactively

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and creatively through various types of interaction (Gergen, 1999). The idea that learning is a deep process that involves participants in a community of practice has also gained a significant ground in recent years (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). The Japanese Central Council for Education (2012) proposes that students’ social competencies should be fostered through collaborative learning activities inside and outside the classroom, and that school teachers should collaborate with their colleagues to deal with difficult educational issues. In a variety of communities of teaching practice in Japan, MEXT (2013) expects that teachers with a common interest in a subject or area can collaborate over an extended period of time, share ideas and strategies, determine solutions, and build innovations. Teachers are expected to improve their EFL instruction through positive interdependence and promote continuing professional development. Taking into account this situation, the author has introduced to in-service teachers a variety of approaches to ELT in Japan, such as collaborative learning/teaching, reflective learning/teaching, task-based teaching, active learning, content and language integrated learning (CLIL). CLIL is defined as “a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language” (Mehisto, Marsh, & Frigols, 2008, p. 9). CLIL is an umbrella term covering various educational approaches (immersion, content-based language learning, etc.), but the most fundamental difference is the planned pedagogic integration of contextualized content, cognition, communication, and culture/community (‘the 4Cs’) into the teaching and learning practice. As long as the 4Cs are followed, variations on CLIL may be possible, depending on the specific conditions in the schools (Ikeda, 2011). EFL education as a response to globalization stands at a critical juncture in Japan. EFL teachers start paying more attention to CLIL as a new approach and innovation in ELT in Japan. They want their students to develop “the ability to understand abstract contents for a wide range of topics and the ability to fluently communicate with English speaking persons”, and to conduct classes “in English with high-level linguistic activities (presentations, debates, negotiations)” (MEXT website, www.mext.go.jp/english/topics/1343591.htm). Collaborative learning (CL) in CLIL practice is a process of peer interaction which is mediated and structured by the teacher, taking into account a set of key elements: positive interdependence, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction, social skills, and group

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processing (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1991). CL seems to be effective in developing students’ critical thinking skills, communicative competence, and learner autonomy through positive interdependence. Regarding collaboration and reflection among teachers, the author has researched and written about its effectiveness in teacher development in primary, secondary, and tertiary EFL education (see Kojima, 2013, 2014). From a social constructivist perspective on supervision for graduate students, collaborative and reflective supervision (CRS) has been in use for over ten years. In CRS, supervisors are no longer seen as the dominant source of expertise. They act more as consultants or facilitators to encourage teacher self-development. The fundamental features of CRS are helping teachers to identify problems and goals in their teaching practice, to promote their professional consciousness-raising, to improve their instruction through reflective teaching cycles, to play various roles in developing learner autonomy, and to develop professionally as reflective practitioners and researchers. As a new perspective for teacher development, MEXT encourages Japanese teachers to learn how to teach as life-long learners (Central Council of Education, 2012). The development of teacher autonomy should be more emphasized in teacher education. Little (1995) refers to genuinely successful language teachers as those who have always been autonomous in the sense of having a strong sense of personal responsibility for their teaching and exploiting the freedom that this confers. In line with Little, the dimensions of teacher autonomy identified by McGrath (2000) are: teacher autonomy as self-directed professionals and teacher autonomy as freedom from control by others. With regard to teachers’ freedom, many Japanese teachers seem to worry about various constraints in their teaching contexts. Constraints on teacher autonomy can be broadly categorized under the macro (decisions taken outside the institution) and the micro (institution-internal decisions) (McGrath, 2000). Teachers must follow the new Course of Study (MEXT, 2008, 2009) and the English Education Reform Plan (MEXT, 2013), and negotiate various constraints on collegiality in their schools. Navigating and sustaining a sense of professional expertise might be critical to how teachers will ultimately position themselves and their work in the different sociocultural teaching contexts that the Ministry envisions for Japan.

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The Study This chapter presents the professional development journey of a graduate student and upper secondary school EFL teacher, ‘Ruriko’. During the first year (2012) of the MA course at the author’s university, as a full-time student, Ruriko studied various subjects with other MA students and laid the groundwork for her research. In her thirties, Ruriko seemed to lack confidence in her pedagogical and research skills that are essential in research-based teacher education. In weekly CRS sessions in the office, she learned a variety of key concepts in ELT such as learner and teacher autonomy, collaborative and reflective practice, and CLIL. In particular, she took interest in CLIL as a new approach to innovation in ELT. In the second year (2013) of her graduate course, Ruriko was required to complete her MA dissertation, while working on research-based teaching practice at her school, one of the prestigious upper secondary schools in the prefecture. Once a month she returned to the university for extra CRS sessions with the author (her supervisor). The present study aimed to examine to what extent CRS could help Ruriko develop her professional competence and autonomy as an EFL teacher through reflective teaching cycles in the CLILTA practice and contribute to ELT innovation in her school context.

Participants The following people were involved in the study: Ruriko, first-year MA student and upper secondary school teacher, two fellow EFL teachers, an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT), and Ruriko’s supervisor (the author). Ruriko taught a new subject English Communication I to 80 first-year upper secondary students in Classes A (40) and B (40), with post-beginner level of English, while working on the research study with the support of CRS. Two fellow EFL teachers taught the same subject in Classes C to G. All the teachers taught a 50-minute English Communication 1 lesson four times a week and team-taught with the ALT once every two weeks. The ALT played an important role in helping students develop communication skills in English.

Materials The present study is based on the analysis of the narratives between Ruriko and the supervisor during the CRS sessions. The supervisor

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connected with Ruriko and helped uncovered her “expectations, motivational factors, prior beliefs, and experiences” through “mediational dialogue sessions as a psychological tool in sociocultural theory” (Mynard, 2012, p. 34). The supervisor helped Ruriko plan, practice, reflect, and analyze various qualitative and quantitative data during her CLILTA practice. Ruriko was advised to implement multiple data collection methods, such as student surveys on EFL learning and CLILTA instruction, student journals for reflective learning, and teacher observation notes for effective feedback. For teaching materials, Ruriko and the fellow teachers used an authorized textbook CROWN English Communication 1 (Sanseido) for first-year upper secondary students. In CLILTA instruction, Ruriko made teaching plans for Units 1 to 6 of the textbook by integrating the 4Cs.

Procedure With the support of CRS, Ruriko’s CLILTA instruction was carried out from April through October in 2013. The CRS sessions are listed below (see Table 3-1) in chronological order along with the specific set of actions taken in each session in light of Ruriko’s CLILTA practice and her professional development. Table 3-1: List of CRS sessions. CRS Session 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Action Reviewing Ruriko’s research and arranging a preliminary survey. Starting to implement CLILTA in Ruriko’s classes. Analyzing the results of the preliminary investigation. Considering various problems in Ruriko’s CLILTA instruction. Reflecting on the CLILTA practice in Ruriko’s classes. Considering collaboration among the other EFL teachers. Carrying out CLILTA in all first year Classes A to G. Discussing future directions in the school context.

The dialogues between Ruriko and the supervisor during the CRS sessions were recorded and all the narratives in Japanese were translated into English by the author.

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Results and Discussion In this section, the CRS sessions are analysed and discussed, taking the research question into account. The students’ or the fellow teachers’ voices were introduced by Ruriko and interpreted through collaboration with the supervisor.

CRS Session 1 The first session was held in March before Ruriko started working at school in the new academic year. Ruriko and the supervisor reviewed her teaching practice and research. Ruriko expressed her wish to research the process of her students’ collaborative, reflective, and autonomous learning. In order to gather information about her students before implementing the CLILTA in her teaching practice, Ruriko discussed with her supervisor conducting a preliminary survey on students’ perceptions of EFL learning. Ruriko claimed: “Before carrying out CLILTA in my classes during the first term, I need to know my students’ perceptions of EFL learning. As an information gatherer, I’d like to ask them some questions: ‘Did you like English in your lower secondary school days?’ ‘Why do you learn English?’ ‘What do you want to learn in your English class in the upper secondary school?’” (CRS, Session 1)

EFL teachers play various roles in the learner-centered EFL classroom, such as information-gatherers, decision-makers, motivators, promoters of group dynamics, and counselors. Ruriko’s students are expected to fully understand the content of each lesson through tasks, which engage their intellect, and to develop their ability to solve problems or challenge themselves cognitively through collaboration with their peers. As a promoter of group dynamics, Ruriko was encouraged to help her students activate the key elements of collaborative learning (CL). The supervisor advised Ruriko to ask all first-year students’ perceptions of learning English in groups.

CRS Session 2 In April, Ruriko started to employ CLILTA in her classes. However, she was worried about how to put together an effective teaching plan for implementing CLILTA. CLILTA is very different from traditional,

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teacher-centered instruction which is very popular in Japan (Kojima, 2013, 2014). Ruriko wanted to shift her teaching style from being ‘teaching-centered’ to being ‘learning-centered’. In order to achieve the benefits of the integration of content and language learning and use, she was advised to follow the idea of three interrelated perspectives: language of learning, language for learning, and language through learning (Coyle & Marsh, 2010). Ruriko decided to encourage the students to interact with their peers and teachers through pair work, group work, and whole-class work as members of a learning community. Ruriko and the supervisor discussed how to integrate the 4Cs in her daily classes. Table 3-2 provides an example of a CLILTA lesson outline written by Ruriko in light of the integration of the 4Cs (Tobinai, 2014). For effective CLILTA instruction, Ruriko felt it necessary to further develop her professional knowledge and skills. For instance, it was not easy for her to generate the most appropriate key questions to ask the students during the lesson (e.g., ‘What is impressive or sympathetic about Mr. Wakata?’). Such questions were essential to foster the students’ higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) in CLILTA. She also needed to consider the educational implications of each Unit for the students’ life. Table 3-2: CLILTA Instruction for Unit 1 Going into Space. Content

Cognition

࣭the earth seen from the space ࣭working with people from various nations ࣭the life & experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) ࣭the reason why Mr. Wakata goes into space LOTS ࣭summarize the life & (lower-order experiments on the ISS thinking skills) ࣭understand what is important to work with people from various nations ࣭explain why Mr. Wakata goes into space HOTS ࣭think about what is impressive or (higher-order sympathetic about Mr. Wakata thinking skills)

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Communication

Community/ Collaboration

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࣭takes ~ to…, dream of~ing, a variety of, worry about~ing, experiment, humanity Language for ࣭the way to ask and answer the learning questions Language through ࣭questions & answers learning ࣭new vocabulary & expressions ࣭understand peers’ different ideas ࣭play one’s role in group work ࣭raise one’s consciousness as a global citizen ࣭understand different values Language of learning

CRS Session 3 In the May session, Ruriko and the supervisor talked about the results of the student survey. Administering the student survey provided an important opportunity for Ruriko to assist her students in reflecting on their EFL learning experience and enhancing their self-awareness necessary to work toward successful language learning as upper secondary school students. At the beginning of the CRS session, Ruriko briefly explained the survey results to the supervisor: “I hear Japanese lower secondary students who dislike English are increasing in number. However, the survey shows 81% of our first-year students liked English in their lower secondary school days. I understand almost all of them would like to continue to higher education after graduation. However, I’m surprised and pleased to know they’d rather learn English for communication in their future lives and jobs than just for examinations. As for learning in groups, most of them want to try group work so that they can help each other and enjoy communicating with others.” (CRS, Session 3)

Ruriko’s comments indicate that her students might have higher level of language consciousness than it is generally expected of Japanese first-year students in general. She looked happy to know that her students tended to have positive attitudes towards learning English to survive in the future society, and that they would like to learn English through collaboration in groups. Ruriko recognized that she should constantly collect information about the students, analyze their language behavior, and observe ongoing interactions in order to better serve their needs as

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students of English. While providing the necessary linguistic and emotional support, she wanted to encourage students to make use of their abilities to the utmost in the CLILTA classroom. At the end of the session, Ruriko was advised to talk about the survey results with her students and to explain her principles of CLILTA instruction to the whole classroom.

CRS Session 4 In the June session, Ruriko complained that she had difficulty in keeping up with the pace of the other teachers because CLILTA was carried out only in her classes. She was worried about some students: “CLILTA instruction might have placed more burden on my students than I had intended. Certainly they had more homework than those in the other classes. Some of my students didn’t do their homework regularly, and this made group work less effective. I have to think of some strategies to solve this problem.” (CRS, Session 4)

In the practice of CLILTA, Ruriko needed to make decisions on a moment-to-moment basis and maintain her students’ interest by constantly assessing their needs and goals and tailoring her instruction accordingly. She was advised to reconsider the balance between individual work at home and group work in the classroom, and to raise her students’ awareness of their own learning styles and strategies. Moreover, the supervisor suggested to her that she should pay more attention to teaching effective learning strategies for the students to use inside and outside the classroom. In the social constructivist classroom, teachers are expected to have strong skills in group dynamics in order to establish efficient classroom routines and smooth transitions in a community of learning. Ruriko needed to arrange different types of student groupings and encourage specific types of learning. However, she sometimes looked worried about CL practice. As is often the case with Japanese teachers, Ruriko had little experience of CL in her school days. In addition, her students were used to learning subjects in a teacher-centered classroom. In order to assist the students in understanding why they must be active participants in CLILTA, Ruriko decided to develop her own skills to organize CL tasks more effectively. Through implementing CLILTA instruction in Units 1 to 5 of the course, Ruriko developed her inner

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strength and saw the value in using CL when helping her students engage with content matter other than the target language itself. Ruriko and the supervisor discussed how to promote the students’ reflections on CLILTA instruction. They planned to conduct another survey with the students in Classes A and B. Ruriko wanted to ask students specific questions about their impressions of CLILTA instruction: e.g., ‘What do you think of your English classes?’, ‘What skills do you think you have developed?’, ‘What do you think of group work?’. Answering these questions would enhance the students’ reflective learning, and ultimately lead to the improvement of her teaching practice.

CRS Session 5 In the CRS session after the survey was administered to Classes A and B in July, Ruriko and the supervisor analyzed the results and discussed her CLILTA instruction. The students seemed to understand the advantages of the new approach based on collaborative learning. Ruriko commented on the survey results: “About 80% of the students claimed to like English and appreciate CLILTA instruction. This might be because they thought they could obtain more knowledge (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, phrases), express themselves more effectively, have more chances to communicate with others, and enjoy critical thinking and the content of the textbook. In contrast, 20% of them showed negative responses. They might need my emotional support. Moreover, through the CLILTA experience, the students claimed to have developed vocabulary (64%), reading skills (53%), writing skills (39%), and thinking ability (33%).” (CRS, Session 5.1)

Ruriko pointed out that in the English proficiency test Classes A and B were the top two of all Classes (A to G) with regard to the ability to express ideas or opinions in English. She was pleased that the ALT evaluated her students’ improvement of their productive skills and critical thinking. She encouraged the students to do vocabulary quizzes, to read the textbook over and over again, to understand the content critically through discussion, and to write their ideas or opinions using an essay format. These teaching strategies could be useful for developing the students’ language knowledge and skills. As for working in groups, Ruriko was relieved to know that the

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students showed more positive attitudes towards group work than she had expected. She commented on their perceptions of CL: “This approach tended to assist the students in deepening their ideas by listening to others (64%), understanding the content of the textbook deeply (61%), and having more opportunities to express their opinions (49%). Fortunately, 79% of them hoped to continue group work. In order to make group work more effective, most of them proposed working hard, preparing for the next class autonomously, and improving their communication skills in English as well as in Japanese.” (CRS, Session 5.2)

Learning has traditionally been considered the product of students’ efforts, in tandem with the teacher’s guidance. Ruriko’s comments above seem to indicate that CLILTA provides opportunities for student-centered learning and innovation in the EFL classroom in Japan. She learned how to promote CL in the classroom through teacher-student collaboration. For the students who showed negative attitudes towards CLILTA instruction, Ruriko was advised to serve as a counselor and have interview sessions with them. She needed to recognize psychological problems that might hinder students’ progress in acquiring English. In order to help her students to overcome these difficulties, she needed to provide emotional support and help them feel secure and confident about EFL learning.

CRS Session 6 It seemed to be difficult for a young teacher like Ruriko to share her understanding of the principles of CLILTA with the other experienced teachers at her school. The majority of them preferred teacher-centered and knowledge-oriented instruction, which is the norm in Japan (Kojima, 2013, 2014). However, in the CRS session in August, the supervisor advised her to take the opportunity to demonstrate her CLILTA instruction to them. This would enhance their awareness of the effects of CLILTA on the development of students’ communicative competence and autonomy. In addition, the supervisor encouraged Ruriko to share the information about the students’ progress with her colleagues as often as possible. Familiarizing them with her research findings on learner development would further support ELT innovation at her school as a whole.

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When Ruriko talked with the fellow teachers about the results of the questionnaire survey, they agreed to do CLILTA for all first-year students in Unit 6 (Roots and Shoots) just after the summer holidays. Ruriko wondered how she could collaborate with them: “Not knowing how to implement CLILTA effectively, the two teachers asked me to create a plan for team-teaching with the ALT. I’m under pressure to exercise leadership in implementing CLILTA in all Classes A to G. I’ve never observed EFL learning and teaching in their daily classes.” (CRS, Session 6)

The supervisor encouraged Ruriko to collaborate with the ALT whose role was to assist both teachers and students in different classroom contexts. The ALT helped Ruriko with the teaching plan and materials, which enabled Ruriko to make instructional objectives clear in light of the 4Cs.

CRS Session 7 After implementing CLILTA in Classes A to G in September, Ruriko, who observed CLILTA instruction in all classes, looked quite excited. She told the supervisor that CLILTA was more successful than she had expected. “Answering the question for higher-order thinking skills (HOTS): ‘If you were a member of Roots & Shoots, what would you do?’, the students discussed in each group and wrote an English report for a poster presentation. They managed to answer the ALT’s questions about the content of their posters. They were also encouraged to evaluate each group’s performance in terms of some viewpoints: content, delivery, preparedness, teamwork, etc. The fellow teachers’ students experienced this peer-evaluation activity for the first time. However, most of them seemed to enjoy playing their own roles in group work and collaborating with each other to achieve their goals.” (CRS, Session 7.1)

Taking into consideration the students’ reflective comments in their journals, their essays submitted after each CLILTA instruction, and her class observations, Ruriko found that the students became committed to the content of the textbook and sympathized with the people in the textbook in relation to their daily lives. Since they did not have enough English skills to express ideas or opinions appropriately, Ruriko and the

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fellow teachers allowed them to use Japanese where feasible. Ruriko continued to comment: “Many students eventually managed to use new vocabulary and express themselves in spoken and written English. We, the teachers, reflected on our instruction and hoped to help students think about the content more deeply and express themselves more fluently as they move on to the next grade.” (CRS, Session 7.2)

Regarding her collaboration with the other teachers, Ruriko had to deal with various problems and show flexibility in solving them. For instance, it took Ruriko a lot of time to create the lesson plan and the teaching materials so that the other teachers could understand how to organize the CLILTA lesson in their own classes. Next, even if the same materials were used, the class activities were somewhat different mainly because her colleagues were experienced teachers with different teaching styles. The supervisor suggested to Ruriko that she should ask the ALT to assist the other EFL teachers to teach the students some effective communication strategies in English. Ruriko highly evaluated the ALTs’ contribution to the success of CLILTA practice in Classes A to G.

CRS Session 8 In the final CRS session in October, Ruriko and the supervisor talked about future directions in her school context. Ruriko critically reflected on her CLILTA practice. “My CLILTA research could have had more validity and reliability as a new approach to ELT if qualitative and quantitative data had been obtained from much more students at the school. When employing CLILTA in the whole school, all the teachers concerned should take their share of making lesson plans and teaching materials, and spend more time to discuss how to organize the lesson in advance. In light of innovation in ELT, all the teachers need to understand the core features of CLIL methodology: multiple foci, safe and enriching learning environment, authenticity, active learning, scaffolding, and collaboration. In addition, we have to discuss the advantages of CLILTA as a response to globalization.” (CRS, Session 8)

From the individual and institutional perspectives, Ruriko and the supervisor discussed her CLILTA instruction in light of innovation in

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ELT and continuing professional development in her institution. MEXT expects Japanese students to foster global competence which is the capacity and disposition to understand and act on issues of global significance. Ruriko claimed that her school must improve its performance as a whole and achieve better learning outcomes, through the development of effective communities of learning and teaching practice. Ruriko and the supervisor agreed that in order for her school to be a successful SGHS, it would be important to familiarize all teachers of different subjects with research findings on school improvement or teaching effectiveness. Collaborative action research for school or organizational change could “become a powerful way of facilitating school curriculum renewal” (Burns, 1999, p. 209).

Conclusion From a social constructivist perspective on teacher education, the author has supported Ruriko’s professional growth through collaboration and reflection. The research question was: to what extent CRS would be able to assist Ruriko in developing professionally through the reflective teaching cycles in the CLILTA practice. In order to promote innovation in ELT, Ruriko wanted to shift her own teaching style from ‘teaching-centered’ to ‘learning-centered’ through CLILTA instruction and to foster her technical knowledge, pedagogical skills, interpersonal skills, and personal qualities. When Ruriko became an MA student, she was likely to think of her supervisor as a figure of authority and dominant partner in the professional relationship. It was not easy for the supervisor to step back and let Ruriko discover what she needed to do as independently as possible. Through CRS, Ruriko learned new approaches to innovation in ELT and recognized the importance of teacher autonomy. In spite of various constraints on the CLILTA practice, Ruriko’s reflective comments during the CRS sessions demonstrate that CRS has assisted her in understanding her students’ feelings and attitudes towards language learning, the importance of gathering information about their progress, developing their metacognitive abilities for learner autonomy, identifying advantages and disadvantages of CLILTA instruction, promoting autonomous learning and teaching reciprocally, collaborating with the fellow teachers, and improving her way of teaching through reflective teaching cycles. Overall, CRS seemed to be effective in supporting Ruriko’s individual professional growth in her own

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educational context. However, from both the individual and institutional perspective, there are some issues to consider. Even though Ruriko’s students showed positive attitudes towards the CLILTA activities, it would be essential for her to continue her professional development so that she can more effectively take into account the knowledge and experiences that her students bring to class, design more authentic tasks to contextualize learning through real-world case-based learning environments, provide more scaffolding at the right time and at the right level, and promote more positive attitudes towards collaboration with her colleagues. Regarding the potential of CRS in in-service teacher education, as CRS in this study helped Ruriko to play various roles in the community of CLILTA practice, teacher educators should assist EFL teachers in enhancing their professional competence and autonomy and promoting cohesive and professional relationships with their colleagues in communities of practice. In designing and organizing in-service teacher education programs, it is necessary for teacher educators to consider the relationships among teachers working within the same school context. It was not easy for Ruriko to collaborate with the other EFL teachers who had different teaching styles. The school culture also has a profound effect on teachers and their perceptions of teacher roles particularly in implementing change that will enhance students’ learning experiences. It is hoped that Ruriko will be able to contribute to the exploration of new ways of collaboration with students and colleagues, and that CLILTA will be carefully designed and successfully practiced within the community of practice.

References Bailey, K. M. (2006). Language teacher supervision: A case-based approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burns, A. (1999). Collaborative action research for English language teachers. New York: Cambridge University Press. Central Council of Education. (2012). Report on comprehensive measures for improving teachers’ abilities throughout their teaching lives. Tokyo: MEXT. Coyle, D. P., & Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL: Content and language integrated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gergen, K. J. (1999). An introduction to social construction. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

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Ikeda, M. (2011). Basic principles of CLIL. In R. Watanabe, M. Ikeda, & S. Izumi (Eds.), CLIL: New challenges in foreign language education at Sophia University Vol. 1 (pp. 1-13). Tokyo: Sophia University Press. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K. A. (1991). Active learning: Cooperation in the college classroom. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. Kojima, H. (2013). Developing autonomy in EFL learning and teaching: A portfolio program under collaborative and reflective supervision. In M. Menegale (Ed.), Autonomy in language learning: Getting learners actively involved (pp. 60-70). Canterbury: IATEFL. Kojima, H. (2014). Collaborative learning and professional development for teachers in an elementary school context. In T. Ashwell, S. Paydon, M. Miyahara, & A. Stewart (Eds.), Collaborative learning in learner development (pp. 203-216). Tokyo: JALT. Little, D. (1995). Learning as dialogue: The dependence of learner autonomy on teacher autonomy. System, 23(2), 175-182. McGrath, I. (2000). Teacher autonomy. In B. Sinclair, I. McGrath, & T. Lamb (Eds.), Learner autonomy, teacher autonomy: Future directions (pp. 100-110). London: Longman. Mehisto, P., Frigols, M-J., & Marsh, D. (2008). Uncovering CLIL. Oxford: McMillan. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). (2008). The guidelines for study in the junior high school: Foreign language. Kyoto: Higashiyamashobo. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). (2009). The guidelines for study in the senior high school: Foreign language. Kyoto: Higashiyamashobo. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). (2013). English education reform plan corresponding to globalization. Retrieved from: http://www.mext.go.jp/english/topics/1343591.htm Mynard, J. (2012). A suggested model for advising in language learning. In J. Mynard & L. Carson (Eds.), Advising in language learning: Dialogue, tools and context (pp. 26-40). Edinburgh: Pearson Education Limited. Richards, J. C., & Farrell, T. S. C. (2005). Professional development for language teachers: Strategies for teacher learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tobinai, R. (2014). Integrating content and language in the Japanese

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senior high school EFL classroom. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Hirosaki University, Japan. Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. M. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Williams, M., & Burden, R. L. (1997). Psychology for language teachers: A social constructivist approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER FOUR A STUDY OF TEACHER REFLECTION IN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PING WANG, CHRISTINA GITSAKI, AND KAREN MONI

Abstract This paper reports on how a group of teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) practised reflection through participating in a professional development (PD) program. The study utilised a transformative PD model within a Community of Practice (CoP) framework. Multiple sources of data informed the study: interviews with the teachers who participated in the PD program; transcriptions of the PD meetings; and follow-up electronic interviews after the teachers had completed the PD program. The analysis of the data showed that a range of stimuli were needed to facilitate teacher reflection in this CoP. These stimuli included sharing readings and watching video-recordings of teaching practice. It was found that the teacher participants’ reflective practices were mainly reflection-on-action and reflection-in-anticipation. Reflection-on-action enabled them to identify and seek solutions for problems in their teaching, while reflection-in-anticipation gave them the confidence to try out new activities. This study contributes to the understanding of how teachers learn through reflection in China because although the innate sense of learning from critical reflection is present in the tenet of Chinese philosophy, reflection is not typically practiced in traditional PD activities.

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Introduction Over the past three decades, a number of educational reforms have been implemented in China. One focus of the reforms was improving the quality of English language teaching at the tertiary level. According to the Teacher Law in China (NPCSC, 1993), in order to teach in tertiary education, one needs a Master’s degree. However, Dai (2008) reported that in one top Chinese university, 75.70% of the teachers in the School of Foreign Languages held a Master’s degree, 8.70% had a Bachelor’s degree, 13% held a Doctoral degree, and 2.60% of teachers did not have a degree. In a local university, 54.2% of the teachers held a Master’s degree, and 10.8% of them had a Doctoral degree. Although there are no official figures of teacher educational background nationwide, Dai (2008) comments that the quality of Chinese teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching at the university level still needs to be improved. In China, EFL teacher PD activities at the primary and secondary level are mainly conducted during school holidays, while fewer activities are organized for teacher PD at tertiary level (Guo, 2005). Furthermore, some of the PD activities available were found to be inadequate and not meeting teachers’ needs (Dai, 2008). Under these circumstances, an appropriate PD model needs to be adopted for Chinese EFL teachers at the tertiary level and other contexts with similar challenges.

Background Teacher professional development is the process of assisting teachers to enhance their knowledge and develop their teaching practice as they undertake a variety of learning activities (Abadiano & Turner, 2004; Hoban, 1997). It is a necessary process to support teacher learning that has a significant impact on teachers’ beliefs, and their teaching practice (Borko, 2004; Fullan & Hargreaves, 1992; Guskey & Huberman, 1995; Villegas-Reimers, 2003). Therefore, investigations of teacher learning through PD activities have become prominent in the field of education (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Hoban, 2002). A model of teacher professional development that has been associated with transformative learning is the Community of Practice (CoP) model (Wenger, 1998), which views everyone in a particular professional community as a learner. A CoP involves a group of teachers working together to share knowledge and practice in order to improve their practice. The characteristics of teacher learning in CoPs include an understanding of members’ learning through

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exchanging ideas, stories, and reflection, as well as the development of professional relationships within the context of their community (e.g., DuFour, 2004; Handley, Sturdy, Fincham, & Timothy, 2006). As the central activity of transformative learning, critical reflection refers to the process of adults being critically aware of how and why their previous beliefs or assumptions have come to be obstacles to the way they understand their practice (Mezirow, 1981). In the education field, the importance of engaging professionals in reflection has been widely recognized (e.g., Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Dewey, 1933; Schön, 1983). Dewey (1933) argued for the importance of linking reflection to teacher education when he stated that “reflection emancipates us from merely impulsive and merely routine activity” and thus helps teachers to change their routine practices (p. 17). He argued that when teachers encounter difficulties in teaching practice, reflection may bring about a solution in the form of renewed practice. Dewey argued that teachers should constantly reflect on what happened in their classes in order to identify and solve problems, and his ideas on reflection provide a historical and conceptual foundation for the understanding of teacher reflection as necessary for professional learning (Zeichner & Liston, 1996). Building on the work of Dewey, Schön (1983) proposed two forms of teacher reflection: reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. Reflection-in-action activities often take place while teachers are teaching in the classroom. They sense that something different from their routine teaching has occurred, and change their teaching plans according to the actual situation in the classroom. Reflection-on-action usually takes place when teachers recall what happened in their classes and attempt to question and evaluate their teaching for the purpose of improve their future practice (Schön, 1983). PD programs usually focus on facilitating reflection-on-action through encouraging teachers to reflect on what they have done in the classroom (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1996). Further features of teacher reflection have been added by more recent educational researchers. Killon and Todmen (1991), for example, distinguished reflection as reflection-in-practice, reflection-on-practice, and reflection-for-practice. These researchers defined reflection-in-practice as occurring in the present, and the analysis of teaching experiences and its results post-hoc as reflection-on-practice. These two terms are similar to Schön’s concepts of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action, while reflection-for-practice is defined as the reflection prior to taking an action.

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This concept adds one more dimension to Schön’s definition of reflection and foreshadows Boud’s (2001) idea of reflection in anticipation of events, and Wilson’s (2008) idea of reflecting-on-the-future, both of which emphasise the importance of reflection before taking action, that is, prior to teaching and learning events. In this chapter, the term ‘reflection-in-anticipation’ is adopted because this term captures how teachers make plans for future practice and anticipate possible problems they may encounter when they try out new practice. Research on teacher learning through reflection in tertiary education has addressed the importance of critical reflection (O’Connell & Dyment, 2006), identified the impact of reflection on teacher transformation and practice (Meskill & Anthony, 2007; Yeo, 2006), and studied teacher reflective activities (Robson & Turner, 2007). The findings indicate that teachers need to be provided with opportunities to reflect on their teaching by sharing teaching experiences with their colleagues. Meanwhile, a supportive environment is needed for teacher learning in groups through reflection.

The Study The study described in this chapter was conducted in a Chinese University located in the east of the country. There were three female and one male volunteer participants in the PD program. All participants were EFL teachers in the English department of the university. The three female teachers held a Master’s degree, while the male teacher held a Bachelor degree. They are identified in this chapter by their pseudonyms: Yang, Chelsea, SJ, and Josh. The researcher, ‘Ping’ was also a participant/observer in the CoP. The PD program designed for this study was to facilitate teacher reflection and the sharing of experiences and ideas within the CoP. Ten weekly meetings on how to organise oral communication activities in the classroom were conducted. During the meetings, teachers watched video recordings of their own classroom activities, and their reading of journal articles on different topics, and shared their experiences and practice. Data reported in this chapter were collected through Pre-PD interviews, transcripts of ten weekly meetings among the participants, and post-PD electronic interviews. These data were translated (from Chinese into English), coded (e.g., ‘M9L323’ refers to line 323 of the transcripts of Meeting 9; ‘Chelsea: PrePD’ refers to the transcripts of Chelsea’s pre-PD interview; ‘Josh: ePostPD’ refers to the transcripts of Josh’s post-PD

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electronic interview) and analysed thematically.

Results and Discussion The PD program designed for this study aimed to involve the teacher-participants in critical reflection through interactions with the other members in the CoP. The stimuli for teacher reflection included discussions of readings and video clips of the participants’ teaching practice. The reflective activities were mainly concerned with reflection-on-action and reflection-in-anticipation.

Strategies for Stimulating Reflection and Exchange of Ideas In this study, the researcher adopted two main activities to facilitate teacher reflection: watching video recordings of teaching practice and sharing readings of journal articles which were distributed to the teachers before the meeting sessions. Before the PD program was conducted, video recordings were made of the participants’ teaching practice in their English classrooms. Each teacher was recorded once for one class hour. During the PD program, participants were again video recorded when they tried new activities in class. Each teacher was recorded for one class hour except for Josh, who invited the researcher to his class to video-tape an extra class hour. In Meetings 3, 4, 5, and 10, the teachers watched these recordings and reflected on their teaching practices, prompted by strategies such as Plus-Minus-Interesting (PMI) (De Bono, 1994) and Praise-Question-Polish (PQP) (Neubert & McNelis, 1986) to help them reflect. Specifically, at Meeting 4, Yang used the PMI strategy to identify problems in her teaching practice while watching the video recording of her class: Yang: First, as for the students’ pronunciation modelling, we prepared material in advance, and then I gave them feedback. These were all what I had learned from you people. And then I asked the students to teach the text. It was not as good as what I had expected. They were not capable to control the class. For example, when asking students to make sentences, the chairperson didn’t give clear directions, or correct the mistakes her classmates made. Some students were very cooperative. There was one guy who did very well. However, there were also some problems. He couldn’t answer questions raised by the class. (M4L118)

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In this excerpt, Yang explained how and why she organised pronunciation modelling. She acknowledged that she put into practice what she learned from the other participants during the PD meetings. Her comments revealed that she had high expectations for the activity which were not fully realized in the classroom. Her response to the limited success was to blame the students rather than to question her own teaching. However, following this, her colleagues in the group assisted her to focus on how her teaching affected students, specifically during feedback sessions: Ping:

This girl is really brave. She had been standing there for long. It is a bit embarrassing for students to receive feedback and be criticised while standing in front of the class. Yang: I have been doing it in this way for a long time. I correct their mistakes while they are standing in the front. Josh: I agree with Ping. I noticed that you only gave feedback to that student instead of the whole class. You spent too much time on the student herself. And you turned your back to the whole class and faced that girl for at least one and a half minutes. (M4L15/17)

Initially Yang resisted her peers’ comments, falling back on her experience as a reason for her practices. “I have been doing it this way for a long time,” she said. It was only after she was encouraged to reflect more deeply on the excerpt using the PMI strategy (De Bono, 1994) that she was able to move beyond this position to consider why this practice might not be appropriate: Yang: Let me do it first. The Plus: I tried the peer-evaluation in my class to give students feedback. Minus has been raised by you people. I asked the student to stand in the front while giving her feedback. It was really embarrassing (Italicized and emphasized by the researcher). Ping: Fortunately the student did not feel much embarrassed. Yang: It would be better if I asked the student to go back to her seat and I faced the whole class to give feedback. One more thing is that my voice is too low. When I watched the video, I noticed the students’ voice was loud enough. However, mine was very low. It is interesting to let students practise teaching in class. However there were still many problems. (M4137/139)

Watching the video, then engaging in structured reflection and responding to feedback from the other teachers led Yang to realise that it

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was ‘embarrassing’ for students to receive feedback while standing in the front of the classroom. In the excerpt, Yang also became aware that her voice was too low in volume and that it was hard for the students who sat at the back of the classroom to hear her. This indicated that while reflecting on the video recording of her teaching, Yang managed to identify a problem she had not been aware of in class and felt comfortable sharing this with colleagues. As she watched video recordings and obtained comments from the other participants, Yang was able to identify the problems in her teaching, which implied that she would be changing her practice in future. The second stimulus for teacher reflection was the reading and discussion of selected journal articles. In each PD session, the teachers shared their reading of one of the journal articles which had been distributed to them one week prior to each meeting by the researcher. The teachers shared their responses to these in all of the meetings except Meetings 2 and 10. The teachers talked about their classroom context when they found the shared journal articles interesting or some new strategies that could be easily adapted into their teaching. At Meeting 1, they realised that the peer-evaluation strategy represented a practical tool for use in their classes, so they actively sought possible ways for carrying out that activity in class. At Meeting 2, the teachers changed the topic of the meeting session because one teacher, Josh, wanted to share his practice of adopting the peer-evaluation strategy, which turned out to be successful in his classroom. This indicated that teachers were willing to learn from others after they learned that some new strategies were implemented successfully. This development supports the teachers’ comments made in their pre-PD interviews about their needs for PD. The teachers expected to learn teaching strategies which would help them organize students’ oral communication activities more effectively. The change of meeting schedule is also evidence of one of the key tenets of CoPs: through sharing experiences of implementing new practice, they related to their own classroom context and attempted to solve problems (Wenger, 1998). Meeting 10 signaled another important development in the teachers’ independent learning. During this meeting, the teachers showed autonomy as they took responsibility for organizing their own session. At the end of Meeting 9, they had decided that their discussion in Meeting 10 would focus on summarizing all the strategies or methods that they had learned through reflection on the PD activities.

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… I suggest every one of you go back to have a review. Next time we can go through all the activities. We’d better have 18 activities. Ping: OK. Let’s go back to think about it and next time we will share. Josh: We’d better review some activities that we can adapt directly to our classroom. It would be better. Yang: Right. We only need to brush it up in the next meeting. (M9L323/326)

Josh initiated the suggestion that they should all review the nine meetings, specifically the activities that they could adapt in their classroom. He wanted to learn about 18 activities because there were 18 weeks in a semester in the research context, and intended to organise a new activity for each week of the semester, which differed from their previous learning through training programs, where they had to learn whatever the course dictated. Through sharing readings and video recordings of their classes in the PD meetings, these teachers not only learned strategies and ideas, but also began to take more responsibility for their learning, and develop confidence in their ability to transform their practice. This was an indication that reflection was a necessary part of the PD program as it helped these teachers transform their attitudes and practices.

Reflective Activities In this study the participants reflected on their classroom practices both during and after the weekly meetings—discussing video recordings of their teaching, writing reflective journals and blogging online. Whenever these teachers reflected on their pedagogy, they tried to identify problems, find solutions, and make plans to improve future practice. Two major types of teacher reflective practices were observed during the PD meetings: refection-on-action and reflection-in-anticipation. Teacher Reflection-on-Action Table 4-1 shows key codes and examples of teacher reflection-on-action practices. It indicates that teacher reflection-on-action activities comprise four main categories. This is not surprising given that several activities in the PD programme were designed to promote this form of reflection across the whole programme. It is also evident that reflection-on-action took place in all ten of the PD sessions providing further evidence that this was a key strategy adopted by the participants. There were statements of

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problem or situation (102 instances), explanations of why decisions were made (62 instances), overall appraisals about activities (45 instances), and evaluations of decisions (37 instances). From Table 4-1 it is apparent that most of the reflective practice in the program was about reflection-on-action. The participants introduced the situation and the problems in class, explained why decisions were made, and shared overall self-appraisals about activities across all of the ten meetings. These findings align with Schön’s (1987) explanation of the elements of reflection-on-action. Throughout the ten meetings, on each occasion that the teachers reflected on their practice, they explained why they organised specific activities in a certain way. For instance, when Yang reflected on her teaching in Meeting 4, she explained that her students were more used to greeting the class in English because she required them to do so (M4L142/143). In Meeting 7 Chelsea reported her strategy of asking students to practise the rhythm of English syllables, and explained that she did not ask students to practise in pairs because she ran out of time (M7L86). Teachers also made positive comments about some of the activities they had tried in class. For example, in Meeting 5 Chelsea complimented her students on delivering good presentations (M5L78) and in Meeting 9 SJ confirmed that her students did well when they were asked to practice teaching a text (M9L112). The participants were also concerned with evaluating the decisions they made when they organized activities. For instance, Josh admitted in Meeting 3 that the reason for his students presenting well was because he had provided them with sample expressions. He had shared these expressions with the other teachers (M3L41) because he perceived the value of providing some sample expressions for presentation as a confidence building strategy. In the electronic interview which was conducted after the PD program, Josh not only confirmed reflection was necessary but that, thanks to the PD program, he now reflected regularly, confirming his belief in the value of reflection through his plan to ask his students to write reflective journals. Josh had already benefited from using the reflective practice in the CoP and he was prepared to adopt it as a tool in his own teaching practice. However, in doing so Josh was also using a strategy with his students that was used as a technique for teacher PD. While this outcome was not intended by the PD program, Josh was willing to try out effective new ideas in his classroom. He had used reflective journals and experienced

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Table 4-1: Key codes, and examples of teacher reflection-on-action in the CoP. Codes RSP Statement of problem or situation

Source 1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,8, 9,10

F 102

REXD Explanation of why decisions were made

1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,8, 9,10

62

ROS Overall appraisal about activities

1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,8, 9,10

45

REVD Evaluating of decisions

2,3,4,5, 6,7,8,9, 10

37

Examples Chelsea: One more thing. For example, the student did well at yesterday’s class, however, all the comments were questions. There was no praise… (M3L175). Yang: …Some students were very cooperative. There was one guy doing very well. However there were also some problems. He couldn’t answer questions raised by the class (M4L118). SJ: That’s why sometimes we had long presentations (M3L108). Yang: When they first did it, they didn’t greet the class. Later on I suggested they do that first. That’s how they started to do it with an opening statement (M4L145). Josh: Yes. I think they did very well in terms of presentation. Sometimes they gave very good examples (M5L75). SJ: The second activity was to ask students to teach. They did very well (M9L112). Josh: Oh. It is not because of me. I prepared the useful expressions for making presentation for them. I asked them to pick expressions from them and use them (M3L41). Chelsea: However, I suggested her to prepare for some plots. If she only asked them to relay the story by using the phrases, she would not be able to control the class (M9L306)

Note. F = Frequency of codes; Source = Meeting; Key words in data are stressed by the researcher.

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their benefits, so Josh believed that this strategy might also help his students with their learning. This was evidence of sustained transformative learning. Josh not only adopted the use of reflective journals to support his own learning, but also adopted this strategy in his teaching practice to help his students learn. The goal of this PD program, which was to help teachers learn new strategies to improve their teaching practices, was achieved. The other participants also used reflection-in-action during the meetings. At Meeting 4, Yang reflected on her practice after watching the video recording of her classroom teaching. Chelsea too reflected in Meeting 7 on why her student activity was not as effective as she expected; while SJ reflected on her organization of the silent discussion activity in Meeting 9. These reflections exemplified the idea that when these teachers took the opportunity to reflect on their practice, reflection-on-action enabled them to identify and seek for solutions for problems in their teaching. Teacher Reflection-in-Anticipation The other category of reflective practice evident in the meetings was reflection-in-anticipation demonstrated when the teachers anticipated possible problems in future practice; when they explained future strategies; and when they made recommendations for potential solutions to problems in teaching. Table 4-2 below presents key codes and examples of reflection-in-anticipation practices. Instances of reflection-in-anticipation were coded into three principal categories: statement of possible problems in future practice (18 instances), explanation of future strategies (14 instances), and recommendations for potential solutions (8 instances). While there were instances of reflection-in-anticipation in some form across all the meetings except for Meeting 9, overall, instances of reflection-in-anticipation were much less frequent than reflection-on-action. As quoted in Table 4-2, in Meeting 3, when talking about the criteria for the peer-evaluation activity, SJ raised the question about how they would give feedback to students who, despite their poor English pronunciation, they had made progress in their oral communication. SJ reflected on potential solutions to a problem she anticipated she would encounter when organizing new oral activities.

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Table 4-2: Key codes and examples of teacher reflection-in-anticipation in the CoP. Codes

Source

F

Examples

ISPFP Statement of possible problems in future practice

3,4,5,7,8, 9

18

REXF Explanation of future strategies

1,2,3,4,7, 9

14

RPS Recommendations for potential solutions

1,3,4,5,6, 9

8

SJ: If they have made some progress, for example the sound “r”, they are trying to correct it, do we need to put it under the column weak points? Or improvement? (M3L166) Chelsea: If you ask them to prepare all the questions, how can they practise their thinking? (M9L86) Josh: I would like to include it in presentation to see whether the structure of their presentation is logical or not. For example whether this part should be here or not... (M7L16) Chelsea: Oh, yes, I think this is very good. If we divide them into many groups, we cannot easily find out how well they are doing. If we ask one group to discuss while the rest of the groups are doing peer-evaluation, it can be much more effective (M5L114).

Note. F = Frequency of codes; Source = Meeting; Key words are stressed by the researcher.

When the teachers discussed the journal articles, their discussions also involved reflection-in-anticipation. The reading materials facilitated discussions, during which the participants considered the possibility of adapting new oral activities to their classrooms. These teachers explained their planned future strategies over Meetings 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 9. For instance, in Meeting 4, Yang planned to show the video recording of her teaching practice to her students. In Meeting 7, Josh planned to add one more criteria for peer-evaluation, while Chelsea suggested in Meeting 5

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that asking one group of students to have discussions while the other groups were doing peer-evaluation would be more time-effective for judging how well the students engaged in the activity.

The Effects of Reflection The effects of reflection in the PD programme were evident in instances where the teachers were motivated to organise new activities, they were positive about the progress of their students, and they were confident in their teaching. In the post-PD interview, Chelsea reported that she valued the opportunities for reflection and the habit of reflection continued after she completed this PD programme. Yang also wrote in the electronic interview that her teaching had improved and she had also learned much from the other participants: …I think my teaching is more active, more efficient and much richer since I adopted other teacher’s class activities and accepted their advice on my teaching after they watched the video of my class. (Later) … I did learn a lot of things from my colleagues. For example, some activities such as story-inventing, news report, altering the ending of the story in the textbook and so on and also some very useful information. (Yang: ePostPD) (Key words are italicised and emphasized by the researcher)

Yang was pleased with the improvements in her teaching that had developed from sharing practice and learning with the other participants. Similar to the words she used to evaluate good teaching in the pre-PD interview, she viewed her teaching as more active, efficient, and richer as a result of attending the CoP, which to her were great improvements in her teaching practices. The reflective activities also helped the teachers to recognize students’ progress. For instance, in Meeting 6 Josh reported that his students had made “great progress. Their critical thinking has been promoted” (M6L37). In Meeting 8, Yang confirmed that after practising, her students could peer-evaluate more effectively. In Meeting 9, SJ also gave detailed positive comments on her students’ progress commenting that her students performed well in their group work: “The second activity was to ask students to teach. They did very well. There were four groups of students doing that. The first group was OK.

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Chapter Four They chose one representative to present in front of the class. From the second group… each group had its own characteristics. The second group chose one student to ask questions, while another answered them. The third group was more or less like our discussion. They played different roles such as explaining words, explaining sentences, and explaining the structure of the text. The fourth group played a mini-class. They also answered questions raised by the rest of the class.” (M9L112)

As they undertook new activities, the teachers were not only confident about sharing their experience with others, but also developed more positive attitudes towards their students’ performance, and they also felt comfortable allowing students to make some decisions about activities in class. This represented a major transformation from the traditional practices they brought to the CoP when they first joined the PD programme. SJ’s contribution in Meeting 9 is even more noteworthy, considering that she was not an active proponent of reflection-on-action during the first seven meetings. SJ was busy with her extra workload brought about by the evaluation from the Ministry of Education that the department was undergoing at the time of the study. It was only after the evaluation was over that SJ managed to put into practice the techniques they had discussed at the meetings. The new activities renewed her excitement about teaching, and this illustrated how the PD programme contributed to the development of a positive attitude towards teaching. This reinvigoration was unexpected, and is a very positive outcome of the PD. It is also indicative of the potential of the CoP model of PD to motivate teachers intrinsically.

Conclusion The study which this chapter draws on revealed that a range of stimuli were needed to facilitate teacher reflection in this CoP. Teachers not only shared their resources and practice but also utilised input from shared readings which provided further stimuli for interaction. Watching video recordings of teaching practice was found to be another effective tool in fostering teacher reflection. This study contributes to the understanding of how teachers learn through reflection in China because although the innate sense of learning from critical reflection is present in the tenet of Chinese philosophy, reflection is not typically practiced in traditional PD activities.

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It was also found that during the processes of reflection, critical feedback from group members and extended discussions assisted teachers to reflect on their classroom teaching. Their reflective practices were mainly concerned with reflection-on-action and reflection-in-anticipation. Reflection-on-action enabled the teacher participants to identify and seek solutions to problems in their teaching, and reflection-in-anticipation helped them to be more prepared to try out new activities. While the broad study, which this chapter draws on, contributed to a better understanding of EFL teacher reflection through attending a PD programme using a CoP framework, it was not without its limitations. This study was conducted in an EFL context in one Chinese university. A small sample of four participants was used in the case study to understand the complexities of implementing the CoP model of transformative learning. Increasing the sample size or implementing PD using this framework in various EFL contexts may provide a more detailed picture of second language teacher reflection and learning in CoPs. Albeit its limitations and small scale outcomes, this study contributed significantly to a wider educational knowledge and understanding of designing effective second language teacher PD programs.

Acknowledgements This project was sponsored by the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry, China.

References Abadiano, H. R., & Turner, J. (2004). Professional staff development: What works? New England Reading Association Journal, 40(2), 87. Ball, D. L., & Cohen, D. K. (1999). Developing practice, developing practitioners: Toward a practice-based theory of professional education. In L. Darling-Hammond & G. Sykes (Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession (pp. 3-32). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain. Educational Researcher, 33(8), 3-15. Boud, D. (2001). Using journal writing to enhance reflective practice. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 90, 9-17. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (1999). The teacher research movement: A decade later. Educational Researcher, 28(7), 15-25. Dai, W. (2008). The report of foreign languages education development in

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tertiary education (1978-2008). Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Languagues Education Press. Darling-Hammond, L., & McLaughlin, M. W. (1996). Policies that support professional development in an era of reform. In M. W. McLaughlin & I. Oberman (Eds.), Teacher learning: New policies, new practices (pp. 202-218). New York: Teachers College Press. De Bono, E. (1994). De Bono’s thinking course (Rev. ed.). New York: Facts on File. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston: Heath. DuFour, R. (2004). What is a “professional learning community”? Education Leadership, 61(8), 6-11. Fullan, M., & Hargreaves, A. (1992). Understanding teacher development. New York: Teachers College Press. Guo, S. (2005). Exploring current issues in teacher education in China. The Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 51(1), 69-84. Guskey, T.R., & Huberman, M. (1995). Professional development in education. New York: Teachers College Press. Handley, K., Sturdy, A., Fincham, R., & Timothy, C. (2006). Within and beyond Communities of Practice: Making sense of learning through participation, identity and practice. Journal of Management Studies, 43(3), 641-653. Hoban, G. F. (2002). Teacher learning for educational change: A systems thinking approach. Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Killion, J. P., & Todnem, G. R. (1991). A process for personal theory building. Educational Leadership, 48(6), 14-16. Meskill, C., & Anthony, N. (2007). Learning to orchestrate online instructional conversations: A case of faculty development for foreign language educators. Computer Assisted language Learning, 20(1), 5-19. Mezirow, J. (1981). An critical theory of adult learning and education. Adult Education, 32(1), 3-24. Neubert, G. A., & McNelis, S. J. (1986). Improving writing in the disciplines. Educational Leadership, 43(7), 54-58. NPPSC (1993). Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Jiaoshi Fa [Teacher Law of People's Republic of China]. Beijing: China Legal Publishing House. O’Connell, T., & Dyment, J. (2006). Reflections on using journals in higher education: A focus group discussion with faculty. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 31(6), 671-691.

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Robson, S., & Turner, Y. (2007). ‘Teaching is a co-learning experience’: Academics reflecting on learning and teaching in an ‘internationalized’ faculty. Teaching in Higher Education, 12(1), 41-54. Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. London: Temple Smith. —. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Villegas-Reimers, E. (2003). Teacher professional development: an international review of the literature. UNESCO: International Institute for Educational Planning. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, J. P. (2008). Reflection-on-the-future: A chronological consideration of reflective practice. Reflective Practice, 9(2), 177-184. Yeo, R. K. (2006). Learning institution to learning organization. Journal of European Industrial Training, 30(5), 396. Zeichner, K. M., & Liston, D. P. (1996). Reflective teaching: An introduction. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

ISSUES IN TEACHER IDENTITY AND TEACHER COGNITION

CHAPTER FIVE ELICITING LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ NARRATIVES OF PRACTICE FOR PROFESSIONAL GROWTH ROBYN MOLONEY AND LESLEY HARBON

Abstract This chapter reports the process of a project in which Australian language teacher narratives were elicited and subsequently published. It reports how the authors worked with twenty-one Australian language teachers, to guide them in writing personal and professional narratives of practice. The chapter explores the design, methodology and outcomes of the project. It contributes to the emerging research literature which captures the inner worlds of language teachers and the nature of language teaching and learning as a social and educational activity. The project is informed by both the academic literature on narrative enquiry and knowledge of current issues in language teaching and learning. The chapter tracks the authors’ engagement with the teachers in a process of scaffolded reflection and intercultural enquiry involved in the writing and editing of the narratives. The project identifies three types of challenge in the narrative writing and contributes to research in language teacher education.

Introduction The use of narrative enquiry has become an important tool in exploring language teacher knowledge, practice and identity (Barkhuizen, Benson, & Chik, 2013; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Farrell, 2007; Golombek & Johnson, 2004). Narrative reveals relationships fundamental to teacher learning in language education, and how the movement between languages and cultures forms an understanding of oneself as a communicator and

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learner. A deeper understanding of teachers’ life-worlds aligns with deeper understanding of their learners’ development in the classroom. This chapter reports how the authors worked with twenty-one Australian language teachers, to guide them in writing their own personal and professional narratives of practice (Harbon & Moloney, 2013). Unlike other studies where reflective narrative writing has been produced for pedagogic purposes within teacher professional development, especially in-service (Farrell, 2011) and pre-service teachers (Moloney & Oguro, 2015), in this current project the teachers were working in geographical isolation and were not linked to any kind of narrative writer community. The purpose of the narrative writing and reflection project was twofold. First, as researchers, we wished to design and explore a methodology for gathering teachers’ stories, often silent in the scholarly literature, allowing these stories to represent a deconstruction and analysis of language teaching practice at the individual/personal level. Secondly, as language teacher educators, we believed that such a collection would, for the first time, offer both role-model exemplars, important in the shaping of beginner teachers’ professional identities (Dimova & Loughran, 2009), and a portrait of the diversity of languages and of teaching contexts within the Australian landscape. This chapter first considers the literature which informed our understanding of the place and role of narrative enquiry in language teacher research. It then presents an analysis of our methodology in eliciting the stories, through the initial conceptualisation, the development of framing questions, the writing support and editing processes. The chapter tracks the authors’ engagement with the teachers in a process of scaffolded reflection and intercultural enquiry involved in the writing and editing of their narratives. Three types of challenge are identified based on feedback received from the teachers. Finally, the applications and use of the collection of teacher narratives, in both undergraduate and postgraduate language teacher education, are discussed.

The Role of Narrative Enquiry According to Josselson (2013) “human life is composed of stories. Narratives construct memory, organise time, and create identity” (p. 3). Stories allow us to find and create ‘order’, in what otherwise might be a chaotic series of events, facts and feelings. Narrative inquiry has been found to be a methodology by which teachers can learn from questioning and investigating their own and others’ narratives. Narrative inquiry entails “a significant measure of reflection on either an event or an

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experience, a significant portion of a life, or the whole of it” (Freeman, 2006, p. 131). The inquiry investigation involves examining what the story was about, determining and targeting what was told, and then examining the ‘why’, ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘by whom’ about past events and lived experiences. A set of suitable questions can frame a narrative, so that the writer is encouraged to include the ‘why’, ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘by whom’ elements. When teachers inquire into their own or others’ narratives, according to Johnson and Golombek, (2002) they “individually and collectively question their own assumptions as they uncover who they are, where they have come from, what they know and believe, and why they teach as they do” (p. 5). Narrative enquiry represents both methodology and process (Barkhuizen et al., 2013) in the investigation of language teachers’ development. The collection of language teacher narratives to which this chapter refers (see Harbon & Moloney, 2013), sits alongside a number of recent publications which have focused on the use of reflective narrative as an important tool in teacher education (Blake, 2012; Johnston & Golombek, 2002; Kiernan, 2010; Mattos, 2009; Ritchie & Wilson, 2000; Trahar, 2011). Underpinning the project is the understanding of reflection in Dewey’s writing. In Dewey’s (1933) analysis, reflection is an attempt to bring coherence to unclear or obscure experience, made up of the interplay between two operations, observation and inference. While observation is concerned with concrete events, inference goes further and makes a supposition or forms a hypothesis to interpret or explain phenomena. Schön (1987, 1991) also proposed that reflection can be seen as a form of ‘conversation’ with the self about an incident. Goodson’s (2013, p. 123) notion of reflection as a capacity to “re-self in new social settings and geographical locations” is pertinent to this current project, observing the many adaptations which teachers must make to re-self, both through interactions with languages and cultures, and through teaching in remote locations. Scarino (2013) has noted that language teachers as storytellers are “interpreters” (p. iv), that is, the writer will have in mind his/her own meaning, but readers will also take their own interpretations from those stories. Our concern, similarly, is that the reader audience of the collection, which is largely other language teachers, will make meaning from the narratives which, in turn, casts light on their own development, in their own professional context. Sercu (2006) has asserted that language teachers need skills in reflection, to be able to facilitate enquiry into language and culture, as part

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of language learning. This is best developed in teachers “taking part themselves in learning experiences which involve risk and reflection” (Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002, p. 30). If our narratives are “central to what we see and how we interpret it” (Gipps, 1999, p. 370), then the use of narrative to unlock this learning in language teachers is a powerful tool in the development of a critical perspective on pedagogy and practice. Coffey (2014) has noted that the collection of narratives, which ensued from this project, offers diverse exemplars of the effectiveness of narrative enquiry as a methodological research field. The narratives give readers opportunity to access lived practice and pedagogy, and, as noted, to examine their discipline through the narrative lens.

The Study Both authors of this chapter have been involved in the teaching of languages and cultures in Australia for more than 30 years apiece, and both have many years’ knowledge of the Australian language teaching community, through our own teaching experience, our tertiary roles in language teacher education, and within teacher professional networks. The steps we followed to elicit and guide language teachers to produce these narratives broke new ground in that university academics worked alongside school language teachers to value and publish teachers’ writing. While this project was not empirical research in the traditional sense, we approached the project as though it were structured research.

Methodology Narrative enquiry may be considered an “alternative paradigm for social research” (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998). Barkhuisen et al. (2013) assert that there is no single way of carrying out a narrative enquiry study, and that each new study may bring with it a new approach. Our design of the project constituted five stages of process. The design was informed by both the academic literature focused on the current issues in languages teaching and learning today, and our own contextual knowledge of practice and networks in schools. We acknowledge that our design, construction and interpretation of the project may have been shaped by our own experience and beliefs (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). First, we recruited our teacher writers using our knowledge of the language teacher community in Australia. Using a convenience sampling technique (Marshall, 1996), we contacted teachers whose work we already knew to be accomplished or who were active in their language teaching

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professional networks. We devised a sample of possible participants, whom we considered to be interested and willing to write a reflective narrative of their personal and professional practice. The sampling was also shaped by the desire to have different languages, different (Australian) geographical contexts, and different pedagogical issues represented. Cognizant of the intensity of school teaching schedules, we structured the timeline of the project to optimize teacher free time during school holidays. Second, as scaffolding to the narrative, we devised a list of generic enquiry questions. The questions, intended as a guide only, asked teachers to consider, for example, where languages began in their life story, why they became a language teacher, what they are seeking to achieve in their teaching. Further, teachers were asked, in regard to the particular issue with which they had some affiliation, why and how the issue has challenged them, what pedagogy and strategies bring about effective learning, and how they may extend their work further in this focus area. The questions were designed to provide the teachers with freedom, yet supporting a consistent structure for the depth of reflection and investigation we intended. The focus issues included the teaching of Aboriginal languages, heritage or community languages; teaching language in rural schools; teaching gifted and talented students; boys and language learning; immersion/content and language integrated learning (CLIL) programs; teaching classical languages; and teaching with a focus on intercultural enquiry. We asked the teachers first for a one- to twoparagraph outline. After providing some feedback to each, the teachers then submitted a final draft outline. They were then encouraged to write up their narrative. Third, following submission of a narrative draft, we critically observed the individual teacher’s engagement with reflection, that is, to what extent teachers had moved beyond observation to inference (Dewey, 1933). We devised a second set of individualized personal questions to interrogate aspects of their draft. Fourth, we engaged in collaborative communication with teachers in which we encouraged further investigation of some aspects of their story. Finally we completed very limited processes of final editing, mindful of the importance of the authenticity of teacher voices.

Participants The project involved 21 teachers in total. Four of them were male, which reflects the gender imbalance in language education (Sunderland, 2000). All but two had more than five years’ teaching experience. Eleven

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of the 21 language teachers had learned their teaching language(s) through formal school and university study-that is, although the term is contested (Samimy & Kurihara, 2006), these teachers may be referred to as nonnative speakers (NNS) of their teaching language. For eight teachers, their language(s) represented an important part of their personal family identity and immigration history. Of those eight, two were born in Australia, and, in their early development they would have been characterized as ‘heritage speakers’ of their teaching language (Carriera, 2004; Valdes, 2001). Seven contributors had engaged with, or were currently involved with, postgraduate education. The languages taught by the contributing language teachers include Noongar and Gamilaraay (two Aboriginal languages), Japanese, German, Indonesian, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Latin, Hindi, and Arabic. Our own narratives of practice, written to share in the complexity of the task asked of the teachers and also to identify and critique our own educational perspectives and motivations, included our languages of Indonesian, German, Japanese, and French. All teachers have been de-identified and ascribed a number (T1, T2, T3, etc.) in the reporting of the results below.

Results We worked with the language teachers over a period of 14 months. The teachers unanimously reported a sense of enjoyment, even honour, that two academics were taking an interest in their professional work and the personal stories embedded in that work. Yet the teachers variously reported to us, in personal communications via telephone or emails, that they faced a number of challenges in writing their narratives. We classified these challenges into three areas: (i) teacher courage to write despite little experience; (ii) teachers’ own professional learning as a result of reflective writing; and (iii) teachers’ difficulty in labelling their core rationale for their narratives. Each of these notions is outlined in the sections below.

Courage to Write Despite Little Experience with Academic Writing The teachers, while courageous in taking the challenge, nevertheless reported to us that they were daunted as first-time narrative writers, both through the task lying outside their regular activities, and the unfamiliarity of the literacy genre. The narrative-writing represented a first academic writing task and publication for all but four of the language teachers. Also,

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as noted, above, eight teachers were writing in English as a second or third language. While all were fully qualified to teach in schools, they had a variety of educational backgrounds, and a variety of pathways of acquisition of the language(s) they were teaching in their schools. For example, T1 and T2 had to both engage with journeys of discovery and reconnection with their Aboriginal heritage communities, and then with learning their family language, before being able to teach it. Choosing where to pitch their writing, and finding the desired ‘tone’ of their narrative, was a challenge for many. There is an inherent contradiction and difficulty in writing personally in the first person, for a publication which will essentially sit in the academic arena. For some, there was the challenge to move from the hyperbole of spoken language to written language, while others struggled to avoid over-formal ‘essay’ writing language, as can be seen in these comments: “I’m not sure exactly what text type I am writing to. I remember when I first finished writing it the first time and thought it over, I felt that it came out like an essay, and I wanted to change it to be less like an argument and more like my personal experience. However, having that said to me... should I write more/less formally?” (T17, personal communication, 19 April, 2012)

Teacher 3 begins his narrative being self-aware of his limitations: “How can I write the ephemeral? How, despite the assurances of Paul Riceour (1976) can I capture moments that are always already gone? ..I habitually barge through life, blinkers on, eyes fixed ahead? I have never kept a journal. My repertoire consists of dusty academic prose, brisk business-speak, and paint-peeling polemic.” (T3, Harbon & Moloney, 2013, p. 38)

Some teachers reported they experienced a challenge because of the need to go beyond observation, to inference (Dewey, 1933). This difficulty of getting beyond description, to achieve critical reflection in narratives, has been observed in many other studies of reflective narratives (Bagnall, 2005; Moloney & Oguro, 2015). Our strategy was to draft individualized enquiry questions (the third stage in our methodological process), and to engage in phone and email dialogue with a number of them after the completion of their first draft, to encourage them to dig deeper into critical incidents in their narratives, often involving an exploration of the deeper meaning of their teaching. We wrote to one contributor by email:

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“We especially love the personal stuff, in your first person voice, like paragraph 4 (wonderful). It’s nice how you are moving in and out of that voice. But keep as much of it personal as possible, your experiences (examples of what it means to kids, kids’ responses, community input) and what it meant to you to have both learnt and taught the language, and helped kids learn it, and now supporting more teachers.” (Researchers, 6/2/12)

Difficulty in Labelling the Core Rationale for their Narratives The teachers needed to be encouraged to speak their mind, and add the very core of their rationale or argument to their stories. All contributors indicated that they wanted to write a meaningful message for other language teachers, but needed critical guidance on their writing, to finally produce a set of narratives that achieve their desire to inspire and impact other teachers’ understandings, resilience and practice. Knowing we were encouraging the expression of a community of practice in these narratives (Lave & Wenger, 1999), we allowed and encouraged the frequent use of the first person pronouns ‘we/our’. T10 wrote: “We should all be encouraged to be the best teachers we can be… if we demonstrate this passion, enthusiasm and zeal for teaching and learning languages, our boys will perceive it and respond to it.” (T10, Harbon & Moloney, 2013, p. 97)

T11’s final words were strong: “Our classrooms must provide challenge matched with requisite support for students to succeed…” (T11, Harbon & Moloney, 2013, p, 109). T17’s words embed him alongside his teacher peers, advocating a joining together to acknowledge what is achieved in language teaching: “To be a language teacher is to be an advocate of language learning and the culture of your chosen language. How can we truly do that without having experienced some of that culture ourselves.” (T17, Harbon & Moloney, 2013, p. 165)

T2’s final inclusive call turns political. She writes: “I have developed personally and professionally through trying to examine my language teaching. Personally it has enabled me to find out about my familial and my cultural heritage…I believe that individual teachers like me, can create ripples in the language pond. We need to lobby

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We encouraged teachers to consider their narratives as a professional contribution to their own communities. For example, T13’s final words were: “I hope that this narrative proves a useful role model framework of professional development, to offer to my peers in Chinese language education” (T13, Harbon & Moloney, 2013, p. 127). Similarly T14 sets out her particular self-aware mission to her Australian Latin teacher community. She writes: “I sit at my writing table surrounded by recent books on the teaching of Latin and Classical Greek….In none of these books is there any mention of Australia. It is my belief, however, that the current Australian scene shows a level of energy, creativity and originality found in few places elsewhere. I take great pleasure, therefore, in telling this story…” (T13, Harbon & Moloney, 2013, p. 128)

Professional Learning as a Result of the Reflective Writing Teachers may come to new understandings of their practice and of languages education as a result of reflection and writing. A number of contributors provided us with feedback that the act of written reflection attached value, for the first time, to their development, their story as a language teacher. As one contributor put it: “Looking back, I can see how the varied experiences in my life have shaped the type of language teacher I am today” (T15, Harbon & Moloney, 2013, p. 142). Another teacher wrote: “Writing this chapter has helped me to reflect on my past experience and gain a deeper understanding of my values and their connections with my own teaching practice…” (T13, Harbon & Moloney, 2013, p. 126). This validation of personal story has also been found in studies of the use of reflective narrative in pre-service language teachers (Moloney & Oguro, 2015). It has particular significance in teachers’ understanding of their own personal role, and their stories, in sharing with students an intercultural approach to language teaching and learning. Coffey’s (2014) review of the published volume of teachers’ narratives lists the many suitable audiences for the narratives, possible uses, and asserts that readers “will find resonance with their own experience” (p. 348). In our work as teacher educators, we have used the narratives in workshops with our own pre-service language teachers, to discuss teacher development, pedagogies, the variety of issues impacting languages

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education in Australia, and the value of reflective practice itself. We have developed a set of enquiry questions for each chapter, which can be shared with interested educators. We have liaised with international colleagues, to facilitate the use of the narratives also in postgraduate teacher education study. An online video resource is also available on Youtube.

Conclusion This chapter has investigated a project in which Australian language teacher narratives were elicited and published in a book. It contributes to the research literature which recognizes the value of narrative enquiry in capturing the inner worlds of language teachers and the nature of language teaching and learning as a social and educational activity. The project was informed by both the academic literature of narrative enquiry, and knowledge of current issues on language teaching and learning. The chapter has outlined the methodology developed for this particular context and tracked the authors’ engagement with the teachers in a process of scaffolded reflection and intercultural enquiry involved in the writing and editing processes. Finally, three types of challenge in the narrative writing were identified and discussed. The project was limited in a number of ways. Firstly, while the purpose of the project was to capture narrative snapshots of teachers at specific points in their career, the project would have benefited from being longitudinal, enabling follow-up activity to be undertaken with the teachers. Secondly, we also note that teachers may have benefited from being placed in a community with each other, and generated their narratives in more diverse community social interaction, rather than just communication with the researchers. This can be easily enabled in the future through online social media, and will be a feature of intended further work in this area. Similarly, while the intent was to allow the teachers to write uninterrupted and largely unsupervised, data collection mid-task would enable analysis of the teachers’ reflection process. The project contributes to research in language teacher education and development. There are a number of emerging applications and uses for the collection of narratives, in both undergraduate and postgraduate language teacher education.

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References Bagnall, N. (2005). Teacher cultural reflection and cultural action learning: Researching a cultural dimension in teacher education. Ethnography and Education European Review, 4, 101-116. Barkhuizen, G., Benson, P., & Chik, A. (2013). Narrative inquiry in language teaching and learning research. London: Routledge. Blake, P. W. (2012). Becoming a teacher: Using narrative as reflective practice. A cross-disciplinary approach (Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Byram, M., Gribkova, B., & Starkey, H. (2002). Developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching: A practical introduction for teachers. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Carreira, M. (2004). Seeking explanatory adequacy: A dual approach to understanding the term “Heritage Language Learner”. Heritage Language Journal, 2(1), 1-25. Cameron, T. (2013). Ripples in the pond. In L. Harbon & R. Moloney (Eds.), Language teachers’ narratives of practice (pp. 22-36). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Coffey, S. (2014). Language teachers’ narratives of practice: Book review. The Language Learning Journal, 42(3), 346-349. doi: 10.1080/09571736.2014.950012 Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educational process. Lexington, MA: Heath. Dimova, Y., & Loughran, J. J. (2009). Developing a big picture understanding of reflection in pedagogical practice. Reflective Practice, 10(2), 205-217. Farrell, T. S. C. (2007). Reflective language teaching: From research to practice. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Freeman, M. (2006). Life ‘on holiday’? In defence of big stories. Narrative Inquiry, 16(1), 131-138. Gibb, B. (2013). Eyes Wide Opened. In L. Harbon & R. Moloney (Eds.), Language teachers’ narratives of practice (pp. 158-166). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Gipps, C. B. (1999). Sociocultural aspects of assessment. Review of Research in Education, 24(1), 355-392. Glesne, C., & Peshkin, A. (1992). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction. White Plains, NY: Longman.

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Goldstein, M. (2013). “They bombed us” - Teaching Japanese in country New South Wales: Privelege and parochialism. In L. Harbon & R. Moloney (Eds.), Language teachers’ narratives of practice (pp. 37-47). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Golombek, P. R., & Johnson, K. E. (2004). Narrative inquiry as a mediational space: Examining emotional and cognitive dissonance in second language teachers’ development. Teachers and Teaching, 10(3), 307-327. Goodson, I. (2003). Professional knowledge, professional lives. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Harbon, L., & Moloney, R. (2013). Language teachers’ narratives of practice. Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Hwang, C. (2013). Boys and language education. In L. Harbon & R. Moloney (Eds.), Language teachers’ narratives of practice (pp. 90-99). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Johnson, K. E., & Golombek, P. R. (2002). Teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Josselson, R. (2013). Interviewing for qualitative inquiry: A relational approach. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Kiernan, P. (2010). Narrative identity in English language teaching: Exploring teacher interviews in Japanese and English. Melbourne, Vic: Palgrave MacMillan Kleinsasser, R. C. (2013). Language teachers: Research and studies in language(s) education, teaching, and learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 29, 86-96. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1999). Learning and pedagogy in communities of practice. In J. Leach & B. Moon (Eds.), Learners and pedagogy (pp. 21-33). London: The Open University. Liang, J. (2013). One teacher’s exploration of the personal and the professional. In L. Harbon & R. Moloney (Eds.), Language teachers’ narratives of practice (pp. 120-127). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative research: Reading, analysis, and interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Marshall, M. N. (1996). Sampling for qualitative research. Family Practice, 13(6), 522-526. Matters, E. (2013). Audio, video, disco: Listening, watching and learning as a classics teacher in Australia. In L. Harbon & R. Moloney (Eds.), Language teachers’ narratives of practice (pp. 128-139). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Mattos, A. M. A. (2009). Narratives on teaching and teacher education: an international perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Mehta, M., & Mahoney, C. (2013). Collaboration calling: My crusade to make community languages mainstream. In L. Harbon & R. Moloney (Eds.), Language teachers’ narratives of practice (pp. 140-147). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Mizoshiri, S. (2013). Teaching Japanese to gifted and talented girls. In L. Harbon & R. Moloney (Eds.), Language teachers’ narratives of practice (pp. 100-110). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Moloney, R., & Oguro, S. (2015). The effect of intercultural narrative reflection in shaping pre-service teachers’ future practice. Reflective Practice, 16(1), 96-108. Richards, J. C., & Farrell, T. S. C. (2011). Practice teaching: A reflective approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ritchie, J. S., & Wilson, D. E. (2000). Teacher narrative as critical inquiry: Rewriting the script (Practitioner Inquiry Series). New York: Columbia University Teachers College Press. Samimy, K. K., & Kurihara, Y. (2006). Nonnative speaker teachers. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (2nd Ed.) (pp. 679-686). New York: Elsevier. Scarino, A. (2013). Foreword. In L. Harbon & R. Moloney (Eds.), Language teachers’ narratives of practice (pp. viii-xii). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Schön, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. —. (1991). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. Sherratt, C. (2013). Learning and teaching an Australian Aboriginal language in Western Australia. In L. Harbon & R. Moloney (Eds.), Language teachers’ narratives of practice (pp. 16-21). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Sercu, L. (2006). The foreign language and intercultural competence teacher: The acquisition of a new professional identity. Intercultural Education, 17(1), 55-72. Sunderland, J. (2000). Issues of language and gender in second and foreign language education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trahar, S. (2011). (Ed.) Learning and teaching narrative enquiry: travelling in the borderlands. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Valdés, G. (2001). Heritage language students: Profiles and possibilities. In J. K. Peyton, D. A. Ranard, & S. McGinnis (Eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource (pp. 37-80). Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics.

CHAPTER SIX PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN A DISCIPLINESPECIFIC CONTEXT MIMI NAHARIAH AZWANI MOHAMED, KAREN MONI, AND CARMEN MILLS

Abstract English for specific purposes (ESP) courses in higher education play a crucial role in developing English language abilities in a workplace. Many studies on ESP have surveyed the language needs of a discipline, examined the implementation of ESP courses and evaluated the effectiveness of ESP courses or programmes. In Malaysia, ESP practitioners are generally of English as a second language (ESL) teachers and have been trained to teach in schools. This suggests that these ESP practitioners experience transitions in their conceptualisation of English language teaching when they move to a university. These transitions require them to reconstruct their professional identities. This study investigated how one English language (EL) educator, who had moved from a school to a university setting, conceptualised English language teaching, identified himself within his institutional context, and managed his teaching. A semi-structured interview was conducted to gather knowledge about the EL educator’s beliefs about ESP, his institutional context and his instructional practices. This chapter reports that the interactions between the EL educator’s beliefs and the way he perceived ESP and interpreted his institutional context created tensions in the reconstruction of his professional identity, and in making decisions about his instructional practices. The study highlights that the professional identity construction process is a complex stage in teaching and learning, particularly in teaching ESP.

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Introduction In this globalised world, it is inevitable for professionals to be involved in global interaction through various types of communication and English is the most common language preferred for this purpose. In addition, professionals need to communicate clearly and accurately, and work as a team effectively in a workplace. Having strong communication skills is important to build trust among team members and it is a great advantage in securing employment (Zaugg & Davies, 2013). In engineering, there is a great demand for engineering graduates to demonstrate communication skills to secure employment in engineering fields (Talbot, Alley, Marshall, Haas, Zappe, & Garner, 2013; Varwandkar & Deshmukh, 2013; Yusoff, Omar, Zaharim, Mohamed, & Muhamad, 2012). Thus, English language teaching in higher education contexts needs to provide a language learning environment which reflects language use in workplace contexts. This calls for English language teaching to change its focus from teaching grammatical and linguistic aspects to teaching English for specific purposes (ESP) for specific disciplines. The main aim of ESP courses is to develop learners’ communicative competence in English within a specific discipline or professional area (Alexander, 2012; Hyland, 2003, 2007). With the need for a future workforce to be able to communicate within a specific discipline, ESP courses are expected to provide specialised English language discourses, specifically for that discipline. Thus, English language teaching within such a discipline-based context includes teaching the language, communication skills and contents of a discipline as well as the language itself. This requires English language educators to have knowledge of a discipline, such as engineering so that they can appropriately address students’ English language abilities and communication skills in an engineering context (Mackiewicz, 2004). In addition, they need to be informed about the demands in engineering industries so that they are able to design an English language course which can support the development of students’ English language abilities and communication skills for the engineering field. The design of such a course should be domain-specific in order to motivate students to participate actively in the learning process, and see the relevance of the course to their engineering courses or fields (Baik & Greig, 2009; Kirkgöz, 2009). However, English language educators may not come from engineering backgrounds and thus, language needs for engineering may not be effectively addressed in ESP courses. In Malaysia, the educators who teach ESP are generally of an English as a second language (ESL) background (Mustapha & Yahya, 2013).

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These educators are well-equipped with linguistic knowledge and the pedagogy of teaching the language. However, they may lack understanding about language in a workplace or a discipline, such as engineering. With limited understanding of the nature of ESP, as well as knowledge about the demands in engineering, English language educators may perceive their role only as ESL educators (Tan, 2011). As a result, the ability to interact effectively in English within a particular discipline or in a workplace such as in engineering industries may not be achieved. When learning ESP, students need to have good command of English so that they can focus on learning specialised language (Evans & Morrison, 2011). However, studies have found that Malaysian undergraduates of science and technical fields have a low proficiency level in English, making it challenging for English language teaching to be contextualised into engineering fields (Musa, 2002; Rafee, Mustafa, Shahabuddin, Razali, & Hassan, 2012; Sidhu & Kaur, 2011). These issues about the qualification of those teaching ESP and the language performance of the students in higher education in Malaysia create challenging roles for English language educators to equip future workforce with good English language abilities and communication skills, particularly in engineering.

Background The increasing need for teaching English for communicative competence has led to the growth of ESP teaching in the 1980’s (Bhatia, 2007; Cheng, 2007; Hayati, 2008; Hyland, 2003, 2007). Within this time, ESP further evolved and English for Academic Purposes (EAP)-English language teaching for an academic context-emerged (Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998; Hyland & Hamp-Lyons, 2002; Jordan, 2002). Although there are undeniable distinctions between ESP and EAP, the term ESP is more relevant for this study. In Malaysia, the trend for teaching ESP grew in the 1990s (Abdullah, 2001). When designing English language courses for a particular field, the appropriateness of content to students’ disciplinary background is vital. Evans (2013), for example, raised the need to develop materials based on actual communicative activities and English language discourse in the workplace environment in Hong Kong. He collected data from 1,478 business professionals in Hong Kong to inform the development of a Business English course which provided an authentic workplace environment. The study identified the commonly used language discourses and communicative events in business. In another study, Flowerdew and Wan (2010) investigated the language used by professional auditors in

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producing audit reports in Hong Kong. The authors reported that the principles of accounting and auditing, management skills in the workplace and knowledge about social situations, which determine appropriate writing, were required to address English language needs in auditing and accounting. In addition to the relevance of the content, English language educators also need to consider the specialised language discourse for a specific context or discipline. Gabrielli, Gabrielli and Pahlm (2012) conducted an investigation on contextualised English language teaching and learning into maritime engineering at a university in Sweden. The researchers reported that there was a disconnect between the language discourse learnt in classrooms and the language discourse used in the workplace. This disconnect may be due to educators’ limited understanding about the workplace environment. In teaching ESP, English language educators need to move from teaching general English to teaching specific English (Basturkmen, 2012). While Gabrielli et al. (2012) suggested an appropriate course design and teaching strategies to integrate language and content in maritime engineering, questions arise about how English language educators develop clear understandings of ESP, as well as ESP knowledge and skills for a workplace and translate this into their teaching (Grosse & Vought, 2012). All the studies above highlighted the need for English language educators to develop accurate knowledge of the communicative events and language discourse of a particular discipline. This means that when teaching English for engineering, English language educators should have specialised knowledge and skills, which may be beyond their expertise in English language teaching, and the rhetorical and linguistic conventions involved in engineering industries. These key issues raise questions about how English language educators could teach ESP effectively when they are not equipped with expertise for teaching ESP. Translating ESP into effective teaching and learning may also be challenging. Evans and Green (2007), for example, investigated the implementation of EAP courses at an English-medium university in Hong Kong. They reported that these EAP courses paid limited attention to grammatical aspects. In Malaysia, Muhamad, Ahmad, Engku, Sarudin, Abdul and Abdul (2013) found similar findings about lack of attention to addressing grammatical aspects in EAP courses. The findings in both studies highlighted that the need to teach the content of the course may outshine the linguistics or grammatical aspect of the language in the educators’ instructional practices. In order to develop students’ English language, ESP should ensure students’ mastery of English, content and

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communicative abilities (Danilova & Pudlowski, 2007; Ngah, Radzuan, Fauzi, & Abidin, 2011; Riemer, 2007; Spence & Liu, 2013). This raises concerns over balancing between content, language and communications skills in teaching ESP as balancing these three elements can be problematic (see Dannels, Anson, Bullard, & Peretti, 2003). Issues around students’ limited proficiency in English and motivation may also cause challenges to teach ESP (Gupta, 2013). Several studies have reported issues associated with Malaysian undergraduates’ limited English language proficiency and motivations towards learning the language (Ahmad & Jusoff, 2009; Gill & Williams, 2013; Musa, Koo, & Azman, 2012a, 2012b; Radzuan & Kaur, 2011; Shah, Hashim, Yusof, Din, Karim, & Abd-Rahman, 2013). With limited proficiency in understanding and using English, students struggle in learning English for a specific field. Evans and Morrison (2011), for example, investigated the experiences of 28 first year students of business, applied sciences, textile and health and social sciences in overcoming language-related challenges in Hong Kong. The authors reported that students had difficulties in understanding discipline-specific technical terms during lectures and the extent to which these difficulties were resolved depended on the students’ education background and their existing language abilities. This suggests that when students have limited proficiency in English, using materials which are discipline-specific, for example materials from the engineering discipline, could impede their learning process and specific learning outcomes may not be achieved. Evaluating an ESP course is crucial in determining the effectiveness of a course. Song (2006), for example, investigated the effectiveness of content-based ESL instruction on students’ English language performance. Although the study showed positive results in improving and enhancing students’ English language performance, the process of developing instructional practices to link language to content, or to a particular discipline, needs to be examined, particularly in the area of ESL educators’ and students’ identities in the classroom (Archer, 2008; Hyland, 2011; Zareva, 2013). Hyland (2011), for example, investigated how academics constructed their identity in the context of the university as a workplace. By examining the texts written in English, visual design and hyperlinks of 100 homepages of academics from the field of philosophy and physics, the researcher found that academics encountered tensions and negotiations in constructing their online identity through their homepage. This online identity is constructed based on what the academics perceived relevant for their position in the context of their institution and on their culturally valued attributes. This suggests that these academics do not have

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control over their online identity, raising questions about how the process of constructing identities creates tensions and how these tensions are negotiated. English language educators are commonly equipped with teaching pedagogies and knowledge about English language to teach in school contexts (Bolitho, 2002; Kabilan & Izzaham, 2008; Ong, Ros, Amisha, Azlian, Sharnti, & Ho, 2004; Zeichner, 2005). They are generally taught about the principles, theories and practices that prepare them to teach English for general purposes (Bolitho, 2002; Evans & Esch, 2013; Ong et al., 2004; Tercanlioglu, 2004). Several studies have found that ESL educators face challenges in transferring these pedagogies and teaching skills to university contexts (Cross, 2010; Deng, 2004; Viczeko & Wright, 2010). For example, Alexander (2012) investigated ESL educators’ beliefs about teaching EAP and reported that the two ESL educators who taught EAP experienced conflicts between teaching language structure and grammar and teaching functional language for academic contexts. The findings emphasised the importance of developing knowledge and understanding of teaching English for a particular context or discipline so that they could position themselves within their educational contexts and identify their roles. In the case of moving from a school to the adult learning context of a university, the transition may interfere with ESL educators’ professional identities and affect their pedagogies and teaching approaches (Viczeko & Wright, 2010). Kanno and Stuart (2011) investigated how novice ESL teachers in the USA learned to teach. Their participants were two secondyear Master in TESOL students who had limited teaching experience. They found that their participants who taught for the first time were not able to position themselves as ESL educators and, therefore, were not able to take control of teaching and learning. The participants were unclear of their professional identity and thus faced challenges in framing their teaching. This study showed that English language educators still struggled with their professional identity even within the educational setting that they were trained to work in. This raises potential challenges for English language educators who move to teaching at higher education institutions which place different demands on their knowledge with expectations of higher levels of content knowledge and teaching skills suitable for adult learning environments.

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The Study This study aimed to explore how an English language educator conceptualised English language teaching and constructed his professional identity within his institutional context. The primary site for the data collection was a public technical university in Malaysia. The university was located in a suburb where the use of English language was limited outside of the English language classroom, and rare outside the university community. This university specialised in technical education, focusing primarily on engineering education. An instrumental case study design was adopted in order to investigate a phenomenon in its real life context and to capture the complex nature of English language teaching, and the issue of English language teaching for a specific discipline faced by an ESL educator who has moved from teaching in a school to a university (Cousin, 2005; Johnson & Christensen, 2004; Neuman, 2011; Silverman & Marvasti, 2008; Stake, 2005; Yin, 2014). A single case study was employed to capture the ways in which the English language educator conceptualised English language teaching in one technical university. The insights obtained from this study may be extended to other disciplines or contexts. The study obtained data from two sources, i.e., documents and an English language educator from a technical university in Malaysia, to gain insights from two different perspectives (Flick, 2006; Hesse-Biber, 2010; Lichtman, 2010). Documents were collected as they were stable and outside the researcher’s influence (Marshall & Rossman, 2006; Swanborn, 2010). These documents provided information related to engineering accreditation, engineering education, the university objectives and graduate attributes, and English language curriculum documents which provided data on the structure and the design of English language courses, the content of these courses and the learning outcomes that needed to be achieved. The information provided an understanding of the expectations within engineering contexts, which created a connection with what was being understood by ESL educators in developing and teaching the English language courses. The ESL educator, Jamal, had a qualification to teach English as a second language in the school context. He had taught in a school for 13 years before being recruited by the university. At the time of the data collection he had been teaching at this university for 4 years. For the purpose of this study, he was interviewed to obtain data on his beliefs, knowledge and teaching practices in teaching English within the engineering education setting. Examples of the interview questions used in

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the data collection are: ‘What do you think about teaching English in a university?’, ‘What are some of the strategies that you use to teach engineering students?’, and ‘Are there any differences between teaching English in a school and in a university?’ Using an interview provides a way to access the participant’s points of view to understand an issue, in this case, how the ESL educator conceptualised English language teaching and how he constructed his professional identities (Kvale, 2007; Silverman & Marvasti, 2008). The data collected were analysed in order to explore the positioning of English language courses and the ways in which English language educators positioned themselves in the context of one technical university in Malaysia. In addition, this study examined the ways ESL educators managed the complexities of teaching English in engineering.

Results and Discussion The Analysis of the Documents The analysis of the programme description document revealed that the university had developed 10 objectives. These objectives, which combined the need for graduates to acquire engineering fundamentals and develop technical as well as soft skills, were filtered before they were translated into the learning outcomes of the English language courses. The Academic Department, which manages issues related to programme quality assurance and accreditation, was responsible for disseminating the university objectives to all faculties to be translated into their courses. Figure 6-1 below shows the translation process from the university objectives to the course learning outcomes of the English language courses. The analysis of course learning outcomes of the English language courses revealed that only three out of 10 objectives were addressed. This suggested that the objectives were filtered before they were translated into the course learning outcomes of the English language courses. Further investigation revealed that a decision was made at university level, through the Academic Department that each course within a curriculum is only required to address 3 outcomes. The department acknowledged that by addressing no more than three objectives, each course could be designed to focus on these selected objectives comprehensively. At the end of an engineering programme, each course would play a role in contributing to the achievement of all the university objectives.

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Academic Department (University) x Objectives English Language Department x Relevant university objectives selected

English Language Courses x Course Learning Outcomes Figure 6-1: The process of translating the university objectives into course learning outcomes.

At the English Language Department, the objectives selected for the English language courses were considered salient and relevant to English language teaching. These university objectives (UO) were: ‘an ability to communicate effectively’ (UO3), ‘recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning’ (UO7) and ‘an ability to function effectively in groups in ways that contribute to effective working relationships’ (UO8). These university objectives were developed into the learning outcomes of each English language course. However, there were differences between the ways these learning outcomes were written at the English Language Department and the learning outcomes found in the documents obtained from all engineering departments regarding the outcomes that English language courses need to achieve. For example, the Mechanical Engineering faculty recorded in their curriculum document that the English language courses should address the first programme learning outcome (PLO) which required students to ‘acquire and apply knowledge of science and engineering fundamentals’ (PLO1) and ‘to communicate effectively both in written and spoken forms with engineers, other professionals and community’ (PLO3). This suggested that English language educators should provide opportunities for students to learn engineering fundamentals and develop English language skills relevant for the engineering field. In addition, the design of English language courses needs to support the development of English language for communication in engineering contexts. However, none of the learning outcomes of the English language courses produced at the English language Department level reflected PLO1 or PLO3. The process which led to the occurrence of

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these differences was not evident because the development of the learning outcomes at the English Language Department and the expected learning outcomes indicated in the documents of engineering faculties were compiled separately. These differences raise the potential for misalignments between the expectations of engineering faculties and the design of the English language courses.

The English Language Educator Jamal had 17 years of teaching experience with 13 years of teaching at a secondary school. Having trained as an ESL educator, he positioned English language teaching in the same way as he did in school, believing that his pedagogical knowledge was appropriate for both contexts and thus, his approaches to teaching students were carried over to the university context: “Our degree was specifically in TESL [Teaching English as a Second Language]. I think it is zooming towards becoming an English teacher...you focus on teaching language.” (JamalIntT6L41-44)

Jamal reported that he focused on teaching language using a transmission approach because “you have to make sure that everything is delivered to them” (JamalIntT6L66-67). This finding showed that Jamal brought his beliefs about English language teaching from his previous school setting into his current adult learning environment. This finding raised potential challenges in transforming his pedagogy to meet the needs of adult learners and developing his professional identity in the context of higher education. When teaching students with limited proficiency, developing communicative abilities was Jamal’s main focus. “I focus more [on] communication. As long as they are able to deliver something, speak something, sometimes we just have to ignore [language errors]. Because [there’s] so little time to correct them.” (JamalIntT6L184187)

Jamal perceived achieving accuracy was important in teaching language. However, he argued that the limited time available caused him to be flexible with language errors and thus focused only on communication. Jamal expressed frustration about being unable to address language accuracy and grammatical knowledge which he believed were important in language learning.

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“It’s a bit too late to teach English at this university. They [have] limited time. There’s not enough time [to correct their language]. Sometimes I got frustrated because what I had done at boarding school I cannot apply here.” (JamalIntT6L170-175)

He reported that due to limited time, he was not able to teach according to what he believed in, which was teaching about the language and addressing students’ language errors. This finding indicates that educators’ classroom practices may not necessarily be the outcome of their beliefs. In Jamal’s case, he perceived that he needed to emphasise language rules in his teaching but was forced to instead focus on communicative abilities due to constraints such as time. His inability to teach according to his beliefs revealed a sense of job dissatisfaction for not being able to replicate beliefs and pedagogies he had developed previously (when he taught in a school) into his current workplace. His accounts raised conflicts about his professional identity whereby he was not able to maintain his identity as an ESL educator. In his effort to emphasise communicative competence in his teaching, Jamal encountered another challenge, which is how to encourage student language production. “Sometimes you really have to force students to speak [in English]. I find it a constraint. You can’t really force them to speak. No time for that.” (JamalIntT6L196-198)

Jamal reported that his students were generally motivated in learning but lacked motivation to use the language. “The students are motivated but they are just not capable. They don’t have the skills in English language. Some of them could not participate in class. There are those who speak more than others. And there are those whom you really have to force to speak.” (JamalIntT6L192-194)

The limited time factor restricted Jamal from concentrating on students’ language production, particularly in speaking skills. This further developed Jamal’s frustration in his professional identity. Similar findings that indicated tensions between teacher beliefs and instructional practices were also found in previous studies (see Khonamri & Salimi, 2010; Li & Walsh, 2011; Phipps & Borg, 2009; Underwood, 2012). Among the factors that caused teachers’ instructional practices to diverge from their beliefs raised in these studies were time constraints, students’ attitudes and motivation, workloads and understandings about teaching and learning.

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In their study, Boyd and Harris (2010) found that teachers who became university lecturers maintained their professional identities as teachers rather than as academics and fell back on their existing pedagogical knowledge as teachers when they encountered uncertainty in their new workplace contexts. In Jamal’s case, the uncertainty created through these tensions was exacerbated by challenges in managing the limited time allocated to address students’ language needs, his perceived need to address language accuracy, and teaching English for communicative purposes. In addition, uncertainty about his institutional identity also created confusion in establishing the focus of the English language courses in this context. He pointed out that the aim of the course required him to use communicative tasks to develop students’ communicative abilities. However, the limited proficiency of the students and their resistance to using the language interfered in achieving the aim of this course, causing frustration. With regard to English language teaching for engineering, Jamal reported that he understood the need to contextualise the content and his teaching to engineering. “I think we do need that [contextualising English language courses for engineering]. Our syllabus is general. I think that the English that we teach is general English. We need to be a bit more specific. We need to cater for different engineering faculties.” (JamalIntT6L255-260)

He advocated above that the syllabus was general and did not specifically cater for engineering fields. He recommended that English language courses, which were more specific for various engineering fields, should be developed. However, he could not see himself as an ESP educator and therefore, was reluctant to include engineering content or issues in his teaching and classroom activities. “I may not understand what they want to do. If they did something technical I don’t know if they [are] lie [lying to me by making up something technical].” (JamalIntT6L246-247)

There was a sense of resistance to including knowledge that was not within his area of expertise because he was not able to control the teaching and learning. Jamal wanted to maintain his sense of being in control of the teaching and learning and felt this was not possible if he integrated engineering content and English language teaching. In addition, Jamal also reported that his students were not keen themselves to use engineering knowledge or issues in their tasks.

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“I don’t emphasise [to] them [students] to carry out tasks that [are] engineering related. None of my students chose to do that.” (JamalIntT6L237-239)

Students’ resistance to using English when learning engineering content could also be linked to limited proficiency in English. The analysis of the documents (the Engineering Accreditation Manual, the programme description booklet, and the English Language syllabus) indicated that there were misalignments between engineering accreditation requirements and the learning outcomes of the English language courses. As a result, the requirements of the engineering accreditation in terms of engineering graduates’ English language skills may not be achieved. The participant, who was trained to become an ESL teacher for school contexts experienced challenges in positioning English language teaching in this university. He recognised the need for ESP contextualised into engineering but his limited expertise in this field made it challenging for him to see himself as an ESP instructor. In addition, limitations in terms of time and students’ low proficiency levels made it even more challenging for the participant to position himself as an ESP instructor. This finding suggests that shifting professional identity, in this case from an ESL educator to an ESP instructor, is a complex process which may not occur successfully.

Conclusion This chapter is a case study reporting how an ESL educator managed English language teaching for engineering at a technical university in Malaysia. The findings have provided insights about the ways an English language educator positioned English language teaching in a disciplinespecific curriculum and the challenges he faced in developing his professional identity. The findings highlighted that teaching in a discipline-specific institutional context not only involved understanding what needs to be taught and how to go about teaching it, but also about the ways in which the educator identified himself and his position within his workplace. In doing so, he had to negotiate and shift his beliefs about teaching English, pedagogical practices, and the context he was in. This study also contributes to the body of literature on formation and transformation of professional identities by elucidating the tensions and struggles experienced by ESL educators in negotiating their beliefs and in developing their professional identities.

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CHAPTER SEVEN NON-NATIVE ENGLISH TEACHERS’ COGNITIONS ABOUT LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY SHIGERU SASAJIMA

Abstract This chapter explores non-native speaker (NNS) English teachers’ cognitions and thoughts about their pedagogy in their own educational contexts. In order to understand teachers’ cognitions, we need to consider their contextualized situations and how these developed through complex educational structures or patterns called ‘attractors’ and their fixed or preferred points or behaviors called ‘attractor states’ in complex adaptive systems (CAS). The present research addressed how language classroom dynamics are shaped by the teacher as an agent of change. A mixed-methods approach that included a questionnaire, an interview, and observations was used with Finnish and Japanese teachers of English. The results suggest that Japanese teachers think more negatively than their Finnish counterparts and their cognitions appear to be linked to complex or unspecific school systems, insufficient teacher knowledge, and unclear educational goals. It is, therefore, necessary to view these complex systems in a holistic and systemic manner and to realize the interrelated nature of NNS English teachers’ cognitions in specific contexts. .

Introduction Although English is just one of over 6,000 languages spoken around the world, it is regarded as a lingua franca (ELF) by an increasing number of people in non-English speaking countries who use it regularly for communication or business. In these countries, English is primarily taught

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by teachers who are non-native speakers (NNS) of English. NNS English teachers are still learners of English themselves, even though they teach English, and, compared to native speaker (NS) English teachers, they have learning needs which are different from NS English teachers (Roberts, 1998). While ‘native-speakerism’ (Holliday, 2006) has been used to highlight the issues between ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ teachers of English, it has not been sufficiently discussed how NNS English teachers work in different educational contexts. This chapter focuses on NNS English teachers in Japan and Finland and discusses their perceptions about their teaching and teacher education in their own educational contexts. As Tudor (2001, p. 1) argues “language teaching is a complex, dynamic activity”, and it is necessary to understand NNS English teachers’ cognitions in different educational contexts.

Background In order to understand NNS English teachers’ cognitions, it would be significant to specifically explore their complex contexts by focusing on how their cognitions have been developed through complex educational structures or patterns called ‘attractors’ and their fixed or preferred points or behaviors called ‘attractor states’ in complex adaptive systems (CAS) or complex dynamic systems (CDS) (see Dörnyei, 2014; Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2009; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). By employing the theory of CAS to identify the nature of NNS English teachers’ cognitions, this chapter aims to address how the teacher as an agent of change shapes language classroom dynamics.

NNS English Teachers in Japan In Japan, English is taught as a school subject primarily by NNS English teachers. Students’ English learning goals do not serve everyday communication needs, but rather they are linked to academic or scholastic achievement, such as passing an exam or entering a prestigious university. NS English teachers, most of whom work as teaching assistants at public or state schools, or teachers of conversational English at English language schools (e.g., Glasgow, 2014), still seem to be situated in somewhat different contexts from the NNS English teachers. Many NNS English teachers in Japan are deeply affected by “native-speakerism”, which is “characterized by the belief that ‘native-speaker’ teachers represent a ‘Western culture’ from which spring the ideals both of the English

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language and of English language teaching methodology” (Holliday, 2006, p. 385). For instance, in public or state primary and secondary schools, NS English teachers, called Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs), teach English with NNS English teachers in the classroom, and they are often English-speaking role models to Japanese students as well as their teachers. In many cases, there are distinct roles between NS and NNS English teachers in terms of English education in each school context. For example, ALTs focus on speaking and listening skills, while NNS English teachers engage in teaching grammar and translation to help students learn English mainly for the high-stake exams.

SLA, Complex Teaching Contexts and NNS English Teachers’ Cognitions As it has been pointed out in second language acquisition (SLA) research, language learning and language classrooms are complex (e.g., Larsen-Freeman, 1997; Lightbown, 2000). Knowledge of SLA is essential for language teachers in order to develop their professional knowledge and skills. Almost all NNS English teachers in Japan have studied SLA in their teacher education programs, but it is not clear to what extent they make use of the knowledge of SLA when teaching English in the classroom (see JACET SIG on SLA, 2013). According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) survey reports in 2013 (see www.mext.go.jp), the traditional grammar translation method (not focusing on language use but on language usage) is still predominant in the classroom, which means that SLA knowledge is not adequately utilized by teachers in the actual classrooms. That is partly because Japanese teachers of English have to cope with an age-long traditional and complex school system and culture (see Imura, 2003), which appear less affected or informed by SLA research. Ellis (2010, pp. 4-5) argues for the need “to see the importance of examining the roles of the various actors involved–SLA researchers, classroom researchers, teacher educators and teachers”, and proposes that classroom researchers and teacher educators should mediate between SLA researchers and teachers. In language pedagogy, the relationship between teachers and students is crucial and teachers are usually the primary decision-makers or agents, although there are a variety of other factors involved in shaping the classroom dynamics. Language classrooms, therefore, are considered as CAS, which have been studied in SLA research (see Burns & Knox, 2011; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008),

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but there have been few studies of how teachers make use of SLA in their classrooms and how SLA is impacting on the development of complex teachers’ cognitions on teaching and teacher education (see Borg, 2006; Sasajima, 2012). Compared to other developed countries, the secondary school system in Japan has some unique aspects in the hidden curriculum, which refers to the implicit norms, values, and expectations in the curriculum (cf. Jackson, 1968). The 2013 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) results (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2014) show that Japanese teachers work the longest hours (54 hours weekly) among the participant countries and economies. Most NNS English teachers have to be in charge of club activities, including sports teams and cultural activities such as brass bands and chorus groups, in addition to their classroom teaching and other school work (e.g., Ishida, Midorikawa, Hisamura, Sakai, & Sasajima, 2003). They even manage some other extracurricular activities, such as tutoring for university entrance exams and pastoral care after school, even at night and on holidays. The fact is that their workload is not limited to teaching their subjects but expanded to other complex situations. In the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report (OECD, 2013), the learning environment in Japan received good evaluations. The report states that: 1) the learning environment is conductive to learning for all; 2) most students enjoy orderly classrooms; and, 3) students never, or only in some classes, do not listen to what the teacher says. However, when it comes to the specific realities and experiences of NNS English teachers in Japan, more complex situations can be identified: for example, English teachers provide class activities that are less practical to actual communication focusing exclusively on repetitive grammar drills and translation exercises; they also do extra work outside the curriculum to help students cope with entrance exams. Their voluntary work, such as engaging in extra-curricular activities for long hours, has become systematically compulsory within the traditional school culture. These complex background contexts should be considered in order to better understand what NNS English teachers think, know, believe and do when teaching in the classroom. Lightbown (2000, p. 452) argues that SLA research “can help shape teachers’ expectations for themselves and their students, and provide valuable clues to effective pedagogical practice.” However, she is concerned that classroom-based SLA research still does not see the teacher as an agent of change or an important ‘attractor’ in the complex language

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classroom. As she also points out, future SLA research needs to focus more on teachers since it has not sufficiently considered language teachers’ cognitions before, in, and after the classroom. Moreover, NNS and NS English teachers can have distinct cognitions about language learning and teaching as well as language and culture, the concepts of which can be dynamic, non-linear and hard to identify, but systematic and self-organized. In order to complement the current SLA research, this study focuses on teachers’ cognitions, particularly by highlighting NNS English teachers in Japan and Finland, and discusses appropriate language pedagogy in relation to SLA.

NNS English Teachers’ Cognitions NNS English teachers’ cognitions about language and culture could be rather complex, simply because they are still learning English while teaching English to their students and have to develop their own intercultural communicative competence (ICC) (Byram, 1997) as well as teach English and culture in their classrooms. However, there has been less research on NNS teachers’ cognitions since teacher cognition (TC) began to be researched in applied linguistics in 1990s (Borg, 2003; Freeman & Johnson, 1998). According to Borg (2003, p. 81), TC is simply defined as “the unobservable cognitive dimension of teaching what teachers know, believe, and think.” It has been used as an umbrella term to show teacher thought processes, teacher conceptions, teacher beliefs, teacher assumptions, teacher knowledge and teacher learning, in relation to teachers’ professional development or decision-making. As Borg (2006) pointed out, the research field of TC on language teaching has been established in 2000s. The present study focuses on language teacher cognition (LTC) defined as follows: “Language teacher cognition (LTC) is a complex set of mental, social, cognitive and emotional processes (e.g., believing, thinking, learning, and knowing) in which language teachers engage in relation to their teaching activities. It is also the outcome of these processes (e.g., their beliefs, learning, assumptions, and knowledge).” (Sasajima, 2012, p. 23)

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LTC can be somewhat a different concept from TC because it refers exclusively to language teachers. Due to the spread of ELF and globalization, NNS English teachers are increasing and they can influence what to teach and how to teach English to their students, and thus it is important to understand the nature of NNS English teachers’ cognitions. In addition, many NNS English teachers work in a variety of complex school contexts (see Ishida et al., 2004; Sasajima, 2002). It is, therefore, worth to see how language teachers actually work in each school context and understand their complex LTC on teaching and teacher education. This study primarily explores the complex nature of NNS English teachers’ cognitions in a qualitative manner.

The Nature of NNS English Teachers’ Cognitions The current study is a follow up of a previous study that utilized a mixed methods approach, comprising a questionnaire called the Language Teacher Cognition Inventory (LTCI), interviews and observations, in order to identify the nature of NNS English teachers’ cognitions on teaching and teacher education (see Sasajima, 2012 for more details regarding this study). As a result, 16 aspects of Japanese NNS English teachers’ cognitions were identified through the Kawakita Jiro (KJ) method, which is a collaborative problem-solving technique in anthropological research (see Kawakita, 1967), and the application of Retrodictive Qualitative Modelling (RQM), which originally comprises the three-step research process for the language classroom as a CAS: 1) identifying salient student types in the classroom; 2) identifying students who are typical of the established prototypes and conducting interviews with them; and, 3) identifying the most salient system components and the signature dynamics of each system (see Dörnyei, 2011, p.1). Instead of students, RQM was applied to teachers in this research study, and it identified the following 16 characteristics of Japanese NNS English teachers’ cognitions (Table 7-1), which are set as the anchor of the present study.

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Table 7-1: Japanese NNS English teachers’ cognitions on teaching and teacher education. NNS English Teacher Cognitions 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

*Teachers feel obliged to have ideal classrooms in their mind. Teachers think that cultural knowledge motivates students. Teachers like vocabulary learning and think students should too. Teachers take easy ways to teach grammar. Teachers view translation as necessary for students to cope with exams. Teachers still wonder what the goal is. Teachers are really worried about their teaching. Teachers are expected to have better relationships with students. Teachers are worried about dual burdens. Linguistic knowledge is one of (Japanese) English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ tools. Teachers suffer from the teacher education system. Teachers seek good collegiality. Teachers want to have practical classroom observation. Teachers need textbooks. Teachers are required to have multiple burdens. Teachers value emotional relationships with students.

Note. *This is the focus of this study.

Sasajima (2012) also shows a model of how the 16 characteristics are interacting with each other. It is based on the model that Borg (2006) depicted as the elements and processes in LTC and shows how Japanese NNS English teachers’ cognitions as attractors and how attractor states are influenced by each other (see Figure 7-1). Figure 7-1 shows how two strong attractor states, ‘the Course of Study (national curriculum)’ and ‘Kyoiku (education)’, yield the greatest impacts on forming Japanese EFL teachers’ cognitions. Each attractor or attractor state in the diagram is not static but dynamic. In other words, an attractor can emerge and change into an attractor state, and then the attractor state may turn into another attractor state. All such attractors and attractor states are always moving, emerging, and self-organized as in the theory of CAS, and should actually be depicted in animations using three dimensional (3D) representations.

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Figure 7-1: A complex neetwork model regarding the nature of NNS English teachers’ cognnitions (Source: Sasajima, 201 12, p. 260).

work model pointed outt the importtance of This coomplex netw understandinng how NNS S English teaachers’ cognittions are forrmed and changing annd of seeing thhe phenomenaa in a holisticc way, but it iss still not evident whaat factors eachh characteristiic of their coggnitions as an n attractor state is com mposed of and a how it can c work to understand language classroom ddynamics. Eaach characterristic such aas ‘PCK (ped dagogical content knoowledge)’, ‘diffficult to teacch’, and ‘interraction with students’, s depicted as whirlpool-likke patterns in n the diagram m, need to be b further explored. The firstt of the 16 chharacteristics of Japanese N NNS English teachers’ cognitions, Teachers feel obliged to ha ave ideal classsrooms in their mind, was furtherr explored in this research h study. It w was assumed that this characteristiic could probably be stron ngly related too teaching and d teacher professionallism and itt could inffluence NNS S English teachers’ decision-maaking in the classroom, as many Jappanese NNS English teachers tennd to think tooo much abou ut what to teaach and how to teach of the naturee of NNS English. Byy looking deepp into each characteristic c

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English teachers’ cognitions as such, we could understand complex aspects of language pedagogy more clearly. More exploration can help understand language pedagogy in the classroom and suggest some better approaches for classroom SLA research. Therefore, the follow-up research on LTC is necessary. In this study, some aspects of NNS English teachers’ cognitions about language pedagogy are discussed especially with regards to complex classroom dynamics.

The Study The present research focuses on some specific attractors or attractor states regarding ideal classrooms or classroom dynamics that NNS English teachers envision as essential to their LTC, through further interviews and observations of Japanese NNS English teachers and some Finnish NNS English teachers. Finnish teachers are used as the contrasting case to help better see the characteristics of NNS English teachers’ cognitions. The Finnish case is used because of the following reasons: 1) the Finnish education system is highly regarded; 2) Finnish teachers are autonomous; and, 3) Finnish students’ English proficiency levels are high (see Finnish National Board of Education at www.oph.fi/english). A questionnaire was administered as part of a Japanese–Finnish collaborative research initiative in foreign language education, which was based on the Finnish KIELO project (Harjanne & Seppo, 2009). From a total of 115 multiple-choice questions and 8 open-ended questions, one open-ended question is reported on in this chapter: ‘In your opinion, what factors are linked to good foreign language teaching?’ The answers to this question were collected from 151 Finnish primary and secondary teachers and 97 Japanese secondary and tertiary teachers. All the data were gathered and analyzed in three phases: 1) notice things; 2) collect things; and, 3) think about things (Seidel, 1998). All the descriptions were coded and classified through this process. Each coded word or phrase was counted and finally the featured keywords were compared between the Finnish and Japanese data sets. In addition, interview and observation data were collected from 10 Japanese and 5 Finnish teachers. All the interviews and classroom observations were recorded and the summary reports were sent to all the participant teachers for verification and confirmation. In order to maintain trustworthiness, credibility, and transferability (see Lincoln & Guba, 1985), a mixed-methods approach was conducted, reflexive procedures were employed during the data collection and analysis, and also the following

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the research paradigm was engaged: 1) focusing on topics or contexts; 2) comfortable collectiveness; 3) meaningful holistic understanding; and, 4) important connectedness or unity (Sasajima, 2012).

Results and Discussion The questionnaire data are summarized in Table 7-2 below. The extracted characteristics are arranged in a descending order and the common characteristics in Finland and Japan are connected through the lines. Table 7-2: Characteristics of LTC on good foreign language teaching. Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

% 11% 8% 8% 6% 6% 5% 5% 4% 4% 3% 3% 3% 2%

Finland flexibility atmosphere professionalism communication materials encouragement motivation culture language use support authenticity enthusiasm clarity

Japan materials motivation facility language skills relationships professionalism enthusiasm language use communication conformity culture practice teacher study

% 7% 7% 6% 6% 6% 4% 4% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3%

Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

The parts highlighted in grey are the common characteristics of LTC in teachers in both Finland and Japan: ‘professionalism’, ‘communication’, ‘materials’, ‘motivation’, ‘culture’, ‘language use’, and ‘enthusiasm.’ These are considered as attractor states for NNS English teachers’ cognitions common in Finland and Japan. In terms of the other characteristics of LTC attractor states, Finnish teachers regarded ‘flexibility’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘encouragement’, ‘support’, ‘authenticity’, and ‘clarity’, as good characteristics for foreign language teaching. The Japanese teachers valued ‘facility’, ‘language skills’, ‘relationships’, ‘conformity’, ‘practice’, and ‘teacher study.’ The results show that Finnish teachers seem to think that flexibility and atmosphere are necessary for students to learn a foreign language. The results also suggest that Finnish

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teachers seem to think that flexibility and atmosphere are necessary for students to learn a foreign language. The results also suggest that Finnish teachers think that learners should be independent or autonomous and the teacher role is to support their students. For Finnish teachers, classrooms are not so complex and teaching can be viewed as positive. On the other hand, Japanese teachers tend to value learning facilities and language skills or skills training activities as important for learning a language. Also, interpersonal relationships (relationships between teachers and students or teacher conformity) were considered by Japanese teachers to be strong attractor states for language learning in their teaching contexts. In terms of Japanese NNS English teachers’ cognitions, some of their characteristics are provisionally identified as attractor states in association with classroom dynamics: 1) learning facilities (‘facility’); 2) language skills (‘language skills’, ‘practice’ and ‘teacher study’); and, 3) interpersonal relationships (‘relationships’ and ‘conformity’). Even though the questionnaire research only shows some fragmented items or remarks, which cannot always reveal any specific background or contextual information, nonetheless, teachers’ conceptions about good foreign language teaching factors are apparently different in the two countries under investigation. For the analysis of the interview and observation data, the researcher noticed what teachers had said in the questionnaire and the interview and what they had done in the classroom, collected and sorted the descriptive or observed data, processed the data into usable forms in the computer, and thought about what they would mean with the participant teachers. The researcher finally reconsidered the complex but systematic interactions in the classroom through NNS English teachers’ cognitions on languages, learners, teachers, cultures, and the environment surrounding them all. It is necessary to view these complex systems in a holistic and systemic manner and to realize the interrelated nature of NNS English teachers’ cognitions in some specific contexts. The results of the interview and observation data show that Finnish teachers’ views of teaching in the classroom or classroom dynamics are almost all very positive and teachers do not feel any difficulties in teaching English. The Japanese teachers’ views are more negative than the Finnish teachers’ views, and they seem to be linked to complex or unspecific school systems, insufficient teacher knowledge, and unclear educational goals. Table 7-3 summarizes the results of the analysis, clearly showing the difference between Finnish and Japanese teachers. The parts highlighted in grey in Table 7-3 show a negative connotation.

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Table 7-3: The interview and observation data: Complex classroom dynamics. Finland difference diversity flexibility challenging actual experiences independent teaching supporting student learning good atmosphere reflection confidence

Japan student difference complex motivation teacher centeredness teacher conformity ambivalent aims social vs. practical needs knowledge vs. skills theory vs. practice lack of time needs for ideas/materials complex assessment

The present study aimed to particularly understand the background of one characteristic of the nature of NNS English teachers’ cognition in Japan. The study results suggest that Japanese NNS English teachers could have more complex characteristics of LTC as attractor states in their school contexts. While it may be hard to value the results, even through this mixed-methods research, they do show some complex aspects of NNS English teachers’ cognitions prompting the need to change the SLA research paradigm, in order to see language pedagogy in its complex context comprising learners, teachers and classroom environments.

Conclusion This chapter focuses on NNS English teachers’ cognitions on complex classroom dynamics and suggests that Japanese NNS English teachers could have more complex LTC than Finnish NNS English teachers due to their complex school contexts. It also suggests that NNS English teachers’ cognitions as CAS should comprise a number of attractors or attractor states to help some complex aspects emerge as a new attractor state. Such viewpoints of CAS can be helpful to understand complex LTC, especially NNS English teachers’ cognitions. This study discusses the nature of NNS English teachers’ cognitions, which are developed in different educational contexts, by focusing on Japanese NNS English teachers and comparing them to Finnish NNS English teachers. The study investigates Japanese NNS English teachers’

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cognitions on complex classroom dynamics, employing a mixed-methods approach (questionnaire, interview and observation) in a qualitative way. CAS, which are referred to in different terms including ‘complex’ or ‘dynamic’, “may be seen as the ‘dynamic turn’ in SLA, resonated with many scholars because nonlinear system dynamics appeared to nicely describe several puzzling language learning phenomena” (Dörnyei, MacIntyre, & Henry, 2015, p. 1). If SLA research is primarily concerned with individual learners, such as their motivations and behaviors, and their classroom environments, such as materials and classroom activities, in a cause-and-effect approach, it may be difficult to understand complex classroom dynamics, especially taught by NNS English teachers in different social and educational contexts. In CAS, the systems are considered to act as a whole and be capable of undergoing transformation in order to adapt to a new environment or a new attractor state. The concept of CAS can be useful to understand NNS English teachers’ cognitions on classroom dynamics. Dörnyei (2009, p. 106) explains that “the answer lies in the concept of attractors and the subsequent attractor states. Attractor states are preferred–but not necessarily predictable–states to which a system is attracted.” Also, Larsen-Freeman (1997, p. 157) states that “studying the parts in isolation one by one will tell us about each part, but not how they interact.” In order to better see language classroom dynamics, it is important that SLA researchers, classroom researchers, teacher educators and teachers cooperate with each other. However, the most important agent should be the teacher. In English language teaching, NNS English teachers should take the initiative in language pedagogy as teacher researchers. That is because, as shown in Figure 7-1, NNS English teachers’ cognitions could be more complex than NS English teachers’ cognitions and should be helpful to understand their students’ cognitions about language learning in each complex context.

References Borg, S. (2003). Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do. Language Teaching, 36(2), 81-109. —. (2006). Teacher cognition and language education: Research and practice. London: Continuum. Burns, A., & Knox, J. S. (2011). Classrooms as complex adaptive systems: A relational model. TESL-EJ, 15(1). Retrieved from:

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http://tesl-ej.org/pdf/ ej57/ a1.pdf Dörnyei, Z. (2014). Researching complex dynamic systems: “Retrodictive qualitative modeling” in the language classroom. Language Teaching, 47(1), 80-91. Dörnyei. Z., MacIntyre, P., & Henry, A. (Eds.) (2015). Motivational dynamics in language learning. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Ellis, N. C., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (2009). Constructing a second language: Analyses and computational simulations of the emergence of linguistic constructions from usage. Language Learning, 59(1), 93-128. Ellis, R. (2010). A principled approach to incorporating second language acquisition research into a teacher education programme. Reflections on English Language Teaching, 9(1), 1-17. Freeman, D., & Johnson, K. E. (1998). Reconceptualizing the Knowledge-Base of Language Teacher Education. TESOL Quarterly, 32(3), 397-417. Glasgow, G. P. (2014). Teaching English in English, ‘in principle’: The national foreign language curriculum for Japanese senior high schools. International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, 9(2), 152-161. Harjanne, P., & Tella, S. (2009). Investigating methodological reality in Finnish foreign language classrooms: Revisiting the KIELO Project’s rationale and research. In K. Ritva & P. Pirkko (Eds.), Joensuu Language education and lifelong learning (pp. 135-153). Joensuu: University of Joensuu. Holliday, A. (2006). Native-speakerism. ELT Journal, 6(4), 385-387. Ishida, M., Midorikawa, H., Hisamura, K., Sakai, S., & Sasajima, S. (2004). Grants-in-Aid for scientific research report: A comprehensive study of in-service English teacher education in Japan -from status quo to renovations. Tokyo: Tanseisha. JACET SIG on SLA. (2013). Dai 2 Gengo Shutoku to Eigo Kyoiku. Tokyo: Kaitakusha. Jackson, P. W. (1968). Life in Classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Kawakita, J. (1967). Hasso ho – Sozosei kaihatsu no tameni. Tokyo: Chukoshinsho. Larsen-Freeman, D. (1997). Chaos/complexity science and second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 18(2), 141–165. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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—. (2000). Anniversary article: Classroom SLA Research and Second Language Teaching. Applied Linguistics, 21(4), 431-462. Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, Inc. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). (2013). PISA 2012 Results: What Students Know and Can Do. Student Performance in Mathematics, Reading and Science (Volume I). Paris: OECD Publishing. —. (2014). TALIS 2013 Results: An international perspective on teaching and learning. Paris: OECD Publishing. doi: 10.1787/9789264196261-en. Roberts, J. (1998). Language teacher education. London: Arnold. Sasajima, S. (2002). Current Situation of Secondary EFL Teachers in Japan. Pan-Korea English Teachers Association English Language Teaching, 14(2), 219-237. —. (2012). Language teacher cognition in the case of Japanese teachers of English at secondary school in Japan: An exploratory study. Doctoral thesis, School of Education, the University of Stirling, Scotland, UK. Retrieved from: https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/handle/1893/12359. Seidel, J. (1998). Appendix E: Qualitative data analysis. The Ethnograph V5 manual. Retrieved from: http://www.qualisresearch.com. Tudor, I. (2001). The dynamics of the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ISSUES IN SECOND LANGUAGE CURRICULUM AND MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER EIGHT EXPLORING DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN BELIEFS AND PRACTICES IN ESL CURRICULUM AND SYLLABUS DESIGN ANTHEA FESTER AND DIANE JOHNSON

Abstract In response to a questionnaire-based survey of teachers of English as a second language (ESL) (involving a sample of teachers from five different countries), more than one third indicated that the institution in which they worked either did not have an overall curriculum for the English courses offered or that they did not know whether it had one or not. Many respondents added comments indicating that the curriculum documents that were made available to them were inadequate, incomplete or unhelpful. In follow-up in-depth interviews with a sample of language programme managers, interviewees were asked a series of questions about their institutional curricula. All but one claimed that their institutions had curricula relating to their ESL programmes, that each of the courses offered was described in terms of levels with associated proficiency-style level descriptor statements, and that there were ‘can do’ learning outcome statements associated with each course. However, a review of the curriculum documents provided by the interviewees did not always confirm their perceptions of them. This chapter presents and discusses some of the findings of the research project as a whole, suggesting some possible reasons why there appears to be so much confusion and disagreement about the nature of the ESL curriculum.

Introduction Over the past few decades, there have been numerous approaches related to curriculum development and syllabus design for the teaching

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and learning of English as a second language (ESL). The focus of most of the research conducted in the area has been on the structure and implementation of the different approaches. In addition, as experienced trainers of language teachers, we were concerned about the fact that although there is considerable interest amongst teacher trainees in developments in language teaching methodology, there is comparatively little interest in language syllabus design and/or in the ways in which textbooks draw upon these developments. As many ESL trainees (who often teach at language centres) appear to rely heavily on textbooks, it seems important to determine whether and, if so, to what extent widely used commercially available textbooks reflect developments in the area of language syllabus design. The overarching purpose of the part of the research study reported on in this chapter was to explore the extent to which different curriculum design proposals have impacted on the beliefs and practices of language teachers and language programme managers/co-ordinators working in the tertiary context. The decision to focus on those operating in a tertiary education context related largely to the fact that they, unlike teachers operating in schools, are not generally inhibited by national curricula (and, in some cases, also by the content of textbooks specifically approved by Ministries of Education). They are, therefore, able to make decisions about course and programme content, decisions that presuppose some awareness of issues associated with second language (L2) syllabus design. The study reported here is part of a larger research project that adopted a multi-method approach in order to explore the various aspects of ESL syllabus and curriculum design. The research discussed here includes a questionnaire-based survey with a sample of ESL teachers from five countries (Japan, Taiwan, Syria, Australia, and New Zealand), a series of semi-structured interviews with ESL programme managers/co-ordinators, and an analysis of a sample of curriculum documents.

Background Various Uses of the Terms Syllabus and Curriculum Research on ESL curriculum and syllabus design has been beset with problems, not least of which relate to the wide range of different ways in which the terms curriculum and syllabus have been used at different times and in different locations. Some researchers use the term curriculum and syllabus interchangeably, as is often the case in the North American context. Other researchers use the term curriculum to refer to all aspects of

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a language programme, including methodology, materials and assessment, and the term syllabus, which is commonly considered to be part of the curriculum, to refer to the content of learning. In distinguishing between these two terms, Finney (2001) identifies both a wider and narrower approach to the definition: “The term curriculum is open to a wide variety of definitions; in its narrowest sense it is synonymous with the term syllabus, as in the specifications of the content and ordering of what is to be taught; in the wider sense it refers to all aspects of the planning, implementation and evaluation of an educational program, the why, how and how well together with the what of the teaching-learning process.” (Finney, 2001, p. 70)

Breen (1987, p. 82) has defined the term syllabus in broad terms, as “a plan of what is to be achieved through teaching and learning”. In this context, a syllabus could encompass a range of organising principles which could be language content driven, activity driven or a combination of both. Interestingly, Breen goes on to question whether the syllabus should be contained within the specification of objectives or whether it should include the means by which the objectives/ goals are to be achieved (ibid). It is not, therefore, surprising to find that some have observed that “with the development of communicative language teaching, the separation of syllabus design and methodology becomes increasingly problematical” (Nunan, 1989, p. 10). Numerous issues were raised that related to the definition of terminology such as syllabus, curriculum and methodology. This indicates that there is considerable confusion in the ESL industry about the use of key terms.

Various Approaches to Syllabus Specification One of the reasons why there has been so much debate about curriculum and syllabus boundaries relates to the fact that there have been so many different proposals relating to syllabus design since the mid-20th century. Earlier examples include the structural syllabus which grew out of “a theory of language that assumes that the grammatical or structural aspects of language form are the most basic or useful” (Krahnke, 1987, p. 15) and the situational or topic-based syllabus in which lexical and grammatical aspects of the language are introduced in terms of their probability of occurrence in the context of particular topics and situations (Ur, 2000, p. 178). The 1970s saw the emergence of the notionalfunctional syllabus which focuses on notional (ideational) and functional (what language is intended to achieve) aspects of language (Wilkins, 1976).

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Among the proposals that emerged from the 1980s onward were the relational syllabus in which relationships within and between propositions provide the starting point for grammatical, lexical and discoursal specifications (Crombie, 1985a, 1985b) and the corpus-based lexical syllabus in which the emphasis is on the ways in which lexis impacts on grammar and discourse (Sinclair & Renouf, 1988; Willis, 1990). These were followed by the task-based syllabus in which various types of task form the core. In addition to the above, are a number of syllabus types that relate to specific aspects of language and language learning such as skills-based syllabuses, including syllabuses that focus on various aspects of reading skills (such as predicting and skimming and scanning) and writing skills (such as genre and text-type related textual organisation (see, for example, Su, 2008; Swales & Feak, 1994). There have also been a number of proposals for integrating two or more of the other syllabus types. One example of this is the core and spiral syllabus proposed by Brumfit (1980) in which the grammatical system constitutes the core, with notions, functions and situations spiralling around it. Another example is the proportional syllabus proposed by Yalden (1983) in which an initial ‘structural phase’ is followed by a number of ‘communicative phases’ and a final ‘specialized phase’.

Globalisation and Neo-Liberalism: Impact on Language Curriculum Design Definitions of ‘globalisation’ have varied considerably (see, for example, Giddens, 1990; Waters, 1995) as have views about the beginnings of globalisation. Some researchers such as Giddens (1990) and Robertson (1992) have argued that globalisation is a pre-modern phenomenon while others (e.g., Cox, 1996) have argued that its origins are much more recent. Despite their differences, what most researchers do agree on is the fact that globalisation includes processes of international integration which are associated with economic as well as cultural interdependence. They also agree that since the second half of the 20th century, international integration has been facilitated by two key phenomena: advances in transportation systems and telecommunications, and post-WWII formation of certain international organisations, such as the Council of Europe and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Globalisation is generally now seen as having been, since the 1970s, closely associated with neoliberalism, an ideology which, whatever precise definition is highlighted, involves policies that promote free trade, open markets and minimum state

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intervention in business endeavours. In the case of language learning, the increasing pace of globalisation has led to the massive expansion in the use of a few languages internationally (most notably English). This massive expansion has in turn resulted in a burgeoning of interest in the teaching of these languages to learners of all ages in a wide variety of contexts and settings along with a substantial challenge to the relevance of traditional distinctions between ‘first language’ and ‘second language’ and between ‘native speaker’ and ‘non-native speaker’ (Graddol, 2006). It has also led to considerable tension between local educational needs and interests (Canagarajah, 1999, 2004) and the type of centralisation that is evidenced in the phenomenon of ‘mass curricula’ (Ramirez & Boli, 1987). “Mass curricula” are “directly defined and prescribed through the influence of international organizations [and]...through the models provided by dominant nation-states” (Benavot, Cha, Kamens, Meyer, & Wong, 1991, p. 97). The fact that English language proficiency is increasingly seen as an essential educational requirement for everybody rather than a coveted achievement for a few (Maurais & Morris, 2003) has resulted in attempts to create language syllabuses that cope with the immediate communicative needs of learners, particularly adult learners. This need led to a focus on specific purposes courses (see, for example, the establishment of a unit-credit system for adult language learning (Morrow, 2004)). The focus on immediate language needs rather than on longer term language goals has been described by Widdowson (1983, pp. 17-18) as involving language “training” rather than language “education”. When combined with the impact of neo-liberalism, this can lead to a type of commodification of language learning referred to by Heller (2002) in which language learners tend to “equate expected outcomes with financial input” and “teaching and learning are . . . ‘chunked’ into smaller and smaller packages that are assessed independently of one another” (Crombie, 2008, p. 58). This commodification and chunking of language learning suggests a focus on immediate language needs and outcomes rather than long term language development.

Language Teacher Cognition Language teacher cognition (LTC), defined by Borg (2006, p. 1) as focusing on “what language teachers think, know and believe–and of its relationship to teachers’ classroom practice”, is the primary focus of the research project of which the research reported here forms a part. Research involving LTC often focuses on teaching methods (e.g., Karavas-Doukas, 1999; Nunan, 1987; Sato & Kleinsasser, 1999, 2004; Watzke, 2007)

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and/or the impact of language teacher education on teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices (e.g., Da Silva, 2005; Johnson, 1996; Numrich, 1996; Spada & Massey, 1992; Wang, 2008). In the case of the research reported on here, the focus was rather different from previous studies conducted in the area of LTC in that: (a) some of the research participants were language programme managers/co-ordinators (not all of whom were classroom teachers at the time the research was conducted); (b) it included a focus not on language lessons themselves but on some of the things that the research participants do that impacts on lessons, such as selecting textbooks, determining achievement objectives, and, above all, designing courses and programmes.

The Study The research project reported here involved a combination of quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, the primary emphasis being on the latter. A mixed methods approach involving triangulation was adopted. The same issue, namely the impact of research on language programme design on the practices of language professionals, was explored through a combination of a questionnaire-based survey, semi-structured interviews, and focus point-based analysis of textbooks and language curriculum and syllabus documentation. Almost all of the research participants were employed in the tertiary education sector, the primary focus on that sector being determined by the fact that those involved in it are generally not constrained by national curricula, as is often the case with those employed in the primary or secondary education sectors.

The Participants and the Research Instruments A questionnaire-based survey was conducted amongst a sample of a total of 93 teachers of English as an additional language from five different countries (Taiwan, Japan, Syria, Australia, and New Zealand), most of whom were known to the researcher (a sample of convenience) or known to those known by the researcher (snowball sampling). The main aim of the survey was to determine how the participants planned and organized the content of their courses and whether, and, if so, how they specified course objectives. The questionnaire included 31 questions, of which 27 were closed (but with many providing space for comments). Reference was not made to any syllabus design types by name. The relevant overarching research questions reported on in this chapter were:

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Chapter Eight 1. How do a sample of teachers and programme managers/co-ordinators working in the context of higher educational institutions decide on the nature of the syllabuses underpinning the courses and programmes they offer for learners of English? 2. To what extent, if at all, are any decisions they make about textbook selection influenced by the nature of the syllabuses that underpin these textbooks?

Among the detailed questions included in the questionnaire and interviews (but set out differently from the way they are set out below) were, for example: 1. Does the institution where you work have an overall curriculum for the English courses it offers (showing, for example, the relationship between each of these courses in terms of level and specific content, and including reference to methodology and materials)? 2. If there are syllabus documents designed by your institution for the use at the level you teach, how useful [essential, very useful, useful, not very useful, not useful at all] do you find them? 3. Does your institution have documents that outline the content of each of your courses? If so, how detailed are these documents? Do they include specific language that is to be taught and, if so, how is it described? Who is responsible for designing these documents? Do they make reference to the nature of tests and examinations? Do they include a list of objectives/ outcomes/ “can-do” statements and what would an example of one be? What do you do to make sure that all of your teaching staff have read these documents?

A selection of curriculum documents supplied by the interviewees was analysed in relation to a number of focus points relating to the types of questions included in the questionnaire and interviews (e.g., presence or absence of explicit achievement objectives specification) and the findings compared with the responses of the interviewees to questions relating to their institutional curricula. It should be borne in mind, however, that discrepancies between the interview data and the content of the documentation might, in certain cases, be more apparent than real in so far as (a) the documentation provided to the researcher may be intended mainly to attract clients rather than to provide accurate curriculum specification, and (b) the interviewees may not have been willing to reveal particular documents due to their commercially sensitive nature.

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Results and Discussion Curriculum and Syllabus: General Overview More than one third of the ninety three questionnaire participants indicated that the institution in which they worked either did not have an overall curriculum for the English courses it offered or that they did not know whether it had one or not (see Figure 8-1 below), with several (14) adding comments indicating that the curriculum documents that were made available to them were inadequate, incomplete or unhelpful. So far as institutional syllabus documents are concerned, while the majority of questionnaire participants considered those that were provided to be essential, very useful or useful, approximately one third either did not respond or indicated that they found them to be ‘not very useful’ or ‘not useful at all’. Of the twenty-four additional comments provided after this question, ten made reference to the lack of clarity of the syllabus documentation made available to them. Even so, only just over half indicated that they actually referred to syllabuses provided by their institutions in determining the content of their courses. Notwithstanding the availability (or otherwise) of institutional syllabus documents, or the extent to which those that were available were actually consulted, the vast majority of questionnaire participants (82-88%) reported that they believed that it was important to have a syllabus for each of the courses they taught (see Table 8-1 below). Where they were not provided with institutional syllabuses, however, over one third (37%) indicated that they would either allow the syllabus to emerge as the teaching proceeded or focus on materials and methodology rather than the syllabus (see Table 8-2 below). Almost one third indicated that the selection of an appropriate textbook, generally motivated by the extent to which it included the language they wanted to cover rather than by the activities it contained, was part of the process involved in deciding what to teach, and approximately the same number indicated that they would allow textbooks to determine syllabus content.

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128 Non-response (2) 2%

Yes No

I don't know (13) 14%

I don't know Non-response

No (22) 24% Yes (56) 60%

Figure 8-1: Does the institution where you work have an overall curriculum for the English courses it offers?

Table 8-1: I think it is very important to have a syllabus document for each course that I teach. Answer Agree Disagree Not relevant in my situation No Response

No. 82 8 1 2

% 88.2 8.6 1.1 1

Overall, the views of the five language programme managers/coordinators interviewed (representing four different institutions) on issues relating to the importance of curricula generally, and syllabuses in particular, were similar to those held by the majority of the teachers who participated in the questionnaire-based survey. However, some of the comments they made, combined with the institutional documentation they provided, suggests that their intentions and aspirations are not always realised in practice. Thus, for example, one of the interviewees noted that planning was ‘very loose’ in the case of one of the programmes offered and that there was no ‘actual curriculum’. In fact, the documentation provided by only one of the interviewees was found to include a reasonably clear indication of the language content of the courses offered.

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In the case of the documentation relating to another of the institutions, there was found to be very little difference between the (very general) statements relating to the content of different courses within the same overall programme although these courses were described as being at different levels. In the case of yet another institution’s documentation, courses were said to be ‘based on published course books’. In connection with all of this, it is relevant to note that although all of the programme managers/co-ordinators had the expectation that teachers would be able to interpret, contest, modify and/or create courses, the assumption, presumably, being that decision-making in this area would be guided by some coherent, theoretically-based and historically grounded rationale, none of the institutions represented by the interviewees appeared to provide staff development opportunities specific to this area. Table 8-2: What participants would do if not provided with a syllabus document for a course. Choices

Prepare one yourself for your own use. Prepare one yourself for your own use and give a copy to students. Allow the syllabus to emerge as the teaching proceeds. Focus on material and methodology rather than syllabus. Other

Ticked

Not ticked

No. 28 22

% 30 78.5

No. 63/ 25

% 68 40

Nonresponse No. 2 2

36 10

38.7 28

55 37

59 67

2 2

21 14

23 67

70 33

75 47

2 2

13 9

14 69

78 38

84 49

2 2

0

0

0

0

Note. The top numbers indicate participants in Japan, Taiwan & Syria. The numbers in italics indicate participants in Australia & New Zealand.

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Curriculum and Syllabus: Issues Relating to Course Integration One of the functions of institutional curriculum documentation is generally to indicate the links among the various courses that make up the programme as a whole. A number of questions in both the questionnaire and interviews, therefore, sought to determine whether participants believed that the courses taken by students should be related in a way that ensured that the overall programme provided to students was a coherent and integrated one. Only approximately half of the questionnaire respondents believed that all of the English courses a student took in any particular year should be directly related to one another. Even so, almost all of them indicated that they would try to take account, either in whole or in part, in teaching a reading (or writing) course of the content of any writing (or reading) course being taken by the same students at the same stage in their programme. Respondents indicated that they favoured doing this often by using reading texts as models for writing texts. Although almost all of them said that they would take account, in some way, of the content of courses being taken by the same students, only approximately half of them claimed that they were actually aware of the content of other courses being taken by their students in the same year as those they themselves were teaching (see Table 8-3 below). Furthermore, when asked whether, if they used a textbook from a particular series with a group of first year students, they would select the next highest level textbook from the same series for the same students when they were in their second year, approximately 35% of questionnaire respondents indicated that they would do so, with the remainder indicating that they would not (9%), or that they did not know whether or not they would do so (41%) (see Figure 8-2 below). While many of the comments added in relation to this question referred to the desirability of variety, none made reference to potential problems, in terms of discontinuity and overall programme content, associated with switching from one series to another, especially where textbooks are being used as a major source rather than as an additional resource.

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Table 8-3: Participants’ awareness of the content of parallel skills courses. Question If you are responsible for a reading course at your institution, would you be aware in a detailed way of the content of any writing course that the same students were taking in the same year? If you are responsible for a writing course at your institution, would you be aware in a detailed way of the content of any reading course that the same students were taking in the same year?

Nonresponses (14) 15%

Answer Yes

No. 41

% 44%

No

13

14%

In Part

13

14%

No Response

26

28%

Yes

39

42%

No

11

12%

In Part

17

18%

No Response

26

28%

Yes (33) 35%

Yes No I don't know Non-responses I don't know (38) 41%

No (8) 9%

Figure 8-2: If you used a textbook from a particular series with a group of first year students, would you select the next highest level textbook from the same series for the same students when they are in their second year?

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The questions asked of interviewees that related to course integration referred specifically to skills-based courses. In responding to a question asking whether they believed that skills-based courses taught to the same group of students in the same year should be closely linked, all but one of the interviewees indicated that they believed that they should be. The interviewees saw the linkage among courses in terms of themes in one case, topics in another, and a combination of topics, vocabulary, concepts and ideas in a third. Thus, so far at least as skills-based courses are concerned, most of the managers/programme co-ordinators and approximately half of the teachers involved in this research project appear, in general, to be in favour of ensuring that there are links between courses. However, in the programme documentation supplied by the interviewees any such linkages are largely unsignalled/covert. Overall, it appears that the issue of language programme integration is one about which views differ and there is, in some cases, considerable uncertainty.

Curriculum and Syllabus: Course Content In terms of the actual content of courses, the majority of questionnaire participants indicated that they would include vocabulary, language structures, and tasks and activities (see Figures 8-3, 8-4, and 8-5 below) in core language development courses at all levels, with approximately two thirds of those who responded to the relevant question indicating that they preferred task-supported to task-based learning (and 24% indicating that they would not include tasks at all at beginner level). Four of the five interviewees indicated that it was equally important to include all of these in their courses (with the other interviewee observing that the main focus of General English courses taught in her institution was language skills). All of the interviewees and most of the questionnaire respondents also considered learning skills/strategies to be an important aspect of the content of language courses. However, in the documentation provided by the interviewees, references to learning skills were either absent altogether or were very general in nature. Also, although one of the interviewees referred on several occasions to the importance of tasks in her institution’s English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme, the documentation relating to that programme makes very little reference to tasks.

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Advanced (83) 23%

133

Beginner (97) 26% Beginner Elementary Intermed.

Intermediate (90) 25%

Advanced Elementary (95) 26%

Figure 8-3: Percentage of respondents who would include vocabulary at different levels. Advanced (81) 23%

Beginner (78) 23% Beginner Elementary Intermed.

Intermediate (91) 26%

Advanced Elementary 95 28%

Figure 8-4: Percentage of respondents who would include language structures at different levels.

Advanced (93) 27%

Beginner (76) 22% Beginner Elementary Intermed. Advanced

Intermediate (93) 27%

Elementary (84) 24%

Figure 8-5: Percentage of respondents who would include tasks at different levels.

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An almost equal number of questionnaire participants indicated that they preferred (40) or preferred not (39) to focus at beginner and elementary level on words and sentences rather than on larger stretches of language, and just over one fifth that they would not include language structures at beginner level. So far as writing courses are concerned, four of the interviewees made a distinction between lower level and higher level writing courses, two of them indicating that there should be a stronger focus on grammar in the former. There seemed to be, in general terms, agreement about the types of content appropriate for writing courses. However, wording used by at least three of the interviewees suggests that their views may have been strongly influenced by a particular textbook written by Oshima and Hogue (1991), one that was actually referred to directly by one of the interviewees. As far as textual cohesion is concerned, although the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001) and many national language curricula clearly signal the inclusion of some cohesive devices from the very early stages of language learning, just under two thirds of respondents indicated that they would not include cohesive devices at beginner level and just under one quarter that they would not do so at elementary level. So far as genre is concerned, a considerable number of respondents indicated that they would not include description, recount or instruction at beginner (55%, 48%, and 59% respectively) or elementary levels (32%, 36%, and 35.5% respectively) or argument at intermediate (32%) or advanced levels (29%) (see Table 8-4 below for those who would include these genres at particular levels). Table 8-4: Percentage of participants who would include particular genres at particular levels or who did not respond. Content Recount Narrative Instruction Argument Report Explanation Description

Beginner 52% 41% 41% 1% 6.5% 4% 45%

Elementary 64% 64.5% 50% 13% 20% 35.5% 68%

Intermediate 48% 63% 57% 58% 62% 74% 62%

Advanced 46% 43% 42% 71% 73% 61% 48%

In this general area of discourse, there was evidence of some widely differing views and considerable confusion. Thus, for example, an almost equal number of questionnaire respondents indicated that they would or

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would not include description, recount and instruction at beginner level, and ellipsis and substitution at intermediate level, and although only just over half indicated that they would include types of linkage between clauses at elementary level (55%), well over three quarters (86%) indicated that they would include cohesive devices at that level. In connection with this, it is relevant to note that none of the programme documentation provided by the interviewees makes any reference to ellipsis or substitution or, with the exception of one very general reference in one institution’s documentation, to types of semantic links between clauses. Also, in the case of one of the institutions, the programme documentation supplied makes no reference at all to genre. In the case of another, reference is made to genre in programme documentation in very general terms (e.g., ‘various genres’) except on one occasion (when reference is made to ‘simple narrative’ at pre-intermediate level). So far as the documentation relating to the other two institutions is concerned, one set refers to narrative at elementary level, and to narrative, recount, report and instruction at intermediate level; the other includes a combination of very general references to genre and some more specific references (e.g., ‘narrative and argument’) at one of the higher levels. In addition to signalling the types of content they considered appropriate for the courses offered by their institutions, the interviewees provided some information about the overall focus of courses at different levels, their responses suggesting an orientation towards the type of proportional approach recommended by Yalden (1983). Thus, for example, all of the interviewees signalled a general move from a focus on clause, sentence and paragraph construction in the earlier stages to a more discoursefocused one later and, finally, a focus on skills specific to academic contexts. One of the interviewees signalled that there was a greater focus on grammar in the early stages of her institution’s programmes, another observed that at the highest level, her institution’s EAP programme was combined with mainstream study and included subject/discipline-related vocabulary and topics. While the vast majority of the questionnaire participants indicated that they were currently more confident about what they should teach in core language development courses (87.5%), and writing courses (86%) than they were when they began teaching, it appears that this confidence may not necessarily be matched by competence in the area of syllabus design. Thus, for example, although most (78%) of the participants indicated that they could provide a list of specific outcomes for each of their courses if asked to do so, fewer (67%) actually provided an example and very few of these examples were clearly indicative of what the students were expected

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to be able to do using the target language on completion of the course, the majority either lacking language indicators altogether or being too general to be measurable. Interviewee responses to a number of questions suggest that at least some of them may be equally uncertain about course outcome specification. Asked whether their institutional curricula included a list of objectives/outcomes/‘can-do’ statements and whether, if so, an example could be provided, three of the interviewees indicated that such a list was available but none of them provided an example. In fact, all but one of the sets of documentation supplied do include achievement objectives in the form of ‘can-do’ statements. However, these statements vary considerably in terms of degree of specificity, often being open to a wide range of possible interpretations.

Conclusion In the area of curriculum and syllabus design, the findings of this research project suggest that there is a considerable lack of fit between belief and practice. While all of the interviewees and most of the questionnaire respondents reported that they believed it was important to have explicit curriculum and syllabus documentation for the programmes and courses provided by their institutions, most of the curriculum documents provided by the interviewees were found to be expressed in very general terms (sometimes with overlapping descriptors for courses at different levels) and almost half of the questionnaire respondents indicated that they did not refer in planning their courses to such institutional documentation as was available, with approximately one third reporting heavy reliance on commercially produced textbooks. Furthermore, while most of the research participants appeared to favour something along the lines of the type of the proportional syllabus type proposed by Yalden (1983), there was evidence of considerable uncertainty about how learning objectives might be specified, what types of content might be appropriate and what aspects of language and discourse should be included at different levels. What all of this suggests is that while the many different proposals relating to language syllabus design types that have been forwarded over the past few decades may have alerted language teachers and language programme managers to the fact that language syllabuses may include a wide range of different types of content, they have done little to alert them to the specific details of different types of proposal and the theoretical rationales that underpin them. Overall, second language teaching appears currently to be marked by confusion and uncertainty in the area of curriculum and syllabus design.

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References Benavot, A., Cha, Y-K., Kamens, D., Meyer, J., & Wong, S-Y. (1991). Knowledge for the masses: World and national curricula, 1920-1986. American Sociological Review, 56(1), 85-100. Borg, S. (2006). Teacher cognition and language education: Research and practice. London: Continuum. Breen, M. P. (1987). Contemporary paradigms in syllabus design: Part 1. Language Teaching, 20(2), 81-92. Brumfit, C. J. (1980). From defining to designing: Communicative specifications versus communicative methodology in foreign language teaching. In A. Valdman, S. Grass & K. Geeslin (Eds.), The foreign language syllabus and communicative approaches to teaching: Proceedings of a European-American seminar. Special Issue of Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 3(1), 1-9. Canagarajah, A. S. (1999). Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. (2004). Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. London & New York: Routledge. Council of Europe. (2001). A common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching and assessment. Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe, Language Policy division. Retrieved from: http://www.coe.int/T/DG4/Linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf. Cox, R. (1996). A perspective on globalization. In J. M. Mittelman (Ed.), Globalization: Critical reflections (pp. 21-30). London: Lynne Rienner. Crombie, W. (1985a). Process and relation in discourse and language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. (1985b). Discourse and language learning: A relational approach to syllabus design. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. (2008, April). Language teaching: Training for excellence. Excellence in teaching and learning. Paper presented at the International Symposium: Excellence in Teaching and Learning, Zishan Hall, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Da Silva, M. (2005). Constructing the teaching process from inside out: How pre-service teachers make sense of their perceptions of the teaching of the four skills. TESL-EJ, 9(2), 1-19. Finney, D. (2001). The ELT Curriculum: A flexible model for a changing world. In J. C. Richards & P. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Giddens, A. (1990). The consequence of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Graddol, D. (2006). English next: Why global English may mean the end of “English as a foreign language”. London: British Council. Heller, M. (2002). Globalization and commodification of bilingualism in Canada. In D. Block & D. Cameron (Eds.), Globalization and language teaching (pp. 47-64). London: Routledge. Johnson, K. E. (1996). The vision versus the reality: The tensions of the ESOL practicum. In D. Freeman & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Teacher learning in language teaching (pp. 30-49). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karavas-Doukas, E. (1996). Using attitude scales to investigate teachers’ attitudes to the communicative approach. ELT Journal, 50(3), 187-198. Krahnke, K. (1987). Approaches to syllabus design for foreign language teaching. Englewood, NJ: Prentice- Hall. Maurais, J., & Morris, M. A. (2003). Languages in a globalising world. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Morrow, K. (2004). Background to the CEFR. In K. Morrow (Ed.), Insights from the common European framework (pp. 3-11). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Numrich, C. (1996). On becoming a language teacher: Insights from diary studies. TESOL Quarterly, 30(1), 131-153. Nunan, D. (1987). Communicative language teaching: Making it work. ELT Journal, 41(2), 136-145. —. (1989). Hidden agendas: The role of the learner in programme implementation. In R. K. Johnson (Ed.), The second language curriculum. (pp. 176-186). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oshima, A., & Hogue, A. (1991). Writing academic English. New York: Addison-Wesley. Ramirez, F. O., & Boli, J. (1987). The political construction of mass schooling: European origins and worldwide institutionalization. Sociology of Education, 60(2), 2-17. Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization: Social theory and global culture. London: Sage. Sato, K., & Kleinsasser, R. C. (1999). Communicative language teaching (CLT): Practical understandings. Modern Language Journal, 83(4), 494-517. Sato, K., & Kleinsasser, R. C. (2004). Beliefs, practices, and interactions of teachers in a Japanese high school English department. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(8), 797-816.

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Sinclair, J., & Renouf, A. (1988). A lexical syllabus for language learning. In R. Carter & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary and language teaching (pp. 140-158). London: Longman. Spada, N., & Massey, M. (1992). The role of prior knowledge in determining the practice of novice ESL teachers. In J. Flowerdew, M. Brock, & S. Hsia (Eds.), Perspectives on second language teacher education (pp. 23-37). Hong Kong: City Polytechnic. Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (1994). Academic writing for graduate students. Ann- Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Su, C. (2008). The teaching of reading in English in Taiwan: A case study involving sustained silent reading. Journal of Maori and Pacific Development, 9(1), 75-96. Ur, P. (2000). A course in language teaching: Practice and theory. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. Wang, W. (2008). Teaching English to young learners in Taiwan: Teacher education, teaching materials and teacher perspectives. Doctoral thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from: http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/2547 Waters, M. (1995). Globalization. London: Routledge. Watzke, J. L. (2007). Foreign language pedagogical knowledge: Toward a developmental theory of beginning teacher practices. The Modern Language Journal, 91(1), 63-82. Widdowson, H. G. (1983). Learning purpose and language use. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilkins, D. A. (1976). Notional syllabuses: A taxonomy and its relevance to foreign language curriculum development London: Oxford University Press. Willis, D. (1990). The lexical syllabus: A new approach to language teaching. London and Glasgow: Collins ELT. Yalden, J. (1983). The communicative syllabus: Evolution, design and implementation. Oxford: Pergamon.

CHAPTER NINE COMPLEXITY APPROACH TO LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING: MOVING FROM THEORY TO POTENTIAL PRACTICE ELAINE FERREIRA DO VALE BORGES

Abstract This work aims at advancing the discussion about the complexity approach to language teaching and learning (CALTL) (Borges & Paiva 2011, 2014) by evaluating its potential use in teaching and learning English as an additional language (EAL). This investigation is motivated by the recently released textbook series Alive (grounded on the complexity theory) for teaching and learning EAL in elementary and high schools in Brazil. After a short review on the emergence of the CALTL in applied linguistics, this chapter presents the Alive textbook series, its theoretical foundation and teaching guideline propositions. It then describes the CALTL nine elements followed by an analysis of selected activities from the Alive textbooks for elementary school Grades 6 and 7, and high school Grade 1. This analysis is expected to help pave the way to a successful implementation of the CALTL in EAL classrooms.

Introduction Larsen-Freeman (1997) and Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008), among others, have introduced important underlying concepts into applied linguistics from physical and biological sciences about complexity and chaos. The major contribution of the complexity theory (CT) for social sciences is its multidisciplinary approach to the study of complex adaptive system (CAS) behavior and how it is influenced by internal and external

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connections to the environment. The main properties of a CAS can be listed as follows: dynamicity, openness, non-linearity, self-organization, adaptation and emergence. From a CT perspective, many of the phenomena of interest to applied linguistics can be seen as a CAS: language and second language acquisition (SLA) are good examples. However, thinking of a complexity approach to language teaching and learning is challenging. This is true given that an approach to language teaching provides a set of coherent principles directly linked to practice (methods and techniques), and these principles end up limiting the practice. The restriction to a certain type of practice proposed by a method has been the central discussion in the postmethod era (Prabhu, 1987, 1990; Kumaravadivelu, 1994, 2001). Recently, Borges and Paiva (2011, 2014) have proposed a complexity approach to language teaching and learning (CALTL) adding nine new components to the four ones (i.e., connectivity across all levels, dynamics of language-using, co-adaptation, and dynamics of learning managing by teaching) originally suggested by Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008) namely: (1) language and SLA as a CAS; (2) reconstructive dynamic dimension of teaching and learning as a multifaceted process; (3) conceiving the teacher as one of the elements that gives dynamicity to the teaching and learning process; (4) focusing on the learner’s performance to promote competence; (5) centralizing language social practices in the classroom; (6) receiving multiple identities or ‘fractalized identities’ (Sade, 2009) of individuals; (7) ‘eco-semiotic syllabus’ (ESS) (Borges, 2014a) co-construction; (8) affordances awareness; (9) individual’s ‘autopoietic organization’ (Maturana & Varela, 2001). The CALTL, as proposed by Borges and Paiva (2011, 2014), is not limited in practice as it only exists in action, managed by teaching and supported by learning. Therefore, it is promptly qualified as a CAS in itself. Even in a post-method era, an approach to language teaching is still important to guide teachers (as long as it does not limit their practices) particularly if complexity is taken into account, as occurs in the applied linguistics field nowadays. This chapter intends to move the discussion about the CALTL (Borges & Paiva, 2011, 2014) one step forward by presenting its potential use/ usage in EAL classrooms in Brazil. To this end, in the following section it describes the emergence of the CALTL in the context of applied linguistics. Next, it presents a short historical perspective together with the theoretical background of the Alive textbook series in Brazil. This textbook series was released in 2012 (for elementary school Grades 6-9) and in 2013 (for high school Grades 1-3). The theoretical foundation and

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teaching guidelines of this series are based on the CT. Then, the nine elements of the CALTL (Borges & Paiva, 2011, 2014) are discussed followed by an analysis of selected activities in the Alive textbooks. The final section of the chapter presents some concluding remarks.

Complexity Approach in Applied Linguistics Since Anthony’s (1963) hierarchical arrangement and contemporary definition of approach, method and technique, the term approach has become more closely related to what one believes can be called a theory of language teaching and learning, or simply a ‘metaparadigm’ (Masterman, 1979) in a language teaching context (Borges, 2009, 2014b). On the other hand, as it is well known, method and technique are actually more connected to the language teacher’s actions in the classroom. However, those classroom actions (teachers) are supposed to be managed by a selected approach that provides them with a set of coherent principles (theorizers). With the advent of the so-called post-method era (Prabhu, 1987, 1990; Kumaravadivelu, 1994, 2001), the relationship between theorizers and teachers has changed “by empowering teachers with knowledge, skill, and autonomy” so they “could devise for themselves a systematic, coherent, and relevant alternative to method, one informed by principled pragmatism” (Kumaravadivelu, 1994, p. 27). This was also what Prabhu (1987) named as ‘sense of plausibility’ or teacher’s intuition “of how classroom activity leads to the desired outcome of learning” (p. 106), and Borges (2010) refers to it as ‘teacher’s methodology’. In the CT context, Larsen-Freeman (1997) took this discussion to a different perspective. She pointed out the need of “a dynamic model of performance [parole], which relates individual use [of a language] to systemic change” (p. 149) instead of focusing only on a theory of competence [langue]. In fact, Larsen-Freeman claims that langue (competence) and parole (performance) “cannot be studied independently of each other if we want to be faithful to the reality of language” (p. 149). This makes very much sense, since theorizers’ main concern regarding the development of approaches to language teaching has been competence. The communicative approach or communicative language teaching (CLT), whose core is communicative competence, is a good example. Even with Hymes’s (1972) broad conception of competence as “dependent upon both (tacit) knowledge and (ability for) use” (p. 282), the notion of an inductive teaching of grammar as if it could be deliberately developed in learners has privileged “situational appropriacy” over “grammatical conformity”

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(Prabhu, 1987). The other way around, the communicational approach (Prabhu, 1987) has developed itself having grammatical competence as its core to avoid the CLT communicative competence pedagogy (Borges, 2009). By focusing on the importance of a dynamic model of performance, Larsen-Freeman (1997) aims at overcoming the classical Chomskyan competence-performance and Saussurean langue-parole dichotomies in applied linguistics studies. This is because competence and performance are additional elements of language as a dynamic complex system or CAS. Also, as far as CT is concerned, second/additional language teaching can be seen as managing the dynamics of learning (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). That means that we should consider adaptation in the classroom and that “learning guides the teaching and not vice versa” (p. 200). In other words, “teaching does not cause learning; learners make their own paths” (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008, p. 199). So, any particular approach to language teaching must be “dynamically adaptable in use” and “learning-centered” (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008, p. 198-200), as opposed to being curriculum-centered or learner-centered as is the case of the approaches we currently have in the language teaching context. Although Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008) believe that any effort in developing a complexity approach to language teaching and learning would be futile since it “does not automatically translate into a complexity method for teaching language” (p. 197), they have suggested four components as a starting point for building one, namely: connectivity across all levels; dynamics of language-using; co-adaptation; and dynamics of learning managing by teaching. Believing that approaches to language teaching are still important to guide the teachers’ methodology (Borges, 2010) in the classroom (as long as it does not limit their practices), Borges and Paiva (2011, 2014) have moved towards a complexity approach to language teaching and learning (CALTL), as described later on in this chapter.

The Alive Textbook Series in Brazil The Alive textbook series for elementary (Alive!: inglês) and high (Alive high: inglês) schools (Figure 9-1) was released in 2012 and 2013, respectively, in Brazil. The authors are English teachers and Brazilian applied linguistics researchers from Federal Universities in Brazil. Among other series, Alive has been distributed in public schools by the Brazilian

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Ministry off Education (M MEC) throug gh the Textboook National Program (PNLD). Thhe general goaal of the series, as one of thhe authors em mphasizes, is the teachiing and learniing of EAL by y working “w with language in use by means of authentic sam mples of lin nguistic sociaal practices and [by] encourage[inng] students to t use English h to act with w words” (Paiva, 2013, p. 8).

Figure 9-1: The Alive textboook series.

The elem mentary schoool series is divided into four textboo oks (from Grade 6 to 9) while thee high school series is divvided into thrree (from Grade 1 to 33). In general, each textbook k contains eigght units organ nized into four blocks. Each block has h two units plus p extra secttions at the en nd such as Glossary, L Language Reeference and Recommendded Bibliogra aphy for Students. Inn the high schoool textbookss, there is alsoo a section callled Time for literaturre. All units are a written in n English. Hoowever, throug ghout the teachers’ texxtbooks theree are some authors’ suggesstions such as teaching guidelines (for some propposed activities) written inn Brazilian Po ortuguese. In addition, each textboook comes with h a CD for liistening activiities. The other linguistics abilities (reading, speeaking, and w writing) are included in sections likee Let’s listen and read!, Leet’s listen, reaad and talk!, and Let’s read and wrrite!. The activvities in lingu uistics analysiss are found in the Let’s focus on lannguage! sectioon present in each e unit. It is woorth mentioninng that the main m innovatioon of the Aliive series comes from m its theoreticaal foundation which is bassed on the CT T. This is clearly stateed in the seection Manua al do Professsor (Teacher’’s guide) (written in B Brazilian Porttuguese) at thee end of eachh teacher’s tex xtbook. In the teacher’ss guide the auuthors describ be the purposee of the series and how it works. Also they provvide all pertin nent definitionns regarding language, l SLA and leaarning conceptions as a CAS. For insttance, in thee Alive!: ing glês teacher’ss textbook (Menezes, Tavares, Braaga, & Francoo, 2012a, 2012 2b) the authorrs say that, orriented by complexity principles, thhe students should be “encoouraged to deevelop an

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autonomous position as co-responsible for the teaching and learning process” (p. 4, my translation). To accomplish this, throughout the units, “students are asked to draw up hypotheses, to deduce rules from the observation of different use of language contexts and to put them into practice” (Menezes, et al., 2012a, 2012b, p. 4, my translation). On the other hand, teachers should guide and encourage students to assume the role of agents of their own learning. The section Let’s reflect on learning! (at the end of each unit) is a good example of how this could be developed (see Figure 9-9 later on in this chapter). Besides that, in the Alive high: inglês teacher’s textbook (Menezes, Braga, Carneiro, Racilian, Gomes, & Velloso, 2013) the authors say that the complexity approach to language teaching proposed by the series “is not limited to language teaching for communication but also for reflection and action in society” (p. 205, my translation). This can be seen, as pointed out by the authors, for example, in the orientations presented in the section Let’s act with words, which is related to the school and students’ context (see Figure 9-7 below).

CALTL: Managing the Dynamics of Teaching and Learning in the EAL Classroom In this section, the nine components of the CALTL introduced to the field of applied linguistics by Borges and Paiva (2011, 2014) are presented and discussed. CALTL elements present in activities and/or teaching guidelines taken from the Alive textbooks for the 6th (Menezes et al., 2012a) and the 7th (Menezes et al., 2012b) grades of elementary schools, and for the 1st (Menezes et al., 2013) grade of high schools are discussed. These activities are actually assumed here as examples of how teaching and learning EAL can be linked to CALTL practice. This task was accomplished with the help of qualitative interpretative research (Pereira & Borges, 2014) for the Alive series for elementary schools. It is worthwhile mentioning at this point that there is no intention to present an exhaustive account of all the activities and teaching guidelines in the Alive textbooks series and that only a few examples taken from the textbooks will be shown, mostly those which illustrate more than one point, for the sake of space.

Language and SLA as CAS As pointed out by Menezes (2013) language as CAS is a non-linear dynamic system that emerged from the interrelation of its elements, such as bio-cognitive, sociocultural, historical and political. In other words,

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language is a complex system consisting of multiple agents and it is in constant movement (Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2009; Larsen-Freeman, 1997; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). SLA as a CAS is also characterized by dynamic processes (Larsen-Freeman, 1997; LarsenFreeman & Cameron, 2008), interacting individual and social factors including, as noted by Menezes (2013), the creation of automatic linguistic habits, cultural and personal affiliations with the second language, input, interaction, output, neural and sociocultural connections. As was mentioned before, throughout the teachers’ textbooks there are some authors’ suggestions as teaching guidelines written in Brazilian Portuguese. Many of those are aimed at encouraging teachers to explain the complex features of a language as social practice to their students, stressing that it is a living phenomenon and in constant movement. In Figure 9-2 (Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 94), for instance, one can see the following passage: “We suggest speaking to the students about the study of grammar, emphasizing that it is not enough to memorize rules, but it is essential to understand their use in communication situations. We recommend providing examples of linguistic variations that students already have studied throughout the textbook that show how often the rules are modified depending on the context of its use.” (my translation)

As can also be seen in Figure 9-2, grammar is taken as an alive component of the language (Grammar is not dead) that changes and varies from place to place. In other words, the textbook emphasizes that “Grammar consists of aspects for word formation, grammar structures or patterns, word sounds, sentence melody, and how we use language to produce meaning in different contexts” (Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 94). Following the concept of language and SLA as CAS, the textbook offers different types of activities. For instance, in the section Learning strategies (throughout the textbooks for elementary schools) activities can be found that emphasize (a) the linguistic variation between US and UK English (Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 94) (Figure 9-2); (b) the different meanings of the same word as a way to make the students aware that “Meaning depends on the context” (Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 62); (b) the use of helpful tips regarding speech production stating that “Hesitation is not a mistake, but a characteristic of oral interaction” (Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 130) (Figure 9-3). Thus, there is no need for the students to “be afraid of making mistakes” since “we learn from our mistakes” (Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 130), and so on. In this last example, mistakes are seen as part of the complex process of acquiring language.

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Figure 9-2: Grammar as a living component of language (Source: Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 94).

Figure 9-3: Mistake as a characteristic of oral interaction (Source: Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 130).

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Reconstructive Dynamic Dimension of Teaching and Learning as a Multifaceted Process The teaching and learning process in action is essentially a teacher and learner(s) co-adaptation or “the interaction of two or more complex systems, each changing in response to the other” (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008, p. 67). Nested in this process there are other important dimensions such as autonomy, self-organization, emergency, and autopoietic organization (Demo, 2008). All together, these dimensions are potentially responsible for phase shifts in the emergent behavior of CAS (teacher and learners, for instance). Emergent behavior tells us that a CAS is trying to obtain new stabilities from previous disorder and also that it is in a state of maximum potential for learning. These CAS state diversities end up in a stabilized behavior (attractor) that can be explained (in the teaching and learning context) by different psychological theories (multifaceted process) of learning and development, all at the same time, such as behaviorism, cognitivism and socio-interactionism. This means that, considering the immediate needs of the learning context, the teacher, as the element that gives dynamism to the classroom, is free to use the principles of different types of the language teaching approach during a lesson, keeping in mind that the complexity approach in itself is multifaceted in its conception of language teaching and learning. The Alive series provides the teacher with that freedom as he/she can find different activities throughout any given unit in the textbooks. For example, in the textbook for elementary schools (Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 94) (Figure 9-4), there is a reading activity of a small text (activities 9 and 10), where the authors suggest activating the students’ prior knowledge about it using the pre-reading technique. The authors say: “As a prereading activity, we suggest to students how they help or could help with household chores and thus activate their prior knowledge on the subject” (my translation). This technique comes from the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) approach with the focus on reading skills which, in turn, is based on cognitivism (top-down processing).

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Figure 9-4: Using reading ESP technique and grammar-based practice (Source: Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 94).

ESP techniques are also used in the Alive series to work with other language skills, such as oral production (see Figure 9-5, activity 2)–where the teacher can find the following suggestion given by the authors: “As a pre-oral comprehension activity, we suggest asking if students like fruit salad and what ingredients they usually use to prepare the recipe. Next, write the ingredients in English on the blackboard.” (Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 84, my translation)

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Figure 9-5: Using listening ESP technique and genre-based instruction (Source: Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 84).

Still on page 94 (Figure 9-4), there are some traditional activities of the contracted negative forms don’t and doesn’t (activity 11). These activities are clearly based on grammar and linguistic habit formation, as those used in the grammatical approach, which is grounded on behaviorism. Similarly, one can see activities 1 and 2 on page 151 of the textbook for high schools (Menezes et al., 2013) (Figure 9-6) that focus on the use of the am/are/is + going to + verb structure. The next activity (activity 3), in turn, is based on a schedule to watch films from the TIFF (The Toronto International Film Festival)–discussed earlier in the unit. The latter activity is potentially founded on the task-based approach or communicational

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approach (Prabhu, 1997) grounded on cognitivism and socio-interactionism.

Figure 9-6: Using grammar-based practice and task-based instruction (Source: Menezes et al., 2013, p. 151).

On page 84 (Menezes et al., 2012a) (Figure 9-5), on the other hand, activity 2 is about how to write a fruit salad recipe with some explanations (Did you know… ?) about the characteristics of the genre speech recipe. This kind of activity can be linked to the approach to language teaching based on speech genres associated with Bakhtin's theory and sociointeractionism. Also, the section Let’s act with words! (Menezes et al., 2013, p. 111) (Figure 9-7)–found in all the textbooks for high schools–is entirely dedicated to the production of different speech genres, such as presentation, graffiti, profile, flyer, propaganda, biography, greeting card,

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website, etc. Another example of using an approach based on speech genres (in the textbook for elementary schools, for instance) can be seen in an activity involving cartoon production in Figure 9-8 (Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 23).

Figure 9-7: Using genre-based instruction (Source: Menezes et al., 2013, p. 111).

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The Teacher Gives Dynamicity to the Teaching and Learning Process A complexity approach to language teaching and learning must shelter the teacher’s sense of plausibility (Prabhu, 1987) or teacher’s methodology (Borges, 2010), serving not only as a guide for his/her actions in the classroom, but essentially providing support for them. This is true since in real school environments what the teacher encounters is a non-linear dynamic web of interactions between many elements, such as (besides the teacher and the students) curriculum, syllabus, approaches, methodology, methods and techniques, textbook, school vision, educational policies, etc., which are the components of class as a CAS. Pereira and Borges (2014) emphasize that the teacher must take a proactive action to work with the Alive textbooks. In other words, the teacher must “be able to expand, adapt and/or modify a proposed activity so that it becomes more appropriate and/or more meaningful for students” (Pereira & Borges, 2014, p. 13, my translation). This is what makes the teacher the element that gives dynamicity to the teaching and learning process. A good example is a cartoon production activity about the environment in the section Let’s act with words (Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 23) (Figure 98) in which according to the authors’ suggestions in the teacher’s textbook (“If you wish, propose to the students to write about the conservation of school, neighborhood, etc.”–my translation) this activity can be directly related to school issues on this transversal theme, whereas the teacher expands the activity to the school context.

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Figure 9-8: Giving dynamicity to the classroom (Source: Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 23).

Focus on Learner’s Performance to Promote Competence Performance is an individual (and therefore a self-organized) phenomenon “because it is the dynamic properties of the system that lead it to happen, not some external organizing force” (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008, p. 58). As a result, there can only be heterogeneity in the classroom. By focusing on performance, the language teacher should lead learners to achieve linguistic, semantic and pragmatic competences in the permanent development of a language. This implies that the central core of an approach to teaching and learning is no longer the competence to achieve performance–as it has happened to approaches so far–but the other way around. At the end of each thematic unit of the Alive textbook series for elementary schools there is a section called Let’s reflect on learning!, which is actually a review of the content studied in that unit. Moreover, there are subsections named I am autonomous, Now I Know and I need to learn more (Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 37) (Figure 9-9) and Self-learning report, My opinion and Now I Know (Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 131), for instance, where students are encouraged to reflect on what they have learned. The same can be found in the textbook series for high schools in the section Learning journal (also at the end of each thematic unit) where

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there are subsections entitled I learned, I liked, I need to review/learn more and My experiences with English outside school were (Menezes et al., 2013, p. 43) for the students to fill in. What draws someone’s attention in this case is the way the review is organized in the book. As the titles of the sections and subsections imply, its intention is for the students to reflect both on their actions and on their learning in the classroom. With this selfassessment, students can focus on their own performance.

Figure 9-9: Promoting students’ autonomy (Source: Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 37).

The emphasis on learner’s autonomy is something of utmost importance to the Alive textbooks since in its approach to language and teaching “students are not limited to passively receive content made ready by the teacher, but rather they are encouraged to develop an autonomous attitude, as responsible for the teaching-learning process” (Menezes et al., 2012b, p. 4, my translation). As stressed by Paiva (2010), autonomy is directly linked to the learner’s performance in the language acquisition process, and through it the learner manages his/her own learning. Autonomy can also be seen as an element of the CALTL once the student’s

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responsibility for his/her own learning is a very important CT issue as it is linked to the self-organization of a CAS.

Centralize Language Social Practices in the Classroom In order to acquire an additional language, its usage (linguistic system) and use (effective communication) must be as close as possible to the real social language performance. This is a real challenge for teachers and learners because they have to break the class barrier in search for real opportunities and contextualized usage/use of these practices (Borges & Paiva, 2011). The Alive series go beyond the teaching and learning of English grammar to work on the meaning it produces in real speech. To this aim, the textbook series emphasizes the “language in use by means of authentic samples of linguistic social practices and encourage[s] students to use English to act with words” (Paiva, 2013, p. 8). Activities 1 to 4 in the section Let’s focus on language! (Menezes et al., 2012a) (Figure 9-10) (textbook for the Grade 6) is an example as it contains samples of authentic texts. Also in this section there are explanations for the teacher (as follows) on how the students should have the perception of actually learning the language that circulates in language social practices by using examples of the language that were taken from real situations: “Lead students to observe that the examples are taken from real situations. It is important that they have the perception of learning the language circulating in social practices of the language. The focus should be on meaning and not form by form. Students need to recognize verbs, but always thinking about their meanings. (…).” (Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 122, my translation)

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Figure 9-10: Providing language social practices (Source: Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 122).

Reception of Multiple Identities of Individuals As Norton (2000) pointed out “it is through language that a person negotiates a sense of self within and across different sites at different points in time” (p. 5) and “learning a second language is (…) a complex social practice that engages the identities of language learners” (p. 132). On the other hand, Sade (2009, p. 520) emphasized that the “‘self’ is constructed via emergence of several other ‘selves’” in what she calls “fractalized identity”. The Alive textbook provides some activities that can potentially

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contribute to bringing out the multiple identities of students (Pereira & Borges, 2014). For instance, in the textbook for Grade 6 (Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 10) there is a unit called Who am I? that presents suggestions for teachers to encourage students to introduce themselves to each other, talking about themselves (friends and family) and about what they like and dislike to do and/or would like and dislike to be. Furthermore, this unit offers photos of famous athletes from around the world, focusing on one of the identities of these sports professionals. Another excellent example is the section Let’s create an avatar! (Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 145) (Figure 9-11) where the students have the opportunity to create a digital identity that may represent one of the student’s identity facet or an alternative identity that might be in his/ her imagination.

Figure 9-11: Bringing out students’ multiple identities (Source: Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 145).

The textbook also provides website links related to the avatar theme and images from the 2009 science fiction movie that illustrates well the identity fractalization of its main actor, Sam Worthington, as a paraplegic marine (a human) and as Jake Sully (a Na’vi inhabitant of Pandora).

Eco-Semiotic Syllabus (ESS) Co-Construction An ESS (Borges, 2014b) is a teacher and learner co-construction syllabus that emerges from classroom interactions, an essential element of the SLA as CAS. In order words, it is a CAS in itself. Moreover, it is an

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analytic and process type of syllabus in which the “teacher’s role as a manager of learning is to nudge the students’ developing system into a trajectory through state space that is consonant with the students’ goals and goals of instruction” (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008, p. 202). The ESS, as pointed out by Borges (2014b), is based on van Lier’s (1996, 2000) two dimensions: a) horizontal, “forging links between different subjects, exploring cross-curricular themes, and dealing with global linguistic problems and issues” (van Lier, 1996, p. 19), also working with the “linguistic normativity (habit and structure)” (van Lier, 2000, p. 258) as a centripetal force of language; b) vertical, “providing deep and rich language experiences throughout the child’s academic career, and building usable and lasting language skills, both oral and written” (van Lier, 1996, p. 19), as well as making the “linguistic creativity (variety and invention)” operational (van Lier, 2000, p. 258) as a centrifugal force of language. Of course, teachers must have a starting point to begin with and that is what one can call the ESS initial conditions, such as the students’ needs and wants (previously verified), and contents and goals that are required by the school curriculum, for instance. After that, teachers must have a sense of plausibility (Prabhu, 1987) to bring out their methodology (Borges, 2010) that will introduce the dynamics required in the interaction of these two classroom forces in the SLA: linguistic normativity and linguistic creativity.

Affordances Awareness An affordance is a particular property of the environment “that is relevant–for good or for ill–to an active, perceiving organism in that environment. [It] affords further action (but does not cause or trigger it)” (van Lier, 2000, p. 252). Even though teachers do not control the students’ learning (understood as a self-organized process), this does not mean that the teaching does not influence it. As discussed in Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008), “teaching and teacher-learner interaction construct and constrain the learning affordances of the classroom” (p. 200). So, being aware of the potential affordances in the school environment (and beyond it) which can help or not students acquire a language is a good tool for successful teaching. In the first part of each Alive elementary and high school textbooks, there is a suggestion for a Year project (scrapbook, tourist booklet, magazine, blog, portfolio, etc.) whose objective is the production of a continuous activity throughout the year to encourage “students’ perception

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of the English language” around them (Menezes et al., 2012a, p. 11). The textbook for Grade 6 (Menezes et al., 2012a), for example, suggests the development of a personal scrapbook and explains that “It is a collection of memories”, and that “We use photos, images, parts of texts from magazines and notes” (p. 9). To accomplish this, the students may use any material they want or already have, like recycled paper or an old agenda. Also, to start his/her scrapbook, the textbook suggests that students make a collection of words in English around them. The textbook’s suggestion for the use of any material available to the students for the scrapbook production (or any other year project) is a way to make them aware of the tools around them that can facilitate the learning of English (Pereira & Borges, 2014).

Individuals’ Autopoietic Organization As pointed out by Maturana and Varela (2001), autopoietic organization refers to a system capable of producing and maintaining itself in contact with its environment, but the system changes are conditioned to its particular structure. Thus, every living being follows a particular path, selected in its history of interactions by a sequence of structural changes that these interactions triggered in him/ her. As human beings, teachers and students are characterized by an autopoietic organization that, in the CT context, is related to one of the most important elements of a CAS: selforganization. Maturana and Varela (2001) stressed the importance of the quality of interactions in the behavior of living beings for the development of human understanding in the biological cognitive perspective. This can be extended to Freire’s (1987) critical pedagogy as an autopoietic education conception, for instance, when the author says that “no one educates anyone, and nobody is self educated; all of us learn from each other, mediated by the world we live in.” (p. 68, my translation).

Conclusion In this work, the emergence of the CALTL in applied linguistic studies was demonstrated. The nine components that describe the CALTL as proposed by Borges and Paiva (2011, 2014) were also presented. The CALTL aims at establishing itself as a key element that emerges in (and gives dynamics to) real language teaching and learning environments in action. In addition, potential ways of using CALTL in EAL classrooms were summarized by giving some examples of activities and teacher

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guideline suggestions taken from the Alive textbooks for elementary and high schools in Brazil. The analysis showed that many activities proposed in the textbooks highlight several components of the CALTL. In addition, it clearly demonstrates the potential of this study to help pave the way to a successful implementation of the CALTL in EAL classrooms.

Acknowledgement This study received financial support from FAPEMIG (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais) and CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico).

References Anthony, E. M. (1963). Approach, method, and technique. English Teaching Forum, 3(1), 7-10. Borges, E. F. V., & Paiva, V. L. M. O. (2014). Towards a complexity approach to language teaching and learning. Paper presented at the 17th World Congress of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA), August 10-15, Brisbane, Australia. Borges, E. F. V., & Paiva, V. L. M. O. (2011). Por uma abordagem complexa de ensino de línguas. Linguagem & Ensino, 14(2), 337-56. Borges, E. F. V. (2014a). Planejamento semiótico-ecológico de ensino de línguas. Revista Contexturas, 23, 39-61. —. (2014b). Paradigm shift in language teaching and language teacher education. The ESPecialist, 35(1), 42-59. —. (2010). Metodologia, abordagem e pedagogias de ensino de língua(s). Linguagem & Ensino, 13(2), 397-414. —. (2009) Uma reflexão filosófica sobre abordagens e paradigmas na constituição da subárea Ensino-Aprendizagem de LE/L2 na Linguística Aplicada. Tese de Doutorado. Faculdade de Educação da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. Demo, P. (2008). Complexidade e aprendizagem: a dinâmica não linear do conhecimento. São Paulo: Atlas. Ellis, N. C., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (Eds.). (2009). Language as a complex adaptive system. Michigan: Wiley-Blackwell. Freire, P. (1987). Pedagogia do oprimido. 29. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. B. Pride & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 269-293). Hardmondsworth: Penguin.

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Kumaravadivelu, B. (2001). Toward a postmethod pedagogy. TESOL Quartely, 35(4), 537-560. —. (1994). The postmethod condition: (E)merging strategies for second/foreign language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 28(1), 27-48. Larsen-Freeman, D. (1997). Chaos/Complexity Science and second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 18(2), 141-165. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Masterman, M. (1979). A natureza de um paradigma. In I. Lakatos & A. Musgrave (Eds.), A crítica e o desenvolvimento do conhecimento: quarto volume das atas do Colóquio Internacional sobre Filosofia da Ciência, realizado em Londres em 1965 (pp. 72-108). São Paulo: Cultrix. Maturana, R. H., & Varela, F. J. (2001). A árvore do conhecimento: as bases biológicas da compreensão humana. São Paulo: Palas Athenas. Menezes, V., Braga, J., Carneiro, M., Racilian, M., Gomes, R., & Velloso, M. (2013). Alive high: inglês, 1º ano (Ensino médio). São Paulo: Edições SM. Menezes, V., Tavares, K., Braga, J., & Franco, C. (2012a). Alive!: inglês, 6º ano (Ensino fundamental). 1ª ed., São Paulo: Editora Anzol. Menezes, V., Tavares, K., Braga, J., & Franco, C. (2012b). Alive!: inglês, 7º ano (Ensino fundamental). 1ª ed., São Paulo: Editora Anzol. Menezes, V. (2013). Second language acquisition: Reconciling theories. Open Journal of Applied Sciences, 3(7), 404-412. Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning: gender, ethnicity and educational change. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited. Paiva, V. L. M. O. (2013). Alive! Ensino de inglês vivo e vivido. In A. A. Assis-Peterson, (Eds.), Anais Eletrônico do XVI Encontro de Professores de Inglês, 23 e 24 de agosto de 2013. (pp. 08-15). Departamento de Letras de Rondonópolis e Cuiabá; UFMT. Faculdade de Letras. CD-ROM. Pereira, L. S., & Borges, E. F. V. (2014). Potencialidades da abordagem complexa de ensino de língua no uso da coleção “Alive!: inglês”. D.E.L.T.A - Documentação e Estudos em Linguística Teórica Aplicada. Prabhu, N. S. (1990). There is no best method – Why? TESOL Quarterly, 24(2), 161-76. —. (1987). Second language pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sade, A. S. (2009). Complexity and identity reconstruction in second language acquisition. Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada, 9(2), 515-537.

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van Lier, L. (2000). From input to affordance: Social-interactive learning from an ecological perspective. In J. P. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 245-259). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER TEN ON THE CUSP OF QUALITY TEACHING AND LEARNING OF ENGLISH IN RURAL SCHOOLS IN SOUTH AFRICA MUCHATIVUGWA LIBERTY HOVE

Abstract Teaching English as a first additional Language (EFAL) and English as a second language (ESL) in rural schools in South Africa has produced appalling results, either due to teacher under-preparedness, lack of motivation to learn the language on the part of the teachers and learners, or because of the lack of appropriate resources emanating from the ecological dimensions of the school. As a result of these mitigating factors, pass marks for EFAL or ESL have been tampered with by the examining board in South Africa, Umalusi, (Krugel & Fourie, 2014) in order to give a semblance of success in the teaching of English (Gee, 1994; Jansen, 2010; Johnson & Kress, 2003). In order to address the paucity in the quality of both the English language teaching and the English learning and teaching materials in South Africa, this study was framed by a three-year longitudinal qualitative paradigm in order to examine three critical issues: theoretical moorings of teacher preparedness, creativity and resourcefulness, and the constructs that have to be taught towards improving quality teaching and learning in rural and often impoverished schools in South Africa (Dornyei, 1998; Mbelani, 2008; Schmuck, 2000). This chapter presents evidence from a three-year longitudinal study and reports that cooperative syllabus design at the secondary school stage is a productive undertaking, that language learning strategies are developed in situ and appropriated by the learners, especially when teachers demonstrate both effective language proficiency and promote multiliteracies across the curriculum (Balfour, 2014; Fakeye, 2014; Janks, 2010). The chapter also recommends both content and methodological constructs perceived as

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critical for quality teaching and learning of EFAL and ESL in a multilingual context.

Introduction A three year longitudinal and qualitative study was undertaken at a secondary school research site to collaboratively design, implement and evaluate a grade-appropriate English language syllabus that would enhance reading and writing competencies in learners who had previously attended disadvantaged rural schools. These learners were financially and materially sponsored by a Telkom Foundation Bursary in South Africa under a corporate social responsibility initiative. From an in-depth focus group interview at the onset of this research, one of the research participants stated the following: “All I need is to go to a school where teachers are fun and supportive, to [learn] and play with friends and come home to a safe place and a happy mom. I will then become anything in life-anything I like.” (Babalwa, My emphasis)

This chapter reports on the results of this three-year longitudinal study of co-operative syllabus design at the secondary school stage; it also reports on the language learning strategies that were developed and appropriated by the learners, and the aspects that are considered critical for quality teaching and learning of English as a First Additional Language (EFAL) at the critical exit grade level, that is Grade 12, in South Africa. It taps significantly on the contributions of three out of the fifty-one research participants in this study, and one whose remarks are embedded in the vignette at the start of this chapter. For the research participant called Babalwa (not her real name), the school environment, particularly the teachers, should be ‘fun and supportive,’ home should be a ‘safe’ place, and then she could be ‘anything in life.’ In order to unpack nuances of such expressions from three research participants, it is necessary to reminisce over the three-year long journey that started with the enrolment of learners from rural and disadvantaged schools at an institution that had all the resources: trained and qualified teachers, contemporary electronic and reading materials, and, most importantly, a supportive and encouraging teaching team.

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Aims and Objectives of the Study At the onset of the research study, the aim was to establish and describe reading and writing abilities of an initial 20 students, enrolled at a private school in 2008 and then 31 other participants who enrolled at the same school in 2009. After establishing their competencies, the second aim was to develop, collaboratively, a syllabus for English that would qualitatively enhance their reading and writing competencies so that they could pass an internationally benchmarked examination, the Cambridge International Examination in English. This aim was framed by an understanding that students’ abilities to read, interpret, analyse and evaluate issues are firmly rooted in the language classroom because we use words to name the world and negotiate presence in the now-ness of the language curriculum. In order to realise these aims, it was necessary to identify, classify and describe the learners’ multi-languaging practices, their errors, and from these offer directions to improve both reading and writing competencies. These were learners weaned from a local South African outcomes-based curriculum. They were multilingual, and while performing challenging language tasks, they demonstrated reading literacies that reflected multilingual backgrounds (in pitch, pace, tone, comprehension, and lexical choices). Their language skills marked salient features such as ethnicity, language (in)competence levels and social class (Blommaert, 2010; Mesthrie, 2000). As a result, porous intersections among a range of discursive features in the target language, English, needed to be defined and harnessed for the development of multiliteracies. The results reported in this chapter are part of a larger study that investigated both sociolinguistic and affective variables that enhance reading and writing success where English and some South African languages interface recognisably through code-switching instances, and more immediately in direct translation equivalence from one language to another.

Theoretical Moorings of the Study One of the challenges that this study faced related to the interdependence between the learners’ language and that of the teacher (the latter’s language, theoretically, is perceived as ‘standard’ and ‘legitimate’). In many ways, learners and teachers are “engaged in the task of forming and reforming their identities in the classroom encounters and conversations” as Kumaravadivelu (2008, p. 12) observes. Closely linked to ‘standard’ and ‘legitimate’ are the sociolinguistic conceptual categories of ‘marked’ and

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‘unmarked’ versions of language, be it in reading or in writing. There were several critiques of the dominance of transmissive, teacher-centred, rotebased teaching and learning practices that pointed to inadequacies in such approaches (Delpit, 2006; Freire, 1976; Gee, 1990). There were also several anecdotal suggestions that rural learners in South Africa failed EFAL as a result of their teachers being under-qualified and therefore using disempowering strategies such as rote-learning (Jansen, 2009; Ramphele, 2012). It has been argued that teachers generally perceived rural learners as ‘incapable’ and ‘disinterested.’ Such perceptions and preconceptions invariably taint the teachers’ attitudes towards their learners in a negative way. Rural and poor schools in South Africa are, generally, unable to attract and retain capable and experienced teachers because of their ecologies, the remote locations, and the lack of grade-appropriate reading materials (Alexander, 2003; Department of Education, 2008; Howie, Venter, van Staaden, & Zimmerman, 2006; Permagiani, 2009). Preparing and deploying teachers for the blistering reality and diversity of poor rural schools calls on the education authorities to dispel the myths about the ‘rural outposts’ and instead, inculcate the positive worthiness of investing teaching-learning time and developing effective teaching methodologies. In a nutshell, as a teacher stands in front of the classroom, and looks at the faces of students, each one of the faces represents a personality, a family, a history, and cultural influences that have shaped that individual (Hove, 2011; Ramphele, 2012). A framework for the development of cognitive academic language skills was designed in situ in order to address the myriad challenges that a language teacher experiences in impoverished schools. The framework emerged from the conviction that multiple literacies become owned by the learners through exposure to multiple relevant reading materials that connect with other experiences. Through speech, writing, action, gesture, image and space, there was a conviction that these could be deployed in rural classrooms to create multi-layered communication ensembles. Taken from Bourdieu (1991), there was an imperative to recognise that it is not enough to learn a new language; we also have to learn new ways of blending identities in a new habitus. The concepts considered crucial for successful preparation and teaching, and later, the model as a framework are presented in this chapter. First, there is a need to identify and describe the specific challenges learners face: is it structuring answers to specific questions, understanding the gist of the question or is the problem at the level of basic decoding skills? Having identified the nature of the problem, the teacher needs to

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assess the impact of the problem(s) on the educational participation of the learner, and more specifically, the impact of the problem(s) on “the creative tensions that characterise” specific language production tasks (Kumaravadivelu, 2008, p. 12). Secondly, the teacher needs to analyse the school’s resources and establish the capacity of these resources to address the needs of the learner(s). For instance, slow reading could be scaffolded by dramatised reading aloud and exposure to extensive reading materials such as short stories and other literary genres. Vocabulary challenges could be addressed through word lists and clauses on their meanings, including antonyms and synonyms. Writing challenges could be addressed through positive feedback, extensive practice and learning from peer models in the same school (Hove, 2011; Krugel & Fourie, 2014). Finally, when these preliminary facts have been established, the language problem needs to be refined, and at times, broken into segments that are ‘teachable’ and can be appropriated by the learner(s). In the refinement of each specific language problem that inhibits learning and concept acquisition and mastery, information about the learners increases, the syllabus is examined for specific learning outcomes in more detail in specific contexts and the exit summative assessment issues are explicitly addressed. Consequently, the educator emerges more prepared to develop and implement specific lesson outlines that address the needs of the learner(s). In this task of problem identification and description, the teacher engages with issues relating to how the learners, as participants in the learning process, become “subjectivities that shape classroom climate” (Kumaravadivelu, 2008, p. 13).

Critical Methodological Issues in the Research Process If teachers’ under-qualification and ineffective instructional methods were cited anecdotally as the major contributors to learner underachievement and failure in the rural areas in South Africa, then three critical issues had to be re-examined in order to improve the quality of teaching EFAL in those areas. These three are discussed in the following sections.

Theoretical Grounding This variable was considered relevant for the full preparation of the teacher since it implied also high quality knowledge of content and appropriate methodologies. Self-awareness and positioning relative to the

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learners were perceived as essential for the teacher as a model. Specifically for the rural schools, aspects such as multi-modal literacies, the plurivocality of the learners themselves, the manifestation of codeswitching and code-mixing in the practical dynamics of the classroom needed to be addressed from informed theoretical orientations and these would then be carefully marshalled for the classroom realities in impoverished schools. In order to ascertain this profiling, the teachers who taught the learners in their previous schools were asked, in structured interviews, to state what philosophical and discipline-specific foundations they had in English language pedagogy, the approaches they used to teach the language and the feedback that they provided to their learners.

English Teaching Pedagogies Under this variable, the teacher would apply knowledge to each distinctive classroom. Under the rubric of pedagogies of teaching English, it is essential to dispel such ‘myths’ as ‘native-like competence’ and ‘native speaker target’ because they are, quintissentially, myths. In a time of expanding globalisation and taking cognisance of the varieties of English (Kachru, 1987) it is helpful to note that multilingualism has gained credible currency. Kumaravadivelu (2008) argues that such targets in a second language setting only help to propagate the westcentric view that British or American English are normative and should be the ultimate exemplars of competence in EFAL/ESL environments such as the South African rural schools. Kumaravadivhelu (2008) further argues that cultural awareness has become so much enmeshed with practices and processes of EFAL/ESL teaching and learning to the extent that what gets learnt in a context such as the South African classrooms is English that is ineluctably tied to the South African experiences and realities, as opposed to English or American culture per se. A more problematic concern is the language expertise of the teachers, where expertise is indicative of the level of command that the teacher is able to marshal for the rural classroom encounters. Expertise, according to Rampton (1990) and Phillipson (1996) is learned; it is relative and partial. In order to achieve expertise, one goes through processes of certification in which the teacher and the learner are judged against standards set by other people. The ability of the teacher and the learner to exercise command over the morphological, syntactic, phonetic and semantic features of English is indispensable for certification; it also ensures mutual intelligibility with other speakers from different locations as much as it

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ensures accrual of the much needed linguistic capital that characterises a hierarchized variety of English (Bourdieu, 1991; Siziba, 2013).

The Ecology of the Rural Schools In each school and classroom, the teacher is not a finished ‘product’ but rather a self-directed, independent and life-long learner, always striving to understand their individual learners and the specific challenges that they face (Gee, 1990). This conceptualisation changes the terms of conversation, and equally, the terms of the conduct of EFAL/ESL knowledge production in the sense that it is premised on the multicultural and multicompetence realities that permeate classroom input and interactions. Of special significance in impoverished schools in South Africa is the fact that the learners bring in their first languages as resources. From a methodological perspective, an amenities checklist was used to establish the resourcedness of each of the schools at which students involved in this study had been previously enrolled before they were sponsored to enrol at the private school. The data gathered is presented in the following section.

Results Morphological and Syntactic Peculiarities Table 10-1 presents ten categories of ‘marked’ morpho-syntactical peculiarities that were identified in the reading and writing patterns of the first group of 20 students involved in this research study (the 2008 cohort). The results confirm the findings of Gough (1996) and Mesthrie (2003).

On the Cusp of Quality Teaching and Learning of English

Table 10-1: Morphological and syntactic deviations at the onset of the English language course. Observed and recurrent morphosyntactic feature Extensive use of resumptive pronouns Gender conflation in pronouns

Extension of the progressive tense Simplification of tense New prepositional verb forms Structures of comparison Generalisation of the participle ‘being’ Retention of question order in indirect questions ‘Can be able to’ as a modal verb phrase Absence of 3rd singular ending

Example

My mathematics lessons, they are very challenging. My mother she is a very strict mom when it comes to night time. His husband is not together with her this days. When his husband came home she was not there any more. After the elections and the new government apartheid is still existing in the way housing is being distributed. When I start to work I wish I will get money to buy my mother a house. The preacher preached about Babel and also explained about how we are now having many languages. Among the school children Babalwa is beautiful than them. When Todani left he was being called by the father. Boipelo had come to the party and she left being thirsty without a drink. The teacher asked Lufuno why did he go to the corner store late. If no one volunteers I can be able to go to report this case. The new school I am enrolled at offer more education from my previous one. Passing English is my motive and everything depend on this. The survival of my pet depend on the money to buy it food.

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The Material and Staffing Realities of the Rural Schools Three schools in Limpopo province and another three in the Northern Cape Province at which the study participants had been previously enrolled were randomly selected and visited during the course of this study in order to establish the schools’ teaching/learning material and staffing resourcedness. Three other schools in the North-West Province were also purposively sampled and observed in order to confirm the pervasiveness of specific attributes in the ecology of rural schools so that even though this study was a specifically longitudinal case study, some general observations could be made about ubiquitous features discerned about these particular rural schools. Table 10-2 below shows the inadequate distribution of resources in the three provinces: many learners in shared and cramped classrooms and often without adequate textbooks. The typical classroom had fifty learners or more.

3 4 1 3 0 2 2 2 2

1 2 0 2 2 0 1 0 1

Availability of Textbooks

3 6 4 7 8 4 6 6 7

Classrooms

350 480 211 615 551 180 373 397 618

Degree and Certificate

Degree Only

Limpopo 1 Limpopo 2 Limpopo 2 Northern Cape 1 Northern Cape 2 Northern Cape 3 North-West 1 North-West 2 North-West 3

Certificate

School

Student Enrolment

Table 10-2: Distribution of resources in impoverished rural schools in three selected provinces.

7 12* 5 12 10 6 9 8* 10

Fair Inadequate Inadequate Inadequate Fair Shared Shared Inadequate Fair

Note. * = Mobile Classrooms; Certificate = a teaching certificate from a teacher training college, without a degree; Degree and Certificate = a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE).

On average, the teacher-pupil ratio was 1:51. Classroom observations revealed that these classrooms were overcrowded, and where chairs and desks were available, these were partly broken or overused. At school 1 in Limpopo for instance, there were seven teachers who were thinly spread

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out to teach at least two subjects each (i.e., multi-subject teaching, which is also multi-grade practice). A similar distribution was observed at NorthWest Schools 2 and 3. In school 1 and 2 in Limpopo, the English language teachers struggled with articulating instructions in grammatically correct sentences, let alone reading texts at expected proficiency levels. Questioning techniques were weak and asked students to recall basic content without probing and asking for elaboration, evaluation and synthesis. Of the nine selected schools, only three indicated they had a ‘fair’ number of textbooks for their learners while four stated that their EFAL/ESL textbooks were ‘inadequate.’ The six schools in Limpopo and Northern Cape were also the feeder schools from which the fifty-one students were sponsored to attend the well-resourced secondary school in this study and all indicated that textbooks were either ‘inadequate’ or ‘shared.’ Often the reading material was photocopied and not original, a factor which the students described as dispiriting since such material was considered “second rate” to “genuine, original texts” (Post-interview respondent’s observation). The majority of the teachers indicated they had certificates in education, a minority held subject-specific degrees and the small number of certified graduate teachers were largely in administrative positions. These observations tentatively suggest that the quality of the teachers in the rural schools sampled for this study was poor and the teachers were generally under-prepared for teaching English language tasks to the learners under their charge.

English Language Teaching Pedagogies The current curriculum statements in South African EFAL (including other subjects) assess competence in reading and writing (National Curriculum Statements (NCS), 2009; Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS), 2012). One perceives a hiatus between the curriculum materials and the curriculum assessment objectives: if the assessment processes are in reading and writing, then an overload of communicative approaches to the teaching and learning of English (CLT) presents an intractable problem. Kumaravadivelu (2008) and Permagiani (2010) argue that curriculum instructional materials need to relate to the assessment objectives at the end of the teaching and learning period. Kumaravadivelu (2008, p. 20) in particular, warns that “textbooks have a direct bearing on teaching methods because it is through them that a particular method is propagated and preserved.” He advises therefore, that “textbooks should reflect the lived experiences learners and teachers bring to the classroom...

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because their experiences are shaped by [the] social, cultural, economic and political environment” (Kumaravadivelu, 2008, p. 20). A preliminary analysis of the Higher Grade EFAL exam papers was undertaken by the researcher in order to assess the type of questions set for examinations at this grade level. Another reason for this preliminary analysis was to establish the level of question difficulty (Hove, 2011), hence the cognitive demands that a typical exam paper exerted on the learners. Such an analysis facilitated a comparative level of engagement with what the exam paper demanded and the strategic skills that the learners had to develop in order to deal with typical examination questions at the Matriculation exit examination level. Bowles and Gintis (1976, p. 283), in an American context, have argued that “examinations, rather than the development of applicable, self-reliance knowledge, determine the worth of knowledge.” They imply, in this observation, that examinations exert an inexorable influence on what counts as knowledge and conclude that examinations subsequently have a ‘negative wash back’ since they determine what is taught in the classrooms. Rubin (2011, p. 4) echoes a similar observation when he states that the “No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has caused more harm than good…led to a narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test.” Memorisation and rote knowledge for such curricular foci as the exit examination in South Africa continue to be the means by which both teachers and learners construe success, especially in the rural schools.

Developing Teaching and Learning Materials Over several language learning topics, the South African curriculum expects learners to be able to quote correctly, paraphrase, extrapolate evidence, explain the meanings of words as they are used in context, describe and express the tone of a specific statement, to use inverted commas correctly and ultimately to use quotations as evidence of support for an opinion (NCS, 2009, p. 3; CAPS, 2012, p. 6). Based on these anticipated skills, Red Indian Heritage (see Appendix 10-A) was selected as the material for teaching these skills to the students in the study. The reading text was extracted from Edwards (1981). This was reading material that was endowed with apt vocabulary and a source from which several graded comprehension questions could be developed by the teacher. The text is a long and militant speech by a marginalised speaker, ‘a red man’, and the speech patterns of the Chief could be related to the speech patterns in a rural set-up where subtle wit, rhetorical devices and repetition are in abundance. Such a selection made the text relevant and

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‘familiar’ to the learners in the rural schools in as much as it added to the existing reading material already in school textbooks but that did not specifically focus on the elements selected for the planned series of lessons. In thinking about the meanings of teaching while actually delivering the lessons, the researcher “pursued actively the possibility that existing practices and methodologies could effectively be challenged though other self-generated alternatives” (Killen, 2007, p. 97). The goal in the learning units in this study were designed to empower the learners to analyse speeches, learn the elements that shape an effective speech and ultimately develop critical language awareness through a deliberate reflection upon their own successful learning strategies (Koshy, 2005, p. 114). Such a pursuit approximated the “design of context-sensitive supplementary material” as advocated by Kumaravadivelu (2008, p. 21). The unit below was developed collaboratively with the learners, taking into cognisance some of the ‘marked’ expressions they had used in reading and writing as presented above in Table 10-1. It addressed specific instances where literacy skills would be addressed in the language curriculum.

Teaching Syllabus Unit on Reading and Writing Skills based on Red Indian Heritage The syllabus unit presented here aims to promote the value of effective language command and use for personal development. With regards to developing reading abilities and skills, it is envisaged that such skills are useful for everyday life such as reading and presenting speeches, including appropriate techniques for intensive and extensive reading such as skimming and scanning, and motivating pupils to develop a lifelong reading habit for enjoyment and knowledge. This syllabus unit, developed to teach the speech by Chief Seattle (see Appendix 10-A), provided the opportunity for students to obtain sufficient understanding and knowledge of the English language in order to become effective users of English and to communicate effectively in both spoken and written English in different situations and registers. There is a focus on the value of effective language command, clarity, precision, accuracy and stylistic sophistication. The syllabus unit is explicit on the requisite skills. Writing and comprehension skills are also explicitly defined in the same syllabus unit: writing skills that must ensure that candidates write a continuous narrative, an argument and a piece of descriptive or informative writing such as that of a process, a character, a scene or of an event. The candidates were expected to write in a style and register

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appropriate to the subject matter, displaying a range of vocabulary and idiom appropriate to that subject matter; make general points and exemplify them. In addition, candidates were expected to organize their work satisfactorily into paragraphs and show a sense of cohesion and coherence within paragraphs; show an awareness of discourse markers that include ‘however’, ‘moreover’, ‘on the other hand’, ‘first’, ‘thus’. Ultimately, such skills were expected to be evident in the students’ capacity to write with grammatical accuracy, spell accurately and punctuate their work correctly. In particular, in punctuation, they were expected to mark sentence boundaries and direct speech. This skills approach to English comprehension and communication provided comprehension materials where students read and responded appropriately to an authentic text, i.e., Chief Seattle’s speech. These comprehension skills are realised when students are able to follow the sequence of events in a text and recognise how language is used. This is assessed through how students follow the development of an argument; recognise main propositions and exemplifying or qualifying details; identify the writer’s attitude(s) towards a subject; understand explicitly stated information; and infer information that is indirectly stated. Candidates summarise aspects of the text relevant to answering specific questions in their own words and work out meanings of words and phrases as they are used in specific contexts rather than discrete vocabulary items. Beyond the clarity of skills and competencies anticipated, the syllabus created for this study explicitly states that communicative competence does not excise rules of writing accurate sentences, spelling, maintaining cohesion and coherence in texts. The elements to be taught in this unit are shown in Table 10-3 below.

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Table 10-3: Language syllabus unit developed to teach aspects of speeches. Vocabulary choice; punctuation range and variation; varied sentence types and structures; embedded clauses; fronted clauses; abstract nouns; adverbials; structural, linguistic and rhetorical features of texts; presentational strategies of texts; analysis of text using detailed textual evidence; issues of text, audience and purpose; shades of meaning, especially focusing on the connotations of words; formality; character, setting, themes, viewpoint; narrative tone and quality. Repetition as delivery technique and stylistic features; the use of transitional devices in speech; 1st person plural (inclusive ‘we’ versus ‘you’ – ‘Self’ and ‘Othering’ practices); sentence types (short, complex, compound); loaded versus factual statements; elaboration and purpose. Imagery: Context of texts – Speeches in

Tone and register

x Community x School x Motivational x Propaganda x Conviction x Persuasion x Logic x Coherence (of argument)

After reading, rehearsing, explaining and assessing Chief Seattle’s speech (Appendix 10-A), the students engaged in constructive discussions and sought clarification at various levels. The reading and writing skills unit, in particular its constituent parts, emerged as this refined document after a number of questions were posed by the various students over two school terms in 2009. Their questions have been grouped together, for the sake of brevity, in the order in which they were asked over the learning period and are shown in Table 10-4.

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Table 10-4: Students’ questions that helped shape and refine the unit. After reading Chief Seattle’s speech, BB asked: Excuse me Sir, is it possible for us to design a set of features that characterise this speech, and any other speech for example? After observing the short sentences, and especially the rhetorical questions in Chief Seattle’s speech, CS asked: Why are there a lot of short sentences in the Chief’s speech? Is it because he is a savage as he calls himself? After going through some of the embedded comparisons in the Chief’s speech, HM asked: I see many references to family – brother, children, father. I also see references to the land features: river, stream, flowers, earth. Please tell me why the Chief uses these. In a discussion on characterisation and the importance of difference in identity matrices, JM asked: Is Chief Seattle really a savage? Why does he appear to be happy when he uses this term to describe himself? There appears to be a number of issues related to critical pedagogy that is packaged in the students’ questions. In interrogating Chief Seattle’s speech, the students sought clarity on the features of an articulate and persuasive speech. These issues of ‘characteristic features of speeches’ extended to issues of understanding the genre of speech and delivery. Equally, the question that sought reasons for the short sentences was laden with astute observations in the Chief’s speech: the shorter the sentences, the more evocative these were. The subject was immediate; the audience was kept attentive through this construction. In a nutshell, the questions asked by the research participants were not indicative of how much the learners misunderstood or misread the text; rather, they suggest various perspectives and understandings that resonate in their problematisation of Chief Seattle’s speech. In 2009, by the end of the series of lessons on this speech by Chief Seattle, the following response was provided by one of the students, a participant in the case study. It was a response to a stimulus question that asked the students to select words that communicated specific effects (see Table 10-5).

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Table 10-5: A student’s response to the writing prompt. Writing Prompt: By selecting words and phrases from Chief Seattle’s speech, examine how the writer creates specific effects throughout this speech. Student Response: In this gutsy refusal of the Great Chief Washington’s offer to pay a paltry $150,000 Chief Seattle employs cynicism and irony to express his discontent at the idea of selling his land. The rhetorical question, ‘How can you buy or sell the sky?’ sets the tone to his impassioned speech. Later, in a terse statement, he reiterates that ‘the idea [of selling the land] is strange to us.’ The plural referent, ‘us’, engages not only himself but the ‘savage community’ on whose behalf he speaks. As natives, Seattle and his people have established a familial bond with their land – even the sky – to the extent that Seattle endlessly refers to them as ‘brothers’, ‘sisters’ and ‘ancestors.’ Such an umbilical connection to the land, the rivers, the animals, the veldt and the sky cannot be broken by the monetary offer of the great chief in Washington. Here again, sarcasm is at the level of sharp invective. Seattle uses simple language and a naturalistic idiom so that all he says can never be misconstrued. His statements avoid ambiguity. This apparent simplicity and directness shatters the pretentious offer of Washington. Seattle’s metaphors and idioms are extracted from the speech repertoire of his people – ‘our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man.’ In the same breath, Seattle protects and guards this serene, interconnected peacefulness against the ‘ravenous appetite’ that characterises the white people. Another feature of this speech is its circularity – a feature that harnesses repetition for emphasis – as evident in ‘every’ (paragraph 3), ‘we’ (paragraph 7), and ‘I am’ (paragraph 13). Each paragraph ends in a summative statement expressing the Red Indian’s perspective on the universe, such as ‘All things are connected.’ Ultimately, rhetorical questions and short, sarcastic explosions work together to heighten Seattle’s ire at the preposterous and ridiculous offer to buy the invaluable land of this ‘savage people.’

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After the series of lessons developed around this speech, learners participated in searching for similar texts, specifically speeches. They were directed towards Martin Luther King’s speech, I Have a Dream and also Thabo Mbeki’s canonised one, I am an African. Two curious students went as far as retrieving Barack Obama’s inaugural speech while one other one located Winston Churchill’s audacious mobilisation speech, If We Must Die, including the memorable poem of Langston Hughes which is the eponymous title. In all, both the researcher and the students were actively collating resource materials for the development of reading and writing skills that focused on a specific genre. For lack of space, this collaborative design and selection of materials cannot be fully elaborated here and suffice to say it was an enriching experience for both the researcher and the students.

Recommendations Figure 10-1 below (Hove, 2011, p. 210) sumarises the research stages and tasks undertaken from 2008-2011. In sum, it is a proposed model for the development of an efficient syllabus that responds to the identified needs of the learners. It taps on the competencies that multilingual learners bring into the classrooms. Further, through a comparative and contrastive analysis of the languages in contact, especially in the South African context where the study was undertaken, it allows both learners and teachers to negotiate trajectories for enhanced reading skills at the cognitive academic level, and writing skills, specifically at the level of lexical choices and sentence construction skills that include co-ordination, subordination and the generation of complex structures that convey ideas with both clarity and fidelity to the content and subject.

O On the Cusp of Quality Teachiing and Learninng of English

Figure 10-1:: Conceptualissing effective syllabus deveelopment for EFAL (Source: Hovve, 2011, p. 210).

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Conclusion This chapter presented a synopsis of the strategies that were used to enhance the quality of teaching and learning of EFAL\ESL in South Africa and offered an example of a teaching and learning unit that was developed in situ. The critical energy in this research study lay in a pedagogical choice that valued the multilingual repertoires of the learners. The other energy was directed at generating contextually relevant material that the students could experientially relate to and consequently enhance their reading, comprehension and evaluative skills. As already reported, the students who participated in this study were initially pigeon-holed into ‘deficit outsiders.’ They were, however, through their questioning, asserting their academic visibility and sharing their thoughts that fed into conversations about syllabus design, syllabus relevance, context and stylistic analyses. In documenting their questions and responses, this chapter has demonstrated how learners from impoverished South African schools could become actively engaged in interrogating texts relevant and relative to their encounters and experiences, and consequently ride on the cusp of quality learning.

References Alexander, N. (2005). Linguistic rights, language planning and democracy in post-apartheid South Africa. In S. Baker (Ed.), Language policy: Lessons from global models (pp. 66-81). Monterey: Monterey Institute of International Studies. Balfour, R. (2014). English as a language of reconciliation: Price and pride. Keynote Address to BEd English Education 4th year students, North-West University, 17th October 2013. Retrieved from: www.nwu.ac.za/webfm_send/87975 Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America. New York: Basic Books. Delpit, L. (2000). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: New Press. Department of Education. (2008). English home language assessment and rubric for writing. December examinations, 2008. Retrieved from: www.education.gov.za/LinkClick.aspx?file Doornyei, Z. (1996). On the teachability of communication strategies. TESOL Quarterly, 29(1), 55-85.

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Edwards, D. J. (1981). Comprehension skills in English. Juta: Grahamstown. Fakeye, D. O. (2014). English language proficiency as a predictor of academic achievement among EFL students. Journal of Education and Practice, 5(9), 38-41. Gee, J. P. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideologies in discourse. London: Falmer Press. Hove, M. L. (2011). Academic skills and linguistic power: Negotiating a syllabus for the acquisition of multifaceted literacies in English. Doctoral thesis, North-West University, South Africa. Howie, S. J., Venter, E., van Staaden, S., & Zimmerman, L. (2006). Progress in international reading literacy study (PIRLS). Centre for evaluation and literacy. Pretoria: University of Pretoria. Janks, H. 2010. Literacy and power. London: Routeledge Jansen, J. (2010). We need to talk. Cape Town: Penguin. Killen, R. (2007). Effective teaching strategies: Lessons from research and practice. Brisbane: McMillan. Koshy, V. (2005). Action research for improving practice. London: Paul Chapman. Krugel, R., & Fourie, E. (2014). Concerns for the language skills of South African learners and their teachers. International Journal of Educational Sciences, (7)1, 219-228. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2008). Individual identity, cultural globalisation, and teaching English as an international language: The case for an epistemic break. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003). Critical language pedagogy: A postmethod perspective on English language education. World Englishes, 22(4), 539-550. Mesthrie, R., Swan, J, Deumert, A., & Leap, W. L. (2000). Introducing sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Permagiani, A. (2009). The power of English and academic literacy: Students’ perceptions and theoretical, political and pedagogic implications. A case study at University of KwaZulu-Natal. Doctoral thesis, City University of New York, USA. Ramphele, M. (2012). Conversations with my sons and daughters. Cape Town: Penguin. Siziba, G. (2013). Language and identity negotiations: An analysis of the experiences of Zimbabwean immigrants in Johannesburg, South Africa. Journal of African Cultural Studies, (26)2, 173-188. doi: 10.1080/13696815.2013.860517

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Appendix 10-A: Reading text for comprehension-based language assessment tasks. Red Indian Heritage (Chief Seattle’s speech) How can we buy or sell the sky? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man. The white man’s dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle; these are our brothers, the rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man – all belong to the same family. So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us. The Great Chief sends word he will reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably to ourselves. He will be our father and we will be his children. So we will consider your offer to buy our land. But it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us. The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you the land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of the people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father. The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember and teach your children that the rivers are our brothers and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father’s graves behind and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children, and he does not care. His father’s grave and his children’s birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the

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sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert. I do not know. Our ways are different from your ways. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand. There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect’s wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whirlpool or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night? I am a red man and do not understand. The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond and the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a mid-day rain, or scented with the pinion pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench. But if we sell you our land, you must remember the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go and taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow’s flowers. So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept, I will make one condition: the white man must treat the beasts of the land as his brothers. I am a savage and I do not understand the other way. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive. What is a man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts soon happens to man. All things are connected. You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the leaves of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

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This we know: the earth does not belong to man: man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood that unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Even the white man, whose God walks and talks to him as a friend to a friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see. One thing we know which the white man may one day discover – our God is the same God. You may think now you own him as you wish to own the land; but you cannot. He is the God of man and his compassion is equal for the red man and the white. The earth is precious to him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. The whites too shall pass: perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. But in your perishing you will shine brightly fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and the red man. That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. The end of living and the beginning of survival.

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Read the passage carefully, listening as much as you can to the rise and fall of the Chief’s voice, his tone and the devices he uses, and then answer the following questions:

1

2

Question Quote the words which: a) Indicate the Indians’ puzzlement over the ways of the white man’ b) Show the Indians’ disapproval of the white man’s treatment of the land’ c) Show the importance to the Indians of their ancestors’ graves. You may be asked the author’s ideas without using his words. In your own words: a) How does the Indian see the idea of selling and buying land? b) What condition does the Chief set upon selling his land? c) How does the Indian regard all living things?

Mark 2 2 2

3 3 3

Sometimes a writer is misquoted in the following ways: a) It may be claimed that he said or meant more than he actually did say or mean, or b) His words, taken out of the context of the rest of the passage, may be made to sound foolish or to take on a different meaning from that which he intended. 3

4

Explain how each of the following quotes or comments is misleading: a) The Indian is mainly interested in little things like ‘every shining pine needle’ and ‘humming insect.’ b) The Indian was silly enough to think a train was a ‘smoking iron horse.’ c) The Indian’s hearing was acute enough to hear sounds such as ‘the unfurling of leaves in Spring.’ When choosing how much of a passage to quote, be sure that you do not distort what the writer said. Quote from the extract evidence for each of the following:

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a)

That a suggestion had been made in Washington to create Indian reserves. b) That the Indians do not understand the white man’s killing of animals just for pleasure. c) That the Indians believe God had a purpose in sending the white man to take over their land.

5

6

Often, leaving out a word or two changes the meaning of a sentence quite crucially. Which of the following is misquoted? a) ‘This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not water but the blood of our ancestors.’ b) ‘The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last breath.’ c) ‘The whites too shall pass: perhaps no sooner than all the other tribes.’ Sometimes the tone of a sentence contains sarcasm or may be suggesting subtly something quite different from the words. Read each of the sentences below and comment on what the Chief intended his listener to understand. a) ‘He will be our father and we will be his children.’ b) ‘But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand.’ c) ‘We may be brothers after all. We shall see.’ Note: For a very long quotation, give the first few words, then indicate the middle section by a row of three dots and write the last few words to end the quotation. Use inverted commas to mark the quotation. Ensure the quotation communicates fully the essence of the speaker or writer. Total Marks

2 2 2

2

2 2

3 3 3

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Writing Tasks (Assess for: planning, content, delivery, flow, conclusion, stylistic strategies) Compose a speech using the style and delivery techniques observed and discussed in ‘Chief Seattle’s Speech.’ Choose one of your own from the following: x This house believes that gay couples should be allowed to adopt children. x Rap and Kwaito are legitimate art forms. x Affluent nations should accept more refugees. x Past and future soccer legends. x Democracy fails both the boy and girl child in South Africa. x This house would cancel third world debt. x South African men are ‘runaways’ and hardly ever there for the child. x Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter are the new, destructive evils of our times.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN GENERAL ENGLISH AND ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES AT A JAPANESE MEDICAL UNIVERSITY MINAKO NAKAYASU

Abstract Although it is considered that English curricula engender a continuum from general to specific purposes, there is, in fact, a large gap between English for General Purposes (EGP) and English for Medical Purposes (EMP) at medical universities in Japan. The aim of this chapter is to report on the use of the scientific journal Nature in order to bridge the gap between EGP and EMP at Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, and to give pedagogical and curricular suggestions for the teaching of English at universities of medicine. In this study, students at a first-year English course were taught using selected articles from the journal Nature. The general objective of the course was to enhance students’ ability to communicate in English and foster interest in scientific topics. In pairs or small groups, the students read the text, conducted research, and presented their results in English using handouts and/or computer slides. The class listened to the presentations, gave comments, and discussed with the presenters in English. The students succeeded in enhancing their reading skills, building their presentation skills, and broadening their scientific knowledge. Pair/group work provided them an effective means for cooperative learning. This chapter highlights and suggests that bridging the gap between EGP and EMP using the journal Nature is beneficial to medical students learning English in Japan.

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Introduction It is well known that English for Specific Purposes (ESP), which includes English for Medical Purposes (EMP), is different from English for General Purposes (EGP), in that ESP is designed to meet the needs of specific learners and to deal with topics in a specific field (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). Since English curricula are considered to exhibit a continuum from general to specific (Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998), a smooth transition from EGP to ESP is crucial, particularly in a setting where both EGP and ESP are called for. Under the current educational system in Japan, medical students take both liberal arts and medical specialist courses in a single curriculum offered at medical universities. The English courses they take cover both EGP and EMP, but they never fill the large gap between the two. Need exists to address the following research questions: What kind of gap is there between EGP and EMP at Japanese medical universities? In what ways (pedagogical and curricular) can this gap be filled in the English courses offered? The purpose of this chapter is to report on the use of the scientific journal Nature as a means to bridge the gap between EGP and EMP at Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, in Japan, and to give pedagogical and curricular suggestions for the teaching and learning of English at universities of medicine in Japan and elsewhere.

Background As pointed out in the introduction, there is a large gap between EGP and EMP in the curriculum of medical universities in Japan, where English courses by necessity cover both EGP and EMP. In fact, English educators there have paid little attention to this gap (Nakayasu, Sugimura & Endo, 2009). First of all, there do not appear to be methods and materials geared specifically to fill this gap. EMP materials, by their nature, are aimed at students who already have a certain amount of medical knowledge. In addition to EMP methods and materials used worldwide, the Japan Society for Medical English Education has been playing a central role in developing EMP methods and publishing EMP textbooks exclusively for Japanese students. As for EGP materials and methods, there is a wide variety of choices. However, there are few methods or materials aiming at a smooth transition from EGP to EMP for students who do not have a systematic medical knowledge yet. Nakayasu, Sugimura and Endo (2009) made one of the very few attempts to teach English to such students, using

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Molecular Biology of the Cell (Alberts, Johnson, Lewis, Raff, Roberts, & Walter, 2008), which is a well-established textbook of basic medicine. Though this attempt was relatively successful, it turned out that the students’ ability of English did not improve as expected, due to the frequent employment of their native language, Japanese, for carrying out the textbook tasks. Second, the English curriculum is not closely coordinated with the structure of other courses in the overall curriculum at medical universities in Japan, which may also be a cause of the large gap between EGP and EMP. The students start from liberal art courses such as humanities, social sciences and natural sciences (e.g., chemistry, biology, and physics). Next come basic medicine courses such as anatomy, biochemistry and molecular medicine. Then they proceed to clinical medicine courses such as internal medicine and surgery and then to clinical clerkship. This means that the 1st-year students do not take any specialist medical courses, neither basic nor clinical medicine. Starting medical English, particularly fully-fledged English for clinical medicine, from Year 1 will not facilitate effective learning with sufficient understanding of the contents. It would, therefore, be meaningful for English courses to coordinate well vertically and horizontally with other liberal arts and medical courses. The 1st year English course is an opportunity to elevate students’ general English proficiency and get them prepared for EMP courses, to interest them in medical topics and motivate them into studying specialist medical courses. The following sections report the details of an attempt to bridge the large gap between EGP and EMP using the scientific journal Nature.

The Study Materials Nature is a “weekly, international, interdisciplinary journal of science” (see www.nature.com/nature/index.html) and no doubt one of the most highly cited across the world. The main aim of the journal is to publish original and important research, provide insightful and notable news, and interpret local and current trends. The science topics covered vary widely from medicine to environment and space. Articles from Editorials and News in Focus sections of the journal were selected for the students in the study. These articles are a good start for the 1st-year medical students because they cover the latest news in various fields of science including medicine, and the text is clearly written and easy to understand. Furthermore, if the students familiarize with the journal, this will open up

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the opportunity to study state-of-the-art research articles later on. Fortunately, the library at Hamamatsu University School of Medicine subscribes to this journal, so the students have free access to all the articles. The articles chosen for the course covered various scientific topics, focusing on medical topics such as iPS cells, influenza, Japanese traditional medicine, and other domestic and familiar topics such as the earthquake that hit Eastern Japan in 2011. These topics were interesting to the students and within their knowledge of science, and, therefore, they were considered appropriate to activate students’ schemata (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983) and enable them to learn more effectively.

Outline of the Course The use of Nature to bridge the gap between EGP and EMP was carried out in the 1st-year English course, namely English IB, in the academic years 2009-2012. This is a 1-year course aimed at scientific English, and its general objective is to enhance students’ ability to communicate in English and foster their interest in scientific topics. Each year 115 1st-year students were divided into 4 groups (28-29 in each group), and the researcher and one other instructor taught 2 groups each in the 1st semester, and switched groups for the 2nd semester. While the researcher taught her groups using the journal Nature, the other instructor used different materials. This chapter reports on the researcher’s classes only, laying focus on the 1st semester of the academic year 2012. A regular class consisted of a warm-up activity, presentations of two groups including a question and answer session, and a consolidation phase. The students in each class were divided into small groups (pairs or groups of three or four), which allowed them to make presentations twice in one semester. Each small group was randomly assigned to an article chosen from the website of Nature. Working together with their group members, the students read the article, did some research on the topic, and made a presentation in English followed by a question and answer (Q&A) session. All the classes were conducted in English, while the use of the students’ native language, Japanese, was discouraged. The expected learning outcomes from the course were: (1) to get students interested in scientific topics including medicine; (2) to enhance students’ skills of reading scientific articles in English; (3) to help students obtain useful and necessary information in English using the Internet and other sources; (4) to provide opportunities to students to cooperate with group members; and, (5) to train students to make effective presentations in English.

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Curriculum Coordination In order to achieve the goal of bridging the gap between EGP and EMP, it was necessary to coordinate the English course with the rest of the curriculum vertically and horizontally (see Figure 11-1).

Vertical coordination

EMP

Other English courses

Medical courses (basic + clinical)

Upper classes

Science courses

Lower classes

Science courses

High school

English IB

EGP

Horizontal coordination

Figure 11-1: Curriculum coordination.

First, this first year scientific English course needed to coordinate vertically with senior high school science courses students have already taken and medical courses they are to take in upper-level classes in the future. According to a survey conducted in 2008 to investigate student readiness for studying scientific English, almost all of the students had studied chemistry (97.2%) at senior high schools, whereas only about half of them had taken biology (43.7%) (Nakayasu, Sugimura, & Endo, 2009). Because the national curriculum guidelines for senior high schools and the subjects of the university entrance examination remained unchanged since then, it is reasonable to assume that student readiness to study English and science courses remained much the same in the following years (2009-2012) when the course discussed in this chapter was piloted. 1st-year students are required to take ‘Introduction to Natural Sciences’ in the 1st semester, which aims at bridging the gap between science courses offered at high schools and the medical program at the university, and in

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this course, students can choose to study either biology or physics depending on which field they did not study at their senior high school. Therefore, it can be assumed that the students have a basic knowledge of science and they are ready to study more advanced science by the end of the 1st semester. Consequently, by activating students’ existing background knowledge in science (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983), instructors can help them learn scientific English more effectively. In upper-level courses during the 2nd- and 3rd-year, the students will study basic medicine such as molecular medicine, anatomy, biochemistry, pathology and social medicine. Since 1st-year students already have an interest in some of these areas, it is meaningful to encourage them to study selected topics from these fields using articles written in easy-to-understand English as a warm-up. Second, the EMP course needs to coordinate horizontally with other 1st-year courses offered in the same year. In addition to the introductory natural science courses already mentioned, the students take chemistry, biology and physics courses which are more advanced than high school equivalents, and those classes are conducted in the form of lectures and laboratory work. There is also a seminar course where students learn study skills in small groups, some of which focus on scientific topics. Since the researcher, who was also the English instructor for this course, was not a specialist of science, she coordinated with other science instructors and sometimes referred to their classes and the textbooks they used (e.g., Hart, Craine, & Hart, 2002). Turning now to English courses, the 1st-year students take English IA (EGP) and English Conversation I (EMP-oriented EGP). The upper-class students take English II (EGP) and English Conversation II (EMP) in the 2nd year, and some of them take 2 more advanced elective courses (EMP) in the 3rd- and 4th-year, respectively. As expected, the current English curriculum moves from more general (EGP) to more specific (EMP) in the continuum. To describe each of these English courses in detail is beyond the scope of this short chapter, but one can see Kuramoto and Nakayasu (2014) for a description of the current English courses. With regards to English courses at senior high schools in Japan, although the national curriculum guidelines aim at increasing students’ communication skills, many teachers in fact conduct their English classes in Japanese (Matsumoto, 2011; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), n.d.). This tendency becomes stronger when it comes to preparation courses for university entrance examinations, which deal with advanced contents. The 1st-year medical students can, therefore, generally be considered not quite ready to study EMP. This is exactly the

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reason why it is important to raise the 1st-year students’ proficiency level.

Teaching Techniques This section explains what kind of teaching techniques were used to achieve the desired effects in the EMP course. Group Work It is well known that working in groups facilitates learning (Davidson, Major, & Michaelsen, 2014; Slavin, 1996). As part of this course, students had to work with their group members to read and understand an article, do some research on the topic, create a handout (and slides if possible) and make a presentation in English followed by a Q&A session. There were two cycles of this approach. Students were randomly assigned into groups for the first cycle, while for the second cycle, they were instructed to make groups with their favorite classmates and create their group names. At the end of each cycle of presentations, students held a review session with their group members. Words The students selected important and useful words from each article and listed them with definitions in their handouts. During their presentation, they explained word meanings and pronounced each word. The instructor selected words from the students’ lists and made exam questions based on these words. The words selected for the exam included keywords of each article and words typically used in scientific articles. Follow-Up After each presentation, the students had a Q&A session, where the audience was encouraged to ask questions, give comments to the presenters, and state their opinions about the topic. Japanese students tend to be reluctant to state their opinions in class, even in their native language (Shimizu, 2006; Cutrone, 2009). Considering this, the instructor encouraged them to ask questions and give comments, promising them extra score points if they did so. The students also wrote comments on small pieces of paper, and read these comments when they held their review sessions.

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Mindmap Mindmaps are used to organize information, for example, to take notes and brainstorm ideas. This technique was only employed when the students read the first article ‘Giant Shock Rattles Ideas about Quake Behaviour’ in order to activate their schemata, to motivate them to study scientific topics in English, and to facilitate learning. Figure 11-2 is a mindmap drawn by one of the groups:

Figure 11-2: Mindmap.

With the keyword “earthquake” in the middle, the students added many ideas to the diagram and connected them. The earthquake was a perfect topic for them because a massive earthquake had hit Japan in the previous year and all the students were familiar with the nature of the earthquake and the disaster it caused. Visual Aids Every group of students was advised to create and distribute handouts to their classmates during their presentation so that they could refer to them and also use them later on to prepare for the term exam. Students

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were also eencouraged too create digiital slides in order to perrform an effective preesentation. Thhese handouts and slides weere supposed to t include a summary oof the article, a list of impo ortant words, tthe additionall research on the topicc, and the souurces of inform mation. Figuree 11-3 shows a part of the handoutt on ‘Obituarry: Steve Jobss’, where thee information obtained from the artticle and from m other sourcees are successsfully coordinated with each other innto a group off pictures.

Figure 11-3: H Handout (Stevee Jobs).

Figure 11-4 is part off the handout a group of sstudents createed on the article ‘Japaan: Will the Sun Set on Kampo?’ K wheere main ideaas of the article are syystematically organized.

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Handout (Kamppo). Figure 11-4: H

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Games and Events Icebreakers such as games and events were used in class in order to lower the affective filter (Krashen & Terrell, 1983) and promote learning. For example, the students played ‘Yes, bingo!’ in the first class. In this game, they collected classmates’ names by asking questions to find a person who, for instance, had already joined a club, liked English, and was interested in a particular field or topic of science and medicine such as iPS cells. This activity helped students to get to know each other and motivated them to study English for science and medicine.

Achievement Evaluation The students’ achievement was evaluated based on the scores of oral presentations in pairs/small groups, written term exam, attendance, and individual performance in class. Students were awarded extra points when they would voluntarily ask questions and give comments in class. For the term exam, two types of tasks were used: fill in the blanks and reading comprehension. Important and useful words selected from the students’ handouts were used for the ‘fill in the blank’ portion of the exam. Students were advised to review their classmates’ handouts for the exam. For the reading comprehension task, excerpts from the articles were used and students were encouraged to answer the questions using their own words and not directly copy from the texts.

Course Evaluation At the end of the semester, students were asked to complete a questionnaire. In the first semester of the academic year of 2012, all 57 students who attended the instructor’s classes completed the questionnaire. Four closed and two open-ended questions were included in an effort to explore students’ perceptions about the course and their performance in the course.

Results and Discussion This section reports on the results of the students’ evaluation at the end of the semester, laying focus on the first semester of 2012. Students were asked to report on their overall impression of the course using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 5 (strongly agree) to 1 (strongly disagree). Figure 11-5 below shows the results for this question.

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Studied hard Was easy Unnderstood well English skkills developed Got interested Knowlledge acquired Relevant too other courses

21 1

29

7 17 7

7

31 3 2

29 24

00%

8 22

17

5

5

25 26

24

12

20%

8

28

40%

5 (sttrongly agree)

4 (agree)

2 (ddisagree)

1 (strongly y disagree)

600%

1

6 24

20

5

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8

80%

2

100%

3 ((uncertain)

Students’ overaall impression of the course. Figure 11-5: S

Each num mber in the stacked s bar grraph above inndicates the number of students whho chose thatt item. Note the clear coontrast in the items ‘I studied hardd’ and ‘The cllass was easy’’: a small num mber of studen nts (8 out of 57) reporrted that the course c was eassy, whereas thhe majority off students (50 out of 557) reported that they stud died hard in tthis course. For F many students, thee class was chhallenging an nd for this reaason they stud died hard. Although thhe course aim med at bridgin ng the gap beetween EGP and a EMP, there was still a gap bettween the maaterials used iin this coursee and the materials stuudents studiedd at their hig gh school. Thee articles from m Nature included teechnical term ms, words an nd expressionns typically used in scientific arrticles, makinng them diffficult for reaading and ev ven more difficult for presenting abbout them. Next, thee questionnairre asked studeents to report which Englissh skill(s) they had devveloped most.. Twenty of th he students ansswered they developed d reading skillls, followed by speaking skills (9 stuudents). This is not a surprising reesult, becausee this class fo ocused on reaading and pressentation. There were also some students s who reported that at they were uncertain about the deevelopment of o their Englissh skills (22 students or 38.6%) 3 or that they hadd not improveed their Englissh (4 students or 7%). The majjority of studdents agreed or strongly aagreed that th hey were interested inn the course contents and d reading toppics (80%), and they acquired new w knowledge from the courrse materials ((84%). This sh hows that the articles sselected for innclusion in thee course were beneficial forr learning. On the conttrary, the num mber of studen nts who felt thhe course wass relevant

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to their other courses was small (17 students or 30%). This result signified that the course coordination with the rest of the curriculum did not work as well as expected. The questionnaire also asked students to indicate which class activities were beneficial to them. Table 11-1 shows how many students felt which activity was beneficial/informative/worthwhile: Table 11-1: Activities students found beneficial. Activity Study articles by themselves Conduct research by themselves Conduct research in groups Make a presentation in groups Listen to other groups’ presentations Ask questions and have discussions Write comments on other groups’ presentations Read classmates’ comments Listen to the teacher’s explanation Games and events Other

N 40 25 39 47 37 19 24 28 11 14 2

% 70.2 43.9 68.4 82.5 64.9 33.3 42.1 49.1 19.3 24.6 3.5

Results show that 82.5% of the students considered presenting in groups as beneficial to them. Other items related to group work, such as ‘Conduct research in groups’ and ‘Listen to other groups’ presentations,’ also showed high percentages of agreement (68.4% and 64.9%, respectively). The students took an active role not only in making presentations in groups, but also in participating in other groups’ presentations as the audience, and in learning from other groups’ presentations. In fact, students whose presentations took place later in the semester obviously learned something from the presentations given before theirs: for example, they improved their handouts and the structure of their presentations. It should also be noted that 70.2% of the students chose ‘Study articles by themselves.’ Given that the general goal of this course was to enhance students’ ability to communicate in English and foster their interest in scientific topics, it may be safely assumed from these results that the goal was accomplished to a significant extent. In terms of what English skills students wanted to improve in the future after completing this course, the results show that EMP received the highest preference (66.7%), followed by items which are related to communication skills (see Table 11-2). Studying in this course motivated the students to want to learn EMP and to improve their communication skills,

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generally and in specific ways. This particular question also served to make the students aware of the coordination of the courses in the curriculum. Table 11-2: Skills students want to develop further in the future. Skill Listening skills Speaking skills Reading skills Writing skills Communication skills in general English for studying science English for medical purposes English for studying culture

N 36 34 32 22 34 15 38 16

% 63.2 59.6 57.9 38.6 59.6 26.3 66.7 28.1

The students were also asked to indicate which article from Nature they got interested in the most. Table 11-3 below shows the list of articles from the 1st and the 2nd cycles and the number of students who got interested in each article. As can be seen, there is a tendency toward domestic topics, particularly the topics related to the earthquake that hit Japan the previous year and the disaster it caused. Students also enjoyed learning such topics as Japanese traditional medicine, a flower from a distant past, Steve Jobs, and clinical and basic medicine. The instructor made use of this result for selecting articles in the next semester. In the open-ended items of the questionnaire students described freely how they felt about this course. Some students used this opportunity to elaborate on their choices in the Likert-scale items, while others raised points which were not covered by those questions. Some students provided more than one feedback reports. Table 11-4 below is the itemized list of students’ positive and negative feedback points and the number of students who mentioned these points. Comments were sorted according to the content they referred to as the titles with numbers indicate.

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Table 11-3: List of articles and student preferences. Cycle

1

2

Article Giant shock rattles about quake behaviour Lessons of a triple disaster Earthquake hazards: Putting seismic research to most effective use Asteroid visit finds familiar dust Blockbuster drug vows out Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice Japan: Will the sun set on Kampo? Kepler discovers first Earth-sized exoplanets Whales on sale Informed consent on trial Facing up to flu Obituary: Steve Jobs (1955-2011) Genomics ace quits Japan Fission power back on NASA’s agenda Messages from the early universe Gas and air Cut hamper bid to tackle AIDS Egg-making stem cells found in adult ovaries DNA donor rights affirmed Mass appeal Tsunami simulations scare Japan Mutant-flu researcher plans to publish even without permission Mutant-flu paper published Pre-term births on the rise War of words over tribal tongue

N 4 3 9 2 2 12 12 2 4 4 5 11 4 3 3 3 3 7 4 1 6 2 1 8 5

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Table 11-4: Students’ feedback in the open-ended items. Positive feedback 1. Beneficial Enjoyed Interested Obtained knowledge Beneficial Skills improved 2. Method – effective Good – overall Group work Presentation Relevance to other courses Teacher’s talk 3. Level – appropriate Appropriate 4. Material – appropriate Good journal Good topics

N 49 5 14 9 9 12 13 2 6 2 2 1 1 1 21 18 3

Negative feedback 1. Not beneficial

N 0

2. Method – not effective Quiz needed Practice needed Wanted to choose topics Advice needed

5 1 2 1 1

3. Level – not appropriate Too difficult 4. Material – not appropriate Too technical Should focus on medicine Very good or very bad

11 11 5 3 1 1

First, as many as 49 students stated the class was beneficial, while there were no comments evaluating it as not beneficial. One student remarked that the class was interesting and that it was important to increase his/her knowledge irrespective of whether he/she liked it or not. Another student reported that his/her English proficiency improved, saying that at first he/she thought the class was difficult, but that eventually communicating in English became a routine. A further 13 students noted that the methodology of this class was effective in that, for example, listening to their classmates’ presentations acted as a good incentive for study, and that this class was relevant to other courses like biology and seminars. There were also 5 suggestions on how to improve the methodology, e.g., to take regular quizzes to test student understanding and to take part in interactive activities, such as discussions, to improve skills for presentation. Some students (11) mentioned that the level of this course was too high. This is also clear from the results of the Likert-type questions. One student felt frustrated because he/she could not ask questions to the presenters though he/she wanted to because his/her English ability was too limited. It is always a challenge on the instructor’s

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part to make sure that the class is beneficial to all the students regardless of their level of ability. With regard to the use of the journal articles, 21 students considered using Nature as appropriate because it is an excellent journal and offers topics appropriate for scientific and medical students. One student remarked that he/she also became interested in other scientific journals. However, 5 students considered Nature as inappropriate because, for example, the articles in Nature were too technical for them. Finally, students were asked to report on their expectations for their studies the next academic year after attending this class. These were sorted into positive and negative points (see Table 11-5). Table 11-5: Students’ resolutions and expectations. Positive feedback Improve English skills Study hard Study science Study medicine Study various fields Study hard in general Teacher’s talk Self-learning Work in group Get more interest Future career High expectation in general Advance to the next year

N 28 21 3 3 5 10 1 7 2 4 3 1 1

Negative feedback Feel anxiety

N 1

(Nothing particular)

(3)

There were 68 positive feedback reports, particularly on improving English skills (28) and on studying hard (21). For the former, the students mentioned improving their communication skills such as presentation skills, listening, speaking and vocabulary, and other goals such as obtaining high scores in English proficiency tests. For the latter, 21 students expressed their determination to study hard, including some who stated their anticipation to study medicine and felt the necessity to study various fields extensively. Taking this feedback into consideration, this class seems to have provided a stimulus for further study of English and science, particularly medicine, and for self-learning. Asking the students to describe their resolutions and expectations seems to have made them aware of the vertical coordination of the curriculum. It is also noteworthy that there was one negative feedback report where the student stated

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feeling anxiety about taking English classes in the next academic year.

Conclusion This chapter has reported on the use of the scientific journal Nature in a 1st-year English course at Hamamatsu University School of Medicine in the academic year 2012 in order to bridge the gap between English for General Purposes (EGP) and English for Medical Purposes (EMP). The course coordinated vertically and horizontally with senior high school courses and other courses offered at the university. The aim of the course was to enhance students’ ability to communicate in English and foster their interest in scientific topics. In pairs/small groups, the students conducted research on articles from Nature and gave presentations in English. The class attended the presentations as the audience asking questions, giving comments, and discussing with the presenters. The results of the course evaluation questionnaire showed that many of the students considered this course as beneficial to them. They claimed that it enhanced their English communication skills and reading skills in particular. Students also reported that working in groups was most beneficial to them, and that the journal Nature was an appropriate source for the course materials. The questionnaire results also showed that this course fostered student interest in scientific and medical topics, and motivated them to study EMP and work hard in the future. Attending this course, the students obtained skills and knowledge that serve as a basis for studying EMP. It can be concluded that the attempt to bridge the gap between EGP and EMP using the journal Nature appears to have been relatively successful for this group of medical students learning English in Japan. Nevertheless, it should also be noted that this project left room for improvement. While the vertical curriculum coordination was largely achieved, the horizontal coordination did not work as well as expected. In addition, some students’ responses indicated that this course was too demanding for a number of students, that they felt some anxiety for future English courses, and that they did not think that their English skills had made any improvement. In order to overcome these weaknesses, the researcher would consider conducting regular classroom quizzes to test students’ understanding, and including more learner-friendly methods of instruction and learning such as doing online projects in collaboration with other medical students in Japan or in other countries. In addition, it would be beneficial to design a curriculum where English and medicine are more closely related to each other, for example, to introduce Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) (see Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010;

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Dalton-Puffer, 2007) into the semesters that follow this course. CLIL is a dual-focused educational approach where attention is given both to the language and content. Some of the key factors of this approach, i.e., motivation, authenticity and relevance, would further facilitate learning in this context where a smooth transition is needed in the EGP-EMP continuum, and the students are expected to develop specific skills and knowledge required as medical specialists.

References Alberts, B., Johnson, A., Lewis, J., Raff, M., Roberts, K., & Walter, P. (2008). Molecular biology of the cell (5th ed.). New York & Milton Park: Garland Science. Carrell, P. L., & Eisterhold, J. C. (1983). Schema theory and ESL reading pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 17(4), 553-573. Coyle, D., Hood, P., & Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL: Content and language integrated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cutrone, P. (2009). Overcoming Japanese EFL learner’s fear of speaking. University of Reading Language Studies Working Papers, 1, 55-63. Dalton-Puffer, C. (2007). Discourse in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) classrooms. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Davidson, N., Major, C. H., & Michaelsen, L. K. (2014). Small-group learning in higher education–Cooperative, collaborative, problem-based, and team-based learning: An introduction by the guest editors. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 25(3 & 4), 1-6. Dudley-Evans, T., & St John, M. J. (1998). Developments in English for specific purposes: A multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hart, H., Craine, L. E., & Hart, D. J. (2002). Hart kiso yuki kagaku (3rd ed.). Tokyo: Baifukan. [Hart, H., Craine, L. E., & Hart, D. J. (1999). Organic chemistry: A short course (10th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company]. Hutchinson, T., & Waters, A. (1987). English for specific purposes: A learning-centered approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Krashen, S. D., & Terrell, T. D. (1983). The Natural Approach: Language acquisition in the classroom. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Kuramoto, C., & Nakayasu, M. (2014). EMP at work: Hamamatsu University School of Medicine. Journal of Medical English Education, 13(3), 80-83. Matsumoto, S. (2011). Nihon no eigokyoiku no kadai to hosaku [English

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education in Japan: Problems and solutions]. Journal of Medical English Education, 10(1), 35-43. MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan). (n.d.) Heisei 25nendo eigokyoiku jisshijokyochosa no kekka ni tsuite [On the survey results of English education in the academic year 2013]. Retrieved from: http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/kokusai/gaikokugo/1351631.htm Nakayasu, M., Sugimura, H., & Endo, Y. (2009). Molecular biology of the cell o riyo shita ikadaigaku ni okeru kokoromi [Teaching English with the aid of Molecular biology of the cell at a medical university]. Journal of Medical English Education, 8(2), 95-103. Nature. (n.d.) Retrieved from: http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html Shimizu, J. (2006). Why are Japanese students reluctant to express their opinions in the classroom? The Hiyoshi Review of English Studies, 48, 33-45. Slavin, R. E. (1996). Research on cooperative learning and achievement: What we know, what we need to know. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21(1), 43-69.

ISSUES IN THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

CHAPTER TWELVE CLIL CLASSROOM INTERACTION CHALLENGES: TRANSLANGUAGING AND GENRE AS PEDAGOGIC TOOLS? YLVA SANDBERG

Abstract This chapter focuses on teachers’ interaction challenges in the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classroom, an area which has not been extensively researched. Six content teachers from three subject areas (mathematics, biology and civics) were interviewed about their experiences of teaching their subject through a foreign/second language. The study was two-pronged: first, it aimed to investigate the challenges perceived by the teachers, and, second, outline the strategies developed by the teachers to meet perceived challenges. Informed by second language acquisition, CLIL and teacher cognition research, an interview guide was created, and interviews were undertaken over a two-year period. The material was coded and analysed in several stages by means of qualitative content analysis. In the analysis, two themes related to teachers’ experiences of CLIL classroom interaction dilemmas emerged: linguistic unpredictability and socio-affective barrier. In the analysis of the strategies that teachers developed to meet the CLIL classroom challenges, two themes emerged: translanguaging and genre. The findings resonate with results from studies of a similar kind. The results of the analyses of the interviews, and how they could inform CLIL teacher education, are presented and discussed in the final sections of the chapter.

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Introduction Traditionally, subject content teachers have not studied the linguistic dimension of the school subjects they teach. Interestingly, as a result of a new curriculum for the Swedish upper secondary school (LGY2011), school subjects, e.g., mathematics, biology and civics, include course core content and intended learning outcomes more explicitly involving the language dimension of the subject. The new curriculum is genre-based, and there is a requirement for teachers and learners to view learning of content and language as an integrated process (Skolverket, 2011). For Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers in Sweden, teaching their subject through a second/foreign (L2) language (in this case, English) rather than in their first (L1) language (in this case Swedish), this new conceptualization of syllabi could prove to be extra challenging, as more classroom interaction on the part of the students is required in the new content syllabi. With requirements for students to ‘learn by doing’ (e.g., involve themselves in tasks where they have to ‘explain’, ‘discuss’, ‘analyse’ and ‘reflect’), there is pressure on subject content teachers to design learning environments that make possible, and, indeed, enhance the use of activities whereby students take active part in classroom interaction. What are the challenges L1 upper secondary CLIL teachers face in the L2 genre-oriented content classroom? What practices and strategies have they developed to meet the perceived challenges? These two research questions have guided the procedures of the project described in this chapter. By applying an ethnography-inspired approach, this study aims to bring forward the voices of upper secondary teachers’ reflections on how to best use L2 as a resource in the interactive CLIL classroom. The outcomes of the study can be useful to other CLIL teachers and researchers, as well as in CLIL teacher education.

Background Classroom interaction in CLIL contexts has long been identified as a challenge (Lightbown & Spada, 2006; Ortega, 2009). Research studies in second language acquisition (SLA) areas such as immersion education, content-based instruction, content-based language education, CLIL, and bilingual education, have reported on challenges in interaction and offered various models for meeting these challenges (Burns, 2013; Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010; García, 2009; Lindberg, 2011; Swain, 1985; Swain & Lapkin, 1998). In terms of interaction design (Selander & Kress, 2010) in

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CLIL and in other forms of content-based L2 contexts, there is much to be gained from pooling resources and bringing together long-term research and experience acquired in educational contexts across the globe (Cenosz, Genese, & Gorter, 2014). CLIL researchers in Spain showed how teachers’ awareness of language as part of different registers can facilitate the teaching of content in L2 (Llinares, Morton, & Whitaker, 2012). In the analysis of the challenges of interaction in the L2 content classroom, the researchers found that “studying subject matter in L2 requires handling of both horizontal (everyday talk) and vertical (scientific, technical) types of concepts” and it is being acknowledged that “opening up the classroom to more dialogic communication will place a heavier linguistic load on all concerned” (Llinares, et al., 2012, p. 64). According to researchers the way to respond to these challenges is for teachers not to resort to a lecture mode. Instead, the researchers claim, content teachers’ meta-linguistic awareness of different registers and genres can be developed, for example in collaboration with language teachers or as part of teacher education courses. Modelling explanations of content both in scientific and everyday language is one example of linguistic content that can be prepared beforehand and applied. With multidimensional linguistic knowledge and appropriate meta-linguistic knowledge in their toolbox, content teachers can design classroom interaction strategically, preparing students for typical moves and expressions in the disciplinary communication and so enhancing their participation in the classroom. In a similar vein, researchers in Swedish as a second language have defined language in three registers: colloquial language, academic language and subject-specific language (Lindberg, 2011). Approaching language learning and language use in this multidimensional way seems to provide a structure for vocabulary use in the L2 content classroom. To support learners of L2 content, teachers’ capability of seeing the language as an integrated part of their subject is crucial, as claimed by Axelsson and colleagues (Axelsson, Olofsson, Philipsson, Rosander, & Sellgren, 2006). Potentially, these results from the research on Swedish as a second language could inform CLIL teaching and learning. Moreover, genre-oriented approaches originating in the Australian educational context provide models for teaching spoken interaction (Burns, 2013). Similar to the genres of written language, which have been thoroughly studied over the years since the 1980s (Halliday, 1985) and widely acknowledged in research and practice (Hyland, 2007), researchers in education today argue that spoken language can also be studied

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systematically and taught as genres (Lindberg, 2011). Examples of such genres are: personal recount, explanation and discussion. These spoken genres involve language use in a dialogic mode. Research on spoken interaction shows that turn-taking, use of typical phrases and language registers can be identified and successfully taught (Lindberg, 2011). Models built on the curriculum cycle (Knapp & Watkins, 2005), traditionally used in writing instruction, can be used for the development of spoken interaction instruction (Burns, 2013). Previous research in CLIL in the Swedish upper secondary school context has identified classroom interaction in the L2 content classroom as a problematic area: for example, studies reported that few questions were posed by students, and interaction in general in these classrooms was limited (Lim Falk, 2008). More recent research undertaken in similar contexts has identified less problematic classroom interaction environments, especially when the ideology of the teacher has allowed for a bilingual mode to be used in the classroom (Yoxsimer Paulsrud, 2014). In these classrooms, bilingual language use has been acknowledged and put to use in various ways, depending on the actual situation. These practices have been conceptualised as pedagogic translanguaging (Yoxsimer Paulsrud, 2014). With a bilingual or multilingual lens at hand, classroom interaction can be viewed in a new light (García, 2011, 2009). Instead of finding faults with the use of L1 in the CLIL classroom, the use of both the L1 and L2 can be experienced as positive and as a potential tool to encourage and enhance deep learning of the curriculum areas. However, although the use of two or more languages in the content classroom is increasingly encouraged in some educational contexts, there are also researchers who take a skeptical stand, claiming that extensive use of the L1 in L2 classrooms could instead be detrimental to successful learning (Swain & Lapkin, 2000). As claimed in subject-content didactics and in teacher cognition research, reflection is essential in teachers’ daily practice (Tornberg, 2009, Schüllerqvist, 2012). Indeed, the teacher as a reflective practitioner (Tornberg, 2009) reflects on what is going to be taught, how this could be taught and why, taking into consideration, among other resources, the linguistic resources, and making decisions on the lesson design prior to the lesson, or adjusting the on-going lesson design on the basis of spontaneous issues arising in-practice. In teacher cognition research, this pedagogic reflection has been described as an on-going process of analytic reflection and normative reflection (Apelgren, 2001) and such reflective practices are

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considered to be not only typical of a teacher’s practice, but integral to teaching (Borg, 2012). Based on the available research about CLIL and the current changes in the Swedish school curriculum, the study described in this chapter attempted to investigate CLIL teacher perspectives. From a language education point of view, questions like ‘Is language awareness something CLIL teachers as practitioners develop over time?’, ‘What do CLIL teachers find challenging in the L2 content classroom?’ and ‘What do they do to meet perceived challenges?’ seemed worthwhile investigating. Indeed, practicing teachers are seldom being heard in research contexts. As teachers are known to be “drawing on context-sensitive networks of knowledge, thoughts and beliefs” (Borg, 2003, p. 81), they might have important pedagogic knowledge to share in a CLIL research context. Indeed, as research in higher education focusing on teachers has been shown to contribute to the development of L2 content teaching in higher education (Airey, 2011; Westbrook & Henriksen, 2011), similar research approaches seemed relevant also in the secondary education context. As more knowledge of study contexts using a bilingual approach have long been asked for (Leung, 2005), a focus on secondary teachers’ accounts of challenges, practices and strategies developed on the basis of reflection, appeared to be highly relevant for this investigation. In the present study, teachers from three school subject disciplines (mathematics, biology and civics) were involved. They all reflected on interaction challenges in the CLIL classroom and the strategies they developed to cope with the challenges. The following sections report on the study and the results of the analyses undertaken.

The Study The study involved six content teachers working in CLIL study programmes in the Swedish upper secondary schools. Two teachers taught mathematics (ma1 and ma2), two teachers taught biology (bio1 and bio2) and two teachers taught civics (civ1 and civ2). For reasons of anonymity and identity protection, the gender of the teachers is not being accounted for in the reporting of the results. The mathematics teachers had taught mathematics in upper secondary schools for fifteen years or more and they were experienced both in terms of teaching in general and in terms of CLIL. The biology and civics teachers were relatively new in the profession with about three years of CLIL teaching experience. The teachers worked at three different schools, in upper secondary CLIL study programmes founded in the mid- or late-1990s. All six

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teachers were native speakers of Swedish. None of the teachers was enrolled in training or professional development courses on how to teach their subject in a L2 context. The teachers were interviewed over a two-year period using a semistructured interview format (Bryman, 2013). The total amount of data for the present study amounts to approximately 70 minutes with each teacher (a total of 6.5 hours for all six teachers). The interviews were transcribed shortly after each interview session. The transcription format allowed for access to the spoken material at the word level with pauses (…), emphasis (bold type) and other emphatic sounds (e.g., ‘sigh’ or ‘laughter’) made visible in the transcript. As is typical of qualitative content analysis, the interview material was constructed and analysed in several stages over a period of time (Bryman, 2013; Dörniey, 2007). The purpose of the analyses in different constellations has been to arrive at ‘data saturation’ and to find the ‘inner consistency’ of the material (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). The interview material presented in this chapter is part of a larger on-going study that included lesson observations, further teacher interviews and focus group interviews with students (Sandberg, forthcoming), which due to limitations of space, are not discussed in this chapter.

Results In the analysis of the interview data, two themes emerged as classroom interaction challenges: linguistic unpredictability and socio-affective barrier. In the study of teachers’ response to perceived challenges, translanguaging and genre orientation were identified as teacher strategies. The following sections present and discuss each of these challenges and strategies.

Linguistic Unpredictability The first theme that emerged from the interviews with the teachers was linguistic unpredictability. This theme refers to the content teachers’ feelings of uncertainty in dialogic classroom situations whereby while they are teaching content in the L2 classroom, all of a sudden, for example triggered by a student question, they are getting into a discussion of subject content area involving specific vocabulary that they had not prepared before the lesson. In Barab and Roth’s (2006) terminology, a situation of this kind could be referred to as a transactional conversation dilemma (Barab & Roth, 2006). However, as the content teachers emphasize the linguistic dimension of the content area as being the

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challenge, the term linguistic unpredictability is used in the context of this study. One example of teachers’ perception of linguistic unpredictability in the CLIL classroom is described here: one of the biology teachers was concerned about allowing for a dialogic mode to be used during lessons. Although the lesson format was often organized around a power point presentation, the teacher made efforts of various kinds to encourage students to ask questions. As the topics studied often interested or provoked students, on-going discussion in the classroom was common. According to the teacher, there were repeated occurrences where there was an instant need for subject-specific vocabulary. As these occurrences were the result of spontaneous dialogue in the classroom, it was not always easy for the teacher to be fully prepared. In these cases, as reported by the teacher, the lengthy search for words often made the tempo of the lesson slow down, and, according to the teacher, the flow of the discussion as well as the pace of the lesson were affected in a negative way: “This is where a vast amount of time is spent. The pace of the lesson can be so slow, having to search for these words, you know.” (bio1)

Although the biology teacher prepared meticulously prior to the lessons by looking up words in advance, there was always an instant need for additional vocabulary as part of the discussion occurring in the biology classroom: “I have to check these [words] in advance… And then there might come up new [concepts and terms] that we start to talk about in the lesson, you know…” (bio1)

The biology teacher found these situations challenging as the linguistic repertoire was not always available in the immediate moment. It took time and effort to try to remember all the words in the L2 or having to quickly look up these words, on the spot, while the students were waiting impatiently. The biology teacher’s response to the perceived language use dilemma in the CLIL interactive classroom was to acknowledge the dialogic nature of the discussion mode, and invite students to take active part in finding the subject-specific vocabulary needed to continue the activity: “As long as you dare to confess that you do not know all the words … there is always a student who is quick to look up the word … they have smartphones these days.” (bio1)

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In inviting the students to participate in the spontaneous search for adequate vocabulary, the biology teacher opened up for shared knowledgebuilding, i.e., the students were invited to take an active role in facilitating and enhancing the CLIL classroom dialogue. The second example comes from the civics classroom. The civics teacher, who was new in the profession and new to teaching in a CLIL environment, commented on the students’ limited spoken interaction in the civics L2 classroom, and tried to interpret the students’ actions: “They are afraid of making mistakes and losing face in the classroom.” (civ1)

Speaking of the interaction challenge as a matter of linguistic unpredictability, the civics teacher explained that the dilemma could be solved by better preparing the students for the classroom interaction in advance. Consequently, after collaboration with language teachers in the work team, the teacher started to design the lessons somewhat differently: “Before I did not give them [the students] so many tools, because I thought they would create the tools themselves. Now I give them more tools because I can see that they are doing better this way. It’s difficult enough anyway.” (civ1)

The tools mentioned by the teacher included for example the teaching of linguistic and meta-linguistic knowledge, such as study of content area vocabulary in formal and informal contexts. The tools also included tasks designed for student output in different genres and languages in a sequenced way, e.g. student presentations in L2, preceded by written manuscripts in L2 and group preparation in L2 or L1, i.e., genreorientation and translanguaging practices. The teacher could see that the students were doing better this way. The third example of linguistic unpredictability came from the second civics teacher. This teacher did not speak so much about the challenge, but more about the practices and strategies that, according to the teacher, have been developed to meet challenges of linguistic unpredictability: “First of all it’s about vocabulary. Of course, you have to work with this; I mean translations…. Then I try to imagine … this is likely to come up [in the discussion]” (civ2)

In the above extract, the teacher accounted for an attempt to visualize the unfolding of the lesson, what is going to be presented, what the students

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might have questions about, what might be the topics of discussion. If the content area is perceived to be complex, the teacher would usually rehearse the lecture beforehand. Although the teacher reported on putting much effort into preparing for the presentation and discussion of a new content area, or in-depth study of a well-known topic, the teacher would know by experience that it is not possible to prepare for every situation. In reality, the sequence of the lesson would unfold in a way different to how it had been rehearsed: “In reality, what you have prepared will turn out differently.” (civ2)

With genres of analysis and discussion being emphasized in the new syllabus for civics, students would often be required to contribute with questions, with their own views, or with examples from areas previously studied, or be asked to bring in news or relate to current issues being debated in the media. Therefore, trying to prepare a civics lesson in L2 can be a challenging task, both for the teacher and the students, as accounted for by the teacher. As a strategy to enhance participation in these situations, the teacher mentioned the use of two languages in the classroom: “So the students might ask in Swedish, although I may have put forward a question in English.” (civ2)

These practices might change over time, the teacher reflected, claiming that teaching practices were not static. On the contrary, as reflective practitioners, teachers would reflect on their teaching and adjust their practices and strategies on a continuous basis: “I have not done this before. If there is a follow-up on this research in five years or so, I might have other dimensions to bring, view things differently. I might do this better, simply more skillfully… teaching in English.” (civ2)

Looking ahead, in a few years in time, the teacher acknowledged the benefit of experience. With experience, the teaching situations will be better known to the teacher. The teacher will have taught the course content of the new syllabus a few times, and will know what kind of issues the students might find difficult to conceptualise. In the present study, the teachers reported using the two languages (L1 and L2) in a dynamic way as a strategy to remedy linguistic unpredictability and to maintain the flow of the lesson. It would be interesting to see whether tailor-made courses for CLIL biology and civics

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teachers could make a difference for the better. In addition to a new syllabus and their own socio-cognitive ability, perhaps teachers could benefit from access to research results from their field of education. The fourth example of linguistic unpredictability came from the mathematics classroom. The mathematics teacher did not talk about linguistic unpredictability as being a dilemma or a challenge. Instead, the teacher spoke of the psychological side of the learning and teaching of mathematics, and that “subject content is no. 1” (ma1). The teacher mentioned the strategy of not requiring students to explain mathematical problem solving in the L2, and how mathematical explanation was considered something that the students were initially allowed to do in Swedish: “From my point of view, it is never a requirement that students have to carry out long explanations in English.” (ma1)

According to the mathematics teacher, this strategy facilitated student learning. In the teacher’s opinion, it was the learning of mathematics that was of paramount importance. Initially asking students to provide explanations in the L2, was not considered high priority, as this ability could be developed in the CLIL classroom over time. With meta-linguistic knowledge on the genre explanation in mathematics, its purpose, structure and typical language, perhaps CLIL teachers could enhance student participation in the L2 content classroom dialogue.

Socio-Affective Barrier The second theme that emerged from the teacher interviews was socioaffective barrier. The teachers mentioned feelings of not getting across to the students in the L2 and not being able to communicate adequately in the CLIL content classroom. Two civics teachers, working at different schools, mentioned the feeling of a linguistic ‘barrier’ between them and the students. Barab and Roth (2006) refer to situations where the main content of the communication has to do with the building of a social relation, as dilemmas in relational communication. Westbrook and Henriksen (2011) use the term affective gap. In the present study I use the term socioaffective barrier, as part of the term has been formulated by one of the teachers in the study, and as it is suitable to the context of this study.

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The first example of socio-affective barrier comes from the biology teacher who was relatively new to the CLIL teaching situation. The teacher’s concern was that students do not dare to ask questions in the L2: “If you are standing there, giving your lecture/…/You are not going to notice who is understanding and who is not understanding what you are talking about. Unfortunately, students are not always prone to asking questions. Actually, I think they find it embarrassing to ask.” (bio1)

The teacher’s strategies involved allowing time for individual students to ask for explanations of content at the end of the lesson on a 1:1 basis. Even if this teacher worked at a school where L2 was being taught to a great extent, explanations were sometimes provided in Swedish by the teacher: “If there is a student coming to ask… and the student would prefer the explanation to be in Swedish, I do not refuse to explain in Swedish.” (bio1)

Applying this strategy, the teacher is prioritizing students’ learning of content over their exposure to the L2, i.e., the communication of content is in focus, however with the aspect of social relation taken into consideration. The strategy is genre-oriented, sensitive to the transactional and the relational communication. With regard to explanation, the second biology teacher applied a similar strategy of bilingual teaching: “There are many words in biology they have not come into contact with before…In these cases, you sort of have to be explicit from the start. There’s no need for the students sitting there not knowing what I am talking about.” (bio2)

By ‘explicit’ the biology teacher referred to the use of corresponding terminology and expression in L1 Swedish. The biology teacher reported on the blended use of the two languages in the CLIL classroom as a common strategy, as this would facilitate students’ understanding, and in this way, cater for more in-depth discussion of content area. Similar to the other teachers participating in this study, this biology teacher regarded students’ development of content knowledge as paramount. To further encourage student output in this context, it is possible that a bilingual genre-based approach in biology could be applied. By these means, the students would possibly not only understand the content area better, but they would also be able to produce structured output in two languages.

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Both civics teachers in this study, teaching at different schools in different parts of the country, reflected on the L2 as causing an affective barrier in the classroom interaction. In the interviews, the civics teachers, both new to the profession and to teaching CLIL, kept coming back to reflecting on the problematic effect the use of L2 had on the classroom interaction in the civics classroom. The first teacher reported: “When I started here, I was very strict with using 100% English in the classroom. To begin with I only spoke English with them [the students], and I always felt there was like a barrier between us… the students were very tense.” (civ1)

The civics teacher was encouraged to plan for more use of Swedish in the classroom. This choice was made in collaboration with colleagues and with regard to the viewpoint that the students’ opportunities to study and learn civics is first priority, and the additional school language, English, should not interfere with this priority. The mathematics teachers expressed their view of, and concern for, a safe learning environment, where the students feel that they can ask for advice and explanation when there is something about a mathematical problem they do not understand. The mathematics teachers, teachers at different schools, spoke of the importance of confidence in the learning process: “Something I have come to understand over the years is that confidence precedes learning.” (ma1) “Of course… the more they get to know you, that it is okay to ask… It takes some time to build [this relation]. Some throw a question right away. They dare to expose themselves, because that is what you do when you ask. Even on a 1:1 basis, some students find it difficult.” (ma2)

The strategies that the teachers developed involved translanguaging in the way that students were given the opportunity to ask questions through their L1, Swedish: “If they prefer to ask me in Swedish they can do this. I never want to force them to speak English with me [even though] I always speak English.” (ma2).

The view of the mathematics teachers was that English may not hinder students’ learning of mathematical content. Therefore, the teacher speaks English, but the students can feel free to ask questions in Swedish.

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Gradually, the students can be encouraged to make use of English in whole class discussions, also in situations involving new or more complex mathematical content. In the mathematics teachers’ view, if the students can be brave enough to ask questions, their chances of learning mathematics increase. Thus, according to the CLIL mathematics teachers interviewed in this study, the task for mathematics teachers is to build a social learning climate, in which the students feel free to ask questions. Seemingly, the experienced mathematics teachers appear aware of the classroom interaction challenge in the L2 mathematics classroom. They spoke of the relational communication as a pre-requisite for successful transactional communication.

Conclusion The focus of this study has been CLIL content teachers’ perceived classroom interaction challenges in three school subjects (mathematics, biology and civics) and the strategies developed by the teachers to meet these challenges. The six teachers managed well, according to their own reports. As has been indicated in this study, there is much to be learned from a synthesis of research on content-based L2 instruction and practices and strategies developed by the teachers in these classrooms. Indeed, CLIL teacher education courses could benefit from being informed by both strategies developed by practicing teachers and research on CLIL. As suggested in this chapter, raising teachers’ awareness of different genres of spoken interaction could form an important part of such courses. Meta-knowledge of the structure and typical linguistic expressions of spoken interaction genres could function as scaffolding, providing a safe pedagogical tool to rely on bridging the gap of linguistic unpredictability. Since discussion and analysis in both formal and informal contexts are required in the new curriculum for upper secondary schools in Sweden, content study in the L2 can be a highly challenging task. In an effort to develop their own and their students’ language proficiency in both informal and formal registers, CLIL teachers can use translanguaging as a pedagogical tool. Translanguaging can lower the socio-affective barrier, allowing for dynamic language use, with a focus on the quality of the content and the aim of the communicative situation. With pedagogic tools and strategies of translanguaging and genre at their disposal, CLIL teachers and learners could more easily and thoroughly engage in spoken discourse about subject-specific topics, as has been shown in this study. Further meta-linguistic knowledge of

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language as part of different registers could assist CLIL teachers in lesson design and reflection. In-service courses could be helpful in this respect. Balancing the flexibility of translanguaging with the structure of spoken genres, CLIL teachers together with their students could enhance the development of successful classroom interaction.

Acknowledgement This study is part of a large-scale research project, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLISS), and it has been partly financed by the Swedish Research Council (Project number 721-2010-5376).

References Airey, J. (2011). Talking about teaching in English: Swedish university lecturers’ experiences of changing teaching language. Ibérica, 22, 3554. Apelgren, B-M. (2001). Foreign language teachers’ voices. Personal theories and experiences of change in teaching English as a foreign language in Sweden. Göteborg: University of Reading/Gothenburg University. Axelsson, M., Olofsson, M., Philipsson, A., Rosander, C., & Sellgren, M. (2006). Ämne och språk–språkliga dimensioner i ämnesundervisningen. Stockholm: Utbildningsförvaltningen. Barab, S., & Roth, W. (2006). Curriculum-based ecosystems: Supporting knowing from an ecological perspective. Educational Researcher, 35(3), 3-13. Borg, S. (2003). Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe and do. Language Teaching, 36(2), 81-109. —. (2012). Current approaches to language teacher cognition research: A methodological analysis. In R. Barnard, & A. Burns (Eds.), Researching language teacher cognition and practice. International case studies (pp. 81-109). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Burns, A. (2013). A holistic approach to teaching speaking in the language classroom. In M. Olofsson (Ed.), Symposium 2012. Lärarrollen i svenska som andraspråk (pp. 165-178). Stockholm: Stockholms universitets förlag. Bryman, A. (2013). Samhällsvetenskapliga metoder. Malmö: Gleerups. Coyle, D., Hood, P., & Marsh, D. (2010). Content and language integrated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Cenosz, J., Genese, F., & Gorter, D. (2014). Critical analysis of CLIL: Taking stock and looking forward. Applied Linguistics, 35(3), 243-262. Dörniey, Z. (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. García, O. (2009). Bilingual education in the 21st Century. A global perspective. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. —. (2011). Pedagogies and practices in multilingual classrooms: Singularities in pluralities. The Modern Language Journal, 95(3), 385400. Gibbons, P. (2009). English learners, academic literacy and thinking. Learning in the challenge zone. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Halliday, M. (1985). Spoken and written language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hyland, K. (2007). Genre pedagogy: Language, literacy and L2 writing instruction. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(3), 148-164. Knapp, P., & Watkins, M. (2005). Genre, text, grammar: Technologies for teaching and assessing writing. Sydney: UNSW Press. Leung, C. (2005). Language and content in bilingual education. Linguistics and Education, 16(2), 238-252. Lim Falk, M. (2008). Svenska i engelskspråkig miljö. Ämnesrelaterat språkbruk i två gymnasieklasser. Stockholm: Stockholms universitet. Lindberg, I. (2011). Språka samman. Stockholm: Natur och kultur. Llinares, A., Morton, T., & Whitaker, R. (2012). The roles of languages in CLIL. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ortega, L. (2009). Understanding second language acquisition. New York: Routledge. Selander, S., & Kress, G. (2010). Design för lärande: Ett multimodalt perspektiv. Stockholm: Norstedts. Schüllerqvist, B. (2012). De samhällsvetenskapliga ämnenas didaktik. En skandinavisk översikt. I: Ämnesdidaktisk komparation. Länder, ämnen, teorier, metoder, frågor och resultat (pp. 25-43). Karlstad: Universitetstryckeriet. Skolverket (2011). Lgy 2011. Läroplan, examensmål och gymnasiegemensamma ämnen för gymnasieskola 2011. Retrieved from: www.skolverket.se Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in interlanguage development. In S. Gass (Ed.), Input in second language acquisition (pp. 235-253). Rowley: Mass. Newbury House.

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Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (1998). Interaction and language learning. Two adolescent French immersion students working together. Modern Language Journal, 82(3), 320-337. Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (2000). Task-based second language learning: The uses of the first language. Language Teaching Research, 4(3), 251-274. Tornberg, U. (2009). Språkdidaktik. Malmö: Gleerups. Westbrook, P. N., & Henriksen, B. (2011). Bridging the linguistic and affective gaps: The Impact of a short, tailor-made course on a Danish university lecturer’s ability to lecture with confidence in English. In R. Cancino, L. Dam, & K. Jaeger (Eds.), Policies, principles, practices: New directions in foreign language education in the era of educational globalization (pp. 189-211). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press. Yoxsimer Paulsrud, B. (2014). English-medium instruction in Sweden. Perspectives and practices in two upper secondary schools. Stockholm: Stockholm University.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF (IN)CIVILITY TOWARD GROUPMATES HARUMI KIMURA

Abstract This study explores how second language (L2) learners perceive and deal with peers’ uncivil behaviors and attitudes when working in pairs or groups. The Pair-/Group-work Incivility Scale was created and administered to 347 university students in Japan. The results demonstrated that perception of incivility toward groupmates was a unidimensional psychological construct, and that students perceived different degrees of incivility toward different behaviors and attitudes in pair-/group-work. Written essays on the same issue by 156 students were also collected. Content analysis revealed that students experienced a variety of negative emotions, from sadness to irritation, in the face of peers’ incivility. However, students also reported that they took a variety of measures to cope with incivility. Students who actively dealt with incivility made use of interpersonal, collaborative skills to engage reluctant peers. Mindful of their peers’ needs—and limitations in some cases—the students adjusted their strategies.

Introduction Pair-work and group-work constitute an important component in second language (L2) learning classrooms. What and how much students learn partly depends on what goes on between or among them—i.e., the quality and quantity of peer interaction (Jacob & Kimura, 2013a). Students are supposed to actively interact with and support each other, and although it would be a rewarding experience to work with cooperative

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partners/groupmates, that scenario may not always be the case. Students may find some behaviors and attitudes exhibited by their peers unfavorable and think that their learning environment is not optimal because of these behaviors and attitudes. However, they are likely to have some strategies to change or survive the situation. Investigation is needed to determine how students perceive peers’ unsupportive behaviors and attitudes, what emotional reactions they experience, and how they cope with unsupportive partners/groupmates. Such research will lead to a better understanding of a positively vs. a negatively interdependent classroom culture. The present study employed a mixed-methods approach and utilized both quantitative and qualitative data (Brown, 2014; Creswell, 2003). A questionnaire with 17 Likert-scale items, the Pair-/Group-work Incivility Scale, was administered to 347 university students who were studying English as a foreign language (EFL) in Japan. The quantitative data provided information on how students evaluate peers’ inconsiderate behaviors and attitudes in pair-/group-work. Among the survey participants, 156 students later provided written essays on the same issue. The qualitative data provided information on how students felt about those behaviors and attitudes and how they coped with them. These two types of data were integrated (Brown, 2014) to explore the reasons for the students’ emotional and behavioral reactions toward incivility.

Background Language classrooms are social contexts filled with learning opportunities. Learners are able to develop their language knowledge and skills, if they are fully engaged in interactions with cooperative peers. However, can we simply assume that students are always working cooperatively and productively when put into pairs or in groups? Does pair-/group-work guarantee meaningful interaction? Pedagogical reasons for making use of small group interaction and cooperation for language development abound. In the traditional input-interaction model of language learning, learners need opportunities to interact with other speakers for mutual comprehension through negotiation of meaning (Long, 1996). From a sociocultural perspective, learning first occurs socially (Vygotsky, 1978) and L2 learners acquire language when they interactively work with other speakers (Lantolf, 2000). Emphasis is placed on verbal face-to-face interaction and language use. Lightbown and Spada (2013) contend that “pair and group work provides

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far more practice in speaking and participating in conversations than a teacher-centered class ever could” (p. 209). Likewise, Farrell and Jacobs (2010) claim that pair and group activities constitute an essential component of contemporary language teaching. Active use of pairs and small groups has gained considerable momentum in task-based language teaching, where meaning-focused language use in interaction among peers is required to perform tasks (Long, 2014). In a cooperative learning framework (Jacobs, Power, & Loh, 2002), students in pairs and in groups are positively interdependent. The actions of one member should benefit others and the actions of others should benefit each member. All members actively participate in the work and it is essential to interact face to face to accomplish the given tasks. While working together, members build and nurture a positive and supportive relationship (Dörnyei & Murphy, 2003; Senior, 1997). To make this happen, students need to develop interpersonal skills such as showing respect and understanding for the needs of others. However, educators who promote student-centered approaches to learning in general, and cooperative learning in particular, have pointed out that these cooperative skills have been overlooked, if not neglected, in traditional classrooms where knowledge transmission and individualistic learning take priority (Jacobs, et al. 2002; McCafferty, Jacobs, & Iddings, 2006). Some other important cooperative skills include listening attentively, asking for help, disagreeing politely, taking turns, praising others, thanking others, and waiting patiently. These skills help to create a good learning environment, where learners support each other. What if learners do not interact in a mutually supportive environment? What if their interaction is not good enough in quantity and quality because learners lack the abovementioned and other interpersonal skills? To answer these questions, L2 teachers need to know how students perceive and deal with impolite, unproductive, and unfavorable learning behaviors and attitudes in pair-/group-work. To date, research has focused on good learning behaviors and what ideal classmates do (Murphey, Falout, Fukuda, & Fukuda, 2014), while classroom environment, most notably peers’ supportive or problematic behaviors, have been demonstrated in a recent empirical study to mediate motivational changes for better or worse (Kozaki & Ross, 2013). The term ‘incivility’ is used to describe problematic classroom behaviors and attitudes. In the available literature, incivility is defined as “speech or action that is disrespectful or rude” (Boice, 1996, p. 3) and it occurs when learners are “characteristically rude and discourteous,

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displaying a lack of regard for others” (Andersson & Pearson, 1999, p. 457). The former describes what people do and the latter describes who they are. In both, ‘others’ are part of the picture, and in classrooms they are peers. Problematic behaviors can also be inappropriate, troublesome, bothersome, disruptive, and can interfere with learning. Investigating the uncivil behaviors and coping strategies that learners employ will lead to a better understanding of productive interactions among peers. Bjorklund and Rehling (2010) conducted an extensive study in this area. They administered a 23-item incivility questionnaire to 3,616 college students in the United States and examined the behaviors the students found uncivil and how frequently they experienced those behaviors. The researchers thought that previous studies had been mostly anecdotal and that a large-scale quantitative study was necessary. They demonstrated that (1) students are experiencing an array of uncivil behaviors and (2) most of the troublesome behaviors are moderately uncivil. In the present study, Bjorklund and Rehling’s (2010) scope of study was narrowed to the Japanese EFL context. Moderately uncivil behaviors and attitudes in pair-/group-work in L2 classrooms were examined. The focus was on how Japanese college students evaluated inconsiderate behaviors and attitudes in English classrooms, how they felt about them, and how they coped with them.

The Study The current study is composed of two phases. In Phase 1, a list of moderately uncivil behaviors and attitudes in pair-/group-work in English classes at Japanese universities were examined quantitatively and rank-ordered. Moderately uncivil behaviors and attitudes indicate a lack of empathy for the emotions and needs of others; thus, they may disrupt L2 learning in pairs or in small groups. For example, uncivil students might ignore the given task and start side conversations. They might make their partners/groupmates do all the work on an assignment. Students may feel more or less offended in the face of these unfavorable behaviors. In Phase 2, how students felt about and coped with these moderately uncivil behaviors and attitudes was examined qualitatively for content analysis. The assumption was that students experienced an array of emotions and had some coping strategies that they thought were effective as well as reasons to use particular strategies. It should be noted that there was no particular focus on L2 use in this study but the aim was to examine overall behaviors and attitudes of members in pairs and groups in L2

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classrooms. The quality and quantity of L2 use in pair-/group-work is a related but distinct issue, and first language (L1) use in L2 classrooms has been demonstrated to have its own value (Jacobs & Kimura, 2013b). The data collected in Phases 1 & 2 were combined to explore why some behaviors were recognized as more uncivil than others. This question was a mixed-methods question because both the abovementioned quantitative and qualitative data were needed to explore reasons for the intensity of incivility perception (Brown, 2014). The research questions of this study included: 1. What behaviors and attitudes in pair-/group-work do L2 learners in Japanese universities find problematic? 2. How do they feel when their partner/groupmates are uncivil? 3. How do they handle classroom incivility? 4. What are the reasons for their emotional and behavioral reactions?

Phase 1 Three hundred and forty-seven university students in three universities in the central and eastern parts of Japan participated in Phase 1 (School A: 156 students, School B: 126 students, & School C: 65 students). In total there were 195 female students, 148 male students, and 4 students who did not declare their gender. The age range was between 18 and 22 years and the mean age was 18.6 years. The students’ majors varied and included (in alphabetical order) architecture, biology, child education, cultural studies, English literature, environmental studies, food science, information technology, music, nursing, policy studies, psychology, and rehabilitation medicine. The Pair-/Group-work Incivility Scale was created for this study. A list of 17 items, which describe uncivil student behaviors in pair-/group-work, was derived from a review of the existing research (Bjorklund & Rehling, 2010; Boice, 1996), a 45-minute focus group interview with three university students in one of the schools, and teacher observation. One item was identical to an item in Bjorklund and Rehling’s (2010) study: ‘doing homework for other classes’. Three items were similar: ‘conversing with others (neither their partner nor groupmates)’, ‘being disrespectful to others’, and ‘arriving late’. Two items about making complaints were combined into one: ‘complaining about the task’. Likewise, three items concerning electronic devices were combined into one: ‘using a cell/smart phone’. The other 11 items were original, and some focused on

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pair-/group-work (e.g., ‘making their partner/groupmates do all the work’ and ‘not listening attentively’). Other items focused on tasks (e.g., ‘not doing the task as instructed’ and ‘going off task’). Bjorklund and Rehling (2010) included two items in their scale that described favorable behaviors, but those were not included in this study. Participants were asked, ‘To what degree do you consider the following behaviors and attitudes to be uncivil?’ and they used a 6-point Likert scale to evaluate each behavior/attitude (1 = not uncivil at all to 6 = extremely uncivil). The survey was given in Japanese.

Phase 2 One hundred and fifty-six university students in two universities participated in Phase 2 (School A: 97 students & School B: 59 students). There were in total 124 female students and 32 male students. Their age range was between 18 and 19 years and their mean age was 18.7. Participants were asked to write an anonymous short essay to the following prompts in Japanese, ‘How do you feel when your partner/groupmates are not serious about working on the given task that requires cooperation? What did you do about it?’ Participants used classroom time, free time, or both to complete their writing. Participants wrote an average of 53.4 Chinese characters in response in total (Min = 21; Max = 132). Their answers to the two questions were translated into English and written on index cards for identification and categorization of themes for content analyses (Miles & Huberman, 1994). A colleague read the translations for verification and assisted in identifying and categorizing the themes through discussion. My colleague and I met twice; each session was 90 minutes long. In reporting participants’ responses in the next section, pseudonyms were used.

Results and Discussion Preliminary Analysis of the Scale The following analyses were carried out to determine the dimensionality of the 17 items from the Pair-/Group-work Incivility Scale. It was necessary to ensure that all the items targeted the same underlying psychological concept, that is, perception of pair-/group-work incivility. An exploratory factor analysis using a principal component analysis was conducted to investigate the factor loadings of the items (see Table 13-1).

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Table 13-1: Summary of items, means, standard deviations, and factor loadings for One-Factor Solution for the Pair-/Group-work Incivility Scale. Item

M

SD

16.

Being disrespectful

4.8

1.5

Factor loading .73

3.

4.7

1.4

.73

4.7

1.3

.78

7.

Making their partner/groupmates do all the work Not cooperating with their partner/groupmates Not doing the task as instructed

4.5

1.4

.81

4.

Using a cell/smart phone

4.3

1.4

.78

15.

4.3

1.3

.77

17.

Not listening attentively to partner/groupmates Doing homework for other classes

4.3

1.5

.83

13.

Being distracted from learning

4.3

1.3

.81

5.

Going off task

4.2

1.4

.80

12.

Not bringing learning materials

4.2

1.4

.80

11.

Displaying inattentive posture

4.1

1.3

.84

2.

Looking and acting bored

4.0

1.4

.69

10.

Arriving late

4.0

1.4

.76

1.

3.9

1.4

.69

14.

Coming to class without doing homework Having side conversations

3.7

1.3

.77

8.

Complaining about the task

3.5

1.4

.76

9.

Conversing with others

3.2

1.3

.63

6.

Note. N = 347; M = Mean; SD = Standard Deviation; Item mean scores reflect the following response choices: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = moderately disagree, 3 = slightly disagree, 4 = slightly agree, 5 = moderately agree, 6 = strongly agree.

Prior to performing the analysis, the suitability of data for a factor analysis was assessed. Inspection of the correlation matrix revealed the

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presence of many coefficients of .3 and above. The Kaider-Meyer-Oklin value was .95, exceeding the recommended value of .6 and the Barlett’s Test of Sphericity reached statistical significance (p = .00), supporting the factorability of the correlation matrix. The principle component analysis revealed one component with an eigenvalue exceeding 1, which explained 60.88% of variance. The scree plot demonstrated a clear break after the first component. All items demonstrated a strong loading from .65 to .84. The reliability was .96 (Cronbach’s alpha). The results demonstrated that all of the items tapped into one and the same psychological construct—perception of pair-/group-work incivility.

Research Question 1: Problematic Behaviours and Attitudes Research Question 1 asked about behaviours and attitudes in pair-/group-work that L2 learners in Japanese universities find problematic. Table 13-1 displays the ranking order of the raw score means of the descriptors on the Pair-/Group-work Incivility Scale. Three items with means over 4.6 are in regards to whether peers are responsible and contributing to pair-/group-work. Item 3 (making partner/groupmates do all the work) and Item 6 (not cooperating with partner/groupmates) concern responsibility. Pairs and groupmates should work together to complete the given task. Students are considered uncivil, or disrespectful (Item 16), when they take advantage of their more hardworking partner/groupmates and do not share the workload equally. Students ask for equal participation in the given task and the partner/groupmates need to share their ideas and energy for the completion of the task—i.e., each individual should be accountable. Other items above 4.0 concern mainly participation. When partner/groupmates are using their cell/smart phone (Item 4) or doing homework for other classes (Item 17), or when they are apparently off task (Item 5) and distracted (Item 13), they are most likely not listening attentively to their partner/groupmates (Item 15). Students may display inattentive posture (Item 11) and act bored (Item 02) when they are not engaged with the task at hand, that is, not participating. When students do not have their learning materials with them (Item 12), their partner/groupmates must share, thus sacrificing their own optimal learning conditions. In all of these cases, students in pairs or in groups cannot make the best use of opportunities to interact and learn. Participants did not seem to care as much about their partner/groupmates

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coming to class late (Item 10) or coming to class without doing homework (Item 1). These behaviors are unfavorable in terms of optimal learning, but they do not seem to disrupt interpersonal relations. Students cared even less about having side conversations with their partner/groupmates (Item 14), complaining about the task (Item 8), and conversing with others (Item 9). In these cases, students are at least interacting or sharing their concerns and interests, even if they are off task. To sum up, items concerning violation of individual accountability (Jacobs, et al., 2002) ranked highest and items concerning lack of participation came next. The participants did not care as much if the behaviors did not impede their interpersonal relations or if peers engaged in unproductive interactions.

Research Question 2: Emotional Reactions to Incivility Research Question 2 asked about students’ emotional reactions to peers’ uncivil behaviors and attitudes. Students reported that they experienced a variety of emotions in the face of classroom incivility and employed a variety of coping/non-coping strategies. In most cases, students experienced negative emotions such as discouragement, dissatisfaction, uneasiness, loneliness, sorrow, irritation, frustration, and upset. Others described the situation as unpleasant, disappointing, unfortunate, troublesome, stressful, and regrettable. These negative reactions are not surprising: the students expect proper learning behaviors, but their partner/groupmates do not live up to their expectations. Students also reported harmful affective outcomes. For example, Haruka, one of the students, reported that she was discouraged by their peers’ uncivil behaviors and lost interest in pair/groupwork, while Shiori, another student, wrote that uncivil attitudes made her feel sad and suspected her partner might not like her. Considering that studies in cooperative learning have demonstrated not only cognitive gains but also positive affective outcomes (Johnson & Johnson, 2009), it is understandable that students in non-functioning pairs or groups suffer a variety of negative emotive reactions. Akiko, who responded that she did not care much about her partner’s/groupmates’ uncivil behaviors, added that she would rather work with supportive peers. Rina thought that unsupportive peers should recognize that they were actually spoiling the learning environment. The collection of expressions of negative emotions from unhappy students and these additional comments by seemingly carefree students both indicate that uncivil behaviors and attitudes could affect the social and emotional climate of the classroom.

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Research Question 3: Coping with Incivility Research Question 3 asked about students’ coping behaviors in dealing with peers’ uncivil behaviors and attitudes. Students reported that they reacted to incivility in different ways and deployed a variety of strategies. It turned out that in many cases, students actively sought ways to encourage their partner/groupmates to participate. In other cases, they chose to do the work by themselves for different reasons. In the following subsection, active approaches are discussed: talking to reluctant partner/groupmates, maintaining a cooperative climate, showing sympathy, and becoming role models. Active Approaches Most students tried to maintain a cooperative climate by talking to the uncivil partner/groupmates. They asked questions about the given task, asked for confirmation, or told them to share ideas in order to involve their reluctant partner/groupmates. Mitsuki responded that she dared to ask a very easy question to push her partner/groupmates into saying something in return and joining their cooperative work. Nozomi “talked and talked” until her partner/groupmates responded. These students persistently appealed to their partner/groupmates for participation. Creating a good climate for learning together was another common strategy. “Okay, let’s …” and “We work together on …” were often quoted in students’ responses. Quite a few students wrote, honestly, that they started with a side conversation—off-task talk and small talk helped to create or support social harmony. Reina wrote: “Side conversation may sound bad, but it helps us set up a context for working together, and we are not just off task for the sake of having a good time or we ignore the task and instructions. We are chatting about other things to be able to get ready for the pair-/group-work.”

Mayuko also wrote that socializing comes before interaction for learning. Showing understanding and sympathy regarding uncivil behaviors and attitudes was another way to get peers involved, and students reported that it helped improve their situation. Erika wrote: “When my partner looks sleepy and is reluctant to work, I try to put myself in her shoes and say things like, ‘You must be tired. How late did you work

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last night?’ Then, my partner says things like, ‘We have too much homework. We are very busy, aren’t we?’ and she got geared and started working, sometimes apparently unwillingly. However, at other times I succeeded in changing my peers’ attitudes, and we started working as good groupmates. I was very happy to be able to work together.”

Some students chose to be good role models, take the initiative, and demonstrate proper learning behaviors in order to motivate their partner/groupmates or to pressure them into collaborating or contributing. Akari pretended she did not care about her inattentive partner/groupmates and tried to look like she was working enthusiastically on the task. Her tactics worked, and her partner joined her later. Mei usually took the lead in starting the work, and she was careful not to keep silent. Talking helped Mei in two ways: she kept herself motivated and continued to send signals that her partner should be working with her. Passive Attitudes Some students were more hesitant in having their partner/groupmates participate in full collaboration. Kanae did all the work alone, and asked her partner only when she was not able to find solutions or she was in trouble. Nami and other students made an arrangement and shared the workload instead of asking non-participating partners to work together. She wrote that it was not always possible to work together because students often were not in the mood or they did not know each other well. These students had more lenient attitudes toward classroom incivility. Other students chose to work alone when they thought their partner/groupmates were unwilling to work with them, and their reasons varied. Ken wrote that the work was for himself anyway. Eriko wrote that she could not change others’ behaviors or attitudes. Ryoko said she did all the work because there was no other choice. Yuma thought that he could not get ideal partner/groupmates all the time and he must accept the situation. He added, “Tomorrow is another day.” Aika was not happy about doing the work alone, but she did so because she did not know how to talk to her uncivil partner. She wrote that she could not do anything when her partner was not interested in her or in the task. Hitomi thought that she should work twice as much to cover for her reluctant partner. These students adjusted to and seemingly accepted their peers’ uncivil behaviors and attitudes, regulating their own emotional reactions, but their mindsets differed.

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Situational Factors A few situational factors influenced the ways students dealt with incivility. First, it sometimes depended on whether the given work was for pairs or for groups. Karin thought that she cared less about reluctant peers in a group than in a pairwork. She could work with the other, more cooperative members in a group. Shinya felt that it was easier to tell uncooperative members to join the work or discussion in a group than in a pair. Suggestions like “You may not feel like doing it but you have to” and “It’s time to work” had worked for him. He could say these statements in a pleasing way or with a fun tone. He wrote that it was easier to be in a playful mood in a group than in a pair. Second, it made a difference whether their partner/groupmates were close friends. Maki reported that with close friends, cooperation started in a natural way and she did not experience incivility or have difficulty in getting started. However, with peers who she did not know well, she did not take active measures when she found them unwilling to participate. Ryo told his reluctant partner, who happened to be his good friend, to start working on the task with a good sense of humor. Saki also wrote that she cheerfully said to her unenthusiastic partner, “What’s wrong? Come on! Let’s work together. It doesn’t seem to be that much work.” These students reported that it was easier with close friends than with mere classmates to deal with unfavorable classroom behaviors, but they tried not to be evaluative and gave encouragement when necessary. They did not sacrifice their friendship to accomplish their pair-/group-work. Other Issues Some students were more resistant to peers’ incivility and did not give up quickly in inviting reluctant partner/groupmates. Ryo reported that he talked to his reluctant partner/groupmates, but when they did not respond properly, he made suggestions as to how they could contribute to the work: he assigned small roles to his uncooperative peers and proposed work sharing. He made the point that their responsibility on the task was not heavy and the work would be “a piece of cake.” “Let’s finish quickly,” he said to his partner. Negative outcomes of classroom incivility were reported from some students. Shiho wrote that she was easily influenced by her peers’ unsupportive behaviors, refrained from working hard, and looked for an easy way out. Sae wrote that she took it easy and decided not to work hard

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when she found her partner/groupmates were unwilling to work. Incivility was sometimes infectious, and some students were not resilient against peers’ incivility. Ayana mentioned emotional scaffolding among peers. She wrote that, honestly, she was sometimes not motivated. In many cases, her partner/groupmates were supportive even when she was “not into the task.” There were times when she was matched with other unmotivated partner/groupmates. She thought that she could manage better with others, even with unmotivated ones, than by herself. She experienced that two or more is stronger than one and she liked pair-/group-work because she became more motivated than in individual work. To sum up, students coped with incivility in different ways. They took priority in creating or maintaining good relationships with their partner/groupmates. They thought that talking to reluctant partners was useful to get them involved, and quite often used side conversations to get going. Some students were more persistent in taking the time and effort to engage their peers, but other students gave up easily. Uncivil behaviors and attitudes were mostly discouraging and created negative affective outcomes.

Research Question 4: Why Uncivil? Research Question 4 asked why some behaviors were recognized as more uncivil than others. Items regarding rudeness and a lack of equal participation were rated highest in the survey as demonstrated in Table 13-1 and discussed earlier (Research Question 2). The item about being disrespectful to the partner/groupmates (Item 16) was ranked the highest, “free-riding” (Item 3) came second, and not cooperating (Item 6) came third with only small differences between them. In pair-/group-work, students expected that they both/all contribute to learning together; i.e., they should jointly work on the task (Johnson & Johnson, 1998). When their partner/groupmates did not live up to this expectation, students thought that their peers were disrespectful and irresponsible because they were not contributing to achieving the supposedly common goals. In cooperative pairs/groups, the actions students take benefit peers and the actions peers take benefit each student (Jacobs et al., 2002). They are positively interdependent when they see cooperation as a necessary investment and feel rewarded when they work together to achieve common goals. When they are positively interdependent, they enjoy their learning experience. Kaori wrote that it was not fun when her partner did

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not want to work together. It was a bad day when she was randomly assigned to a reluctant partner or was put into a non-cooperative group. This is suggestive of Jacobs et al. (2002), who wrote that positive interdependence exists “primarily in the minds of students” (p. 33). Teachers may be able to structure tasks so that students should be interdependent on the tasks and encourage them to do so, but what determines students’ satisfaction of pair-/group-work is how well they cooperate. Other scale items regarding discipline problems (Bjorklund & Rehling, 2010) were also ranked rather high because they caused peers to feel neglected. For example, using a cell/smart phone (Item 4) was ranked 5th. Minako wrote that she did not like it when her partner started to use her smartphone because she felt ignored and sad. Ruka reported that she felt isolated when her partner was doing homework for other classes (Item 17). She wrote that she was envious of other pairs, who looked like they were enjoying learning together. Students who work on something else when they are supposed to work with their partner/groupmates are not just behaving irresponsibly and taking advantage of their partners’ hard work, but they are also rude or uncivil and not providing their partners with support, encouragement, enjoyment of learning, or satisfaction of cooperation. It is worth mentioning that not listening attentively to partner/groupmates (Item 15) ranked higher than displaying inattentive posture (Item 11): 6th and 11th, respectively. Students hoped that their partner/groupmates would stay more mindful to what they have to say than to the task itself. Masayoshi wrote: “What’s the point in trying to work together when my partner/groupmates look absent-minded or when they are thinking of something else and not listening to me?”

Mamiko also wrote, “I felt like I was shut off.” Their comments demonstrated dissatisfaction, alienation, and irritation in the face of inattentiveness. Pair-/group-work is inherently social and requires “face-to-face, mind-to-mind, and heart-to-heart” (Cozolino, 2013, p. 17) interaction with caring others. Other items about improper attention, being distracted (Item 13), and looking or acting bored (Item 2), ranked 8th and 12th, respectively. Students do not feel they are connected to, and therefore valued by, their uncivil partner/groupmates. Kei chose to join another pair when his partner

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seemed distracted or “off in another world”. He went on to say that he usually started with monitoring or assessing the readiness or willingness of his partner/groupmates. Atsumi responded that she did not like it that her partner/groupmates looked bored even when they were doing the task together. Interpersonal communication is automatic and unconscious to a large extent (Cozolino, 2013). It is likely that negative attitudes easily show and students are good at detecting them. On the other hand, going off task was more permissible when students were interacting with their partner/groupmates in some way. For example, when complaining about the task (Item 8), students were active in talking to each other about the task and exchanging ideas. The group or partners may be building consensus, which is a solid outcome of the interaction. As discussed earlier, students often made use of side conversations (Item 14) to build a cooperative climate and facilitate successful peer interaction. Low rankings of these items demonstrate that some off-task behaviors do not bother students as much because they help foster bonding in some cases and produce actual outcomes in others. It is worth mentioning that coping strategies comprise interpersonal, collaborative skills. The list in Jacobs et al. (2002), for example, includes “encouraging others to participate”, “persuading others, offering suggestions”, “using humor to help group functioning”, “getting a group back on task”, “waiting patiently”, and “asking for help, clarification, examples, explanation, and repetition” (p. 80), which are behaviors that the students in this study reported and used in coping with incivility. The skills students most expected from their partner/groupmates included “listening attentively” (Jacobs et al., 2002, p. 80) and showing genuine interest in others, both of which are indispensable in teamwork, and they “form the basic nexus among individuals” to make cooperative work possible (Johnson & Johnson, 2009, p. 369). It is not a coincidence that coping strategies display an array of interpersonal skills as these skills are essential for positive human connection in every community, and classrooms are no exception. To sum up, students do not accept incivility in the classroom because it spoils trust, group cohesion, and learning satisfaction. Students feel they are not valued in their relationships with uncivil partner/groupmates. In cooperative pairs/groups, on the other hand, members are positively interdependent and share responsibility and outcomes of learning (Jacobs, et al., 2002). Students appreciate it when they can join together to work on a task. Cooperative behaviors and attitudes support caring relationships among students and create a healthy social milieu for learning in pairs or

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in groups. Peers are an essential part of the learning environment and unsupportive peers can have detrimental effects on the wellbeing of their partner/groupmates.

Pedagogical Implications University students were shown to develop some important interpersonal, collaborative skills, so it is probably better for instructors to wait patiently for pairs and groups to manage interpersonally difficult situations themselves instead of rushing to help. Students are developing some of these skills, or emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995), when paired with or grouped into both cooperative and uncooperative partner/groupmates. Side conversations are often used for partners/groupmates to get started, and simply banning side conversations might not be a good strategy. A student might be intentionally using a side conversation for a good purpose. Implementing icebreakers or group-forming activities for building rapport among new partners or group members would be preferable so that each pair/group can get down to business once they are given a task, thus nurturing a pleasant and inspiring learning environment.

Conclusion This study investigated L2 learners’ perception of their peers’ incivility and their strategies to deal with it. The results demonstrated that students faced uncivil behaviors and attitudes in pair-/group-work while trying to get their reluctant partner/groupmates to start working cooperatively with them. Students made use of a variety of collaborative skills to connect with uncivil peers and invite them to work, while uncivil peers were likely to lack those skills. More importantly, the uncivil peers did not show respect and concern for others. Students valued positive interdependence and equal participation when working with partner/groupmates. When they found their partner/groupmates to be uncivil, they experienced a variety of negative emotions. Examining uncivil behaviors and students’ coping measures highlighted the importance of developing and maintaining interpersonal, collaborative skills. These skills form the basis of fostering bonding among peers as well as nurturing a pleasant and inspiring learning environment.

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References Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace. Academy of Management Review, 24(3), 452–471. Boice, B. (1996). Classroom incivilities. Research in Higher Education, 37(4), 453–485. Bjorklund, W. L., & Rehling, D. L. (2010). Student perceptions of classroom incivility. College Teaching, 58(1), 15-18. doi: 10.1080/87567550903252801 Brown, J. D. (2014). Mixed methods research for TESOL. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Cozolino, L. (2013). The social neuroscience of education. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company Ltd. Creswell, J. W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Dörnyei, Z., & Murphey, T. (2003). Group dynamics in the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Farrell, T. S. C., & Jacobs, G. M. (2010). Essentials for successful English language teaching. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York, NY: Bantam Dell. Jacobs, G. M., & Kimura, H. (2013a). Cooperative learning and teaching. Alexandria, VA: TESOL. Jacobs, G. M., & Kimura, H. (2013b). Encouraging second language use in cooperative learning groups. Beyond Words, 1(1), 24–37. Jacobs, G. M., Power, M. A., & Loh, W. I. (2002). The teacher’s sourcebook for cooperative learning: Practical techniques, basic principles, and frequently asked questions. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1998). Learning together and alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Ally & Bacon. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2009). An educational psychology success story: Social independent theory and cooperative learning. Educational Researcher, 38(5), 365–379. doi: 10.3102/0013189X09339057 Kozaki, Y., & Ross, S. J. (2011). Contextual dynamics in foreign language learning motivation. Language Learning, 61(4), 1328-1354.

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doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2011.00638.x Lantolf, J. P. (2000). Sociocultural theory and second language learning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2013). How languages are learned (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Long, M. (1996). The role of linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In W. Ritchie & T. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 413–468). New York: Academic Press. —. (2014). Second language acquisition and task-based language teaching. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. McCafferty, S. G., Jacobs, G. M., & DaSilva Iddings, A. C. (Eds.). (2006). Cooperative learning and second language teaching. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Murphey, T., Falout, J., Fukuda, T., & Fukada, Y. (2014). Socio-dynamic motivating through idealizing classmates. System, 45(4), 242–253. doi: 10.1016/j.system.2014.06.004 Senior, R. M. (1997). Transforming language classes into bonded groups. ELT Journal, 51(1), 3–11. doi: 10.1093/elt/51.1.3 Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN DEVELOPING FOREIGN LANGUAGE IDENTITIES THROUGH AUTONOMY-ORIENTED PEDAGOGY TERO KORHONEN

Abstract Language learning is increasingly viewed as a holistic process impinging on the learner’s identity. Still, the extent to which this development can be induced within the formal institutional foreign language (FL) context has been contested. Situated within Finnish adult upper secondary education, this study examines whether and how language learning in an autonomy-oriented FL context can promote the development of FL identity-a multifaceted construct referring to any aspect of personal identity related to one’s knowledge and use of the target language (TL) in question. The researcher collected longitudinal, narrative data from his English as a foreign language (EFL) students. On analysing the data narratively, the researcher’s interest lay in the students’ language narratives as sites for identity construction, with the term language narrative referring to the students’ storied, TL-related experiences acquired in different spheres of life over time. Despite the uniqueness of the students’ experiences, the findings suggested that language learning in the FL context provided the students with critical experiences triggering or fuelling the development of their FL identities. This identity work had a positive impact on the students’ capacities to function as persons in desired ways using the TL, their sense of themselves as TL learners, users and participants, and a variety of TL-mediated aspects of their life skills. This implies that the pedagogy for autonomy adopted in this FL context is a plausible way to promote FL identity development and raises speculations about the interrelatedness between autonomy and identity.

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Introduction Language learning is not only about acquiring new linguistic structures for communication; instead, it refers to a holistic process involving reconstructions and transformations of identity (Benson & Cooker, 2013; Norton, 2013; van Lier, 2004). On the other hand, it has been widely contested whether foreign language (FL) learning in the FL context can bring about such profound developments (Block, 2007; Lantolf, 2013; Pavlenko, 2005). According to Block (2007, p. 113), for example, “the FL context provides few opportunities for the emergence of significant new subject positions mediated by the TL [target language]”, with identity work only confined to the language learner community and the abundant first language (L1)-mediated interference as the two primary reasons for this. This case study makes claims for the opposite while pinpointing some of the peculiarities involved in identity work in the FL context and indicating parallels with the identity development discovered in study abroad contexts. By analysing English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ language learning processes in a general upper secondary school for adults (GUSSA) in Finland with the help of narrative data, this study also contributes to the narrow empirical knowledge base about identity work in the FL context.

Background Whereas plenty of research has been conducted on identity in second language (SL) situations such as immigration (see Norton, 2013), there are relatively few studies to date on identity in the FL context (see Huang & Benson, 2013). According to Gao, Li and Li (2002), this condition may be due to the fact that FL students are often claimed to lack exposure to the target culture. Thus, the critical experiences necessary for identity development are also assumed to be in short supply, which has been seen to imply that issues about identity are irrelevant in the FL context (see Block, 2007). For anyone working and researching within FL education, such assumptions and claims should be a source of concern since identity is nevertheless one of the key constructs in the field (Kaikkonen, 2012; Kohonen, 2001). On the other hand, the little research that is situated in the FL context has suggested that identity development, although somewhat different to the SL context, may be an integral part of formal institutional language learning. Here, brief references will only be made to two pieces of research that are of interest for this study.

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First, Huhtala and Lehti-Eklund (2012) investigated emerging identities in an FL context. By thematically comparing the narratives written in the TL by first and third semester Finnish university students of Swedish, the researchers demonstrate how the university context and the community of fellow students, teachers and TL users promote the language learners’ identity development. Second, Huang (2011) has studied identity development in a Chinese FL context, gathering data that consisted of autobiographical learning accounts, semi-structured interviews and field notes. In addition to pointing out identity development among the EFL students in his analysis, Huang suggests complex and dynamic interconnections between identity, agency and autonomy, conceptualising the constructs as interrelated but distinct concepts in the process of FL learning. The theoretical framework for this case study is informed by a poststructuralist, narrative understanding of FL identity. In a similar fashion, Benson, Barkhuizen, Bodycott, and Brown (2013, p. 28) have suggested a working definition for SL identity to capture the diverse processes and outcomes involved in SL learning, viewing the notion as “any aspect of a person’s identity that is related to their knowledge or use of a second language”. Drawing and elaborating on this notion, the construct of FL identity has been adopted here to refer to the potential reconstructions and transformations of personal identity that language learning in the FL context may accompany. As any aspect of personal and social identity that is related to one’s knowledge and use of the TL to be learnt, FL identity encompasses the person’s dynamic and evolving relationships to the foreign languages that s/he knows and the relationships among them. Like its SL counterpart, FL identity is both socially conditioned and individually constructed over time. It is a multifaceted notion referring to the identities of people who know one or more foreign languages. This view implies the existence of multiple FL identities which together combine into a more or less coherent and meaningful whole and contribute to the on-going, dynamic development of personal identity. Furthermore, this study examines FL identity as a narrative identity. This understanding derives from what Ricœur (1991) and scholars drawing on him have argued about the relationship between narrative and identity. The core of this view lies in that people interpret themselves and the world by telling and retelling autobiographical stories within the limits set by the language and culture that they inhabit. In this on-going process of positioning and re-positioning, self-narratives do not simply represent a person’s life but produce the person’s identity (Bruner, 1991). Identity consists of situated, temporal and storied experiences about who the

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speaker is, where s/he comes from and where s/he is going (Mishler, 2006). This study approaches FL identity from this perspective as a linguistic phenomenon inseparable from its narration and made manifest both in and through narrative.

The Study The present study derives from the writer’s forthcoming narrative PhD research, the main objective of which was to investigate FL students’ growth to autonomy longitudinally through the lens of FL identity in adult upper secondary education. In this research, autonomy as a goal of FL education was examined as a complex construct including but also extending beyond self-control over language learning (for related theoretical views, see Benson, 2013; Pennycook, 1997; Raya, Lamb, & Vieira, 2007). One of the specific aims was to look for evidence of reconstructing FL identities, which constitutes the part of the PhD research that this study draws on. In particular, this study focuses on the following research questions: 1. Did the adult students show development of FL identity during their EFL studies in the GUSSA? 2. What kind of identity work was manifest in this FL context? The research participants included 34 Finnish-speaking FL students who attended the writer’s EFL courses in the local GUSSA between spring 2009 and autumn 2012, with GUSSA here referring to a Finnish adult education institute that provides formal upper secondary education for adults of all ages (see Siivonen, 2010). On the basis of the data, some of the participating students were selected for a detailed narrative analysis in the PhD research. Although similar findings are revealed from among the other research participants, the data extracts presented in support of the knowledge claims in this case study were generated by four of these students during their EFL studies. Due to ethical, epistemological and practical reasons, exploratory practice was adopted as the method to gather narrative data (Allwright, 2003; Allwright & Hanks, 2009). This meant that data collection was integrated into the practices and routines of FL teaching without additional research machinery and the analysis relied on the material generated naturally in the daily processes of FL learning and teaching. As indicated in Table 14-1, the data, most of which were collected in electronic form, consisted of the participating students’ language learning journals kept as

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required course work, their reflective essay tasks and self-assessments that were also compulsory course assignments, audio-recorded material from the annual counselling sessions between the student and the teacher, and the teacher’s teaching journal written during the three and a half-year research period. Whereas some of the extracts quoted in this study were originally in English, others were produced in the participants’ first language (Finnish) and were translated into English after the analysis. Table 14-1: Types and amounts of data collected. Type of data

language learning journal

reflective tasks & selfassessments

counselling sessions

teaching journal

Amount of data

319 pages

128 pages

70 pages

352 pages

These data included what the writer termed language narratives. With this notion, the writer refers to individually constructed but culturally and socially rooted, storied experiences of language learning, language use and participation in different TL-related domains of life. Following Bruner (1991), Polkinghorne (1996), Ricœur (1991) and Squire (2008), the researcher examines language narratives as contextually anchored spaces for identity construction, in which the learners give personal meaning to their TL-related experiences, make sense of themselves in relation to the TL, and position and perform themselves as language learners, users and participants in different contexts over time. A three-part analysis drawing on Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, and Zilber’s (1998) four-dimensional matrix of analysing narratives and Polkinghorne’s (1995) distinction between analysis of narratives and narrative analysis was conducted on the data from the selected students. In the first part, the holistic analysis of narrative form, each student’s language learning process was depicted by graphing the overall development of their English-related subject positions over time. This analysis also involved an identification of key episodes and turning points occurring as part of the student’s language learning process. The second part of the analysis, the holistic analysis of narrative content, consisted of identifying the constituent thematic elements, powerful storylines, during these learning processes and following the progression of these storylines throughout the student’s EFL studies. On the basis of these two analyses, the key events, actions and experiences discovered were crafted into storied, developmental accounts in the third part of the analysis. These

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‘emplotments’ depicted each student’s individual language learning process in the form of a multi-voiced narrative.

Results and Discussion Although the analysis revealed the uniqueness of each student’s learning process, it also indicated similarities in the students’ development, as the following findings will illustrate. In the extracts, the pseudonyms Noora, Susanna, Suvi and Leena have been used to refer to the four female students.

Noora In her mid-twenties, Noora enrolled in the GUSSA to find a meaningful way to spend her evenings. Having done office work after graduating for a vocational occupation, she felt that her life did not provide her with sufficient intellectual challenges. As for her English skills, she felt that they were already good. She was also motivated to study, and portrayed herself as a self-directed FL student with a perfectionist attitude. Noora was accustomed to using English while surfing the net, having chats with her foreign friend and receiving phone calls from foreign customers at work. In extract 1 from her second school year, Noora describes what had become one of her key experiences in the EFL courses. 1. “I’m also starting to understand that learning a foreign language is a lifelong process and during these three years […] I won’t be ‘totally complete’. […] I’m not ready and I’ve learned that I’ll never be ready. This has taken a certain weight off my shoulders and there again, on the other hand, it keeps up my interest because there’s always something new to study.” (2nd year, holistic-form analysis)

This evolving understanding made Noora position herself differently as a language learner, as she began searching for her own voice instead of perfection. Extract 2 captures her relation to the TL at the end of her studies, also showing evidence of her developing personal voice in English. 2. “[L]anguage is something you can work with, a kind of tool you can play and experiment with. […] I’ve learned to make [the language] suit my style, so it sounds like me. And my courage is at a point where I dare to

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Chapter Fourteen begin a conversation on genetically-manipulated food or something like that.” (3rd year, holistic-content analysis)

In addition to outcomes that directly relate to the TL, Noora also attributed a substantial part of her personal growth during her GUSSA years to her EFL studies. In extract 3, she describes this development triggered by the personally engaging course topics. 3. “When I’m studying the language, I often think about things and express myself. Perhaps I can’t express these things as perfectly as in my mother tongue, but I feel that I’ve grown as a person now that I’ve thought about my relationship to society and culture, for example.” (3rd year, holisticcontent analysis)

Susanna Susanna, 19, enrolled in the GUSSA, having first studied in a regular upper secondary school for younger pupils and then quit school after her au pair months in France. Claiming to have only had negative experiences of studying English and considering herself a ‘loser’, Susanna came across as a talented but extremely demotivated English learner. Despite this negative conception of herself in the classroom, she nonetheless claimed to have managed well using English elsewhere, which had made her question the usefulness of language learning at school. Since the beginning of her GUSSA studies, however, these attitudes had transformed. In extract 4, deriving from a counselling session between her and the EFL teacher, Susanna remembers what triggered this change. 4. “Earlier I never did a thing in school to learn English, I was really bad. Here I began to want to learn. It was when you said, after I’d written that essay, that I could produce something better. I’d never thought I could produce something better. After that I’ve started to think more about the structure [of the text]. I don’t just write down whatever comes into my head. I’ve given more thought to what I put in the paragraph, what are the points I want to make in my writing.” (2nd year, holistic-form analysis)

This turning point marked a considerable shift in the subject positions that Susanna adopted as a FL learner. Towards the end of her EFL studies (extracts 5 and 6), she had already begun to contemplate the meaningfulness of studying English from a different angle. 5. “My language skills and my attitudes to studying have changed radically. I’ve finally realized what teachers and parents have been going

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on about since primary school – we don’t learn for school but for life. I need the things I’ve learned here. I realized that English is linked to many of my dreams (travelling, living and working abroad), and I came to the conclusion that studying English then wouldn’t do me any harm. Gradually I began to like English…” (3rd year, holistic-content analysis) 6. “Studying languages has affected my picture of the world and of my own place in it. It’s increased healthy criticism of my own culture and helped me understand that the world isn’t as black-and-white as you might imagine at first glance. There are innumerable ways of living and acting on this planet...” (3rd year, holistic-form analysis)

Encompassing changes in attitude, perceptions of the self and awareness of the world, these learning outcomes go beyond developments in the FL learner’s linguistic proficiency.

Suvi Suvi enrolled in the EFL courses in her mid-twenties to revise her English, which had become a source of anxiety for her over the years. Suvi’s past negative experiences of English had developed into a concrete fear and avoidance of the language and its speakers. Feeling that her negative emotions restricted her life substantially, she reported on feelings of being an outsider whenever using English was required. In extract 7, Suvi describes her negative positioning in relation to the TL. 7. “Communicating [in English] has become a huge psychological threshold for me. I decided to study English [here] in order to get rid of my feeling of anxiety brought about by communication-related situations. My aim was to get over my trauma so that I could feel I was coping with life.” (1st year, holistic-form analysis)

In the EFL courses, Suvi adopted the self-reflective, narrative tasks as a meaningful means to work on her anxieties, attitudes, emotions and fears. These learning tasks gave Suvi’s language learning a more positive direction, as demonstrated by extracts 8 and 9. 8. “It annoys me when I go on about my bad old experiences. I’ve blown them up into bigger nightmare scenarios than they are. […] I shall try to replace my negative thinking with something more positive. Studying English isn’t a deadly serious thing for me anymore, even though it is significant.” (3rd year, holistic-form analysis)

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Chapter Fourteen 9. “Developing as a user of English has boosted my confidence in myself, it has reduced my feeling of being an outsider in situations where I used to be at a loss when I understood hardly anything and was too shy to find out. Apart from a language skill, I’ve learned a lot of things about myself, I’ve learned to move outside my comfort zone and begun to value myself more as the person I am. […] Studying has contributed to giving me a greater range of opportunities for seeking experiences and knowledge. Apart from entertaining myself and satisfying my hunger for knowledge, I can make my contribution by making more responsible choices.” (3rd year, holisticform analysis)

The extracts show how English gradually became an empowering language for Suvi. Indeed, comparing the subject positions in extracts 8 and 9 with those in extract 7 reveals that a considerable change had taken place.

Leena At the beginning of her EFL studies, Leena was a 60-year-old mother of three who worked as the head of an accounting firm. In her youth, she had studied advanced Swedish and German but only taken a few English courses at commercial college. Now she needed English when socializing with her grown-up daughters’ English-speaking ‘prospective sons-in-law’. In her first journal entries, Leena often viewed herself as a deficient English user, as can be noticed from extract 10. 10. My weakness as a language student [is] laziness to study grammar […]. Even though I know how important grammar is, I haven’t ever been good [at] it. It’s the same problem in all languages, even in Finnish. I’m [a] hopeless case!” (1st year, holistic-content analysis)

Leena frequently described the uncomfortable feeling of not being able to express herself properly when chatting with her daughters’ boyfriends, her daughters constantly having to ‘keep an eye on her’. The steady development of her English proficiency nonetheless triggered a slow reconstructive process that resulted in Leena gaining more self-confidence about her English skills and re-defining herself as an English user (extracts 11–13). 11. “My [English] has got a sort of effortlessness. I can start speaking off the cuff just like that as naturally as in Swedish. I’ve got some nice feedback from our daughters’ boyfriends. When I ring them up and one of them answers the phone, I’ve been told they say to the girls that it’s nice to

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talk with your mum, that she can hold a real conversation and not just separate sentences. […] It feels incredibly nice…” (2nd year, holisticcontent analysis) 12. “Last time I went to visit [my daughters], they didn’t watch over me so precisely, checking how mum would manage to get from the airport, whether they should fetch me, and should they come down to the station, and can she get a taxi to take her where she wants to go. They too can see already that I can manage in English.” (3rd year, holistic-content analysis) 13. “Nowadays I can always open my mouth and not stop to think what I’m supposed to say. I find a way to reply or ask or say something.” (3rd year, holistic-form analysis)

Studying English gave Leena an empowering feeling that she can control her life in English without other people’s aid. By the end of her studies, she felt that she could finally be herself and function as herself also when using and participating through English.

Interpretation of the Findings The data extracts capture developments of FL identity, showing consistency with both Huang’s (2011) and Huhtala and Lehti-Eklund’s (2012) findings. This development was triggered by formal institutional FL teaching, or initiated within, or extended to involve the language learner community in the local GUSSA. Thus, these findings contradict Block’s (2007) claims about identity work being minimal to non-existent in the FL context, positioning this researcher’s understanding of FL learning closer to the views and hypotheses proposed by scholars like Gao, Li, and Li (2002), Kramsch (2009), Lamb (2013), and Yashima (2013), according to whom identity work is also possible in the FL context. According to Block (2007), the L1-mediated interference in classrooms leaves little room for the emergence of critical experiences that are considered necessary triggers for identity work (cf. Layder, 2004; Webster & Mertova, 2007). Many participants in this study, Noora, Susanna and Suvi among them, reported on what had clearly turned out to become critical experiences for them in the FL context. These critical experiences contributed to or triggered FL identity development but were not always mediated by the TL directly, although Block (2007) considers this mediation essential for critical experiences. The critical experiences in the data involved the TL in one way or another, but some were loosely related to it while others were even mediated by the person’s L1. A case in point

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was Suvi’s narrative self-reflection that took place in Finnish. Yet, the data showed how this process, in which she worked on her relation to the TL, became a key experience leading to the development of her FL identity. With this in mind, it might be justified to broaden the conception of critical experience in the FL context in a similar vein to Benson et al. (2013) to encompass any personally meaningful, TL-related experiences that change one’s sense of self in relation to the TL, be they mediated by that language or not. Underlying Block’s (2007) argumentation is also a claim that identity work in the FL context is more about the communities of practice inside the classroom than about the TL communities beyond it. The data include ample evidence that developments of FL identity rarely confine themselves to one context only. In Suvi’s and Leena’s case, for example, the identity work in the language learner community (i.e., growing into a self-aware and self-confident FL learner and participant in the classroom) expanded to cover those TL-related communities that they were engaged with beyond school and language learning contexts. Alternatively, as in Susanna’s case, the FL context was integrated into the student’s FL identity process during her EFL studies as an important site for identity construction alongside the other TL-related settings of her life. The data indicate that reconstructions of FL identity can flexibly expand from one context to another. Similar claims have been made by Norton (2001), for example. Drawing on the notion of imagined community, she has attempted to demonstrate how language learners envision their imagined communities beyond the school context while learning the TL in the classroom. In sum, although the FL identity work in the classroom may be about demonstrating personal growth and developing affiliations to collectives inside this language learner community, as Block (2007) claims, it may still represent an aspect of the same identity process that will likely spread across other TL communities that will fuel and shape this process further. Even though the FL identity development inside the classroom walls is different in nature, being more systematic among other things (also, Huang & Benson, 2013), this study shows that it may be an essential reinforcing part of the FL identity process as a whole. Gathering the benefits of study abroad under the term ‘SL identity’, Benson et al. (2013) have proposed a continuum of potential identityrelated processes and outcomes ranging between identity-related L2proficiency, linguistic self-concept, and various L2-related personal competences. Among these outcomes, linguistic development is intimately linked to broader personal development. These findings on the impact of

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study abroad provide an interesting parallel with the findings on FL identity in this case study, as traces of similar influences can be discovered in the GUSSA students’ language learning processes. First, the GUSSA students developed their capacities to function and participate as persons in desired ways using English. For example, Leena adopted more empowered subject positions alongside her developing socio-pragmatic competence. Second, the students worked on their sense of themselves as English learners and users. For example, the ways Susanna and Suvi viewed themselves as language learners changed dramatically during their EFL studies. Finally, the students developed the English-mediated aspects of their life skills and personal competences. For example, Noora depicted how she grew as a person when having to use English to respond to the course topics at a personal level, and Suvi reported on her increased self-confidence, which she attributed to her English studies. Thus, it appears to be that FL learning has the potential to involve and contribute to dimensions of identity development similar to those which Benson et al. (2013) have discovered exist in study abroad contexts.

Implications of the Findings This case study contributes to a situated understanding of FL learning. The validity of its findings beyond the local FL context is to be determined by further research. Furthermore, there is no implication that the FL teaching in the local GUSSA will always trigger identity work in every FL student. Indeed, the data also included less encouraging cases of language learning which were unfortunately beyond the scope of this chapter. With these limitations in mind, the two research questions on the data can now be revisited on the basis of the findings. In answer to research question 1, i.e., whether adult students show development of FL identity during their EFL study at GUSSA, the data indicated that the adult students, indeed, demonstrated empowering reconstructions and transformations of FL identity in formal institutional language learning in the local GUSSA. As to research question 2, i.e., the kind of identity work that was manifest in such a context, the following claims can be made. First, the critical experiences involved in FL identity work were not necessarily mediated by the TL directly. Although intimately related to it, some experiences were even mediated by the person’s L1. Second, FL identity development was not context-specific. It had the potential to expand from the FL context to other TL-related ecologies that the person was engaged with, or vice versa. Third, similar

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dimensions of identity development were discovered among the outcomes of study abroad and FL learning in the GUSSA. These dimensions ranged between the capacity to function as a person in desired ways using the TL (identity-related L2 proficiency), sense of oneself as a language learner and user (linguistic self-concept), and TL-mediated aspects of one’s life skills (L2-related personal competence). As for the pedagogical meaning of these findings, the FL teaching in the local GUSSA appears to provide students with a potential domain for identity development, which is often linked to successful language learning in language education theory (see Benson & Cooker, 2013; Kaikkonen, 2012; Riley, 2010). As the writer’s forthcoming dissertation will indicate, the ideology underlying this FL teaching can be conceptualised as a pedagogy for autonomy with an emphasis on affordance (Menezes, 2011; van Lier, 2004), authenticity (Benson, 2013; Kaikkonen, 2012), and co-direction (Holec, 2009). This pedagogy encompasses more than the promotion of the capacity to control one’s language learning, which refers to an influential and widely-accepted definition of autonomy in the FL context (Huang & Benson, 2013). Instead of confining itself to language learning only, this pedagogy aims at fostering the person’s capacity to exercise flexible and authentic control over the different TL-related aspects of the ecologies that s/he inhabits (for connections to autonomy theory, see Aviram & Yonah, 2004; Benson, 2013; Huang, 2011; Huang & Benson, 2013; Hunter & Cooke, 2007; Kohonen, 2009; Littlewood, 1996; Raya, Lamb, & Vieira, 2007; van Lier, 2004). Essentially, this pedagogy is about developing personal agency and voice in those sociolinguistic and sociocultural landscapes that involve language learning, use and/or participation through the TL. The findings of this study thus raise questions about the interrelatedness of autonomy and identity development in FL learning (for selected discussions, see Huang, 2011; Huang & Benson, 2013; Korhonen, 2014).

Conclusion Deriving from the writer’s forthcoming narrative research, this case study investigated the impact of language learning on FL students in adult upper secondary education. It pointed out that the construct of FL identity can be adopted as a broad framework to conceptualize the GUSSA students’ language learning. Contrary to some previous arguments, it was suggested that FL identity development is possible in the formal institutional FL context as one of the many domains where FL identities

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can develop, and that this identity process involves similar outcomes to the identity work in study abroad contexts. Knowing that the identity work investigated took place within the autonomy-oriented pedagogy of the FL classroom, it can also be speculated whether identity development is, in fact, intimately linked to the development of personal autonomy. With the need of more research on identity in the FL context in mind, this will undoubtedly provide an interesting hypothesis for studies to come.

References Allwright, D. (2003). Exploratory practice: Rethinking practitioner research in language teaching. Language Teaching Research, 7(2), 113-141. Allwright, D., & Hanks, J. (2009). The developing language learner. An introduction to exploratory practice. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Aviram, R., & Yonah, Y. (2004). Flexible control: Towards a conception of personal autonomy for postmodern education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(1), 3-17. Benson, P. (2013). Drifting in and out of view: Autonomy and the social individual. In P. Benson & L. Cooker (Eds.), The applied linguistic individual. Sociocultural approaches to identity, agency and autonomy (pp. 75-89). Sheffield: Equinox. Benson, P., Barkhuizen, G., Bodycott, P., & Brown, J. (2013). Second language identity and narratives of study abroad. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Benson, P., & Cooker, L. (2013). The applied linguistic individual: Gaining perspective. In P. Benson & L. Cooker (Eds.), The applied linguistic individual. Sociocultural approaches to identity, agency and autonomy (pp. 178-186). Sheffield: Equinox. Block, D. (2007). Second language identities. London, New York: Continuum. Bruner, J. (1991). Self-making and world-making. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 25(1), 67-78. Gao, Y. H., Li, Y. X., & Li, W. N. (2002). EFL learning and self-identity construction: Three cases of Chinese college English majors. Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, 12, 95-119. Holec, H. (2009). Autonomy in language learning: A single pedagogical paradigm or two? In F. Kjisik, P. Voller, N. Aoki, & Y. Nakata (Eds.), Mapping the terrain of learner autonomy. Learning environments,

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learning communities and identities (pp. 21-47). Tampere: Tampere University Press. Huang, J. (2011). A dynamic account of autonomy, agency and identity in (T)EFL learning. In G. Murray, X. Gao, & T. Lamb (Eds.), Identity, motivation and autonomy in language learning (pp. 229-246). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Huang, J., & Benson, P. (2013). Autonomy, agency and identity in foreign and second language education. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 36(1), 7-28. Huhtala, A., & Lehti-Eklund, H. (2012). Language students and emerging identities. Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies, 6(2), 5-17. Hunter, J., & Cooke, D. (2007). Through autonomy to agency: giving power to language learners. Prospect, 22(2), 72-88. Kaikkonen, P. (2012). Language, culture and identity as key concepts of intercultural learning. In M. Bendtsen, M. Björklund, L. Forsman, & K. Sjöholm (Eds.), Global trends meet local needs (pp. 17-33). Vaasa: Faculty of Education, Åbo Akademi Universitet. Kohonen, V. (2001). Towards experiential foreign language education. In V. Kohonen, R. Jaatinen, P. Kaikkonen, & J. Lehtovaara (Eds.), Experiential learning in foreign language education (pp. 8-60). London: Pearson Education. —. (2009). Autonomy, authenticity and agency in language education: The European language portfolio as a pedagogical resource. In R. Kantelinen & P. Pollari (Eds.), Language education and lifelong learning (pp. 9-44). Joensuu: University of Eastern Finland. Korhonen, T. (2014). Language narratives from adult upper secondary education: Interrelating agency, autonomy and identity in foreign language learning. Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies, 8(1), 65-87. Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. What foreign language learners say about their experience and why it matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lamb, M. (2013). The struggle to belong: Individual language learners in situated learning theory. In P. Benson & L. Cooker (Eds.), The applied linguistic individual. Sociocultural approaches to identity, agency and autonomy (pp. 32-45). Sheffield: Equinox. Lantolf, J. (2013). Sociocultural theory and the dialectics of L2 learner autonomy/agency. In P. Benson & L. Cooker (Eds.), The applied linguistic individual. Sociocultural approaches to identity, agency and autonomy (pp. 17-31). Sheffield: Equinox.

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Layder, D. (2004). Social and personal identity: Understanding your self. London: Sage. Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative research. Reading, analysis, and interpretation. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Littlewood, W. (1996). Autonomy: An anatomy and a framework. System, 24(4), 427-435. Menezes, V. (2011). Affordances for language learning beyond the classroom. In P. Benson & H. Reinders (Eds.), Beyond the language classroom (pp. 59-71). Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mishler, E. G. (2006). Narrative and identity: The double arrow of time. In A. de Fina, D. Schiffrin, & M. Bamberg (Eds.), Discourse and identity (pp. 30-47). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norton, B. (2001). Non-participation, the imagined communities and the language classroom. In M. P. Breen (Ed.), Learner contributions to language learning: New directions in research (pp. 159-171). Harlow: Longman. —. (2013). Identity and language learning. Extending the conversation. (2nd ed). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Pavlenko, A. (2005). Emotions and multilingualism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pennycook, A. (1997). Cultural alternatives and autonomy. In P. Benson & P. Voller (Eds.), Autonomy and independence in language learning (pp. 35-53). London: Longman. Polkinghorne, D. (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. In A. J. Hatch (Ed.), Life history and narrative (pp. 5-23). London: Routledge Falmer. Polkinghorne, D. (1996). Explorations of narrative identity. Psychological Inquiry, 7(4), 363-367. Raya, M. J., Lamb, T., & Vieira, F. (2007). Pedagogy for autonomy in language education in Europe. Towards a framework for learner and teacher development. Dublin: Authentik. Ricœur, P. (1991). Narrative identity. Philosophy Today, 35(1), 73-81. Riley, P. (2010). Reflections on identity, modernity and the European language portfolio. In B. O’Rourke & L. Carson (Eds.), Language learner autonomy. Policy, curriculum, classroom (pp. 373-385). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Siivonen, P. (2010). From a “student” to a lifelong “consumer” of education? Constructions of educability in adult students’ narrative life histories. Jyväskylä: Finnish Educational Research Association.

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Squire, C. (2008). Experience-centred and culturally-oriented approaches to narrative. In M. Andrews, C. Squire, & M. Tamboukou (Eds.), Doing narrative research (pp. 41-63). Los Angeles: Sage. van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning. A sociocultural perspective. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Webster, L., & Mertova, P. (2007). Using narrative inquiry as a research method. An introduction to using critical event narrative analysis in research on learning and teaching. London: Routledge. Yashima, T. (2013). Individuality, imagination and community in a globalizing world: An Asian EFL perspective. In P. Benson & L. Cooker (Eds.), The applied linguistic individual. Sociocultural approaches to identity, agency and autonomy (pp. 46-58). Sheffield: Equinox.

ISSUES IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE IMPACT OF CLASSROOM PRACTICES ON YOUNG LEARNERS’ ACQUISITION OF SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT IN VIETNAM: A PILOT STUDY VI THANH SON

Abstract Researchers have long emphasized the importance of classroom interaction for enhancing foreign language learning (Carroll 1967; Chihara & Oller, 1987; Krashen, Butler, Birkbaum, & Robertson 1978; Krashen & Seliger, 1976). This pilot study attempts to see how English teaching and learning methods in Vietnamese classrooms affect young learners’ acquisition of English subject-verb agreement in their speech production. To do this, classroom observation using the communicative orientation of language teaching (COLT) and recordings of four Vietnamese children were made after a lesson were conducted. Using COLT for classroom observations helps to see clearly if the classroom activities follow teachercentered or learner-centered approaches which support the development of communicative skills in second language learning and highlight the roles of the teacher and the pupils in the classroom. The analysis of the children’s speech was based on the Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann, 1998). The results showed that, to some extent, there is evidence for the prediction of PT of the developmental stages of the acquisition of English as a second language. It also showed learner variation and pointed out that rote-repeat instruction of subject-verb agreement is not effective for long term understanding, but only for temporary learning. The study recommends that there should be a more interactive method for learning grammar in the classroom in which conversational purposes are targeted.

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Introduction English, as a “leading international language” (Janson, 2002, p. 260) is taught, learned and used in Vietnam. Vietnam’s linguistic history is affected by its political history (Denham, 1992). Under the Chinese rule of the feudal times, the system used Chinese characters named ‘Hán’. Approximately 80% of Vietnamese people could read the Chinese ideographs (Karnow, 1983). From 1954-1975, there was the resistance war against French colonialism with the political system resulting in two divided regimes: (i) In the North, which was heavily influenced by the Soviets, Russian and Chinese were used as a compulsory subject in the first two years of university at that time; (ii) In the South, where French and US education models were adopted in 1954, English was the prominent foreign language to be studied at schools because it was the language of the allies (Dang, 1986). After independence in 1975, Vietnam became a national union, and there were two big shifts in foreign language instruction at schools: the shift to Russian (1975-1986) (Do, 2000) and then to English (1986 - present) (Trinh, 2005). The open-door policy of Vietnam to other countries in the late 1980’s led the country to adopt a market-oriented economy in which English is recognized as important for the development of the country (Nguyen & Crabbed, 2000; Trinh, 2005). Since then, the education system in Vietnamese schools has required students to start learning English at an early stage-from primary schools onwards (Denham, 1992; Nguyen & Nguyen, 2007). Foreign language learning (Russian, French and English) are indeed compulsory subjects at schools with English being the most popular foreign language (Bui 2005; Denham, 1992; Nguyen, 2011). This study explored how the teaching methods used in the classrooms in Vietnam affect learners’ acquisition of English as a second language (ESL). In particular, the focus of this study is on the acquisition of subjectverb (S-V) agreement of third person singular (3SG-s) and English language teaching and learning in classroom settings. Typically, the rote learning and recall methods used in traditional Vietnamese classrooms (Duong & Nguyen 2006; Le, 2000; Lewis & McCook, 2002; Nguyen 2014; Trinh, 2005) may influence the learners’ level of comprehension and fluency in the English language, including S-V agreement. The chapter is divided into three main sections. In the first section, the Processability Theory (PT) with regards to subject-verb agreement is discussed. The second section describes English instruction in a Grade 5 classroom at a Vietnamese primary school, and then presents the analysis of learners’ language output in order to see if classroom instruction had

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any effect on their English acquisition. The third and final section of the chapter presents some conclusions and recommendations based on the evidence collected in this study.

Background Processability Theory and Subject-Verb Agreement in ESL Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann, 1998) conceptualizes the process of language development as a set of stages. PT describes the language structures and grammatical forms present at each stage of language development. Thus, interlanguage variation and age-related differences in language acquisition are described and formalized within Lexical-Functional Grammar. Pienemann (1998) wanted to connect the learning to teaching, so he developed his “teachability hypothesis” (see Pienemann, 1984, 1987, 1988), which predicts that “stages of acquisition cannot be skipped through formal instruction” and that “instruction will be beneficial if it focuses on structures from the next stage” (p. 250). In other words, teachers should adapt their teaching to the learners’ grammatical levels. This means that one must first determine the learners’ level of grammar before proceeding to teach grammar. A number of studies applying PT in the acquisition of different languages have been conducted: Pienemann (1998) in English, Swedish, German, and Japanese; Håkansson, Pienemann, and Sayehli (2002) in German; Glahn, Håkansson, Hammarberg, Holmen, Hvenekilde, and Lund (2001) in the Scandinavian languages, etc. PT encompasses six universal developmental stages in morphology and syntax in the development of ESL (Dyson 2009; Pienemann, 1998, 2005). In the first stage, learners produce bare words and formulae (How are you?; Hello; Five). In the second stage, learners acquire strings of words, and ‘lexical’ morphemes exhibiting either rule application or nonapplication rule, such as: word order like subject-verb-object (SVO) (Me live here; You live here); the negation before SVO (No me live here); plural-s (Cats); Past-ed (She played, he goed); Possessive-s (Pat’s cat). At stage three, learners acquire phrasal morphemes, in which there is an exchange of information between the head of the noun phrase (NP) and other NP constituents, such as in plural agreement (Two cats). The learners can also vary the syntax by placing adjuncts in initial clausal position, such as do-fronting (Does he live here?). At stage four, learners acquire the first forms of subject–verb inversion (Is he at home?) and the auxiliary in the

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initial position in inverted yes/no questions (Has he seen him?). At the fifth stage, learners acquire inter-phrasal morphemes, such as third person singular –s (3SG-s) (He eats), and the inverted syntax of the auxiliary in second position (Why did he eat that?). Finally, at the sixth stage, learners acquire the cancel inversion (I wonder where he is). Linking to the stages of acquisition in PT, learner variation is prominent. PT shows the way the learners manage to handle language problems by attempting or taking a risk to produce certain grammatical structures in their speech before they have acquired such structures. According to PT, subject-verb (S-V) agreement (i.e., the agreement between number and person in the subject and the verb) uses a number of processing procedures: lemma access, category procedures, phrasal procedures, appointment rules, and the Sentence-procedure. Additionally the morphemes are acquired in three sequences: (1) Lexical; (2) Phrasal; and (3) Inter-phrasal morphemes. There are complications and variations with S-V agreement patterns according to Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan (1999). The marking of person agreement in the verb in English S-V agreement is shown in Table 15-1. Table 15-1: English S-V agreement (Adapted from Pienemann, 1998, p. 124).

The first person The second person The third singular person

Copula I am You are he, she , it Singular-NP is

Lexical verb IV You V he, she, it Singular-NP V-s

Note. V = Verb stem; NP = Noun Phrase

English Instruction in Vietnamese Primary Education English is an elective subject at the primary education level (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2007). Since the 1990s in big cities (e.g., Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh), English has been taught as a pilot program at some primary schools following a directive from the Ministry of Education and Training in 1996, which provided guidance on foreign language teaching in primary schools. At some private language schools, English is already taught at children aged five or six (Nguyen, 2011; Nunan, 2003). Children in Grades 3-5 are given two thirty-five minute English lessons a week. The Let’s go series

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by Nakata, Frazier, Hoskins, & Wilkinson (2000) is currently used in Vietnamese primary schools.

The Study The study aimed to explore whether classroom instruction and practices have any impact on Vietnamese learners’ acquisition of S-V agreement. To do this, a case study examining classroom teaching and learning activities and learner language output was used. This chapter provides (1) an analysis of the English instruction at a Grade 5 classroom in a Vietnamese primary school, and (2) the analysis of recordings from four Grade 5 Vietnamese learners of English.

Context and Participants An English lesson in the 5th Grade at a Vietnamese primary school was attended and observed. There were 35 pupils in the class, and they were all 11 years old. The pupils in the class started learning English when they were in Grade 3, so at the time of the study they had already 2 years of English instruction at school. Four Vietnamese learners from the Grade 5 class were recorded for the pilot study. The learners volunteered to do the tasks.

Procedure For the classroom observation, the COLT framework was used (see Spada & Fröhlich, 1995). COLT uses seven categories (i.e., time, activities and episodes, participant organization, content category, content control, student modality, materials) to help analyse the classroom activities. ‘Time’ is used to indicate the starting time of each episode/activity so that the percentages of time spent on different COLT features can be calculated. ‘Activities and episodes’ are different units in a classroom, and they serve as the basic units for COLT analysis. ‘Participant organization’ describes three basic patterns of organization: class, group, and individual. These subcategories describe how the students are organized as participants in classroom interaction in which group work is considered to be a crucial factor in the development of communicative competence. This category also aims to differentiate between teacher-centred and group work interactions in second language (L2) classrooms. ‘Content category’ describes the subject matter/theme of the activities, such as what the teacher and the students are talking, reading, or writing about, or what they

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are listening to. The rationale arises from discussions about whether the primary focus of instruction should be on meaning or form and to which extent a focus on meaning and/or form may lead to differences in L2 development. ‘Content control’ refers to which person selects and decides the topic or task that is being talked about as the focus of instruction. This feature aims to measure how the classrooms may vary along this dimension. ‘Student modality’ identifies different skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) which can be involved in a classroom activity. Finally, ‘Materials’ refer to the materials used in the classroom including text type and source of materials. Coding for COLT analysis of the lesson was done in ‘real time’ by the researcher. Timing was necessary to calculate how much time the teacher spent on each category of the total allotted lesson time. All activities and episodes were timed and checked as being: the ‘exclusive focus’ (e.g., the teacher focused on one aspect of language such as form or function); ‘combinations’ (e.g., the teacher focused equally on both language form and function); or, the ‘primary focus’ (e.g., the teacher made a quick reference to language function but focused primarily on language form) (Fröhlich, Spada & Allen, 1985). The four learners were recorded one at a time in a separate room. The learners were asked to do the same task: describe what they could see in a picture (see Figure 15-1 below).

Figure 15-1: Picture of people’s jobs (Source: Let’s go by Nakata et al., 2000).

This picture was used because it is a collection of smaller pictures with different people doing different jobs. It gave the learners flexibility in choosing any of the smaller pictures and allowed them to show their mastery of English by describing what the person or the people were doing and what job or jobs were illustrated.

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Results English Lesson Observation Using COLT The results of the COLT analysis of the English lesson in the Grade 5 classroom in the Vietnamese primary school showed that the teaching and learning processes in the lesson consisted of four activities (A) and six episodes (E): AI. AII. AII. AII. AIII. AIII. AIII. AIV.

Settling the class with the greeting and singing. E1. Introduction to the new lesson: teaching new vocabulary. E2. Listening comprehension using the textbook. E3. Practice. E4. Teaching another grammatical structure. E5. Students’ practice. E6. Closings: the teacher’s feedback and homework. Ending the class.

Table 15-2 below shows the ‘participant organization’ in which the teacher spent 40% of the lesson time in whole class interaction. Meanwhile 20% of the time was spent in a combination of teacher to class and vice versa (), and student to student/class interactions. A further 25.72% of the time was spent on a combination of teacher to students and choral work by the children in the class. The children all working as a group on the same task took 14.28% of the lesson time. These results show that the teacher primarily led the activities in the class. The response from the children was mostly choral work in repeating the words, structures or sentences provided by the teacher. There was little time devoted for group work, only in the practice tasks when the teacher asked the children to practise with each other, introducing their house to a classmate by using the structure ‘This is…’.

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Table 15-2: Participant organization (total percentages of time spent at the lesson).

Exclusive/ primary focus Teacher

Student/ Class 40%

Class Combination

Teacher Student/Class and Student Student/Class 20%

Group

Teacher

Student/Class and Choral 25.72%

Indivi dual

Same task

14.28 %

0%

Note: : Interaction from teacher to students and vice versa.

Then the teacher asked some volunteers to go to the blackboard and point to the picture and speak. There were three volunteers and they spoke almost the same sentences (without producing the ‘s’ in the word ‘is’): “This i my house. This i the bedroom. This i the kitchen. This i the dining room. This i the living room. This i the bathroom.”

It seems that the pupils already knew the structure from before and they had learned these sentences by rote. Then in Episode 5 of practicing with another structure, the teacher asked the pupils to practice with each other. A short, 5-minute period was used for the group work. After that, he asked two pupils to stand up and speak. Table 15-3 shows the results of the analysis of the lesson content using the COLT categories. Table 15-3: Content analysis using COLT. Exclusive/Primary focus Management Language

Procedure 8.58%

Form 20%

Function 14.28%

Procedure/ Discipline

5.72%

Combinations Form/ Function/ Narrow topic

37.14%

Form/ Narrow topic

14.28%

Procedure took 8.58% of the lesson time. The Language focused on Form (20%) and Function (14.28%). A further 5.72% was spent on a combination of Discipline and Procedure. 37.14% was spent on a

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combination of Form/Function/Narrow topics. Finally, 14.28% was spent on Form together with Narrow topic. Narrow topic is a narrow range of reference in which topics refer to the classroom and the students’ immediate environment and experiences (Spada & Fröhlich, 1995), and in this lesson, the topic was about furniture in a house. These results show that in terms of content, Management and Procedural directives were the focus of the lesson since the teacher mainly gave directions and commands to the children. Only within the last 2 minutes of the lesson, the teacher gave the class feedback on their progress and participation. Discipline directives are a typical form of cultural learning in the Vietnamese classroom. Vietnamese teachers and educators do not only teach the school curriculum, but they also seek to encourage acceptable Vietnamese social behavior and morals (Le, 2000; Trinh, 2005). The primary focus of instruction in this lesson was on Form with the introduction of grammatical structures, such as ‘there is, there are’, and vocabulary, such as pronunciation and meaning for new words. Activities related to Function only took place when the teacher introduced to the class another grammatical structure, such as ‘there is… there are.’ He spoke the structures in English and explained them in Vietnamese in order to make the pupils understand that ‘there is’ should be used together with a singular noun and ‘there are’ should be used with plural nouns. The teacher stressed that adding ‘s’ to the plural nouns is necessary. Most of the lesson time was spent on Narrow topics which referred mainly to the name of some furniture in classroom and in the house. In terms of Content control, the teacher was the only one that decided on the topic and tasks for the children in the class. According to Spada and Fröhlich (1995), more involvement on the part of learners in the content of the lessons would have a greater positive impact on the children’s learning. However, in this case, the children are young and it seems that they did not exert any control over the learning tasks, materials or content of instruction, so all the tasks and materials were decided by the teacher. In terms of Student modality, students spent 37.12% of the lesson time on listening, 22.85% on speaking, 20% on a combination of listening and speaking, and finally 20% on a combination of listening, speaking and writing. This indicates that listening was the language skill that was used the most by the children. They listened to the teacher and the audiotape, before practicing speaking some sentences. One thing to point out is that they did not really speak as in a communicative process, but most of the time they repeated what the teacher said. Then, they wrote down, or mainly

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copied, what the teacher wrote on the blackboard. This shows passive learning. Finally, in terms of Materials, 62.86% of the lesson time was spent on minimal materials which were specifically designed for L2 teaching, 20% of the time was spent using a combination of minimal text, visuals designed for L2 teaching (namely the textbook), and teacher-prepared pictures. Finally, 17.14% of the lesson was spent using a combination of minimal text and audio for L2 teaching. The results of the classroom observation taken together reflect and highlight the roles of the teacher and learners in the following ways. Instruction began as soon as the teacher walked into the classroom. Students were expected to stand and greet the teacher, singing the greeting to the teacher in English. This allowed the class to have a bit of fun, while focusing their minds on the upcoming lesson. It also helped to reinforce learning of basic conversational language structures. The pupils could use the structure ‘this is’ with some new words fluently. This shows that they could learn these sentences by rote in the classroom. Additionally, they spoke quickly and using the structure ‘this is’ in all of their utterances, but they skipped the ‘s’ in the word ‘is’. I believe this is due to the Vietnamese pronunciation in which we do not pronounce the last vowel or consonant in a word. There were more activities using visual inputs, such as pictures from the teacher and the textbook, rather than songs and games to introduce new words and make the pupils practise their English. However, the songs and games the teacher used in the class were mostly to help the children memorize the words, but not to use them for communication. It has been argued by Moon (2009) that such activities do not “develop children’s ability to communicate and to produce novel utterances rather than just reproducing memorized chunks” (p. 316). Additionally, translating new words and structures from English to Vietnamese is commonly used in Vietnamese classrooms in order to help the pupils learn the new terms faster. This reflects the way of learning the foreign language, i.e., through translating and using a combination of Vietnamese and the target language. Like Kieu (2010), I found that the teacher in my study did not use the target language as the language of instruction. Instead, the students’ mother tongue (L1) was used more often in the lesson since it is easier to make the children understand the new words. However, according to Kieu (2010), overuse of the L1 in the classroom robs students from opportunities to learn the target language in the classroom context.

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Error correction, including recitations and repetition by the entire class after the teacher and the teacher’s questions were common. Pupils asked no questions, there was little to no game play or comprehensive conversations between the teacher and the pupils and among the pupils in the lesson. The teacher ‘disciplined’ some students during the feedback portion of the lesson, telling the non-participants and the lower achievers they must try harder. The rest of the time he ‘directed’ the students to complete the exercises and activities. This shows a teacher-centered approach to teaching. During the lesson, it was hard for the teacher to control the pupils’ activities in the classroom and correct their mistakes while they were practising in pairs or in groups because of the large number of pupils in the class and the short of time of the English lesson. Pupils mostly listened to the teacher, repeated and copied the structures and words from the teacher. At the end of the lesson, the teacher asked them to learn by heart the new words and structures, showing an emphasis on rote learning. Moreover, the practice of pupils standing up to greet the teacher and waiting for the teacher to allow them to sit down and the feedback session, i.e., questions mostly from the teacher to the students but not from the pupils to the teacher, illustrate the cultural aspect of Vietnamese classrooms in which the teacher gets high respect from the pupils. As a result, there were no interruptions or asking for explanations or clarifications from the pupils during the lesson. Generally, these results also confirm that the teacher is the knowledge provider, while pupils are expected to be good listeners and repeaters. I also found that the teacher in the study was still at a low level of English proficiency. In general, there is a shortage of Vietnamese teachers of English with appropriate English skills (Cameron, 2003) and most primary teachers in Vietnam graduate from the College of Foreign languages in which they are trained to teach students in secondary schools. There should be more English teacher training programs specializing in teaching primary school children, and in-service teachers should have opportunities to participate in regular language training (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2007; Nguyen 2011).

Analysis of the Student Recordings Four students were recorded after the lesson in order to see if they had acquired S-V agreement marking (3SG-s) and if the instruction had any effect on their learning.

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All four of the learners had acquired Stage 1: the single word question and single word formulae. The students were able to use ‘Who is he? Who are they?’ with the inverted subject and verb, the copular verb ‘be’ placed in the second position and the correct agreement marking on the copular verb. Students could also use plural agreement when using nouns such as ‘teachers’ and ‘farmers’. Since the picture used for the language task was from their textbook and they had already learnt how to ask and answer questions about people’s jobs, all four students could easily form such questions and answers. Nevertheless, as observed during the lesson, students did not produce the ‘s’ in the word ‘is’: “Who i he?/ He i a student/ Who i he?/ He i a police officer/ Who i she?/ She i a cook/ Who i she?/ She i a taxi-driver/ Who i she?/ She i a shopkeeper/ Who are they?/ They are nurses/ Who are they?/ They are farmers/ Who are they?/ They are teachers.”

Each individual learner had acquired some syntactical and morphological points but in some instances they failed to produce a correct structure and each of them handled the problem using different strategies, mainly simplifying the target language and keeping their own interlanguage. The following paragraphs provide a more detailed profile of each learner’s language performance. Learner 1 The first learner performed the best by producing many correct utterances such as: ‘He reads/ He writes/ They drive/ They talk/ They cook/’. She knew SV agreement in the form of putting the ‘s’ at the end of the singular verb, but not to the plural verb. She produced inflected verbs, both with and without 3SG-s, which indicates that she knew 3SG-s is a third-person singular agreement marker. Moreover, she could express the progressive aspect by using the lexical V-ing morpheme on the lexical verb ‘teach’ as in ‘She is teaching’. She had acquired Stage 1, Stage 2 with Ving and plural agreement, and Stage 4 with copula inversion. Therefore, she could soon acquire Stage 5. Learner 2 The second learner did not have as large a vocabulary as the first learner, so she needed to ask the researcher for translation help in order to produce some sentences. Observing her utterances, I could see that she succeeded in forming a correct sentence with inflected lexical verbs

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followed by the auxiliary in the progressive aspect as in ‘he is writing’. However, she did not know how to answer the Yes/No questions. Instead, she repeated the same sentence, ‘does he read books?’, when the researcher asked her. The learner heard the sound ‘s’ in the question, so she could have recognized that there should be an ‘s’ for a verb to go with a singular subject. However, she seemed unsure as to where it needed to go, so she placed a ‘s’ in the main verb in the question ‘does he reads books?’. This is an example of ‘overextension’. Additionally, she did not fill the morphology gaps by acquiring 3SG-s in her utterance ‘He write books’. Moreover, since she was familiar with the structure ‘he/she is’, ‘they are’, she also included the regular verb together with the verb ‘be’ in a simple tense. This overextension can be seen in these sentences she produced: They are read book/ They are drive a taxi/ They are write books/ She is write taxi. At this point in the lesson, pupils have learned a lot about the structure ‘he is…, she is…, they are…’, so it seems that she is more familiar with S+be rather than S+VerbStem present. Therefore, she kept using the auxiliary ‘be’ while adding other uninflected lexical verbs ‘drive’, ‘read’, ‘write’ to form the S+main regular verb for the simple tense, e.g., ‘he is read books’, ‘they are drive taxi.’ Additionally, in these sentences, she appeared to acquire the morphology of S-V agreement in the marking of the auxiliary ‘be’, but there are uninflected lexical verbs followed by the auxiliary in the progressive aspect instead of the V-ing morpheme on these lexical verbs, such as ‘he is drive a car’, ‘they are read books’. At the end of the task, the student attempted to correct herself from ‘she is drive taxi’ to ‘she drive taxi’. This shows her attempt to leave out the verb ‘be’ in order to have a regular main verb in a simple sentence. However, she could not form the SV-agreement in putting a ‘s’ to the singular verb ‘drive’. Even though the interviewer sometimes produced ‘s’ with the main verb for single subject in some statements, the learner still dropped the ‘s’ in the singular lexical verb in her own sentences. This also shows that the learner did not imitate the language produced by the researcher or turn the input into intake; instead she simply kept her interlanguage. This is in accordance with the view that L2 learners (especially children) have an “innate language ability” based on “universal rules of language” (Saville-Troike, 2006, p. 23). Based on her task performance, the student could be placed at Stage 2 since she has acquired V-ing and SVO patterns, but she has not yet reached Stage 3 (yes/no inversion) and Stage 5 (3SG-s).

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Learner 3 This learner managed to acquire S-V agreement on the copular ‘be’, but he did make the same mistakes as learner 2 by having both ‘be’ and the bare lexical verb in a sentence such as ‘He is write a book’. It seems that he knew that there should be a ‘s’ for a main verb to go with a singular subject. He was trying to think and at the same time correct himself. In this way, he took a risk by adding a ‘s’ to the pronoun ‘he’ instead of putting a ‘s’ to the singular verb ‘write’ and produced the sentence ‘hes write a book’. ‘Hes reads a book’ is also another attempt to form S-V agreement on a singular verb by adding a ‘s’ to a singular lexical verb, ‘read’, while also keeping a ‘s’ at the end of the pronoun ‘he’, resulting in overextension. Nevertheless, he did express a simple aspect lexical ‘s’ morpheme on the lexical singular verb. Repeatedly, he attempted to correct himself from ‘he is write a book’ to ‘hes write a book’. Continuously, he also formed the wrong sentence when adding a ‘s’ to a plural verb and combining it with the verb ‘be’ as in ‘they are reads a book’. Due to lack of vocabulary needed to describe the picture, he was confused in choosing which lexical verb to use and the result was often more than one main verb, as in the example ‘she is drive cook’. However, he could produce the progressive form for V-ing, ‘cooking’, as in ‘she is cooking’ after some minutes of silence and thinking. This shows that he could reproduce the correct form temporarily, but afterwards he went back to the same mistake with the utterance ‘he is write a book’. It appears that the learner is familiar with the ‘Subject-is’ pattern sentence, and uses it extensively but tends to combine it with the bare lexical verb in the simple present tense. This shows that he probably confused the structure Subject+be when attempting to produce Subject+verb in the present tense. After that, he corrected himself by again adding a ‘s’ to the pronoun instead of the lexical verb for a singular subject, as in ‘hes write a book’. Based on his language output, the student could only be placed at Stage 1 since V-ing was not used in his speech. Therefore, he has not acquired any further stages. Learner 4 Similar to the others, this learner had acquired SV agreement for the copula ‘be’ and Plural-agreement in which the plural number is marked on several constituents, as in: ‘They are a cook. He is a cook. They are farmers’.

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The learner was familiar with the structure ‘he is… they are..’, but he could not acquire the main verb either in simple form or in progressive form Stage 2, so he could not acquire further stages. As a result, instead of using a verb to describe what the person was doing, he kept using nouns, as in ‘He is a cook’, ‘They are taxi-drivers’. Additionally, he could not produce any instances of inflected verbs with 3SG-s. The morphological marking for the third person in verbs was never used in the recording. This indicates that he may not know that 3SG-s is a third-person singular agreement marker, as is evident in these sentences: ‘She study’, ‘She drive a taxi’. This also illustrated the underuse of inflectional morphemes in S-V agreement. Summary of Student Results In summary, with regards to morphology, most learners had acquired S-V agreement on the copular ‘be’ and the auxiliary ‘be’ but they failed in S-V agreement on singular verbs by adding a ‘s’ to lexical verbs for singular subjects, except for the first learner who had reached Stage 5. Table 15-4 is an ‘implicational scaling’ table in which grammatical structures are displayed on the left-hand side, and the symbols on the righthand side mark the structures in the sample student utterances. In short, the three learners who had not reached Stage 2 (learners 3 and 4) or Stage 3 (learner 2) did not produce any utterances correctly in Stages 3 and 5. There was no evidence for Stage 4. Since according to PT the stages are implicational, the acquisition of the lower Stages 1, 2 and 3 is an essential prerequisite for reaching higher stages, such as Stage 5 agreement (3SG-s). Learner 1 who had acquired Stage 5 had also acquired Stages 1 to 4, but the children who had not acquired Stage 5, they had not acquired Stages 2, 3, and 4 either. This supports Pienemann’s language development hypothesis.

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Table 15-4: Learners’ stage of acquisition based on the stages of ESL acquisition by Pienemann (1998). Stage 6 5 4

3

2

1

Cancel Inversion Aux2nd/ Do2nd/ 3SG-s Copula Inversion Y/N Inversion Particle verbs Neg+V Do Front Topi ADV SVO V-ing Plural possessive pronoun single words

1 / +

Learner 2 3 / / -

4 / -

/

/

/

/

+ + +

+ + +

+ + -

+ + -

+

+

+

+

Note. + = acquired; - = not acquired; / = no evidence; Aux2nd = Inversion of Auxilary in WH-questions; Do2nd = Inversion of Do/does/did in WH-questions; 3SG-s = Third person singular-s; Y/N inversion = Yes-No Inversion; Neg+V = Negation + Verb; Do Front = Do-Fronting; Topi = Topicalisation; SVO = Subject+Verb+Object; V-ing = Verb + ing

Conclusion This study attempted to investigate the classroom activities at an English lesson at Grade 5 in a Vietnamese school and whether the classroom practices had any impact on the young learners’ acquisition of S-V agreement, typically the use of 3SG-s in their speech. The results from the lesson observation completely match Moon’s (2005) findings with regards to teaching methodology: (i) a focus on form and accuracy rather than fluency; (ii) heavy use of repetition drills and whole class chorus in order to make the children memorise the new words; (iii) lack of opportunities for the children to produce the target language freely for communicative purposes. Admittedly, English lessons in different classes or different primary schools in Vietnam may not be the same. However, they are not all that different either because the general steps and procedures followed in the English classrooms in Vietnamese primary education conform to a

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nationalized and unified lesson plan which was dictated by a centralized department when the national curriculum was issued by the Ministry of Education and Training in 2003. This is also confirmed by Nguyen and Nguyen (2007). Among the four learners examined in this study, there was only one (Learner 1) who had acquired Stage 5 3SG-s. It seems that the learners knew that there should be a ‘s’ for a verb to go with a singular subject, but they seemed unsure where it needed to go. That may be the reason why Learners 2, 3 and 4 added a ‘s’ to the pronouns. This supports the idea that learners follow universal stages of development. However, this does not mean that for a given stage of acquisition all learners use identical grammatical systems. Instead, there is a degree of variability in the use of “interlanguage systems” (Pienemann, 2011, p. 22). The variability among the learners in this study was evidenced in the addition of a ‘s’ in different words in a sentence. The reason that the learners were not familiar with S-V agreement on a lexical verb could be because they came across more examples of S-V agreement on the copular and auxiliary ‘be’ in their lessons. As a result, they combined ‘be’ with another lexical verb in a simple aspect. That caused overextension. This supports the idea from Pienemann (2005), about the variational dimension which states that the learners avoid the advanced structures that they have not yet acquired by making the language simpler and standardized through using “a specific range of structural options” (pp. 46-47) available in their processing resources. However, this also shows how the learners manipulated morphological structures indicating what they were working to acquire. The learners experienced difficulties in adding a ‘s’ in the context of the third person singular NP subject. They failed to supply a morphology ‘s’ for the singular verb in obligatory contexts, and tended to overuse the copula ‘be’ in different positions as in simple present verbs and pronouns. The results also showed that someone starting to learn English may be hearing ‘s’ as a random sound, and, therefore, he does repeat what he thinks is a random sound, so he keeps on missing ‘s’ in singular regular verbs. While conventions of the Vietnamese language such as not pronouncing the last vowel or consonant in a word, and not marking 3rd person singular and plural in verbs does play a part in the errors learners made most often, the format of the lessons (listen and repeat) did not lend itself to self-correction. Therefore, we can see that the rote-repeat instruction in Vietnamese classrooms, while designed to help the learners acquire the grammatical aspect of S-V agreement, did not have a permanent effect, only a temporary one. This grammatical point can be

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learned better if there is a more interactive method of learning grammar in the classroom in which conversational purposes are targeted. The small investigation described in this chapter only touches the tip of the iceberg and cannot cover all phenomena of English language acquisition in Vietnamese children. It mainly shows a preliminary study on S-V agreement phenomena found in an ESL classroom and a general view of classroom second language teaching and learning in a Vietnamese primary school. Nevertheless, deeper investigations on a larger scale are needed. There should be more lesson observations of different classes of English in different schools and more participants to do several tasks in order to see how English teaching and learning methods in the language classroom affect language output.

References Biber, D., Stig J., Geoffrey L., Susan C., & Edward F. (1999). The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Bui, H. (2005). Cҫn Dҥy Hӑc Nhӳng Ngoҥi Ngӳ Nào Trong Tr!ӡng Phә Thông ViӋt Nam. Tҥp Chí Khoa Hӑc H"QGHN, Ngoҥi Ngӳ. [What foreign languages should be taught at secondary schools? Vietnam National University Journal of Science and Foreign Languages], 9(3), 1–6. Dang, T. N. (1986). Teaching oral communication skills to trainee interpreters at the University of Hanoi. Unpublished MA (TESOL) Field Study Report, Faculty of Education, University of Canberra, Australia. Denham, P. A. (1992). English in Vietnam. World Englishes, 11(1), 61-69. Do, H. T. (2000). Foreign language education policy in Vietnam: The emergence of English and its impact on higher education. In J. Shaw, D. Lubelsak & M. Noullet (Eds.), Partnership and Interaction: Proceedings of the fourth international conference on language and development (pp. 29-42). Bangkok: Asian Institute of Technology. Duong, T. H. O., & Nguyen, T. H. (2006). Memorization and EFL students’ strategies at university level in Vietnam. TESL-EJ, 10(2), 121. Dyson, B. (2009). Processability theory and the role of morphology in ESL development. A longitudinal study. Second Language Research 25(3), 255-376. Fröhlich, M., Spada, N., & Allen, P. (1985). Differences in the communicative orientation of L2 classrooms. TESOL Quarterly, 19(1), 27-57.

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Glahn, E., Håkansson, G., Hammarberg, B., Holmen, A., Hvenekilde, A., & Lund, K. (2001). Processability in Scandinavian second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 23(3), 389-416. Håkansson, G., Pienemann, M., & Sayehli, S. (2002). Transfer and typological proximity in the context of L2 processing. Second Language Research, 18(3), 250-273. Karnow, S. (1983). Vietnam: A history. New York: Viking Press. Kessler, J. (Ed.). (2008). Processability approaches to second language development and second language learning. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. Kieu, H. K. A. (2010). Use of Vietnamese in English language teaching in Vietnam: Attitudes of Vietnamese university teachers. English Language Teaching, 3(2), 119-128. Krashen, S., & Seliger, H. (1976). The role of formal and informal linguistic environments in adult second language learning. International Journal of Psycholinguistics, 3, 15-21. Krashen, S. D., Butler, J., Birkbaum, R., & Robertson, J. (1978). Two studies in language acquisition and language learning. ITL: Review of Applied Linguistics, 39/40, 73–92. Lewis, M., & McCook, F. (2002). Cultures of teaching: Voices from Vietnam. ELT Journal, 56(2), 146-153. Le, V. C. (2000). Language and Vietnamese pedagogical contexts. In J. Shaw, D. Lubeska & M. Noullet (Eds.), Proceedings of the fourth international conference on language and development (pp. 73-80). Bangkok: Asian Institute of Technology. Meisel, J., Clahsen, H., & Pienemann, M. (1981). On determining developmental stages in natural second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 3(2), 109-135. Ministry of Education and Training. (1991). Tieng Anh, 11 and 12. Hanoi: Education Publishing House. —. (2003). Chuong Trinh Tu chon Mon Tieng Anh o Bac Tieu Hoc [English Curriculum as an Optional Subject at Primary Level]. Hanoi: Ministry of Education and Training. Mitchell, R., & Myles, F. (2004). Second language learning theories. London: Arnold. Moon, J. (2005). Investigating the teaching of English at primary level in Vietnam: A summary report. Paper presented at the Teaching English Language at Primary Level Conference, June 2-3, Ha Noi, Vietnam. —. (2009). The teacher factor in early foreign language learning programmes: The case of Vietnam. In M. Nikolov (Ed.), The age

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factor and early language learning (pp. 311-336). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Nakata, R., Frazier, K., Hoskins, B., & Wilkinson, S. (2000). Let’s go (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press Nguyen, B., & Crabbe, D. (1999). The design and use of English language textbooks in Vietnamese secondary schools. Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Language and Development, October 13-15, Ha Noi, Vietnam. Nguyen, H. T. M. (2011). Primary English language education policy in Vietnam: Insights from implementation. Current Issues in Language Planning, 12(2), 225-249. Nguyen, T. M. H., & Nguyen, Q. T. (2007). Teaching English in primary schools in Vietnam: An overview. Current Issues in Language Planning, 8(1), 162-173. Nguyen, X. H. (1998, June 30). University system must adapt, not adopt, foreign models. Vietnam News. Nguyen, N. T. (2014). Learner autonomy in language learning: Teachers’ beliefs. Doctoral thesis, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Nunan, D. 2003. The impact of English as a global language on educational policies and practices in the Asia-Pacific region. TESOL Quarterly, 37(4), 589-613. Ohta, A. S. (2001). Second language acquisition processes in the classroom: Learning Japanese. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pienemann, M. (1998). Language processing and second language development: Processability theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. —. (2005). Cross-linguistic aspects of processability theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pienemann, M., & Keßler, J-U. (2011). Studying porcessability theory: An introductory textbook. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sakai, H. (2008). An analysis of Japanese university students’ oral performance in English using processability theory. System, 36(4), 534-549. Saville-Troike, M. (2006). Introducing second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spada, N., & Fröhlich, M. (1995) The communicative orientation of language teaching (COLT) observation scheme: Coding conventions and applications. Sydney, Australia: Macquarie University.

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Tode, T. (2008). Effects of frequency in classroom second language learning: Quasi-experiment and stimulated-recall analysis. Bern: Peter Lang. Trinh, Q. L. (2005). Stimulating learner autonomy in English language education: A curriculum innovation study in a Vietnamese context. Doctoral thesis, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN VOCABULARY UPTAKE FROM PEPPA PIG: A CASE STUDY OF PRESCHOOL EFL LEARNERS IN GREECE THOMAÏ ALEXIOU

Abstract This chapter presents a small-scale case study that investigated the influence of comic series in English as a foreign language (EFL) vocabulary acquisition. To that aim, Greek preschoolers watched a set of episodes of the Peppa Pig comic series in English and then they discussed the plot and the heroes with their teacher in Greek. No explicit teaching of the English language or vocabulary included in the comic series took place. Following that, the children were tested in a child-friendly way in order to measure the receptive English vocabulary they were exposed to in the specific episodes of the comic series. Results indicate the significant contribution of comic series in EFL students’ receptive vocabulary but also in vocabulary development in general.

Introduction McDonough (1981) suggests that children are the best examples of language learners because of their spontaneous nature of language acquisition. They learn by using their senses, by experiencing and exploring. They are very perceptive, they appear to ‘absorb’ knowledge like sponges and although they are impressively good memorisers they tend to retain in memory whatever makes sense. So they retain the essence of a story or fairy tale, for example, even if details are lacking or may be wrong. They may not be able to explain or rationalise a grammatical rule but they learn short phrases, and not just individual words, which they can use to communicate giving them some grammaticality. When learning

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second or foreign languages, priority and emphasis is given to oral skills at the early stages as children have not yet developed literacy skills in their first language (L1) (Alexiou, 2015). Teaching young learners is a complex and genuinely difficult job although immensely rewarding. Because young children are restless and they easily lose interest, their teachers need to be very efficient, imaginative, and armed with a large and varied repertoire of activities and methods. Since teaching at that sensitive early stage is primarily a pedagogical task, teachers of young learners need to be familiar with a variety of pedagogic principles in order to find the best ways to ‘talk’ to the children’s minds and ‘touch’ their hearts (Alexiou, 2015). One major problem with preschoolers learning a second or foreign language (L2) is that they have limited attention span and they are not very disciplined. Consequently, playful, alternative and unconventional teaching techniques are encouraged at this early stage. Children’s television (TV) programmes, primarily intended for native speaking children, are one type of exposure to the L2 that is frequently used with very young foreign language learners and this type of language input, specifically the Peppa Pig children’s series, is investigated in this chapter.

Child Language Learning and the TV Factor The onset age of starting a foreign language has been widely discussed. Some researchers claim that the earlier children begin to learn a second language the better (e.g., Ellis, 2008; Krashen, Long, & Scarcella, 1979; Larsen-Freeman, 2008; Mayberry & Lock, 2003; Singleton, 1989), but others argue that older learners are better than younger learners (Dekeyser, 2000; Snow & Hoefnagel-Hohle, 1982; Stern, Burstall, & Harley, 1975). The general consensus, however, is that children, when exposed to a foreign language from an early age, seem to benefit in listening (Munõz, Pérez, Celaya, Navés, Torras, Tragant, & Victori, 2002) and they are able to achieve native-like pronunciation (Oyama, 1976). Tahta, Wood and Loewenthal (1981a, cited in Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991) suggest that, “…the children’s ability to replicate intonation in longer phrases remained steady in the five- to eight-year range, and then dropped rapidly between ages eight and eleven, plateauing again in the eleven to fifteen range.” (p. 156)

It is generally accepted that there is a ‘window of opportunity’ at the age of 5 to 8 and that teachers should use this period for foreign language teaching to the learners’ benefit. Researchers who assert the superiority of

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younger foreign language learners claim that children’s brains are more flexible (e.g., Lenneberg, 1967). Children are considered to be like ‘sponges’ and can absorb language presented to them almost effortlessly but with continuous exposure of the right kind. Teaching at these early stages is usually rather informal and takes place in a playful manner that includes a variety of songs and rhymes, short stories, colouring and drawing. Children enjoy silly rhymes, riddles, jokes and hands-on activities (Oesterreich, 1995). Total physical response activities, arts and crafts, drama, projects and games are all appropriate since they make children use language authentically and for meaningful purposes (Halliwell, 1992). Yet, when learning the L2, the importance of linking a word to an object they can see and touch is highlighted and this is the reason that any kind of visual stimuli is important in early classroom settings. Therefore, TV and any form of computer technology are essential instruments as they provide ample visual stimuli. Comic series shown on TV, but also available on the internet (via YouTube), are based on short stories. Stories are appropriate for children: they are familiar to them from their mother tongue and they allow children to focus on meaning, not on structure. As Cross (1992) states, “…an additional benefit is that the learner’s attention is on the message not on the language. They acquire language unconsciously with their whole attention engaged by the activity, in much the same way as they acquired their mother tongue.” (p. 153)

Furthermore, children are expected to infer meaning based on visual stimuli, on body language and gestures used by the people they meet and see (in the present study, Peppa Pig and her family). According to most recent constructivist theories, learners are seen as active agents who “engage in their own knowledge construction by integrating new information into their schema, and by associating and representing it into a meaningful way” (Hsiao, 2005, p. 2). Negotiating meaning and modifying output are vital processes to second language acquisition (Long, 1996). But how effective is this kind of learning? As Gathercole, Willis, Emslie and Baddeley (1992) state, “Although studies of word learning in children have documented the remarkable facility of preschool children to acquire new vocabulary … the factors underpinning the large individual differences in young children’s abilities to learn new words are as yet little understood.” (p. 887)

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In order to understand vocabulary uptake in L2 we need to review research in this age group in L1. From these studies, implications can be made about L2 as well. There is a common belief that native speakers learn their native vocabulary so quickly, perhaps as many as 15 words per day from the ages two to seven, that direct instruction of vocabulary cannot possibly account for the vast growth of students’ knowledge of vocabulary (Coady & Huckin, 1997). Hart and Risley (1975) researching implicit teaching of mother-tongue language to preschool children concluded that it “appears to be an effective means of increasing children’s language skills” (p. 419). More recent research is much more conservative and Milton and Treffers-Daller (2013) suggest vocabulary uptake in first language by young learners is probably more like two words a day on average, a rate of learning which can be explained by explicit learning and without the need for complex theories of implicit uptake. More studies (e.g., Linebarger & Walker, 2005) have shown that “well-designed programs with a coherent narrative structure that combine correct language use with engaging content may contribute to positive language outcomes for infants and toddlers” (Krcmar, 2011, p. 780). It has also been suggested that “children as young as two can learn the meaning of words by viewing their referents on videos that were designed noncommercially as experimental stimulus material” (Naigles & Mayeux, 2001, cited in Krcmar, 2011, p. 782) and children 22 months and older are able “to learn novel words, even from single exposures to commercially produced (albeit edited) video” (Krcmar, Grela, & Lin, 2007 cited in Krcmar, 2011, p. 784). TV or YouTube videos are extremely popular with children (Rhodes & Puhfahl, 2003) and toddlers can easily spend two hours per day in front of the TV (Rideout, Vandewate, & Wartella, 2003). A range of vocabulary can be acquired and stored through watching these programs notwithstanding that children at this age do not pay attention to form and they are not interested in realising grammatical structures (Rhodes & Puhfahl, 2003). These programmes are thought to have a positive affective benefit as multimedia’s “emotional interest illustrations were found to have a positive impact on promoting learners’ motivation” (Park & Lim, 2007, p. 159). Either in L1 or L2, children, as active learners, try to establish the meaning of people’s utterances based on their limited previous knowledge (Cameron, 2001; Moon, 2000). Children easily comprehend the general meaning of what others tell them before understanding the individual words (Halliwell, 1992). This is due to the fact that they dwell on

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imagination but also because they are able to decipher external clues like “intonation, gesture, facial expressions, actions and circumstances” (Halliwell, 1992, p. 3). Moon (2000) argues that this emphasis on meaning rather than form helps children realize the gist and plot of a story or a video and enables them to match the meaning with the unknown words in an effortless way.

Peppa Pig Computers and all forms of multimedia play a major role in preschoolers’ lives today, and offer huge potential for L2 language learning (Milton & Garbi, 2000). Despite recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a typical day, 68% of all children under two use screen media (59% watch TV, 42% watch a video, 5% use a computer, and 3% play video games), and these youngsters spend an average of two hours and five minutes in front of a screen (Kokla, 2013). Very early on, Bullock (1975) had suggested that TV exposure can also have an educational value. For example, TV can be beneficial as “it exposes children to a variety of accents, idioms, register, which they would not hear otherwise. Infants engage in a space travel game show and know words like rocket, countdown, capsule, etc.” (Bullock, 1975, pp. 6162). TV programmes intended for young learners contain many of the characteristics required for good foreign language teaching. Thus, in programmes such as Peppa Pig English words are presented in “clear, artificially slow speech” (Huntly, 2006, p. 61) and are continuously repeated throughout each episode. Where the programmes the children watch include foreign language material, the potential for learning is high. By contrast, the classroom environment at an early age is alleged to be lexically poor (Meara, Lightbown, & Halter, 1997; Tang & Nesi, 2003). The vocabulary of the classroom can be so restricted that learners may learn as few as one or two words in the foreign language per classroom hour (Milton, 2006; Laufer, 2010, cited in Milton, Jonsen, Hirst, & Lindenburn, 2012). Native English speaking 5-year olds may typically have a vocabulary of 4,000 to 5,000 word families (Schmitt 2000, p. 3), and they may add 500 words (Milton & Treffers-Daller, 2013) or 1,000 words (Schmitt, 2000) each year thereafter, but we have very limited information about the volumes of vocabulary uptake which very young foreign language learners can achieve. Laufer (2010) mentions uptake rates of approximately two to three words per hour of L2 instruction, while Milton and Meara (1998) report three to four words per hour of L2 instruction. This may be due to the fact that teachers can resort to L1

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where they fear that children’s limited knowledge of L2 may cause them problems in confidence and can therefore lose interest but it may equally be a product of time factors since vocabulary cannot be the only focus of every L2 class. It seems inevitable that exposure to the language in the L1 is much larger than the exposure that learners will typically get in their L2. Not surprisingly, therefore, there is interest in the uptake of words through informal methods such as extensive reading, listening to songs and watching TV and videos. Horst and Meara (1999) studied the lexical learning of Dutch in a learner from reading a Lucky Luke comic book, and concluded that more than 30 words per contact hour were acquired by the single subject in their investigation. Studies of Greek vocabulary learning from listening to songs and watching videos with sub-titles (Milton, 2008) also concluded that considerable amounts of vocabulary gains can occur from these informal activities. Peppa Pig is a British animated television series for pre-schoolers which originally aired in 2004. It is shown in 180 countries and has been dubbed in many languages. Each episode is approximately 5 minutes long and the animation is eye catching while the episodes are humorous and joyful. The show revolves around Peppa, a pig with anthropomorphic features, and her family and friends. The episodes relate to “everyday activities such as attending playgroup, going swimming, visiting their grandparents, going to the playground or riding bikes” (http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppa_Pig).

The Study This chapter investigates the uptake of English as a foreign language (EFL) vocabulary shown in 4 episodes of the English version of Peppa Pig. The aim of the study was to investigate whether this type of exposure facilitates vocabulary gains in a foreign language. There were three main research questions examined in this study: x Are children aged 4-6 successful in acquiring EFL vocabulary only through TV exposure? x What kind of EFL words are easier to recall at that age? x Are there any gender or age differences in the acquisition of EFL vocabulary through TV exposure?

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Methodology Thirty preschoolers aged between 4 and 6 took part in the study (8 four year olds, 12 five year olds, 10 six year olds) at a state nursery school in Thessaloniki, Greece. The children spoke only Greek. Preschoolers watched four episodes (5 minutes each) four times, a total of 80 minutes exposure over a period of one month. The episodes were viewed only in English and they watched each episode twice each time they had a class, which was twice in the week. There was no pre-teaching or any formal teaching of the English words included in the episodes, and no explanation of any of the words was given. Thematic areas of the episodes included colours of the rainbow, winter and snow, lunch and pancakes. The four episodes used in the study can be accessed from the links below: x x x x

The rainbow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tmfgACyhZU Snow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F44ohP5YS4o Lunch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYZw5n2bs9Y Pancakes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Ng1Mqbrf4

The preschoolers’ receptive vocabulary uptake of the English words contained in these episodes was then measured through a 5-minute word recognition test, which was done in a playful manner on a one to one basis. The researcher asked the child whether s/he could help Peppa recognize some English items; the researcher then pronounced the words (which were only nouns) and the child pointed to the relative pictures. At this age, we could not measure more than five words/per episode and we had to select words that were concrete and were presented both in sound and picture during the episodes. A corpus of the four episodes was created and then 21 concrete words were tested receptively after watching all episodes so as to see whether the EFL vocabulary children were exposed to had been retained or not. Researchers in this area make a distinction between words as base forms or lemmatised word types. Namely, ‘pig’ and ‘pigs’ are highly regular and inflected forms and are treated in the corpus as one word whereas ‘pig’ and ‘piggy’ are considered two different words as they involve morphological derivation and are less regular and frequent (Milton, 2009).

Results and Discussion The results of the study are presented in order of the research questions in the following sections.

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Are Children Successful in Acquiring EFL Vocabulary Through TV Exposure? Vocabulary size or vocabulary learning is usually measured in the learning of lemmatised types (Nation, 2001, pp. 6-8). This means that for example, the episode ‘colours’ contains 535 words in total (tokens) and 172 different words (types). Henceforth, we refer both to types or words to mean the same thing. This method of measurement may not be appropriate in this case study since the subjects had no experience of formal learning of English and had no opportunity to form any idea of how lemmas might be formed in the new language. Following the example of Milton and Vassiliu (2000), uptake in this study was counted in types. The vocabulary types and tokens for each episode and in total are shown in Table 16-1. Table 16-1: Vocabulary types and tokens in the Peppa Pig episodes. Episode colours clothes lunch pancake Total

Types 172 129 136 166 603

Tokens 535 373 431 438 1,777

Overwhelmingly the vocabulary comprised high frequency words with 86% from the first 1,000 most frequent words in English and a further 6% from the second 1,000 most frequent words. The vocabulary contained in the four episodes appeared to be highly concrete and imageable as defined by Milton (2009). The results of the uptake of the target words is shown in Table 16-2 below. Preschoolers could remember about half of the target vocabulary in each episode and about one third of the total 21 target words without explicit instruction but merely by watching the episodes. If this were to be true of all the words in the corpus compiled for this study, then it suggests that these learners may have acquired some 200 different English words within a period of a little less than an hour and a half. Nothing in the literature suggests uptake as impressive as this among older L2 learners or even among L1 learners. This, in turn, can imply that if these words were then formally instructed, contextualized and practised through activities, the results could be even more impressive.

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Table 16-2: Mean scores and standard deviations for all episodes. Episodes (target words) colours (6 words) snow (5 words) lunch (5 words) pancake (5 words) Total (21 words)

Mean Score 2.48 1.80 2.57 2.00 7.66

SD 1.39 0.98 1.13 1.14 3.12

What Kind of Words are Easier to Recall at that Age? The figures above demonstrate how many of the target words from each episode children recalled receptively. Further analysis can offer assumptions of the kind of words that are easily recalled. The vast majority of children recalled the words blue (73%) and pizza (87%). Chocolate cake, albeit a multi-syllable word, was recalled by two thirds of the children (67%), and snowman (40%) and egg (47%) were words that were retained by almost half of the children. It appears that children were more likely to recall words that have some relation to Greek (chocolate cake, blue, pizza, etc.). The impact of cognates on learning vocabulary has been well attested in the literature (e.g., Milton, 2009). These words are also concrete and imageable and tend to be nouns and adjectives. The results from Horst and Meara’s (1999) study of uptake from reading Lucky Luke also showed that the subject demonstrated better learning of nouns and adjectives which could be easily seen within the illustrations and linked to a new lexical item, while there was less learning among, for example, adverbs, where meanings are much harder to pick up. The fact that the lexical content of the episodes comprised so many high frequency items also suggests that learning is expedited by the learners’ pre-existing conceptual framework. Learners in this study are not searching to create wholly new concepts for blue and chocolate cake; they are applying new labels to ideas they already have and where they can easily find translation equivalents. This tendency is also noted in the literature (Masrai & Milton, 2015). Words, which lie outside their framework of knowledge, are not added to the lexicon so easily. For example, children were better able to acquire the words egg or flour than the word pancake although it occurred in the episode 15 times. This can be because in the Greek context, eggs and flour are much more common than pancake which would be more common within British or American culture.

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Moreover, the young learners in this study appeared to recognise words that made an impression of colour or music and they could recall exclamations like hurray! As previously suggested some children may be ‘referential’ and their early vocabulary includes mainly object names, some verbs, proper names and adjectives, while other children are ‘expressive’ and they retain also social routines or formulae such as thank you and stop it (Foster-Cohen, 1999; Nelson, 1981). The implication here is that even at the early stages of acquisition whole phrases, lexical chunks and formulae (Schmitt, 2000) should also be part of teaching and exposure. These considerations suggest that the rapid uptake seen in this study may not be sustained into further episodes and onwards through the course of learning a foreign language. The availability of frequent, imageable, short and cognate words with readily available translation equivalents in Greek, is likely to diminish over the course of L2 study and the speed of progress is likely to slow down. Even within this study the target words focused on words, which have qualities likely to make them easy to learn thus over-estimating the rate of uptake. Although the words used in the Peppa Pig series are generally highly frequent in normal language, the frequency of occurrence within the episodes does not seem to play a clear role in uptake. Thus, rainbow was heard 18 times while snowball only once; yet both words were recognized by 37% of the children. Snowman was repeated 14 times and was recognized by 40% while both pancake (repeated 15 times) and lettuce (repeated 10 times) only by 27%. The correlation between frequency of occurrence and rate of learning was not found to be statistically significant (r = .217, p = .344). However, all children were able to recall family words, which were introduced after each episode (mummy, daddy, brother) and could do it after the second episode. Therefore, “lexical acquisition requires multiple exposures to a word” (Schmitt, 2000, p. 137) and “recycling previously met words in varied contexts and activities is essential to keep learnt words active” (Cameron, 2001, p. 95), while there is only a 5%-14% chance of retaining a word from one exposure (Nagy, 1997). What is also remarkable is that all children remembered the plot of all episodes and children who were older than five could recall some verbs as well.

Are there Gender Differences in the Uptake Scores? Dale (1976) claims that in preschool and early school years there are few differences or no differences at all between boys and girls. Previous

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studies conducted mainly with older groups have demonstrated superiority of girls in all language aspects (Asher & Garcia, 1969; Powell, 1979) although the opposite was found by other researchers (Gomes da Costaǡ mith, & Whiteley, 1975; Snow & Hoefnagel-Hoehle, 1977). In this study boys outperformed girls and in total the difference was statistically significant (r = -443, p = .014) and especially in the ‘lunch’ episode (r = 444, p = .018). According to recent studies, boys appear to be better in visuo-spatial abilities whereas girls outperform boys in verbal memory skills (Vecchi, Phillips, & Cornoldi, 2001). The nature of this intervention (watching cartoons using visual rather than verbal skills) may relate to these findings.

Does Age Influence Uptake Scores? When the difference between the age groups was examined, it was found that there were statistically significant differences. When examining 4- and 5-year olds, 4-year olds scored higher in all but one episode, but the differences were not statistically significant. However, in the ‘rainbow’ episode where 5-year olds outperformed 4-year olds the difference was statistically significant (t (9000) = -4,392, p = .002). Between the 5- and 6-year olds, 6-year olds scored higher in all episodes and the difference was statistically significant (t (25,993) = 3,657, p = .001). Statistically significant differences emerged also in the ‘snow’ episode (t (16,208) = -2,375, p = .030) and the ‘pancake’ episode (t (20,451) = -2,670, p = .015) where again the 6-year olds outperformed the 5-year olds. Finally, very subtle differences were found in the scores of 4and 6-year olds and only in the ‘rainbow’ episode a statistically significant result occurred (t (14,000) = -4,063, p = 0.001) where once again the 6year olds scored higher than the 4-year olds. The particular results are in agreement with previous studies on language learning from TV programmes (Kokla 2013; Linebarger & Kosanic, 2001; Rice & Woodsmall, 1988; Rush, 2011) which found that older children learnt more words than younger ones. The results presented here are interesting and confirm previous studies in the field. For example, Rice, Huston, Truglio and Wright (1990) argued that Sesame Street contributes to young children’s vocabulary development, especially to children between 3 and 5 years of age where a rapid oral language development was noted. Linebarger and Kosanic (2001 cited in Kokla, 2013) assessed 3-year olds and 4-year olds on their knowledge of Spanish before and after watching Dora the Explorer. The children’s Spanish vocabulary had significantly increased and this was

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more evident in 4-year olds. Kokla (2013) conducting a similar study with Dora The Explorer in Greece found both receptive and productive vocabulary gains in English as a foreign language, with statistically significant higher scores in the receptive vocabulary.

Conclusion This study was an attempt to examine the vocabulary that is retained in preschoolers’ short-term memory through watching Peppa Pig. To this end, four episodes were shown to children without any instruction or explanation and then their receptive learning of a set of words was assessed. The results showed that children were able to recognize many of the words they were exposed to and sometimes even if they had heard them only once. While the method of testing employed may have led to some over-estimation, the results are still remarkable. It seems that these young learners with no instruction were able to learn as much as a third of all the vocabulary they were exposed to. Uptake could well be over 100 words per hour although there are reasons for thinking that this rate of uptake is likely not to continue further in their study of EFL. Nonetheless, it is impressive learning compared to the 3 or 4 words per classroom hour reported in Milton and Meara (1998) or the 1 to 2 words per day noted by Milton and Treffers-Daller (2013) among native speaking learners (although the L1 learners will be simultaneously building the conceptual elements of the lexicon and not simply adding new labels to existing concepts). It might be suggested too that while these learners were identified as speaking only Greek, they would have had considerable exposure to English available through TV and songs and the other media which may have primed them with some of the vocabulary items they were tested on. This study also showed some interesting results regarding the kind of words preschoolers were able to learn. Like many other L2 learners they appeared to make use of cognates and there were plenty of these to draw on. They also favoured short, concrete words with easily available translation equivalents in Greek. Long term and follow up studies should be conducted so as to reach firmer conclusions regarding the effectiveness of this medium of vocabulary exposure. Can the rate of progress seen in this study continue with further access to TV series like Peppa Pig, for example? How do the various word difficulty factors inter-relate in the process of acquisition? Nonetheless, the results of this study suggest this issue appears to be a promising area for research. What can be concluded confidently is that comic series and Peppa Pig

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in particular can be a successful EFL tool, which can be utilised by all stakeholders (teachers, curriculum designers and parents). It appears to involve natural, implicit and subconscious exposure to relatively authentic language and in a format that the preschoolers can access for vocabulary learning. It includes words which are international and which learners are already familiar with (e.g., taxi, ball, computer) as this can only boost selfconfidence (Alexiou & Konstantakis, 2009) and further promote success in learning the target language. While the rate of progress in learning noted in this study seems unlikely to continue, it appears, nonetheless, an effective start to the process of foreign language learning.

References Alexiou, T. (2015). Comic series and ‘Peppa Pig’: A hidden treasure in language learning. In M. Tzakosta (Ed.), Language learning and teaching in multi-cultural environments (pp. 187-206). Athens, Greece: Gutenberg. Alexiou, T., & Konstantakis, N. (2009). Lexis for young learners: Are we heading for frequency or just common sense? In A. Tsangalidis (Ed.), Selection of papers for the 18th symposium of theoretical and applied linguistics (pp. 59-66). Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Asher, J., & García, R. (1969). The optimal age to learn a foreign language. Modern Language Journal, 53(5), 334-341. Bullock, A. (1975). The Bullock report: A language for life. Department of Education and Science (DES). London: HMSO. Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching languages to young learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coady, J., & Huckin, T. (1997). Second language vocabulary acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cross, D. (1992). A practical handbook of language teaching. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall. Dale, P. (1976). Language development: Structure and function. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. DeKeyser, R. M. (2000). The robustness of critical period effects in second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22(4), 499–533. Ellis, R. (2008). SLA research and language teaching. New York: Oxford University Press. Foster-Cohen, S. H. (1999). An introduction to child language development. Essex: Longman.

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fòrum sobre plurilingüisme i educació. Publicació electrònica semestral de l'ICE de la Universitat de Barcelona 1, 14 March 2006. Retrieved from: http://www.ub.es/ice/portaling/eduling/eng/n_1/munoz-art.htm. Nagy, W. E. (1997). On the role of context in first-and-second language vocabulary learning. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 64-83). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Naigles, L. R., & Mayeux, L. (2001). Television as incidental language teacher. In D. G. Singer & J. L. Singer (Eds.), Handbook of children and the media (pp. 135-152). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: CUP. Nelson, K. (1981). Individual differences in language development: Implications for development and language. Developmental Psychology, 17(2), 170-187. Oesterreich, L. M. S. (1995). Ages & stages-five-year-olds. Lowa State University: National Network for Child Care (NNCC). Retrieved from: http://www.nncc.org/Child.Dev/ages.stages.5y.html Oyama, S. (1976). A sensitive period for the acquisition of non-native phonological system. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 5(3), 261284. Park, S., & Lim, J. (2007). Promoting positive emotion in multimedia learning using visual illustrations. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 16(2), 141-162. Powell, R. C. (1969). Sex differences in language learning: A review of the evidence. Audio-Visual Language Journal, 17(1), 19-24. Rhodes, N., & Puhfahl, I. (2003). Teaching foreign languages to children through videos. ERIC Digest, EDO-FL-03-10. Washington DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on languages and linguistics. Rice, M. L., & Woodsmall, L. (1988). Lessons from television: Children’s word learning when viewing. Child Development, 59(2), 420-429. Rice, M. L., Huston, A. C., Truglio, R., & Wright, J. (1990). Words from ‘Sesame Street’: Learning vocabulary while viewing. Developmental Psychology, 26(3), 421-428. Rideout, V. J., Vandewater, E. A., & Wartella, E. A. (2003). Zero to six: Electronic media in the lives of infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation. Rush, A. (2011). Can toddlers learn novel words from educational videos? A study using repeat exposure to assess infant’s use and understanding of television. Master's dissertation, Wakeforest University, USA.

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Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in language teaching. Cambridge: CUP. Singleton, D. (1989). Language acquisition: The age factor. Clevedon, Multilingual Matters. Snow, C., & Hoefnagel-Hohle, M. (1982). The critical period for language acquisition: Evidence from second language learning. In S. Krashen, R. Scarcella, & M. Long (Eds.), Issues in second language research (pp. 93-113). London: Newbury House. Snow, C., & Hoefnagel-Hoehle, M. (1977). Age differences in the pronunciation of foreign sounds. Language and Speech, 20(4), 357365. Stern, H. H., Burstall, C., & Harley, B. (1975). French from age eight or eleven? Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Tang, E., & Nesi, H. (2003). Teaching vocabulary in two Chinese classrooms: Intensive and extensive exposure in Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Language Teaching Research, 7(1), 65-97. Vecchi, T., Phillips, L. H., & Cornoldi, C. (2001). Individual differences in visuo-spatial working memory. In M. Denis, R. H. Logie, C. Cornoldi, M. De Vega, & J. Engelkamp (Eds), Imagery, language and visuo-spatial thinking (pp. 29-51). Sussex: Psychology Press.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN MEASURING CHILD SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY ACQUISITION THROUGH IMMERSION IN SCHOOL JAMES MILTON AND SHADAN ROGHANI

Abstract Vocabulary uptake among young learners in classroom settings is well documented. However, research that explains the uptake of vocabulary from young learners in immersion settings appears non-existent. This study examines the vocabulary growth of an ab initio English as a foreign language (EFL) learner from Persia, acquiring English solely from immersion in a British school. It emerges that the learner makes very rapid initial progress, with learning focussed on the most frequent vocabulary ranges, but the rate of acquisition tails off rapidly. A frequency-based test appears able to capture this kind of knowledge, as it does among second/foreign language learners. After an academic year the learner probably knows enough vocabulary to be orally proficient. However, when compared with an English native speaker of the same age, and other Persian speakers in the same school, it is clear there are significant differences with native speaker knowledge both in the quantity and quality of the words learned, and that these differences will persist over many years. The assumption made by his teachers, that after a year such learners are effectively native-like, appears quite wrong. This deficiency has the potential to compromise the learners’ ultimate educational attainment.

Introduction It is common for children who move country to find themselves in a classroom where they know none of the language of education and they may receive very little, sometimes no, formal instruction in the language

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they are immersed in. Such young learners in British schools can appear to learn English very rapidly indeed and are often assumed to function like their native speaking colleagues once communicability has been achieved and they can survive without obvious difficulty in the classroom. Appearances can be deceptive, of course, and as Paradis (2007) points out these young learners are comparatively little researched in terms of second language acquisition issues when compared with more adult foreign language learners in classrooms. We have little to tell us how these learners acquire their language so quickly, how varied the learners are, and whether they really are strictly comparable to natives in every aspect of language knowledge and performance. Child second language learners are more widely researched in the USA, it seems, and here it appears that these child second language learners are often found to be significantly different from native speakers of the same age particularly in their vocabulary knowledge (e.g., Kohnert & Windsor, 2004). Deficits in the learners’ lexis, and consequently their reading ability in the language of education, are thought to impact significantly on subsequent educational attainment (e.g., Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997). In the British context, however, there is little comparable research to tell us whether similar difficulties occur here. The challenge presented by learners working through the British education system in English as a foreign language is a growing one. The number of children who fall into this category have increased by a third since 2003 and about one in six British school children now falls into this category (Geay, McNally, & Telhaj, 2012). Investigating language development from the perspective of the lexicon ought to be a useful starting point for research among these learners. It allows direct comparison with existing studies in this area, of course, which often have lexical concerns tied into them. Vocabulary knowledge in a second language is linked closely with performance in the four skills (e.g., Stæhr, 2008; Milton, Wade, & Hopkins, 2010) and this allows judgements about the development of learners’ language knowledge and performance generally to be made. But vocabulary measurement has other very useful characteristics. One is the way it can be investigated from the point of view of size. The measurement of vocabulary size ought to allow direct and meaningful comparison between learners, and a quantification of learner progress, in a way that is not possible for other aspects of language knowledge and performance. This is a very useful characteristic if the intention is to make a comparison of second language learner knowledge with native speakers to evaluate how similar they are. The second is that vocabulary measurements can be linked to a theory of acquisition. Tests of vocabulary knowledge are often

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based on frequency data (for example, Nation’s (2001) Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) and Meara & Milton’s (2003) X-Lex). These tests produce believable and reliable results not least because vocabulary learning, at least among foreign language learners, can be demonstrated to associate strongly with word frequency (Milton, 2007; Edwards & Collins, 2013). While vocabulary size testing is widely researched in English as a foreign language (EFL) acquisition in adults, this research, and the models and techniques it has created, appears not to have crossed over into research in monolingual or bilingual young learners in schools. For example the Peabody picture test (Dunn & Dunn, 1997), which is in use with young children, links the test items it contains to a cline of observed difficulty, but not to a comprehensive model of the developing lexicon or to an estimate of size. Vocabulary size testing methods in the EFL are now sufficiently robust, however, for estimates of knowledge to be made even among low level learners and among learners where progress by any other method would be hard to determine convincingly. The intention in this chapter, therefore, is to examine English language vocabulary growth among child subjects immersed in a British Junior School and learning the language from zero knowledge, and to test whether the frequency based methods, so widely used in second language (L2) testing, might be applicable to young learners from varying language backgrounds in schools.

Background Vocabulary Size and Growth in Native Speakers If the lexicons of learners are to be compared with the lexicons of native speakers, then it is essential to have details of the vocabulary size of native speakers and there is over a century of research, which has tried to make these measurements. A feature of this research is that often the estimates are very large; early estimates could be in the hundreds of thousands (e.g., Seashore & Eckerson, 1940). Such figures were made on the basis of dictionary counts where the estimate could be inflated by counting commonly derived forms of a single word as separate words. More recent estimates are in the region of about 60,000 lemmatised words (e.g., Nagy & Herman, 1987; White, Graves, & Slater, 1990; Aitchison, 2003) and these assume that words, at least in English, are learned and stored as a base form to which regular rules for inflection or derivation can be applied. Knowledge of the base form implies at least receptive knowledge of these other regularly created forms. This figure, in turn,

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gives rise to the assumption that learners in childhood will add about 3,000 base words per year to their lexicons (e.g., Graves, 2006; Nagy, 1988; Marzano, 2004). This implies that vocabulary growth is regular and free from the surges and plateaus, which often characterise the reports of vocabulary learning in L2 (e.g., Laufer, 1988). Estimates of this size have a significant influence on our assumptions about how these words are learned. With learning on this scale, something like ten base words per day, it is unclear how so many words can be encountered, explicitly noticed and learned. It is assumed, therefore, that learning is implicit, that the learning of words is not necessarily deliberate and intentional, and that much of this learning comes from reading since volumes of infrequent vocabulary are more available in writing than they are in speech (Nagy, 1988). Beck and McKeown (cited in Duke & Carlisle, 2011, pp. 206-207) suggest that only about 10% of the 3,000 words which schoolchildren are believed to learn annually can be explained by explicit learning in school. Herein lies the potential for inequality which writers in the USA fear. Learners who arrive at school with large vocabularies can access more reading material, and encounter and learn more words, than learners with small vocabularies. They, therefore, grow even larger vocabularies enabling them to succeed at school, while the learners with small vocabularies will read more slowly, will read less and grow consequently smaller vocabularies, and so are locked into a cycle of failure. This is known as the Matthew effect (Stanovich, 1986), although it is not at all clear that this effect can be observed empirically (Shaywitz, Holford, Holahan, Fletcher, Stuebing, Francis, & Shaywitz, 1995). There are studies, however, which challenge these assumptions of very large native vocabulary sizes and implicit learning through reading. D’Anna, Zechmeister and Hall’s (1991) study of US undergraduates suggests that educated native speakers have a defining vocabulary of about 14,000 lemmatised words and the authors suggest that this may actually be an over-estimate. Milton and Treffers-Daller’s (2013) study of UK undergraduates suggests a defining knowledge of about 10,000 lemmatised words on entry to university and 11,000 on leaving. These studies suggest an uptake of vocabulary of only about 500 or 600 words per year or about 2 words per day, a figure which is entirely explainable through explicit learning. Milton and Treffers-Daller’s study, like Shaywitz et al. (1995), finds no evidence of a link with reading habits to suggest that vocabulary size is gained through extensive reading. Studies of child learners, when the lexicon is still growing, are comparatively rare. Anglin (1993) suggests learners in school Grade 1, age

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6 or 7, knew an average of about 3,100 base words. By Grade 5, learners aged 10 or 11, the average vocabulary size had risen to about 7,500 base words, and these figures suggest a rate of uptake of about 3 words per day, or maybe 1,000 words per year. Biemiller and Slonim’s (2001) careful study bears out many of Anglin’s general conclusions. Their normative group in Grade 1, age 6 to 7, knew on average just under 3,000 base words rising to just under 8,500 by Grade 5. While there is variation, uptake appears to be 2 to 3 words per day, or 600 to 700 words per year during the early stages of formal school instruction. Both these studies suggest a vocabulary size in adulthood, which would be much closer to the smaller estimates, between 10,000 and 15,000, reported above, than the larger ones of 60,000 or more.

Vocabulary in Bilingual Children and L2 Learners The vocabulary of bilingual children is generally thought to be smaller in each language than that of monolinguals (for overviews see Bialystok, 2001; Bialystok, Luk, Peets, & Yang, 2010; Oller & Eilers, 2002). Bilinguals use their languages for different purposes, one language in the home and another at school, for example, and they do not need translation equivalents for all the words in their two languages. Most bilinguals are also dominant in one or the other language. Treffers-Daller (2011) observes that vocabulary differences can be seen in both oral or written production; and bilinguals produce text, which is richer in one language than the other. Additionally, since bilinguals are growing two vocabularies simultaneously where the combined vocabulary total is considerably greater than that of monolingual learners, there may be a delay in the acquisition of each individual lexicon (Pearson & Fernandez, 1994). Among young learners who begin the acquisition of the second language sometime after the first is underway, differences will often be a product of the time spent learning the second language since children who transfer to a second language environment may never have encountered the language at all, while their monolingual counterparts will already have spent years in acquisition. These learners are thought to catch up but, as Paradis (2007) observes, vocabulary acquisition is a gradual process and this process may take years. Hakuta, Goto-Butler and Witt (2000) suggest that it took 5 years of schooling before the English L2 learners they observed began to score in the native speaker range in standardised measures of oral proficiency. Among L2 learners the lexicon is often considered the biggest task in learning they have to undertake and, where the L2 lexicon is small, the

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biggest obstacle to communication and comprehension. As Meara (1980) has pointed out, “most learners identify the acquisition of vocabulary as their greatest single source of problems” (p. 221). There is a strand of research in L2 acquisition that attempts to quantify what constitutes a sufficient number of words for different types of performance, in EFL in particular. For participating in an everyday conversation it is assumed a learner needs 2,000-3,000 of the most frequent English words (Adolphs & Schmitt, 2003), and 5,000 words to begin to read authentic texts (Schmitt, 2007). In Dutch it is suggested that around 10,000 words are needed for starting an academic degree course (Hazenberg & Hulstijn, 1996). Nation (2006) also investigated the vocabulary size of a group of highly educated L2-users of English who were studying advanced degrees through the medium of English and found that they knew around 8,000 to 9,000 wordfamilies. Studies in L2 acquisition provide a model, albeit primitive, of the how the growing lexicon is constructed. It appears that learners are heavily influenced by frequency and there is a strong tendency for learners to acquire the most frequently occurring vocabulary before less frequent words. This means that, in English, learners acquire the highly frequent structural vocabulary early in the learning process and extend their knowledge of lexical vocabulary over a much longer period of time. Milton and Treffers-Daller’s (2013) study of English native speakers and bilinguals observes the same tendency in native speakers. This produces what is called a frequency profile where the quantity of word knowledge is plotted in frequency bands as in Figure 17-1 and known words are concentrated in the most frequent bands.

words known (max 5000)

5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 5000

10000

15000 20000 frequency bands

25000

low freq

Figure 17-1: Frequency profile in English native and bilingual speakers (Source: Milton & Treffers-Daller, 2013, p. 162).

Frequency profiles may provide information on individual differences in the nature of learning and Meara, Milton and Lorenzo-Dus (2001)

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report learners whose vocabulary knowledge appears to defy the impact of frequency in the most frequent bands and whose profiles have unexplained dips in the profile. The relationship between frequency of occurrence and acquisition does not seem to have been explicitly investigated in studies of young first language (L1) learners. However, Dale and O’Rourke (1981) (as reported in Biemiller & Slonim, 2001) observed some ordering of word learning. Biemiller and Slonim (2001) investigated the possibility that word frequency may explain variation in this common sequence, but no connection was observed.

Issues of Methodology in Testing Vocabulary Size The influence of frequency on learning is an important issue since it can, and often does in measurements of L2 learning provide a rationale for the construction of vocabulary size tests, which justify their selection of vocabulary for testing in terms of a principled sample across frequency bands. Nation’s VLT (2001) and Meara and Milton’s X-Lex (2003) are examples of this. In estimates of L1 vocabulary size, Goulden, Nation and Read (1990) use Thorndike and Lorge’s (1944) frequency count as the basis of their vocabulary size tests although they also apply the criterion that the words in their test must also be in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961). They suggest that the overwhelming majority of vocabulary known by English speakers falls within the first 25,000 words and that testing beyond this level of frequency may not usefully improve the estimate of size, which emerges from the test. There are some obvious reasons for wanting to base a test of size on frequency information. One reason is that it avoids many of the potential difficulties associated with dictionary counts. Using a dictionary may well mean that the estimate arrived at is dependent on the size of the dictionary used (Lorge & Chall, 1963) and may also be prone to over-estimation. A second reason is that large dictionaries, which can contain quantities of historic and highly specialist words, may not be suitable for a vocabulary size test intended for young learners. Biemiller and Slonim use Dale and O’Rourke’s (1981) Living Word Vocabulary list of some 44,000 word meanings for their research. This list is sequenced to reflect the grade level at which each of the meanings is known by 60-80% of children in their sample and appears very suitable for estimating vocabulary size among school learners. Of course, much of Dale and O’Rourke’s list must be highly frequent as language users cannot communicate without knowledge of this highly frequent vocabulary, but this raises the question whether a test based on a good frequency-based list might be more suitable for a

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wider range of learners, avoiding the idiosyncrasies that a list drawn from a single educational system might introduce. A third reason is that dictionaries are not lemmatised although it is considered that since word knowledge is based on root or base words then a count of lemmatised base words or word families is most appropriate (Vermeer, 2004). Dale and O’Rourke’s list, it should be noted, includes base words and derivations so that without editing it cannot provide an estimate of base word knowledge comparable with most of the more recent estimates of first and second language vocabulary size. Frequency lists, especially in English, are available in lemmatised form (e.g., Kilgariff, 2006) and scores on tests, based on lists of this kind, have been shown to correlate well with educational performance in the four skills (e.g., Staehr, 2008; Milton et al., 2010), and with educational attainment more generally such as degree class (Milton & Treffers-Daller, 2013). There are also reasons, however, for questioning whether most generally used frequency lists are suitable for testing young learners. Frequency lists tend to be heavily based on written language sources which is likely to be qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the oral language from which young learners will gain their language (Milton, 2009). The oral language, which young learners learn from, makes much greater use of the most frequently occurring lexis in English than written language (Adolphs & Schmitt, 2003). Consequently, it can be assumed that learners can become fluent in oral language with a smaller vocabulary size than is required for fluency in many written forms of the language. Child language too contains many items that are simply not relevant beyond the realm of childhood and therefore feature much less in written language and occur low down in frequency lists. Most English speaking children learn the names for the young of animals, for example a tadpole is a young frog, but until they have children of their own native speakers may have no reason for using or encountering the word tadpole thereafter. Nonetheless, it would seem preferable to base a test on a principled sample of vocabulary linked to a demonstrable model of acquisition, as with frequency, rather than an adventitiously arrived at collection of words.

The Study The broad aims of this paper are to examine English language vocabulary growth among child subjects learning from scratch immersed in a British Junior School, and to examine whether the frequency based methods, so widely used in L2 testing, are relevant and applicable to these

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learners. Within these broad aims are a number of more specific objectives: 1. To test the effect of frequency in the uptake of young monolingual, bilingual and immersion learners of EFL and provide, therefore, a justification of frequency-based testing in this population. 2. To track vocabulary growth in an unaided young learner in the first academic year of immersion using a frequency-based test. 3. To compare the vocabulary knowledge of an EFL learner after a single year of school immersion with monolingual and bilingual counterparts in the same class.

The Participants The principal subject of this investigation was a 7-year-old boy (Participant A) who moved to Britain from Iran at the end of September 2011. He started school classes in Year 4 in October 2011. He was a first language speaker of Persian who spoke no other language before moving to the UK and at the time of entering school had mastered only greetings formulae in English. His EFL knowledge was, therefore, assumed to be at or around zero at the start of school. The school provided 15 minutes per week of one-to-one teacher support to help him with his English development. Additionally, three further schoolboys were tested all of them in the same school Year as Participant A, and 8 years old at the start of the period of investigation: x A monolingual native speaker of English (Participant B). x A more advanced EFL learner than Participant A (Participant C). This participant was from Canada and he spoke French at home and began his immersion in English school in September 2010. x A bilingual Persian/English speaker born in the UK to Iranian parents (Participant D). This participant spoke Persian at home but all other activities outside the home from playgroups to nursery school to formal state school were carried out through the medium of English.

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The Tests To provide an estimate of vocabulary size, and to gain information on the frequency of the lexis learned, the participants were tested using three English versions of Meara and Milton’s (2003) X-Lex vocabulary size test. The X-Lex test draws a sample of words from the most frequent 5,000 lemmatised words in English and estimates a testee’s overall knowledge of this vocabulary. It is a Yes/No test that presents learners with 100 test words and learners have to indicate whether they know each word. The test also includes 20 false words which are designed to look and sound like words in the target language which allow the scores which emerge to be adjusted for guessing and overestimation of knowledge. The tests give an overall score of words known out of the most frequent 5,000 words. The test is simple in format and comparatively large numbers of items can be tested in a short space of time. Results on these tests are usually very reliable (David, 2008). An illustration of the format of this type of test is given in Figure 17-2. Please look at these words. Some of these words are real English words and some are invented but are made to look like real words. Please tick the words that you know or can use. Here is an example. ;dog Thank you for your help. before

cup

normal

impress

antique

kennard

Figure 17-2: Example of the X-Lex test (Source: English version from Milton, 2009, p. 254).

Qualitative assessment of A’s vocabulary knowledge and that of the other participants is provided by an analysis of the frequency profiles which are obtainable from the X-Lex test.

Procedure Participant A was tested each month between February and July. Testing was not attempted earlier in the learning process to avoid the difficulties and negative impact of subjecting the learner, at a very difficult time, to an intervention where he would not know the overwhelming

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majority of what he was being tested on. After four months in class, however, it was felt he was becoming sufficiently confident and communicative for the results of the test to become meaningful without being intimidating. His mother, who was also the assessor, tested him monthly at home. Firstly, the assessor read each word and asked the subject to give the meaning of that word. The assessor accepted answers such as synonyms, explanations in English or Persian and illustrations of correct use as correct answers. The participant was told that the number of correct answers was not important and it was just research to measure the words he did know. The participant was not tested on the false words in the X-Lex test since this was considered unnecessary. Participants B, C and D were tested using the same tests and procedure in July.

Results Vocabulary Knowledge and Frequency The mean scores from the four participants tested in July, on each of the five frequency bands in the X-Lex test are given in Table 17-1. Table 17-1: X-Lex vocabulary scores divided by frequency band among the 4 participants.

Participant A EFL learner (first year) B Monolingual English native speaker C EFL learner (second year) D Bilingual

1000 917 967

Frequency bands 2000 3000 4000 500 483 300 833 800 580

5000 165 617

950

583

700

385

300

983

867

800

550

365

The relationship between a word’s frequency and the likelihood of it being learned becomes clearer if this information is presented as a graph so the vocabulary profiles of the learners can be viewed and this is done in Figure 17-3.

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1000 800 A 600

B

400

C

200

D

0 1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

Figure 17-3: X-Lex vocabulary scores divided by frequency band among the four participants in graph format.

The Development of X-Lex Scores in Participant A The growth of scores in Participant A on the three X-Lex tests, and therefore an estimate of vocabulary size, over the period of testing is shown in Table 17-2. Table 17-2: X-Lex scores from the three test versions taken by Participant A. X-Lex

February

March

April

May

June

July

Version 1 Version 2 Version 3 Mean

950 850 900 900

1400 1400 1350 1383

1900 1600 1600 1700

2300 2200 2000 2166

2500 2450 2150 2366

2550 2450 2250 2416

It will be seen that the 3 different tests give consistently similar estimates suggesting the tests are working well and reliably. The scores also reveal a pattern of growth in vocabulary size over the testing period, however, growth is not straight-line and as learning progresses the scale of monthly growth diminishes and appears to be plateauing at around 2,500 lemmatised words. This is clearly visible in Figure 17-4 where the mean scores are charted as a histogram.

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The mean number of known words

314

5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0

Months

Figure 17-4: Mean X-Lex scores for Participant A between February and July.

X-Lex Scores in Other Bilingual and Native Speaking Children The total mean scores on the X-Lex test by the other participants in the study, taken in July, are recorded in Table 17-3. Table 17-3: X-Lex scores in immersion learners, a bilingual and a monolingual child. Participant

X-Lex Version 1 Version 2 Version 3 Mean

A EFL learner (first year) 2550 2450 2250 2416

B Monolingual English

C EFL learner (second year)

D Bilingual

3700 3650 4050 3800

2700 2950 3100 2916

3500 3500 3700 3566

Again, it will be seen that the 3 different tests give consistently similar estimates suggesting the tests are working well and are providing believable estimates of vocabulary size, at least within the 5,000 wordrange covered by the test.

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Discussion The Effect of Frequency in Learning The vocabulary profiles of all learners (Table 17-3 and Figure 17-4) in this study show a downward left to right trend. There is a strong frequency effect therefore, a tendency to learn the most frequent words before the less frequent. This is a trend, of course, and less frequent words are learned alongside the highly frequent words for the frequency lists. Three versions of the X-Lex frequency-based tests were used and with all four participants and the tests produced consistently similar scores, which suggests that this test, within its own parameters, is working consistently and reliably. The presence of the frequency profile and the reliability of the tests replicates the results among adolescents and adults reported in David (2008) and Milton (2009). A general conclusion from these observations is that they support the argument for the validity of frequency-based tests as a generally applicable measure of vocabulary knowledge in children. It would appear from Participant A, the immersion learner of English, that even a 5,000-word test can capture most of his English word knowledge in his first year of learning. A 5,000-word test appears less suitable for the monolingual and other participants. It would appear that, to accurately characterise these learners’ vocabulary sizes a test that goes beyond the most frequent 5,000 words would be needed.

English Vocabulary Growth in an Unaided Young Learner The results shown in Table 17-3 and Figure 17-4 suggest that Participant A learned some 2,500 lemmatised words during the course of the academic year, that is in nine or ten months. This figure appears comparable to the estimates of about 3,000 words per year attributed to children learning their native language that abound in the literature (e.g., Gleason, 2005). By any standard this appears to be good progress and suggests considerable learning, more than is usually possible in the foreign language classroom where figures of about 500 words appear (Cameron, 2001). The vocabulary uptake of Participant A in this study is also comparable to adult uptake in foreign language immersion settings (Milton & Meara, 1995). For comparison with the learners in the Anglin (1993) and the Biemiller and Slonim (2001) studies, Participant A demonstrates an uptake rate of about 8 words per day in the initial stages of learning, much faster than observed in these studies. The figure of 2,500 may even be a slight underestimate since it is likely that some knowledge of words

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exists beyond the 5,000 words of the test. The angle of the profile suggests, however, that this knowledge may be slight. The X-Lex tool has, as with adult EFL learners, proved an efficient way of capturing and quantifying this learner’s uptake of vocabulary and suggests that immersion learners really can make very fast progress in learning the new language of their environment through attendance in school. The learning that occurs is not uniform and tails off as it reaches the 2,500-word mark so uptake at the end of this period is not as fast as it was at the beginning. The 300 words or so learned each month between February and April is reduced to 50 words between June and July (Table 17-3 and Figure 17-4). There may be two reasons for this to occur. One is that at about 2,500 words the learner is approaching the levels of knowledge needed for oral communication (Adophs & Schmitt, 2003) and can probably handle the language needs of the classroom. The urgent pressure to learn more, simply to understand what is going on around him, will not be so great once this level of knowledge is attained. Even among adult EFL learners knowing 2,500 out of the most frequent words in English suggests a learner would be at or approaching an intermediate level (Milton & Alexiou, 2009; Milton, 2010) and could begin to function independently in the new language. The second reason why the speed of vocabulary acquisition may tail off is that the learners in this study are only 8 and 9 years old and will not, presumably, access the volumes of language material in writing necessary to encounter greater numbers of infrequent words. The opportunity to encounter words beyond the 3,000word range is more restricted in speech than in writing (e.g., Adolphs & Schmitt, 2003) and so it is easier to encounter and learn these frequent words than the infrequent ones. The significance of this plateau effect in vocabulary learning, where the speed of learning is tailing off, is unclear without understanding the vocabulary knowledge of other learners and of the monolingual native speakers this learner will study alongside in school.

Comparison with Monolingual and Bilingual Counterparts The monolingual native speaker of English (Participant B) had a score of 3,800 on this test, some 50% higher than Participant A. This suggests that although progress was good and Participant A must have been functioning, at least in speech, he was some way short of native speaker levels. The difference was very likely even greater since the X-Lex test used in this study tests only the first 5,000 words, and that there is very likely a ceiling effect in Participant B’s score as suggested by the angle of the profile (Figure 17-3). Even allowing for a ceiling effect, Participant

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B’s progress suggests an adult vocabulary size of 10,000 to 15,000 lemmatised words, as suggested in D’Anna et al. (1991), rather than the 60,000 suggested elsewhere in the literature. Our immersion learner, Participant A, also had a smaller vocabulary in English than the more extended learner and the bilingual speaker in this study. Participant C, who had been in English immersion at school one year longer than Participant A, had an estimated vocabulary size of 2,900, that is 500 words more than A. It seems quite believable that even with the slowing rate of lexical growth shown by A, this kind of progress might materialise with a further year in a British school. Even after two years of immersion in an English speaking school, however, there is still a clear difference in the vocabulary knowledge between the native speakers and the EFL learners of the order of about 25%. The difference may be even greater since the angle of these two learners’ profiles suggests Participant C was developing more knowledge of words in the less frequent ranges beyond 5,000 words. The observations made, for example, by Paradis (2007) and Hakuta et al. (2000) that it may take years to attain native like levels of knowledge appear borne out. Participant D, who is likely to be a more balanced bilingual having been brought up in UK, scored nearly 3,600, still 10% less than the monolingual. This is in keeping with other research suggesting that bilinguals may develop their two lexicons slightly more slowly than monolinguals, and may also reflect the absence of a need for all vocabulary to exist in both languages. However, the difference is not uniform across the frequency ranges. Monolingual and bilingual knowledge of vocabulary appears identical in the first 3,000 to 4,000-word frequency ranges and the bulk of the difference is located in the less frequent 5,000-word range. It may be tentatively suggested therefore, that these bilingual and second language EFL learners have the lexical resources to perform comparably with monolingual natives in oral performance. However, the comparative deficiency in the vocabulary levels at and beyond the 5,000 words level has the potential to impact on writing and academic performance where these words become more frequent and more important to successful communication. It is not clear, from this study or the existing literature, at what point this difference in knowledge becomes large enough to impact on academic performance. What emerges from this comparison is that while learners who gain their language through immersion in school make terrific progress and rapidly reach the level of knowledge to be able to function, they are still, even after several years, short of monolingual native speaker levels of vocabulary knowledge and this may have the potential to impact on

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subsequent scholastic attainment, as observed in the US literature (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997).

Conclusion The results of this study suggest that all learners, monolingual, bilingual and second language, acquire vocabulary in a sequence that is strongly related to frequency of word occurrence. Within the limitations imposed by the size of the tests, therefore, frequency-based tests appear able to capture and characterise a learner’s size of vocabulary knowledge and provide an objective, quantifiable measure of the lexical resources available to learners as they develop through childhood into adulthood. Tests of this kind are, arguably, applicable to all learners of English and are not subject to the difficulties imposed by methodologies based on the lexis of a particular educational system. The test used in this study appears to have characterised the scale of vocabulary acquisition in an immersion learner well and results confirm the impression that immersion learners can make very fast progress at the outset of learning with very little formal support. To acquire some 2,500 lemmatised words in a year is really impressive progress. Nonetheless, at the end of a year of immersion the learner in this study was still far from native-like and had a knowledge of the most frequent 5,000 words in English, some 30% smaller than that of a monolingual native-speaker. Even after two years of immersion, knowledge may still be 25% less with the difference in knowledge concentrated in the infrequent ranges. The immersion learners’ knowledge may be sufficient for oral and general interaction but the comparatively small knowledge in the less frequent range suggests other skills associated with academic performance may be compromised. Obviously, this conclusion is based on a handful of case studies and this is an area that requires replication and more detailed study. With the growing number of learners in British schools in the position of acquiring the language of the medium of instruction while actually undergoing that instruction, informing teachers, parents and learners alike as to their knowledge and progress is important. Being able to quickly and objectively quantify the scale of such knowledge must provide a useful tool to teachers who work with these children. For monolingual and bilingual learners it would appear that a 5,000word test will significantly under characterise the volume of word knowledge that these learners have once they progress beyond the reception levels aged about 4 or 5. A more extensive frequency-based measure working on bands that go beyond 5,000 would seem likely to

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yield useful results. Even with such measures, however, the scale of learning appears, compared to some estimates, relatively modest at the 2 to 3 words per day that Anglin (1993) and Biemiller and Slonim (2001) found among US learners. This figure is significant since it suggests that the differences between native and non-native users of English, while important in their impact on performance, are not so large that formal intervention to redress the imbalance cannot be considered. Interventions of this kind have been attempted in North America and include, for example, Dialogic Reading (Whitehurst Falco, Lonigan, Fischel, DeBaryshe, Valdez-Menchaca, & Caulfield 1988), Text Talk (Beck & McKeown, 2001), Direct and Systematic Instruction (Biemiller, 2003), and Anchored Instruction (Juel & Deffes, 2004). Research to investigate this possibility would appear a priority given the number of learners who potentially have need of it.

References Adolphs, S., & Schmitt, N. (2003). Lexical coverage of spoken discourse. Applied Linguistics, 24(4), 425-438. Aitchison, J. (2003). Words in the mind: An introduction to the mental lexicon (3rd ed.). Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell. Anglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58(10), Serial No. 238. Beck, I., & McKeown, M. (1991). Social studies texts are hard to understand: Mediating some of the difficulties. Language Arts, 68(6), 482-490. Biemiller, A. (2003). Vocabulary: Needed if more children are to read well. Reading Psychology, 24(3-4), 323-335. Biemiller, A., & Slonim N. (2001). Estimating root word vocabulary in normative and advantaged populations: Evidence for a common sequence of vocabulary acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(3), 498-520. Bialystok, E., Luk, G., Peets, K., & Yang, S. (2010). Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13(4), 525–531. Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching Language to Young Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cunningham, A., & Stanovich, K. (1997). Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later. Developmental Psychology, 33(6), 934-945.

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D'Anna, C. A., Zechmeister, E. B., & Hall, J. W. (1991). Toward a meaningful definition of vocabulary size. Journal of Reading Behavior, 23(1), 109-122. David, A. (2008). Vocabulary breadth in French L2 learners. Language Learning Journal, 36(2), 167-180. Duke, N., & Carlisle, J. (2011). The development of comprehension. In: M. L. Kamil, P. D. Pearson, P. A. Afflerbach, & E. B. Moje (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research 4 (pp. 199-228). New York: Routledge. Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, D. M. (1997). Peabody picture vocabulary test (3rd ed.). Circle Pines: American Guidance Services. Edwards, R., & Collins, L. (2013). Modelling L2 vocabulary acquisition. In: S. Jarvis & M. Daller (Eds.), Vocabulary knowledge: Human ratings and automated measures (pp. 157-184). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Geay, C., McNally, S., & Telhaj, S. (2012). Non-native speakers of English in the classroom: What are the effects on pupil performance? IZA Discussion Paper No. 6451. London: Centre for the Economics of Education. Gleason, J. B. (2005). The development of language. Boston: Pearson. Goulden, R., Nation, P., & Read, J. (1990). How large can a receptive vocabulary be? Applied Linguistics, 11(4), 341-363. Graves, M. F. (2006). The vocabulary book. New York: Teachers College Press. Hakuta, K., Goto-Butler, Y., & Witt, D. (2000). How long does it take English learners to attain proficiency? Policy report, the university of California linguistic Minority Research Institute. Retrieved from: https://www.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/research/publications.html Hazenberg, S., & Hulstijn, J. H. (1996). Defining a minimal receptive second-language vocabulary for non-native university students: An empirical investigation. Applied Linguistics, 17(2), 145-163. Kilgariff, A. (2006). BNC database and word frequency lists. Retrieved from: http://www.kilgariff.co.uk/bnc-readme.html#lemmatised. Kohnert, K., & Windsor, J. (2004). The search for common ground: Part 1. Lexical performance by linguistically diverse learners. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 47(4), 877-890. Laufer, B. (1988). What percentage of text-lexis is essential for comprehension? In: C. Laurén & M. Nordemann (Eds.), Special Language: From humans to thinking machines (pp. 316-323). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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Nagy, W E., & Herman, P. (1984). Limitations of vocabulary instruction. (Tech. Rep. No. 326). Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Center for the Study of Reading. Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oller, D. K., & Eilers, R. E. (Eds.) (2002). Language and literacy in bilingual children. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Paradis, J. (2007). Second language acquisition in childhood. In E. Hoff & M. Shatz (Eds.), Handbook of language development (pp. 387-406). Oxford: Blackwell. Pearson, B., & Fernández, S. (1994). Patterns of interaction in the lexical growth of two languages of bilingual infants and toddlers. Language Learning, 44(4), 617-653. Schmitt, N. (2007). Current perspectives on vocabulary teaching and learning. In J. Cummins & C. Davison (Eds.), International handbook of English language teaching: Part II (pp.827-841). New York: Springer. Seashore, R. H., & Eckerson, L. D. (1940). The measurement of individual differences in general English vocabulary. Journal of Educational Psychology, 31(1), 14-38. Shaywitz, B. A., Holford, T. R., Holahan, J. M., Fletcher, J. M., Stuebing, K. K., Francis, D. J., & Shaywitz, S. A. (1995). A Matthew effect for IQ but not for reading: Results from a longitudinal study. Reading Research Quarterly, 30(4), 894-906. Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(4), 360-407. Stæhr, L. S. (2008) Vocabulary size and the skills of listening, reading and writing. Language Learning Journal, 36(2), 139-152. Thorndike, E. L., & Lorge, I. (1944). The teacher’s word book of 30,000 words. New York: Teacher’s College, Columbia University. Treffers-Daller, J. (2011). Operationalizing and measuring language dominance. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15(2), 147-163. Vermeer, A. (2004). The relation between lexical richness and vocabulary size in Dutch L1 and L2 children. In P. Bogaards & Laufer B. (Eds.), Vocabulary in a second language (pp. 173-189). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. White, T. G., Graves, M. F., & Slater, W. H. (1990). Growth of vocabulary in diverse elementary schools: Decoding and word meaning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(2), 281-290.

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Whitehurst, G. J., Falco, F., Lonigan, C. J., Fischel, J. E., DeBaryshe, B., Valdez-Menchaca, M. C., & Caulfield, M. (1988). Accelerating language development through picture-book reading. Developmental Psychology, 24(4), 552-558.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE CHALLENGES IN ACHIEVING GLOBALIZATION THROUGH ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING IN JAPAN: A FOCUS ON ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS RIE ADACHI

Abstract The Japanese government is currently restructuring the way English is taught at schools and plans to introduce English classes to elementary education hoping to help Japanese society better adapt to a globalized environment. This chapter reviews these changes, examines the background of the reforms and looks at the issues involved in the process of globalization in Japan. The particular focus of this study was on English education in elementary schools. Pupils’ motivational attitudes toward learning English as well as their communicative attitudes toward other people were analysed. With regard to pupils’ communicative attitudes, the findings indicate that the introduction of foreign language activities in Japanese elementary schools had both positive and negative aspects. On the plus side, pupils tended to have a more positive attitude toward other people and the findings suggest that pupils who understood the need to learn English were more likely to exhibit a positive attitude toward English activities. On the negative side, pupils who did not see the importance of learning foreign languages were likely to have less positive communicative attitudes. Although the Japanese government is now facing up to the challenges of a globalized environment, it does not seem to have taken into account what language and intercultural skills will be fundamentally important for Japanese students in the future. This chapter emphasizes the fact that Japanese people are faced with the dilemma of how to develop a global perspective and how to engage with the diversity of contemporary Japan.

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Introduction Japanese students today need to acquire intercultural communication skills in order to live in a globalized world. As globalization progresses, competition to hire excellent human resources is rising in the world and Japanese universities face an urgent need to cultivate students capable of working internationally. In an effort to increase Japanese students’ English language proficiency and communication skills, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) recently proposed higher English learning objectives for every level of the educational system and suggested formally introducing English as a subject in elementary schools (MEXT, 2013a). It had been argued that English proficiency among Japanese learners is lower than that of learners from other countries (MEXT, 2012). Tsuneyoshi (2005, p. 67) states “the Japanese wonder how it is possible for students to learn English for six to ten years, and yet fail to speak simple English.” Japanese students study English as a foreign language (EFL) and they rarely have the opportunity to practice English communication in their daily lives because there are few TV programs and daily newspapers in English, and only a small number of English native speakers live in Japan. There are a number of challenges which Japanese students face in order to improve their English communication skills and become citizens of a globalized society. To begin with, if students are unable to understand the need for learning English, it is difficult for them to motivate themselves to learn it as learning a language that is not used in everyday life takes both time and effort. Moreover, there is a need for the Japanese government to invest more money in the education system. There are not enough English teachers in elementary schools and most of them have no skills in spoken English communication. If English education is to be introduced in elementary schools, the government needs to offer training courses for in-service teachers and set up English education courses for teachers of young learners in universities. Thirdly, the ability to use English is not enough to live in a globalized society, rather, a multicultural perspective is required for future generations. Contrary to the advancement of globalization, the Japanese Ministry of Justice has had a strict policy towards immigrants and refugees. However, a Japanese society that is becoming more diverse and multicultural is necessary in order for Japanese students to develop a global mindset. To help students become global citizens, what do Japanese government officials need to do? Is it enough to just promote English education? This

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chapter focuses on English education in Japanese elementary schools and looks at the educational problems and needs that are likely to arise in the context of a globalized world.

English Education Reform in Japan Issues With Globalization As Japan faces globalization, MEXT (2013a) plans to improve English education and their proposals include teaching English not in Japanese but by using English in the classroom as much as possible, preparing new teaching materials, and introducing English as a specific subject in elementary schools. The plans are designed to improve the overall English proficiency of Japanese high school graduates in an effort to develop and internationalize Japanese higher educational institutions. The internationalization of universities has become an urgent priority due to the instantaneous nature of communication and rapid advances in transportation, which result in an increased need for intercultural and international understanding and knowledge (Bartell, 2003). Altbach and Knight (2007, p. 290) define globalization as “the economic, political, and societal forces pushing 21st century higher education toward greater international involvement.” Doiz, Lasagabaster, and Sierra (2013) researching a university in Spain found that the impact of globalization and internationalization in higher education is even greater than before, and it is reflected in the spread of English-medium instruction and the increase in student mobility and exchange programs. With globalization expanding, Japan is facing the challenge of reforming its educational policy. MEXT has implemented a number of projects to help internationalize Japanese education, including proposals to increase the number of international students to 300,000 by 2020. According to MEXT (2013c, p.1), one aim of this is to “gain from the advancements of other countries which will ultimately lead to Japan’s further development.” However, because of insufficient residential accommodation, the number of international students had only reached 135,519 in 2013 (MEXT, 2014a). Furthermore, according to Burgess, Gibson, Klaphake, and Selzer1 (2010), Japan, while acknowledging the necessity of embracing global trends, currents and standards, it also wants to protect and strengthen Japanese national identity in the face of foreign pressure. Currently in Japan, kokusaika (internationalization in Japanese) is less about transcending cultural barriers and more about protecting them,

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while grurobaruka (globalization in Japanese) is an external process over which Japan has little or no influence or control (Burgess et al., 2010). Hashimoto (2013) argues that a focus on the differences between Japan and foreign countries, as well as between Japanese and foreigners is still clearly evident in Japanese society in general. With regard to bilingualism in Japan, Hashimoto (2013) points out that it is an attribute that belongs exclusively to foreigners or ‘Others’ and that the English-only initiatives in both secondary and tertiary education have highlighted the separation of the national identity and English in the education system. She describes the dichotomy between Japanese people and others as follows: “Japan’s concept of internationalization is about promoting Japan to the international community, not about becoming part of it, and this concept is based on a view of the world as the Japanese/Other.” (Hashimoto, 2013, pp. 29௅30)

It would seem that the Japanese society does not actually want to change; rather, the Japanese would prefer to keep their identity intact and to resist the era of globalization. However, with the number of foreign residents and foreign students increasing in recent years (see Figure 18-1), Japanese people need to consider how best to develop a positive attitude toward living together with other people and in doing so how to preserve their national identity. Phan (2013) stresses the importance of examining the issues surrounding the new English language policy, the internationalization of higher education, national cultural identity, and the over-promotion of English which undermines the study of other foreign languages. He suggests that national cultural identity often has to contend with the western hegemony and the widespread perception that “the West is better” (Phan, 2013, p. 164). He also argues that while Japan has successfully maintained the value of its own cultural identity through its language education policies, English has fundamentally influenced Japan in much deeper and complex ways. Similarly, Kobayashi (2013) warns that all language teaching professionals need to be more aware than ever that language education policies are by no means immune from the power of language ideologies.

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250000

200000

150000

100000

50000

0

Foreign residents Foreign students 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Figure 18-1: Growth in foreign residents and foreign students in Japan. Based on the data from the Ministry of Justice (2014) and Japan Student Services Organization (2014).

Furthermore, the Japanese government has put an overwhelming focus on English language education. While Shimomura (2014), the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, stresses the importance of English language education as a response to globalization, he does not explain how to promote a good relationship with most of the foreigners and foreign students who live in or visit Japan, who come from the “expanding circle” countries (Kachru, 1992, p. 356), mainly from Asia. Kobayashi (2013) argues that English imperialism constrains plurilingualism and deprives Japanese pupils of opportunities to learn languages other than English. In order to help students develop respectful attitudes toward others, researchers and teachers should acknowledge the importance of diversity and multilingualism in the educational system. If the ‘spirit of harmony’ is central to Japanese society, we should also nurture more positive and respectful attitudes toward the other non-English people, especially Asian people. To become a truly globalized person, there are other important qualities to nurture, in addition to English language proficiency. These include developing an interest in other cultures, developing a worldview that accepts diversity and multilingualism as natural phenomena, and acquiring intercultural competence. Living in the emerging global environment, the younger generation will need an understanding of other cultures as well as international literacy to build close, multilateral relationships with other people. The intercultural competence of students can be a measure of the

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effectiveness of the internationalization efforts in higher education (Deardorff, 2006). In the future, Japanese people will have more intercultural contact, especially with people from other Asian countries. If students focus only on learning English language skills, they could not get a chance to learn how to communicate well with the other non-native English speakers. Since the Japanese government plans to proceed in the direction of internationalization and to develop a higher education policy in response to globalization, they must engage with the issues described above. The reform of English language education is not enough for Japanese students to develop and internationalize their attitudes to live in the context of a globalized society. Students will need not only English communication ability, but also openness toward foreigners. They will need to nurture a broader identity and a balanced outlook, and cultivate a global mindset as well as intercultural competence. Developing an interest in other people and other cultures, broadening one’s own perspective, and fostering intercultural relationships will become increasingly necessary in the globalized Japanese society.

English Teaching in Japanese Elementary Schools In response to globalization, the Japanese government plans to drastically increase the number of English instruction in schools by 2020 (MEXT, 2013a). The idea is that third and fourth grade students will have classes in English language activities once or twice a week, while fifth and sixth grade students will have English language classes as a subject three times a week. In Japan, students used to start learning English after entering junior high school. However, in 2008, MEXT revised its curriculum guidelines and in 2011 Japanese elementary schools introduced the ‘foreign language activities’ program. According to MEXT (2009), the main objective of the introduction of the foreign language activities program was: “to form the foundation of pupils’ communication abilities through foreign languages while developing the understanding of languages and cultures through various experiences, fostering a positive attitude toward communication.” (p. 1)

As most Japanese elementary school teachers have neither experience in teaching English, nor the confidence to teach English, they encountered

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grave difficulties in implementing the program (Adachi, Sakai, & Aizawa, 2014). Home-room teachers (HRTs) are too busy to prepare additional classes in English: they have to teach all subjects and they are generally “responsible for everything from classes and extra-curricular activities to cleaning and even the students’ lives at home” (Fennelly & Luxton, 2011, p. 21). Furthermore, most HRTs lack the qualifications to teach English. According to MEXT (2014b), in 2013 only 16,506 elementary school teachers (i.e., 4.7% of all teachers) were qualified to teach English. Therefore, foreign assistant language teachers (ALTs) are usually dispatched from private contracting companies to schools or they are hired by local governments, as well as Japanese teachers of English (JTEs), most of whom are local people hired by the school, in order to support the implementation of the foreign language activities program at schools. Of all foreign language activities classes in 2013, 57.9% were conducted by ALTs, 14.9% were taught by JTEs, and only 2.3% were taught by English language teachers from junior and high schools (MEXT, 2014b). ALTs and JTEs usually adopt a team-teaching style with HRTs. As most HRTs do not have the confidence to teach English (Fennelly & Luxton, 2011), they feel challenged and under pressure when teaching even one English class a week. Unfortunately, the educational reforms plan does not make provisions for offering sufficient English teacher training programs for elementary school teachers (MEXT, 2013b). Instead, the plan promotes the leaders of English within the teacher training programs, who would offer English training to one key teacher at each school who would then be expected to train the other teachers at the school. In contrast, in neighboring Korea, which is also one of the ‘expanding circle’ countries, official English education started much earlier than in Japan, and English became a required subject in 1997. Similar to Japan, English is taught primarily by regular HRTs and most of them were not originally trained to teach English (Butler, 2004). Kim (2011) reports that a typical elementary school in Korea has two or three English teachers. Although there is no required qualification to become an English teacher in elementary schools, teachers usually take a national six-month in-service teacher training program as well as a national ability test for teachers, the Teaching English in English Test (TEE TEST). According to Kwon (2009), while English education in Korea has improved generally, problems still remain, including incompetent teachers, especially in their speaking ability, students losing interest and confidence, and poor English skills among some students. As both Fennelly and Luxton (2011) and Adachi et al. (2014) have

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revealed, many elementary school teachers are too busy to prepare for English classes, they feel overworked and think teaching English is too much of a burden. Without sufficient teacher training and time to prepare, teachers cannot improve their confidence in English and will continue to feel both embarrassed and exhausted. Such teacher attitudes toward the foreign language activities program and the introduction of more English classes in elementary schools are bound to have a negative effect on the outcomes of educational reform. As argued in the previous section, in order for Japanese students to gain awareness of the globalized society and to develop a global mindset, they will need to develop fundamental communication abilities, which include open-mindedness toward other people and a positive attitude to building good relationships with people from different cultures. Therefore, this study has focused on investigating the extent to which the introduction of English language lessons in elementary schools has increased Japanese pupils’ interpersonal communication skills and their positive attitude towards other people.

The Study Participants The study was conducted with fifth and sixth grade pupils. The data were collected at three schools in the Chubu area (K school, I school, and N school) and one school in the Kansai area (O school). K school and I school were surveyed both in the beginning and at the end of the school year. O school was also investigated at the start of the school year, however, it withdrew from the study at the end of the school year. N school was added to the project in the end of the school year. All four schools were in relatively newly-developed residential areas and were not specially-designated schools for English education. Most of the HRTs at these schools were not English teachers and tended to depend on foreign ALTs. During the year covered by the study, HRTs in all schools began conducting some English activity classes for fifth and sixth grade pupils in preparation for the formal introduction of the foreign language activities program. The schools were similar in terms of the educational environment. All data were collected during classes with the cooperation of the HRTs. The total number of students who participated in the study were 427 (219 boys, 206 girls and 2 unanswered) and 591 (310 boys, 280 girls and 1 unanswered), at the beginning and the end of the school year

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respectively. Roughly, half of the students were in Grade 5 and half in Grade 6. Table 18-1 indicates the number of classes at each school before and during the study and as it is shown, the number of classes increased especially in the 5th and 6th grade. Table 18-1: The number of English classes in Grades 5 and 6. Before the Study

Grade 5

Grade 6

K school

15

15

I school

12

12

O school

33

33

N school

22-35

22-35

Grade 5

Grade 6

K school

35

35

I school

35

35

N school

30-35

30-35

During the Study

The Purpose of the Study Since the objective of foreign language activities was to “form the foundation of pupils’ communication abilities,” “develop their understanding of languages and cultures,” and “foster a positive attitude toward communication” (MEXT, 2009, p. 1), this study attempted to find out to what extent Japanese pupils developed positive attitudes or openness toward other people and acquired intercultural communicative competence by attending a higher amount of English language lessons. To find out the effect of the foreign language activities, the study examined the difference in pupils’ communicative attitudes at the start and at the end of the school year. The study also attempted to identify the relationship between pupils’ communicative attitudes and other variables related to learning English. The communicative attitudes in this study, do not refer to communication abilities, but to “communicative attitudes with outsiders” (Adachi, 2010, pp. 210-211). A construct called ‘Willingness to Communicate’ (WTC) was first developed for researching first language

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(L1) communicative competence (McCroskey, 1992). MacIntyre, Clément, Dörnyei, and Noels (1998) adapted WTC for second language (L2) studies and conceptualized as a heuristic, pyramid-shaped model. They showed that the WTC construct in L2 has different influential components from the one in L1. Since then WTC has been used in L2 contexts (e.g., Yashima, 2002). Based on previous studies and considering the idiosyncrasies of the Japanese context and the Japanese learners’ background, Adachi (2010) proposed the addition of a new factor, “communicative attitudes with outsiders,” also called “WTC with outsiders” (pp. 210௅211). It is defined as pupils’ attitudes toward different people or people from different cultures, it indicates effective and positive interactions with others, and it includes not only verbal but also non-verbal behaviors (Adachi, 2012b). The research questions for this study were: 1. What is the difference in pupils’ ‘communicative attitudes with outsiders’ at the start and at the end of the school year? 2. Is there a relationship between pupils’ ‘communicative attitudes with outsiders’ and their motivational attitudes towards English? 3. Could the efficacy of English language classes be evaluated through pupils’ attitudes? 4. Did pupils’ ‘communicative attitudes with outsiders’ and other attitudinal variables, increase as the number of English classes increased?

Materials The study utilized a questionnaire. Questionnaire items fell into six categories and they covered motivational attitudes, orientation, communicative attitudes and other variables about learning English. These items were used in previous studies (see Adachi, 2009a, 2009b, 2010, 2011, 2012a, 2012b). Each item was rated on a six-point Likert scale, ranging from strongly agree (6) to strongly disagree (1). The questionnaire originally included 34 items. At first, in order to verify the distribution of each item, all items were subjected to descriptive analysis and the data were analyzed separately for the beginning and the end of the school year. Although some items exhibited floor or ceiling

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effects, most of them did not show a very skewed distribution, but two items that exhibited a clear floor effect were excluded. The Cronbach’s Alpha internal consistency reliability coefficient for three items which were presupposed to be under the subscale of ‘Attitudes related to Japanese identity’ was not acceptable, and none of the three items had any correlations with ‘communicative attitudes with outsiders’. Subsequently, these were also omitted. As a result, 28 items were analyzed in this study and are outlined below. The Cronbach Alpha internal consistency reliability coefficients were calculated. They are shown in Table 18-2. Some of the Cronbach Alpha values were not high, since the author attempted to operate some subscales as presupposed concepts. However, although improvement of some of the question items may be necessary in future study, they were almost acceptable. Table 18-2: Cronbach alpha for each attitudinal dimension at the beginning and at the end of the school year. Category

Number of items

Beginning

End

Motivation

4

.84

.82

Orientation

9

.92

.93

People around a learner

3

.89

.86

Vitality of English

3

.82

.86

Attitudes toward learning

5

.76

.72

Communicative attitudes

4

.74

.77

The final list of questionnaire items fell into the following six categories (attitudinal dimensions): 1. Motivation (four items) based primarily on the concepts of Gardner (1985): This included effort, desire, and favorable attitudes; ‘FA Enjoyment’ refers to enjoyment of lessons in foreign language activities; ‘E Audio-visual’ refers to learning English at home using audio-visual activities; ‘FA Learning more’ refers to a favorable attitude toward the increase in the number of classes; ‘E Vocabulary’ refers to making an effort in order to build up vocabulary; and ‘D

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Improvement’ refers to a desire to improve in English. 2. Orientation (nine items) included instrumental orientation, integrative orientation, and intercultural orientation. a. Instrumental orientation (three items): ‘Information from the Internet’ referred to getting information from the Internet; ‘Work abroad’ referred to traveling or working abroad; and ‘For future career’ referred to entering a good college or a good company in the future. b. Integrative orientation (three items): ‘Learn US and UK’ referred to learning about and understanding the culture and people of the US and the UK; ‘Ex with US and UK’ referred to exchanges with people in the US and the UK; and ‘Native speaker’ referred to speaking English like native speakers. c. Intercultural orientation (three items): ‘Learn L2 culture’ referred to learning and understanding the culture and people of India, the Philippines and Hong Kong; ‘Ex with L2 people’ referred to exchanges with people from India, the Philippines and Hong Kong; and ‘Ex with FL people’ referred to exchanges with people from China, Russia and Brazil. 3. People around the learner (three items): This refers to descriptions of how hard pupils try to study English because they get encouragement from their ‘peers’, ‘parents’ and ‘teachers’. 4. Vitality of English (three items). These items referred to the degree to which pupils recognize English as an important and powerful language in their future social life (importance of English learning). English will become increasingly important because people will have more chances to ‘go and stay overseas’, or will need to ‘get information’, or need to ‘avoid friction’ with foreign people. 5. Attitudes toward learning (five items). These items referred to descriptions of positive attitudes, mainly concerning language learning. To better understand English (to have confidence), to believe in the value of effort, to be able to understand an ALT’s spoken English, to have a positive attitude toward learning in general, and to have a positive attitude toward learning multiple languages. 6. Communicative attitudes with outsiders (four items): ‘Make a compromise’ referred to the idea that ‘I try to make a compromise when we have a conflict in the group in class’; ‘Non-verbal

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communication’ referred to the idea that ‘I can give directions using non-verbal communication to a foreigner who got lost’; ‘Acceptance of unfamiliarity’ referred to the attitude of being able to talk with an unknown foreigner without fear; and ‘Friendly attitude’ referred to the idea that ‘I try to make friends with foreign transfer students when they join my class’.

Results First, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed on four communicative attitude items using data from schools K and I school, as only these two schools were surveyed at both the beginning and the end of the school year. There was no significant effect for either the school by time interaction or a significant main effect for school. However, a significant main effect for time was found only in the ‘acceptance of unfamiliarity’ item (F = 7.47, p