First and Second Language Use in Asian EFL 9781783095599

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First and Second Language Use in Asian EFL

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Series Editor: Professor Viv Edwards, University of Reading, Reading, UK Two decades of research and development in language and literacy education have yielded a broad, multidisciplinary focus. Yet education systems face constant economic and technological change, with attendant issues of identity and power, community and culture. This series will feature critical and interpretive, disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives on teaching and learning, language and literacy in new times. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION: 49

First and Second Language Use in Asian EFL

Ross Forman

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto

To Carlson Loke and Peter de Ruyter, with heartfelt thanks

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Forman, Ross, author. Title: First and Second Language Use in Asian EFL/Ross Forman. Description: Bristol; Buffalo: Multilingual Matters, [2016] | Series: New Perspectives on Language and Education: 49 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015049065| ISBN 9781783095582 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781783095605 (epub) | ISBN 9781783095612 (kindle) Subjects: LCSH: English language—Study and teaching—Asia. | Language policy—Asia. | Task analysis in education—Asia. | Language and languages—Study and teaching—Asia. | Second language acquisition—Asia. | English language—Asia. | Asia—Languages. Classification: LCC PE1068.A7 F67 2016 | DDC 428.0071/05—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049065 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-558-2 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2016 Ross Forman. Front cover image: © 2015 Simon Barton, [email protected] All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Nova Techset Private Limited, Bengaluru and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Books Group.

Contents Acknowledgements Preface

vii xi

Part 1: Overview 1 The Author’s Story

3

2 Language, Learning and Teaching

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3 A Case Study in Thailand

30

Part 2: Pedagogic 4 Bilingual Teacher Talk

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5 Intercultural and Intertextual Dimensions

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6 Ten Principles of L1 Use

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Part 3: Personal 7 Identity and Alterity

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8 Language Play

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9 Teachers’ Views of L1 and L2 Performance

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Part 4: Professional 10 Global EFL Textbooks

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11 EFL and ESL Domains

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12 Conclusion: Productivity at the Boundaries

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Appendix A Appendix B References Index

190 192 194 211

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Acknowledgements I wish to thank the teachers and students who generously participated in this study, and the many others from whom I have learnt over the years. Colleagues in Sydney have been fundamental to how I think about pedagogy, and have supported me in many diverse ways: I am grateful to Alastair Pennycook, Chitcharoen Satewerawat, Constance Ellwood, Erik Johansen, Jacquie Widin, Jenny Hammond, Keiko Yasukawa, Ken Cruickshank, Roslyn Appleby and Suphinya Panyasi. Some ideas in this book have appeared in earlier forms, and I would like to thank publishers for permission to draw upon papers as follows: Cambridge Scholars Forman, R. (2010) Ten principles of bilingual pedagogy. In A. Mahboob (ed.) The NNEST Lens: Non Native Speakers in TESOL (pp. 54–86). NewcastleUpon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Elsevier Forman, R. (2008) Using notions of scaffolding and intertextuality to understand the bilingual teaching of English as a Foreign Language. Linguistics and Education 19 (4), 319–332. Oxford University Press Forman, R. (2011) Humorous language play in a Thai EFL classroom. Applied Linguistics 32 (5), 541–565. Sage Forman, R. (2012) Six functions of bilingual EFL teacher talk: Animating, translating, explaining, creating, prompting and dialoguing. RELC Journal 43 (2), 239–253. Taylor and Francis Forman, R. (2014) How local teachers respond to the culture and language of a global English as a foreign language textbook. Language, Culture and Curriculum 27 (1), 72–88. Forman, R. (2014) Speaking L2 in EFL classes: Performance, identity and alterity. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 8 (2), 99–115. TESL EJournal Forman R. (2015) When EFL teachers perform L2 and L1 in the classroom, what happens to their sense of self? TESL-EJ 19 (2), 1–20. vii

Two ecologies Productivity increases at the boundary between two ecologies (land/water; forest/grassland; estuary/ocean; crop/orchard) because the resources from both systems can be used. In addition, the edge often has species unique to itself. (Mollison, 1991: 26)

Preface Most of the world’s English teaching today happens in countries where English is not a medium of instruction, but simply a school or university subject. In this respect, EFL (English as a Foreign Language) has a lot in common with the teaching of foreign languages such as French or Chinese in the West. In both contexts, the roles of teacher and textbook become highly intensified and there is one vital and distinctive element of pedagogy: most teachers will share a first language with their students. The first language is a fundamental part of who we are: how we think, feel, see ourselves and the world. But amazingly, across the globe, its use in L2 teaching often remains devalued and even demonised. There have been few empirical studies which capture the ways in which teachers make use of L1 in their L2 teaching, particularly in Asian EFL. The current project aims to address this gap, and it does so primarily by watching lessons and talking to nine teachers located at a Thai university – the former workplace of the researcher. Additionally, I draw upon my experience of working with teachers in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam; and with teachers from across Asia who have travelled to the West for postgraduate training. This book explores the impact of L1 in L2 classrooms at three levels. First, it illustrates practices of pedagogy in EFL: what teachers actually do, and what they say about it. Second, it looks at the personal, to see how L2 users ‘perform’ a foreign tongue and what this means for their sense of identity. And third, it looks outward to the profession, considering global EFL textbooks, and the distinctive nature of the EFL domain. There are no existing books which offer this tri-level perspective upon what are majority-world practices of English language teaching. The book speaks to three groups of teachers: (1) Local teachers in Asia and elsewhere, who may see parts of themselves in the pictures drawn here. (2) Western teachers who are already working abroad, or who are planning to do so – in order that they may better understand local practices. (3) Teacher-trainers, in both East and West, for whom the study offers a window into EFL teachers’ professional lives – so that we may improve the quality and relevance of teacher education. xi

xii First and Second L anguage Use in A sian EFL

There has been massive growth of EFL teaching in Asia over the past decade, embedded as it is within the stunning economic growth of the region. I hope that the present book will provide a timely contribution to research and professional practice, and that it may further the mission of, as Suresh Canagarajah puts it, ‘reclaiming the local’ (2005).

Part 1 Overview

1

The Author’s Story

Everyone has their own story – their experience of the world, and ways of communicating it. I start this book by telling of four ‘waves’ in my own story of teaching English and working with English teachers.

ESL in Australia: The First Wave This lasted a good five years, and started in the 1980s when I taught English as a Second Language (ESL) to immigrants and refugees in Sydney, Australia. As well as the rich impact of this work upon on my heart, there are two aspects of the teaching which stand out in my mind. First, our students had left their homelands, perhaps forever, in search of a better life. We saw often sadness at this loss, as well as hope for the future and a deep investment in learning English. Second, each class was composed of students from many countries who spoke a range of languages – at that time, these students were principally from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, but also from China, Korea and the Middle East. It was my first teaching job, and I was assigned to teach the ‘most beginner’ classes. (Are beginner classes ‘easier’ for a novice, as is often assumed? Beginners, for me, have always been the most difficult to teach well; and, by the same token, the most rewarding.) Friends were often curious about this kind of work, and I would be asked questions such as: ‘How can you be teaching in English when your students cannot yet speak English?’ My answer, as you might expect, was that teachers made use of classroom actions, real objects, pictures, drawing and so on; that is, we drew upon semiotic systems other than language. But at the earliest opportunity, in the summer vacation, I did undertake a crash course in Vietnamese. Looking back, it is hard to believe that at that time I had never set foot on the continent of Asia. Consequently, it was in the classrooms of a Sydney school that I first heard communication in languages such as Vietnamese, Khmer, Chinese and Korean. It was exciting to listen to Vietnamese in 3

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particular, whose sounds and words were so distant from English or any European language I had studied. Culturally, too, I was fascinated by differences among student groups, some of which were immediately obvious, and others which it took time to see.

EFL in Thailand: The Second Wave Naturally, then, the second wave fell on an Asian shore – and in 1988, the most accessible country from Australia was Thailand. I arrived in Bangkok prepared only by my Linguaphone tapes of Thai, and naively booked into a ‘short-time’ hotel. ‘Why were the windows painted black?’ I wondered. Through a process of phoning universities around Thailand, I was lucky to be appointed as an EFL teacher in a tranquil, rural university, located about two hours by coach from Bangkok. There was one other Westerner (or ‘farang’, in Thai) on campus at that time. Professionally, I soon discovered that although I was of course still an English teacher, the two dominant features of my experience to date – immigrant students and monolingual teaching – no longer applied in this Asian context. And by talking to my new colleagues and students, I began to better understand the distinctive nature of teaching/learning English as a foreign language (EFL) rather than a second language (ESL). In this Thai EFL context, students nearly always shared a common tongue with their teachers; and my later experiences confirmed that this is usually the case with English classes across Asia. So, this second wave of teaching began to open my eyes to the nature of local EFL practices and while I initially worked in Asia for the relatively short period of a year, the experience did give me some understanding of culture and movement across borders – of how it feels to be ‘other’ in a new land.

EFL in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos: The Third Wave A third wave took me to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the 1990s, where I worked with teams of local and Australian colleagues to design and deliver nationally-funded EFL teacher training projects. Although I was now lecturing at an Australian university, I travelled to these countries for several months of each year during that period. Readers less familiar with South East Asia may be reminded that following the ‘liberation’ or ‘fall’ of Saigon in 1975 (according to either the Vietnamese or American view), the former IndoChinese countries of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos became allied to the USSR. Consequently, Russian became the favoured foreign language. At the

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dissolution of the USSR in 1991, while the political systems of former IndoChina remained communist, their need for international communication prompted a rapid switch from Russian to English as the most favoured foreign tongue. In fact, many of the workshops that we held in the early 1990s in all three countries were designed for teachers of Russian who were retraining as teachers of English. Some of the older teachers had previously taught French in colonial and post-colonial eras: English was now their third foreign language. We were also impressed by one Lao teacher who mentioned that she was additionally self-studying a fourth language – Japanese – ‘just in case’. At that time, all these countries were economically poor, with low technology and disrupted education systems (almost obliterated in the case of Cambodia of course). The English language proficiency of most teachers was not high. Therefore, we had to consider what was appropriate in terms of the methodology that we were presenting in our workshops. I would like to say a little more about our largest EFL project, funded by the Lao and Australian governments. It was located in the capital and provinces of Laos; and the team itself comprised eight Australian and 12 Lao trainers. On an annual basis over five years, we delivered in-country programmes both as professional development and at Graduate Certificate level. Central to our programmes were lesson observations conducted by Australian and Lao trainers, which involved some 40 Lao teachers per year. Through these observations I spent considerable time in schools and colleges, some of which were located in very remote areas. Projects such as this provided some amazing experiences for the Australian component of the team, but I frankly say that at first, we were not equipped with a good understanding of local needs. In fact, we started with the classic mistake of thinking that what worked in our own Western context would be transferable to this Eastern context. Standard Western ESL at that time – as now – followed principles of Communicative Language Teaching, which stresses maximum/exclusive use of L2, both by the teacher, and by students who are often organised into pairs/groups to undertake communicative ‘tasks’. When this methodology emerged in the West, it was often practised in private language schools with small class sizes, good resources, and students from European language backgrounds. But clearly, the conditions of EFL which we met in South East Asia were very different. It took some tears, reflections, the capacity to listen to Lao team members and then further false starts – but over time, we were able to jointly develop a methodology which was appropriate to that context. One major part of such ‘appropriate methodology’ related to the use of L1 to assist L2 learning. When considering the issue of L1 in L2 teaching, we made an important distinction between two terms which have often been linked

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together: ‘exclusive’ and ‘maximum’ use of L2. We embraced ‘maximum’ but rejected ‘exclusive’; and referred to this approach as ‘bilingual teaching’. That is, we supported a pedagogy where the target language is given maximum exposure in class, and also where the first language is valued as a resource for efficient translation of meaning, explanation of grammar, and discussion of culture. In using the term ‘bilingual teaching’, we also sought to position local teachers differently: as ‘bilingual plus’ rather than ‘monolingual minus’. At one workshop, there stands out in my mind a question posed by a Lao teacher trainer (who was herself a revolutionary figure from pre-1975 days): Where does it come from, the bilingual approach to teaching English? But this was not easy to answer, for in fact it came from our joint reflections on what seemed to work best for Lao teachers in Lao classrooms; and in supporting bilingual teaching, we were at first apprehensive because such an approach did run counter to the principles of Communicative Language Teaching which had worked well for us in many Western settings. My university was the first to provide post-war English language input to the Lao education system back in 1992 (as indeed we were in Vietnam in 1991, and in Cambodia in 1994). Since that time of course, all three countries have become better known, and more recently, popular travel destinations. For readers who may be interested in knowing more about Laos in particular, I recommend a research monograph written by my colleague Jacqueline Widin (2010), as well as on a lighter note, the detective novels of Colin Cotterill, who was a good friend to our projects over many years.

Teacher Training in Australia: The Fourth Wave In 1990, when I had returned to Sydney to lecture in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, there were no international students in our postgraduate programmes. Now, as in many parts of the Western world, international students represent a large proportion of our intake. At my institution, these students are principally from China, Korea and other East/South East Asian countries, as well as from the Middle East. Many of the teachers whom I had got to know through our EFL projects also came to Australia to study master’s programmes – and some I have supervised in their doctorates. Because of our existing relationships, I have been able to listen to honest accounts of what has been valuable for Eastern students in their Western studies, and of what has been less valuable. What have these international EFL students said about their postgraduate TESOL programmes? In sum, students have generally been positive about

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both lecturing staff and teaching performance, often commenting on the dedication of staff, their expertise, and good relationships with students. But the content of the programmes has often been less well received. In particular, two areas seem to be problematic. The first relates to methodology subjects, which tend to remain predicated upon monolingual teaching in ESL contexts, and thus do not explore important methodological issues such as: the relevance to EFL teachers of Western methodologies including Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL); the place of L1 in L2 classes; the role of translation (‘the fifth skill’); how to set and mark local tests of L2; how to prepare students for international tests such as IELTS and TOEFL; and how to deal with the language and culture of Western ‘global’ textbooks. For example, the classic ‘Literacy’ subject in these Western university programmes is often concerned with English literacy in L1 contexts and rarely addresses the EFL curriculum, where the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing are often taught separately, and where the reasons for reading and writing a foreign language may be different from those relating to ESL. Neither does it address what some might see as central to L2 literacy: practices of translation. The second area which can be problematic concerns the more theoretical subjects. These are often enjoyed by international students because, having already learned (at least) two languages, they usually possess a strong grammatical, lexical and cultural awareness. However, once again, there may be an issue of relevance. Generally, subjects concerned with grammar and discourse are confined to English grammar. Again, points of contrast and transfer between languages – which lie at the heart of second language teaching – are not usually examined in any depth.

Finding Out More: An In-depth Study of Thai EFL Classrooms As a result of the professional experiences described above, I had become more aware of how language affects the way we see the world and ourselves in it. I had also witnessed how powerfully English was spreading across the Asian continent, and was interested to explore more fully how local teachers were responding. Thus in 2002–2004, I returned to my former university in Thailand in order to undertake classroom research of an ethnographic nature. This time, I wanted to be able to observe and record teachers in action, and to interview them about many aspects of ELT, but using as a focus the role of L1 in L2 teaching. Fifteen years had elapsed since I had first worked in

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Thailand: some former colleagues had retired, but a number did remain on staff, including my former head of department. Trusted relationships are fundamental to Thai society, perhaps to all societies; I found that re-entering this site was a smooth and harmonious process. The English Department itself had by now expanded from nine to 21 staff. Two-thirds of teachers were Thai nationals, and one-third were expatriates from English-speaking countries. (This proportion of 2:1 was regarded by the department as ideal – a view that I share.) Through the new head of department, I put out a request for volunteers to participate in my study: nine teachers responded, of whom four were already known to me. When I refer to Thai teachers in this book, I will follow Thai custom, which is to use the person’s first name, preceded either by the word ‘Ajarn’ (meaning ‘lecturer’), or ‘Doctor’. Thus, for example, I will refer to Ajarn Rajavadee, or Dr Bua. In fact, I remember when I first arrived on this campus as a young man, being drilled to never address a Thai colleague simply by a first name. Though customary in most English-speaking contexts, to do so in Thailand would be extremely impolite. This was one of my first lessons about South East Asian culture; a quick second lesson was that Thai telephone directories, class lists, and so on, were arranged by first name rather than family name. In all, at this site I was able to watch and audio-record nine teachers delivering one or two classes. This resulted in around 19 hours of lesson data. I also interviewed each teacher on two occasions, which produced around 18 hours of data. It was fun to see old friends again, and to see the changes that had occurred over 15 years. The increase in staff size which I mentioned earlier had resulted from growth of student numbers and was reflected in the physical environment of the campus, where much of the formerly green area had been filled with new buildings. The English Department, which used to be housed in a two-storey wooden building with open verandas, was now located in an eight-storey concrete and glass block. Indeed the entire region had developed economically during this period, being located in the industrialising Eastern seaboard of Thailand. On campus there was also a noticeably greater number of Westerners compared to the two who were employed 15 years ago. It was a relief to me – and maybe also a little disappointing – to no longer receive the attention given when foreigners were rare in this rural and traditional part of the country. In regard to ELT methodology, perhaps the greatest single change was related to the use of English in teaching. In ‘my time’, I had rarely seen a Thai colleague use English to communicate in class but now every teacher did so. And whereas previously, my spoken English class was considered ‘noisy’,

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resulting in its move to a salaa (wooden pavilion); now, every teacher encouraged the use of English by students (though with variable success, as I will discuss later).

Theoretical Foundations The aim of this book is to create new knowledge which can be useful to both academics and teachers, many of whom may have English as a second or additional language. While my focus is on classroom practice, I aim at the same time to bring in theoretical perspectives which can elucidate and enrich our understanding of the classroom. Here I will briefly mention the key theories upon which this book will draw. First, with regard to language. When I undertook my master’s at Sydney University in the 1980s, I was inspired by the scholarship and teaching of Michael Halliday. While this book does not make use of the grammatical analysis offered by systemic-functional linguistics, it does follow Hallidayan views of the nature of, and relationship between, language, learning and culture. Second, closely linked to this functional view of language is a sociocultural view of learning, and here I draw upon the work of Lev Vygotsky as developed by, for example, Leo van Lier. Third, when we look specifically at second language learning, the scholarship of Vivian Cook has provided psychological insights into the bilingual brain and consequences for pedagogy. Fourth, my understanding of Asian EFL contexts has been greatly enhanced by the work of Angel Lin, Phan Le Ha and Suresh Canagarajah. Fifth, identity is another issue which I explore, and to do so, draw upon a range of post-structural perspectives influenced by Michel Foucault. And finally, when examining the spread of English across the globe, I have embraced many of the political insights offered by Alastair Pennycook and Robert Phillipson.

Contents The book is in four parts.

Part 1: Overview (Chapters 1, 2, 3) Following this introduction, the theoretical foundations of the study are set out in Chapter 2. Details of the project’s design and its cultural context are provided in Chapter 3.

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Part 2: Pedagogy (Chapters 4, 5, 6) A functional analysis of bilingual EFL pedagogy is presented. I additionally consider intercultural dimensions of language learning; and draw out principles of L1 use in L2 teaching.

Part 3: The Personal (Chapters 7, 8, 9) This section moves inwards to explore the personal dimension of classroom discourse. I describe five major interpersonal roles of language through which identity is created. In addition, I explore how teachers themselves feel when they perform L1 and L2 in the classroom.

Part 4: The Professional (Chapters 10, 11, 12) Here I move outwards, to examine teachers’ professional contexts. I look first at curriculum in the form of global textbooks, documenting how local teachers responded to one particular series in class. Then I move more broadly again, to compare the global domains of ESL and EFL teaching/ learning. The book concludes by drawing together all three strands of pedagogy, the personal, and the professional, into a ‘big picture’ discussion of EFL local practices.

Fresh currents: The contribution of this book A major study by Hall and Cook (2013) has recently confirmed massive, previously undocumented use of L1 in L2 classes across the globe. However, there exist few empirical studies of the ways in this happens. Thus Üstünel and Seedhouse, for example, have called for research into ‘how pedagogical focus and language choice are related in the teaching of other languages’ (2005: 322). Their voices are joined by others, including Carless (2008), Turnbull and Dailey-O’Cain (2009a), Levine (2011), Lin (2013b) and Macaro (2014: 10), who asserts that ‘Classroom code-switching … is in desperate need of some theorising’. (I may note that the term ‘code-switching’ itself, though still widely used, will be problematised later in this study.) If we consider L1 use in Asian EFL contexts, we find that there exist to date only two book-length accounts. The first is a monograph by Song and Andrews located in the Chinese tertiary context (2009): it is recommended to readers as a psychological study of how teachers’ beliefs about L1 use relate to their practices. The second is a volume edited by Barnard and McLellan (2014b) which comprises case studies located in 13 Asian university settings – including Thailand – and explores the extent and functions of ‘code-switching’,

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together with teachers’ motivations. Of note is how widespread this practice remains, despite hardening of institutional opposition in recent years; and the resulting ambivalence that is often felt by teachers. The present book seeks to answer the calls reported above in its analysis of pedagogy – and does so with the depth offered by a single case study. But my project also responds to Lin (2013a: 209), who urges that such enquiry extend beyond pedagogy into ‘identity’ and ‘ideology’. Accordingly, as noted earlier, the research additionally turns inwards to look at the personal nature of L1 in EFL classes – what this can mean for performance and identity. And it looks outwards, at the professional role of EFL teachers in Asian contexts, addressing issues such as imported materials and methodologies. The study thus seeks to integrate psychological, sociocultural and post-structural perspectives, with the aim of providing an ecological picture of majority-world teaching practices in EFL. In this chapter I have spoken candidly about my own experiences. This has been done because I see writing as a dialogue – verbal/mental – which needs to be contextualised. Over many years I have taught ESL and EFL, trained teachers, watched classes and reflected upon what is good teaching practice. This book is the result.

2 Language, Learning and Teaching

As noted in the Introduction, Chapter 2 presents the theoretical foundation of the book. Here, first I will set out ideas about language itself, and relate these to identity and culture. I move to language learning, then to the teaching of EFL and finally, the role of L1 within that domain.

Part 1: Language In this book I will draw upon the theory of language developed by Michael Halliday known as Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL). While I will not be making use of Halliday’s detailed grammatical analysis, I will be drawing upon his ideas about language itself (and later, about learning and culture). Therefore, I will provide here a brief explanation of the theory for readers who may be less familiar with it. Halliday’s functional approach to language may be traced back to the anthropological work of Bronislaw Malinowski (1884 to 1942), who documented the society and culture of Trobriand Island communities in the South Pacific. In the course of transcribing and then translating the language of the Islanders as they were engaged in their main livelihood – fishing expeditions – Malinowski realised that readers would not fully understand his account unless he also described the event itself. He coined the term context of situation to cover the non-linguistic meanings which accompany our language use. Furthermore, Malinowski found that he needed to describe the context of culture – to show the roles and significance of a fishing expedition within that culture. Malinowski’s work was taken up and further developed by his student, J.R. Firth (1890 to 1960) in the UK, whose own student, Michael Halliday (b. 1925), has been the leading figure in functional linguistics since the latter part of the 20th century (1985a, 1994). In Halliday’s view, language does not 12

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‘convey’ or ‘express’ meaning. Instead, language both constructs semantics and is constructed by it, hence the title of his account of L1 development: Learning How to Mean (1975). Halliday’s concern with language in use – how form and meaning are related – is of direct value to language teachers; in fact, Halliday started his career as a teacher of the Chinese language to English students. A key feature of Halliday’s functional theory of language, following Malinowski and Firth, is its emphasis on the systematic and predictable relationship between language and the context in which it occurs. According to this theory, the language that we speak or write is constrained by three variables within the context of situation: field, tenor and mode. Field signifies that when we communicate, we always have something to say (sometimes referred to as ‘the content’). In the grammar, field is built through ‘ideational meanings’. Language varies according to what we are communicating about. Tenor signifies that when we speak/write, we always have a listener/reader in mind (sometimes referred to as ‘an audience’). We speak differently to a friend, stranger, child, monk and so on, even if the topic, or content (field) remains the same. In the grammar, tenor is built through ‘interpersonal meanings’. Language varies according to whom we are addressing. Mode refers to the role that language itself has in making the communication cohesive – that is, ‘hold together’, and coherent – that is, ‘make sense’. Mode describes the differences between spoken language and written language; whether communication is face-to-face or at some distance; whether it is instant or delayed. In the grammar, mode is built through ‘textual meanings’. Language varies according to how we are communicating. So, even though we may be communicating about the same topic (field), and to the same person (tenor), our language will still change according to whether we are writing, speaking, face-to-face, at a distance and so on (mode). In the present study, I make particular use of the notions of tenor and interpersonal meanings, as I demonstrate how language always operates not only ‘with ideas’ but ‘through people’. As Halliday puts it: … all construction of meaning – all discourse – functions simultaneously both as construal of experience and as enactment of interpersonal relations. (1995: 257, emphases in original) This perspective can help us to understand how and why teachers and students make use of L2 in the classroom, or why they may be resistant to doing so. For indeed, following Halliday, it may be said that the interpersonal leads learning.

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Identity Identity has been widely researched in recent years, both in Applied Linguistics, and within the Social Sciences more broadly. L2-mediated identity was initially explored by Norton (Norton Peirce, 1995; Norton, 1997, 2000), and important subsequent studies have included those by Pavlenko and Blackledge (2004), Mantero (2007) and Lin (2008). In poststructural terms, identity is the effect of our actions/speaking: it emerges from re-iterated performances by the actor/subject (Derrida, 1988). At the same time, no performance is simply ‘repetition’: each new speaking is different from the last, and therefore carries with it agency. In other words, we cannot step into the same stream twice; or, as Halliday asserts: ‘every act of meaning transforms it [language], however microscopically, from what it was into something else’ (1992, 2003: 389). These repeated acts of language/identity have been described as sedimentation (Kramsch, 2009), a useful metaphor which suggests that fluidity in identity development does not signify an absence of fixity (Pennycook, 2005; Harissi et al., 2012). Thus identity can be viewed as not only an effect but also a cause of our speakings/actings: for it is from these iterations that new sediments form. It is also important to recognise that identity is constructed by the self in conjunction with others, and that when moving into a new language/culture, identity may thus become more ‘marked’, that is, more visible and audible – again, both to the self and to others. Lemke has described how in second language learning: There are changes in how we move and how we feel, in the rhythms and musicality of our speech, the timbre and ‘grain’ of our voice. We add new dimensions to our Selves; we expand, through use of the language, our repertory of possible identities and ways of being human. (2002: 84) Thus, being ‘othered’ by the L2 experience can present possibilities for adopting, resisting or appropriating various aspects of the self. And once we enter a new language, there is no going back, for as the first language/ culture transmutes the second, so does the second transmute the first (V. Cook, 2003b). In the present study, I observe how different interpersonal roles available in L2 classes can afford different possibilities of L2 identity development; and I ask teachers how they actually feel and think when communicating with students in L1 and L2.

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Verbal play; verbal art One notable interpersonal role identified in the present study was that of verbal playing. In searching for ways to analyse verbal play from a linguistic perspective, the framework of Verbal Art as developed in the functional linguistics of Hasan (1985) was found to fit the bill. The term itself has served to broaden the traditional notion of ‘literature’ (written, canonical, restricted genres) to ‘texts’ either written or spoken, and which are available in a range of domains and genres. Verbal Art may thus be realised through spoken language – from everyday genres of anecdote, joke or song to the ‘oratory’ of public occasions; as well as through written language – from everyday genres of fairy tale or magazine story to literary works. In descriptive terms, verbal art is distinguished in two ways. First, it is constituted by language which is marked through patterning, by ‘regularity which is significant’ (Halliday, 1971: 330). Although language itself is patterned, verbal art is taken to be ‘the chemistry which results from the combination of the many co-occurring patterns within the same text’ (Hasan, 1985: 19), and is shaped by repetition and contrast at any or all levels of phonology, lexico-grammar and semantics. Patterning, however, can equally well occur in non-art texts, and consequently, verbal art must also be distinguished communicatively in its imaginative function (Halliday, 1973). The imaginative function may further be construed in either aesthetic or play dimensions (‘poetic’ and ‘ludic’, in G. Cook’s terms [2000: 193]). And finally, play itself may take the form of humour, and this is precisely what was observed to happen extensively in one particular classroom of the present study. Hasan’s framework will be used and extended in order to account for what is happening both linguistically and discursively when humour occurs in language teaching.

Culture The notion of culture has been construed in many different ways according to perspective, scale and focus of investigation. Here, I will follow Hinkel’s view of culture as consisting of ‘social norms, worldview beliefs, assumptions, and value systems’ (1999: 2). These beliefs and practices may then be examined for the ways in which they construct ‘learning, understanding, production and interaction in a second language and a second culture’ (1999: 2). For Halliday, following Firth and before him Malinowski, there is no equivocation about the relationship between language and culture. Each constitutes the other; and semantics incorporates pragmatics (Halliday, interviewed by Thibault, 1987: 612). Halliday views language as ‘actively constructing reality’ (1995: 259), a notion complementary to the

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notions of discourses, which, following Foucault (1972), are taken to be ‘ways of being’ and ‘ways of meaning’ which constitute and are constituted by language/action (Kramsch, 1998). Discourses may range, for example, from those of power or gender, to those of, say, consumerism, volunteering, technology or fashion. A person may thus be said to concurrently and permeably enact various discourses. The relationship of language and culture is central to the classroom analysis undertaken in this book, for when learning a second language, we are learning to understand not only new forms, but forms which realise new meanings, and new meanings which constitute new culture. Here I also draw upon the notion of ‘linguaculture’ (Friedrich, 1989: 295). Coined to convey the inseparability of a language with its cultural context, this notion enables us to see language learning as always culturally embedded; and to see the learner as one who crosses and recrosses cultural boundaries as her/his L2 linguaculture develops. Thus as well as my ‘pedagogic’ analysis of classroom discourse, it proves essential to provide an ‘intercultural’ perspective.

Part 2: Language Learning In this section, I will start by looking at the fields of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Bilingualism, and move to explore the relationship between learning and culture.

Second Language Acquisition The mainstream of SLA research has located itself, as has mainstream linguistics, in the discipline of psychology. Its view of language has generally been focused on form rather than on meaning, seeking to measure syntax and morphology, and sometimes phonology or lexis. However, the key construct of Chomsky’s Generativist model (1965) has been described as embedded in ‘anglocentric “universalism”’ (Halliday, 1995: 259); and SLA’s idealisation of the native speaker has been opposed because of its extension into reification of the native speaking teacher. The central image of SLA is said to be of ‘the transplanted learner’ (Sridhar, 1994: 801; see also V. Cook, 2009); and there is a continuing focus on L2 as it is learned in a mothertongue, i.e. target-language, environment (Muñoz, 2008) – which type represents only a minority of SLA participants worldwide. Perhaps most serious for the present study is the continued monolingual focus of mainstream SLA research. May (2011, 2014) draws our attention to the limited progress made in this respect since early critiques by Sridhar (1994) and Y. Kachru (1994).

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Ortega (2010, slide 131) can still speak of ‘a discipline blinded by the monolingual bias’; one whose concern seems to be ‘explaining why bilinguals are not native speakers (i.e. monolinguals)’ (2014: 48). Mainstream SLA has been variously known as Psycholinguistic, Cognitive and Interactionist; it continues to dominate research and publication. However, over the past 20 years has emerged a growing view of knowledge as socially constructed, which situates the L2 learner as a social as well as psychological being. A turning point is often located in the special issue of the Modern Language Journal of 1997, in particular, the paper by Firth and Wagner which argued for a reconceptualisation of SLA from cognitive to social phenomenon. Ten years later in 2007, the same journal revisited the issue, and while is it clear that cognitive approaches continue to dominate, it is also clear that there has been a ‘social turn’ (Block, 2003) in SLA, in the shape of sociocultural theory, identity studies, discourse-approaches and post-structural perspectives more broadly. The confidence with which the social turn is celebrated by Firth and Wagner in 2007 (as well as, for example, by Block, 2007b; Kramsch & Whiteside, 2007; Swain & Peters, 2007, in the same volume) is notable, and these two journal issues provide a neat historical record of development. Subsequent to the social turn noted above, we have been alerted to a ‘bilingual turn’ (Ortega, 2010) and a ‘multilingual turn’ in SLA (edited volumes by May, 2014; and by Conteh & Meier, 2014). But it must be said that differences between cognitive and social models of SLA remain fundamental (Ortega, 2014), and indeed are perceived to constitute a ‘bifurcation’ in the field by Ellis and Shintani (2014: 804). In socially-oriented theories, alternative images of learning are proposed, such as ‘affordance’ (created by Gibson, 1979, 1986, and taken up by, for example, van Lier 2000, 2002); ‘participation’ (Lantolf, 2000) and ‘ecologies of learning’ (Kramsch’s edited volume, 2002). Socially-situated perspectives in the second language field are often known as sociocultural theory (SCT), and for the most part are based on the work of Vygotsky and his followers (Sokolov, 1972; Luria, 1979; Leont’ev, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978, 1979, 1986). Key notions include that of ‘scaffolding’ (Wood et al., 1976; van Lier, 1996), coined to describe the process of guidance which occurs within the learner’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), the latter referring to a learner’s capacity to achieve with assistance that which s/he cannot yet do alone. Thus according to Vygotsky, intermental development precedes intramental: we learn through others before we develop individual competence/knowledge. Activity theory (Wertsch, 1981) views purposeful activity as being based on socially-defined beliefs and desires, and occurring in particular contexts. Knowledge itself is seen as jointly constructed between learner and teacher or among learners, for as van Lier puts it: ‘social interaction is the engine that drives the learning process’ (1996: 147).

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Sociocultural theories of learning resonate with a Hallidayan analysis of language. A view that all knowledge is socially constructed enables us to perceive how cultural contexts and language will influence what and how we learn. Knowledge is embedded in culture and developed through social interactions, with language its major semiotic: language and cognition are interdependent processes. Language can now be seen as part of an ecology (van Lier, 2004; Thibault, 2004) where learners interact with environments spatial, social, cultural, educational and linguistic. This study is clearly sociocultural in its Vygotskyan analysis of Pedagogy (Part 2); and moves to a broader ecology in relating such practices to the Personal domain (Part 3) and Professional domain (Part 4). The book’s ecological stance is highlighted in its Inscription, which gave a biological metaphor for what happens when we move from L1 to L2: Productivity increases at the boundary between two ecologies (land/ water; forest/grassland; estuary/ocean; crop/orchard) because the resources from both systems can be used. (Mollison, 1991: 26)

Bilingualism In exploring how second languages develop, the central area of research has been the field of SLA as identified above. But there is another part of applied linguistics which is of great relevance to the study of L2 learning: that of bilingualism. Here we move from a psycholinguistic to a sociolinguistic perspective; one which locates both learner and society as fundamental to the language learning process. As the term ‘bilingual’ can of course mean many things, I specify that here it will be taken to describe a speaker who can communicate appropriately in various contexts in two or more languages (Kroll & Dussias, 2004). It may be seen that a greater part of the world’s population is bilingual than is monolingual. And yet monolingual learners have become the norm for investigation within SLA, resulting in a view that an L2 learner is deficient in comparison to a native speaker of that language. But as V. Cook points out, an L2 learner simply cannot be a native speaker (1997). In terms of communicative efficiency, a monolingual speaker ‘must be considered merely half as efficient as the bilingual speaker’ (Herdina & Jessner, 2002: 128). Thus it has been proposed that the bilingual speaker be recognised as the new yardstick in language study (V. Cook, 2002). The present book has as its central aim to claim a rightful space for bilingual learners and associated pedagogy. And what of the bilingual brain? Ervin and Osgood’s (1954) classic study, though now problematised, distinguished between the states of co-ordinate

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bilingualism and compound bilingualism – sometimes known as the ‘one pot/two pots’ view. A co-ordinate bilingual was held to possess two separate language systems in the brain, these resulting from having learnt the two languages separated in time and place. On the other hand, the compound bilingual was viewed as having one semantic system with two surface representations, as a result of learning two languages at the same time. The state of compound bilingualism was not favoured, and according to Baker (2001), the view that mixing language systems generally caused confusion for the learner, and resulted in ‘subtractive bilingualism’, was generally held until the early 1980s. That position was attacked by Cummins and Swain, who proposed a ‘dual iceberg’ model of language whereby the visible tips of the iceberg – the surface languages – hide the greater submerged mass which is seen as proficiency common to both languages (1986: 82). The tide turned swiftly, and already by 2000, Cummins could report on 150 studies which supported the value of additive bilingualism in education. Key to the present study, and backed by the psycholinguistic perspective outlined above, is a multi-competence model of the second language user. This model has been consistently developed by V. Cook over a period of time (e.g. 1991, 2001, 2010). It envisages the relationship between L1 and L2 in the learner’s mind as an ‘integration continuum’ (2003a: 6); thus when a bilingual is communicating in one language, ‘the other language is still residually activated’ (1992: 567); in other words, the bilingual brain has two languages simultaneously ‘on-line’ (2001: 408). In support of his model, V. Cook draws upon an extensive literature including Grosjean’s paper aptly titled ‘The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person’ (1989). Other studies of speech processing have similarly concluded that ‘the language systems of the bilingual are permeable’ (Kroll & Dussias, 2004: 191; see also Wu & Thierry, 2010; V. Cook & Bassetti, 2011). In recent years, post-structuralist views of bilingualism have been developed through the notion of translingual practice (Canagarajah, 2013) or translanguaging (García & Li, 2014), where bilingual speakers are seen to have ‘one linguistic repertoire from which they select features strategically to communicate effectively’ (García, 2014: 2, emphasis in original). I take up V. Cook’s notion of multi-competence here both in terms of pedagogy – looking at the flows of meaning between L1 and L2; and in terms of teachers’ own performance – looking at how identity develops across languages/cultures. Thus far, I have set out the theoretical principles upon which this book rests in relation to language, identity and learning. I would now like to examine in more detail the specific relationship between learning and culture, as this strikes me as a contentious area, and one where inaccurate and unfair positioning of EFL students still takes place both in Western and Eastern contexts.

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Learning and Culture It is difficult to talk about any dimension of culture without essentialising certain features; to compare, say, British and Chinese ‘educational culture’ without reducing a complex, shifting picture to a simplified, static one. As previously indicated, of value in this study will be the notion of discourses as ways of being/meaning which constitute and are constituted by language/ action. The work of Kubota (2004) and others has shown that when attempting to describe patterns of culture and learning, it may be difficult in the first place to ‘notice’ and make sense of what is happening without stereotyping the features that are present. But at the same time, when we turn to language learning in classroom settings, I would claim that any teacher who has worked with learners from different language and/or cultural backgrounds will have observed in students certain patterns of behaviour when it comes to ways of learning, expectations of educational goals, interactions with other students and with teachers. And this recognition is clearly of value, as far as it goes, for there do exist patterns of behaviour both formal and informal which vary across – and within – cultures. But there is of course more to culture than meets the eye. Dimensions of a new culture may be missed or mis-read, particularly when we cross cultural borders, and particularly perhaps when a Westerner travels to an Asian context and has the mixed blessing of communicating in what is her/his own L1 of English.

Mainstream accounts It may be noted that individual ‘learning styles’ have been described for many years at the psychological level, for example by Kolb (1984) and in Gardner’s ‘multiple intelligences’ (1993). At a broad cultural level, literature on comparative learning styles has usually focused on ‘Western’ (generally US and UK) styles, and ‘Eastern’ or ‘Asian’ styles. The term Confucian-Heritage Culture (CHC) has become widely recognised to describe not only the Chinese speaking countries of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, but also Japan and Korea, and is sometimes taken to include Vietnam and Malaysia. There have commonly been claims of ‘passivity’ among Confucian-Heritage Culture students. Ho (2009: 332) points to a continued and widespread perception that ‘the CHC learning environment stresses recitation and memorisation, has large classes with passive learners, is teacher-centred …’, even though such simplistic and essentialising accounts have been widely critiqued in the literature for some time (Ramsey et al., 1999; and more recently Bao, 2014; Peng, 2014).

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Alternative accounts In recent years, alternative views of how to approach differences in learning have emerged. First, there is a perspective which simply compares educational success at national levels. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) assesses the competencies of 15 year old students in OECD countries at three year intervals, focusing upon three areas of Written Comprehension (sometimes referred to as Literacy’, or simply as ‘Reading’), Mathematical Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge. It is often a matter of concern to media and educators in Western countries that East Asian learners regularly out-perform their Western counterparts in all three areas, and particularly in the second and third. It is also notable, for example, that in the most recent PISA assessment (2012/3), the US is not included in the top 25 countries for achievement in mathematics; nor in the top 15 countries for literacy (see the OECD website). Not only is averaged student attainment higher for certain Asian countries, but so is placement in the top 10% benchmark. Thus it may be seen that arguments which commonly laud Western education at the expense of its Eastern counterparts are simply wrong. Second, we go back to the charge of ‘rote’ learning, and ‘passive’ learners in CHC and other Asian education systems. Here, Biggs makes a useful distinction between rote as in ‘without thought or meaning’, and rote requiring ‘repetition as a means of ensuring accurate recall’ (1994: 47), pointing out that it is the latter which can in fact provide a positive learning strategy. An interesting study of PISA data relating to students from Hong Kong, Macau, Japan and Korea found learners to be ‘highly active, monitoring their studies and learning from their mistakes, and linking past experience to their studies’ (Ho, 2009: 332). The high performance of students from these East Asian societies in all three domains is confirmed, and Ho notes that such findings: … challenge the perception that Asian learners are ‘rote learners’ who can only drill for traditional tests. Evidence in PISA suggested that they can apply their knowledge to solve daily life problems. (2009: 342) From another perspective, when my Australian and British colleagues were working with EFL teachers in Laos, and posed a question ‘Can you learn without understanding?’, they received the reply ‘Can you learn without having a good memory?’, with Lao teachers explaining that by first being able to remember what they had been taught, they were enabled to revisit new ideas and begin to understand them (Bessell-Browne & King, 1993: 8). Third, as for actual classroom performance, the term ‘passivity’ is gradually being replaced by ‘reticence’ (e.g. Xie, 2010). The re-labelling, while

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attempting to remedy a negative term, is not unproblematic, for such terms still suffer from the ethnocentric view that ‘what you see is what is happening’. Might we alternatively relabel the favoured Western learner as ‘voluble’, or perhaps ‘garrulous’? In fact, in their oft-cited study, Cortazzi and Jin (1996), for example, found that Chinese students whom they surveyed did believe that they were ‘active’ in class, in the sense that at a mental level, they were interacting with the teaching (also for China, see Jin & Cortazzi, 2006; Shi, 2006). Phan (2004) similarly asserts the active but differently verbalised nature of Vietnamese university classrooms. Japanese students, too, were found in Ellwood’s (2004) multi-nationality classes to be more verbally reticent than their European peers. However, interview discussion revealed such students to be focused on, attentive to, and again, mentally interactive with teaching and learning. The ethnocentricity of Western notions of ‘silence’ and ‘talk’, and how these modes play out in classrooms, have been recently explored by Bao in his innovative study of five Asian and one Western cultural contexts (2014). It is also the case that Western classrooms have been demonstrated to be dominated by the teacher-fronted Initiation-Response-Feedback protocol (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975; Mehan, 1979), or what Hess and Azuma (1991) called ‘quick and snappy’ public questioning. Western teaching overall may be perceived as ‘student-driven, hyperactive, supervoluble’ (Canagarajah, 1999: 191). And Bao (2014: 172) draws our attention to the frustration that can be felt by some learners if ‘required to publicise their half-baked thoughts when they are unprepared to do so’. It seems that in order to achieve better intercultural education, we need to reappraise the role of talk in the classroom – by teachers and by students; to look at the kinds of learning valued in different contexts; and to see what kinds of learning are enabled by various interaction patterns. In this book, notice will be taken of the patterns of Asian students’ learning which are observed to occur in classes, as well as of the related views of their teachers. I thus hope to contribute to a richer, more subtle account of the L2 learning process.

Part 3: Language Teaching This section describes the crucial difference between the contexts of second language teaching, and foreign language teaching; reviews the notions of native and non-native speaking teachers; and explores the role of L1 in teaching L2 across the globe. I start by clarifying some key terms which are used to describe the teaching of English as a second language.

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ESL and EFL Teaching English as a second language is traditionally divided most simply into two kinds: English as a Second Language (ESL), and English as a Foreign Language (EFL). In brief, ESL refers to contexts where English is a dominant language of the country, such as the US or the UK; and EFL to contexts where it is not, such as China or Japan. ESL education generally takes place within a context of the target language and its associated cultures, where the L2 is pervasive and powerful, being among other things the medium of school instruction. Students themselves are usually ‘transplanted learners’ (Sridhar, 1994): either immigrants, or ‘sojurners’ such as international students; and classes usually comprise learners from several different language/cultural backgrounds. Teachers themselves are often monolingual, and may be required or encouraged to use only the target language in class. In contrast, EFL education normally takes place where English is not a medium of instruction, but simply a school or university subject. Here, as may be seen in many parts of Asia, there may be little contact with the target language or its associated cultures, beyond the average of two to four hours per week spent in the classroom. EFL teachers are usually in a position where they share a first language and culture with their students; and students are usually ‘local’ rather than ‘transplanted’. In these ways, teaching EFL in Asia may be seen to have many features in common with Anglophone teaching of ‘foreign languages’, such as French, Russian, Chinese. Given the massive differences in ESL and EFL contexts, it is strange that these terms are often used interchangeably; or are elided into others such as ELT (English Language Teaching), or TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). In such cases, it is nearly always ESL which dominates or absorbs EFL. This happens in practice, with teacher training, curricula and textbooks; and in theory, with most Second Language Acquisition research – even though globally it is EFL which has by far the bigger spread. Part of the aim of this book is to describe what is distinctive about EFL, and to offer explanations of why practices do differ so markedly according to context. As well as the ESL/EFL distinction, there are a number of other ways of describing varieties of ELT which have gained some currency. One is that made between contexts where L2 is being used as a medium of instruction for the teaching of content – language as medium; and those where the L2 is being studied ‘as a language’ – language as object (or language as subject, as in ‘school subject’). Another useful classification, which we may call ‘geopolitical’, has been provided by B. Kachru’s classic description of three concentric circles of English: Inner Circle, Outer Circle, and Expanding Circle (1985), where

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Inner Circle refers to English-speaking countries such as the US, UK or Australia; Outer Circle refers to former colonies where English retains a major presence, such as India, Malaysia or many parts of Africa; and Expanding Circle to the reminder of the world, including most of Europe, South America and East Asia. This is a model which still commands great respect, though it has been sometimes criticised for ambiguity and reductionism (Bruthiaux, 2003; Park & Wee, 2009). Issues relating to EFL/ESL will be further explored in Chapter 11’s discussion of professional practice.

Foreign Language Teaching So far, we have looked at the ways in which just one language – English – is taught across the globe, and focused in particular upon the classic divide of ESL and EFL. But there is another domain known as Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) which in the West refers to the teaching/learning of a whole range of European and Asian languages. It is interesting to note that connections between the domains of ESL, EFL and FLT are still rarely made. In some ways, this is understandable, given that in professional terms, FLT is located apart in its training, professional associations, conferences and teaching materials. Moreover, if you are a teacher of one particular foreign language, e.g. French, it might be more natural to identify with other teachers of French, rather than with teachers of different foreign languages. However, I would argue that in many ways, it may be more useful to understand EFL as a form of FLT, rather than as a form of ESL. Here, I return to a number of points made earlier in regard to EFL contexts, and which apply in similar ways to many FLT contexts. First, there are similarly low levels of exposure to the target language – confined in the school curriculum, for example, to 2 to 4 hours per week. Second, teachers of foreign languages whether English or any other language normally share a common L1 and culture with most of their students. Third, students themselves are usually ‘local’, rather than ‘transplanted’ learners. All three terms of ESL, EFL and FLT have their value as well as their limitations. For the time being, I continue to use them in the conventional way.

EFL teachers: Native and non-native It was noted as long ago as 1964 that native speakers could no longer claim ‘ownership’ of English (Halliday et al.). And back in 1982, B. Kachru predicted that by the year 2000, non-native speakers of English would outnumber its native speakers. This prediction has of course proved to be true.

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Already by 1998, the ratio was estimated to be 2:1 (Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 1999); by 2003, 3:1 (Crystal, 2003); and by 2008, 4:1 (Crystal, 2008). It is not surprising therefore that critiques of concepts relating to nativespeakerdom have intensified in recent years. Still widespread in the ELT profession are perceptions which privilege native speaking (NS) teachers, and disempower non-native speaking (NNS) teachers of English to a serious degree. These power inequities are clearly expressed through differing employment opportunities, income and status. But when we look at what constitutes an NS or an NNS of any language, interesting points arise. While I support the problematising of these notions on political grounds, I also believe that in the minds of most teachers and students, the boundaries are pretty clear. For this reason, and in the absence of better terms to date, I will continue to use them here. However, it seems crucial that we move beyond considering principally an individual teacher’s English language expertise, and aim to re-create a balance with their pedagogic expertise. But there is another issue which I believe has not been adequately explored: the monolinguality of most native-speaking teachers of English (though see E. Ellis, 2013). On the one hand, there are a number of expatriate NS of English who, when they move to live and work in Asian contexts, put their best efforts into learning the language and understanding the culture of the new country; some make good or even excellent progress. However, in my experience, these teachers tend to be a minority within expatriate communities. This is an issue rarely addressed, with a few notable exceptions. Phillipson confirms the problem, and asks: How can anyone be an expert in the language learning needs, steps and strategies of a set of learners without in-depth knowledge of the culture and language that the learners bring to the classroom? (1997: 245) Skutnabb-Kangas makes the point more strongly: To me, monolingual ESL teachers are per definition incompetent to teach ESL: they simply lack several of the capacities or proficiencies that a learner needs and can reasonably expect from the teacher. (2000: 37) And if we go back nearly a hundred years, we find Palmer asserting that: The least competent person to teach English is an Englishman who does not possess the students’ language. (1932, cited in Kelly, 1976: 281)

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On the other hand, of course, those native-speaking teachers who remain monolingual can and do make important contributions to EFL teaching, particularly in providing ‘living examples’ of the target language and parts of its associated culture (see also Houghton & Rivers, 2013). For NS and NNS teachers alike, I support Kramsch’s assertion that language teachers: … have to respond to the foreign words with the sensibility of both a native speaker and a non-native speaker. … They have to remember what it felt like to learn a new language, the linguistic and cultural shocks experienced, the challenges and rewards encountered along the way. (2004: 256)

EFL Teaching: Role of L1 So far, we have briefly looked at global domains of language teaching, and types of English language teachers. Now I would like to move to the central theme of this book: the way that students’ first language shapes the learning of a second. For every person, language is first experienced as our mother-tongue. It is the mother-tongue which we start to hear in the womb, and which, within days of being born, we respond to above all other languages. This is a deep, deep connection. What happens, then, when we move from the mothertongue into a new language? Butzkamm (2003) asserts that that ‘we only learn language once’, regardless of how many languages we may later learn. Halliday (1975) famously holds that learning language is ‘learning how to mean’. When we are learning a second language, the first language has been variously considered a barrier, a resource, a catalyst. There is certainly a profound relationship between L1 and L2, but frequently a significant gap between what teachers are expected to do in class (according to government policy, institutions, parents and students); and what teachers actually do. Here I will briefly outline the main points against L1 use in L2 teaching, and then the main points for it. (For a detailed survey of relevant literature, Hall & Cook, 2012 is recommended.)

Opposition to the use of L1 If we look at the history of language teaching, probably the longest overview to date has been provided by Kelly’s Twenty Five Centuries of Language Teaching in 1976. Across the centuries, as Kelly points out, the use of L1 in the form of translation has been the dominant teaching tool, and in fact was

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particularly favoured in the West from the 16th to the 19th centuries. But in the 20th century, such use was actively disfavoured by all major methods: Direct Method, Audio-Lingualism, and Communicative Language Teaching: indeed, the monolingual principle is said to be ‘the unique contribution’ of the 20th century’s language pedagogy (Howatt, 1984: 289). Although each of these methods sought to improve what had gone before it, from our perspective today, we may see that they held some common beliefs about language development, which can be reduced to three in number. The first was that L2 learning should be as close as possible to mother-tongue learning. That is, when we learn the mother-tongue it is through listening and speaking in a ‘natural’ environment, rather than through translation, or written texts. The second assumed that the mother-tongue could be a barrier or a source of confusion when learning a second language; and the third that teachers should minimise the use of L1 simply in order to maximise the use of L2. These beliefs have held sway in most Western contexts until very recently. But here we have two interesting points. First, such beliefs about L1 exclusion have always been justified on linguistic or educational grounds. However, in fact we need to also consider ideology: who gains and who loses if L1 is not permitted in ELT (Pennycook, 2001). Bearing in mind Palmer’s comment presented earlier, we must consider whether 20th century monolingualism was just a ‘truth’ of convenience to native-speakers of English. Second, a comparison between EFL with FLT may again be useful – for in the FLT domain, some use of L1 has nearly always been retained. Most English speakers who have learned, for example, German or Chinese as a foreign language, will recall the teacher’s regular use of students’ L1 in class. And indeed, leading FLT scholars such as Butzkamm (1998, 2011), Levine (2003, 2014) and Macaro (1997, 2014) have consistently and powerfully argued for the positive role of L1 in learning L2.

Support for the use of L1 I have mentioned above several writers who have supported the use of L1 in L2 classes. However, it is important to note that without exception, they have stressed the need to still maximise the use of L2. As indicated earlier, the difference between exclusive and maximum use of L1 is highly significant. The point made by those who support L1 in class is that when used appropriately, it can have a powerful, sometimes catalytic effect upon the process of learning an L2. The central figure here over the past 20 years has been Vivian Cook, whose ‘multi-competence’ model, identified earlier, has offered a view of the learner as a potential bilingual, rather than as an inadequate native speaker. I would like to draw attention to the following

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comments by Cook, as I believe they well capture the psychology of L2 learning: L2 users have L1 permanently present in their minds. Every activity the student carries out visibly in the L2 also involves the invisible L1. … From a multi-competence perspective, all teaching activities are cross-lingual … the difference among activities is whether the L1 is visible or invisible, not whether it is present or altogether absent. (1999: 202) Cook’s model of the learner is a psychological one, but sociocultural theory, too, has offered a new view of L1 (van Lier, 2004; Levine, 2011). Swain and Lapkin, for example, see L1 as our ‘most formidable cognitive resource’ when learning an L2 (2005: 181). Additionally, it has been proposed that there are socio-affective benefits whereby L1 can create rapport among students and teacher, and can act as a familiar emotional base from which to journey into a new language (for example, Canagarajah, 1999; V. Cook, 2001). When students themselves have been surveyed in respect of L1-L2 use in disparate EFL settings, they have been found to strongly favour some use of L1 (e.g. Myojin, 2007; Brooks-Lewis, 2009). So, there have been some shifts of perception in favour of L1 use. Between 2009 and 2011 we saw publication of the first full-length volumes dealing with this issue. Four relate principally to FLT contexts: the first, by Butzkamm and Caldwell (2009) hails, rather optimistically, the end in sight of ‘the mother tongue taboo’; the second is a collection of papers edited by Turnbull and Dailey-O’Cain (2009b); a third deals with classroom applications (Scott et al., 2010); and Levine’s (2011) sole-authored book presents foreign language classrooms as de facto scenes of ‘multiple codes’. Then we have Guy Cook’s (2010) publication, which seeks to reinstate the value of translation in pedagogy. And as indicated earlier, there are two other volumes which are particularly relevant to the EFL focus of the current book: a monograph by Song and Andrews (2009) which explores L1 use in Chinese EFL; and a volume edited by Barnard and McLellan (2014b) which identifies the functions of ‘code-switching’ in a range of Asian contexts. What these various publications show is a shift in theoretical positions within Applied Linguistics, as confirmed by Ellis and Shintani (2014: 235) who assert that ‘the pendulum has swung firmly in [L1’s] favour at least in applied linguistics circles’ (italics added). But the qualifier in Ellis and Shintani’s statement is significant, for while academic views have been changing, the overriding messages found in current teaching materials, training, and often in government policies remain opposed to L1 use in the teaching of L2. As Ellis and Shintani also observe: ‘in general … the overriding assumption of

L anguage, Lear ning and Teaching

29

the teacher guides which we have inspected is that language teaching activities should be entirely – or almost entirely – L2 based’ (2014: 228). This exclusion has also characterised the most popular initial EL teacher training programme worldwide, the Direct-Method-based CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults: Cambridge English, 2015). Translation itself is said to have been positioned by ELT orthodoxy as ‘unproductive, oldfashioned, pre-modern’ (Pennycook, 2008: 35), and simply ‘… does not figure in the British ELT professional mindset’ (Phillipson, 2010: 152). In Asia, as indicated earlier, Barnard and McLellan’s edited volume (2014b) has documented widespread use of L1 in L2 classes across the continent. But here again, as the editors report, ‘zero-tolerance policy is still the norm in many Asian education systems, imposed by ministries of education and by key stakeholders in academic institutions’ (2014a: 8), a view confirmed for East and South East Asia by Lin (2013b). Nevertheless, support for change has been recorded in China (Song & Andrews, 2009; Tian & Kunschak, 2014); Hong Kong (Lin & Man, 2009; Swain et al., 2011), Taiwan (Raschka et al., 2009; Tien & Li, 2014); Japan (Macmillan & Rivers, 2011; Humphries & Stroupe, 2014); Korea (Liu et al., 2004; Rabbidge & Chappell, 2014); Indonesia (Zacharias, 2004; Le & Hamied, 2014); Thailand (Tayjasanant & Robinson, 2014) and Vietnam (Anh, 2010; Le & Hamied, 2014). However, for local teachers, as Kirkpatrick notes (2014: 214), the existing ‘disconnection’ between official policies and actual classroom practice may be seen to have a destabilising impact. Looking beyond Asia to across the globe, a major study was conducted by Hall and G. Cook (2013), where 2785 EL teachers across 111 countries were surveyed to discover their beliefs and practices with regard to L1 use in L2 teaching (and a further 17 respondents followed up at interview). These authors, too, found overwhelming evidence of L1 use in L2 classes, confirm the validity of this practice, and urge the conduct of further investigation (Hall & Cook, 2013: 26). Their call joins those I noted earlier, for a ‘full-scale re-evaluation’ of the role of L1 in L2 learning (Turnbull & Dailey-O’Cain, 2009a: 14), and for urgent attention to be paid to actual classroom data (e.g. Üstünel & Seedhouse, 2005; Carless, 2008; Macaro, 2014). Critical here, too, is the major contextual difference between ESL and EFL domains, which forms a major theme of this book. In this light, I offer strong support to Rabbidge and Chappell (2014: 13), who urge that: Government policies that cite theories based on ESL environments need to be rethought, and ideas that address EFL learning specifically need to be permitted in order to help assist students in such contexts.

3 A Case Study in Thailand

As indicated earlier, the book’s genesis lay in my broad experiences as a teacher, teacher-trainer and academic working in several Asian countries. Then in order to achieve a depth of ethnographic analysis, I selected one slice of Asian EFL: classes held in the English department of a Thai university, my former workplace. Aspects of this research have been previously reported in various journals (see Forman, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014a, 2014b, 2015a). This chapter is in two parts: first, I introduce the Thai cultural context and describe how the research project was conducted; and then I present three scenes from classes observed, together with teacher comments at interview.

Part 1: The Research Project Thai cultural context There can be no discussion of Thailand without acknowledging the role of Buddhism. Variously termed a religion and philosophy, Buddhism occupies a significant visible and invisible part of the social fabric of Thailand, with 93.6% of a large-scale survey self-reporting religion to be an important part of their lives (Komin, 1990; confirmed in 2015 by the United Nations Thailand). It is still Thai custom that young men undertake a retreat of up to three months in a Buddhist monastery, in order to accrue merit for themselves and their families. Key cultural traits are reported to be those of social harmony, respect for age and status, desire for collaboration, and the maintenance of ‘face’ (O’Sullivan & Tajaroensuk, 1997; Hallinger & Kantamara, 2001). Students in the present study, and at other Thai universities according to my experience, generally do exhibit the cultural traits referred to above, particularly perhaps those of harmony and collaboration. Bovonsiri et al. (1996: 60) comment, for example, that ‘Perhaps the most concrete visible influence of Thai culture on contemporary campus life is the prominence of students studying in groups’, and note that one can rarely find a student studying alone. 30

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31

Teachers in Thailand are held in high respect by students, parents and by society, with Simon describing the teacher’s role as that of ‘friend and helper of pupils in a master-disciple relationship’ (2001: 340). Buddhism is also drawn upon in order to develop teachers’ morality. Parkay et al. (1999: 65) refer to Payutto’s (1995) description of the character of the ideal teacher: • • • • • • •

‘endearing’, or approachable; worthy of respect in character and actions; inspiring; and exemplifies what s/he teaches; can speak wisely, appropriately and caringly; is patient; can explain and guide students clearly; does not lead students into areas lacking in worth or morality.

It is my experience that such a description would be regarded as appropriate in Thailand and across the East Asian region (for consideration of teachers as ‘moral guides’ in Vietnam see L. Phan and V. Phan [2006]; and in China, see L. Phan et al. [2011]).

Entering the site Isara University is a medium size provincial university with a student population of around 12,000. It has over 500 academic and 300 general staff. The English programme is run through the Department of Western Languages, which is the biggest department in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (other departments include Oriental Languages, Thai, and Communication Arts). As indicated previously, I taught in the English Department at Isara University for one year from 1988 to 1989. After leaving Thailand, I kept in touch with two former colleagues at Isara who had become friends, and whom I visited from time to time. One such colleague and another member of the English Department also undertook postgraduate training at my university in Australia. Thus in the study, two of the nine teachers were well known to me. Of the remaining seven, I was acquainted with two, and five I had not previously met. (As noted earlier, I will follow Thai custom in referring to teachers by their first name, preceded by ‘ajarn’ (teacher/lecturer) or ‘doctor’. Each teacher self-selected a pseudonym for use in this study.) In setting up the research project, I relied extensively upon Ajarn Rajavadee, my former Head of Department and subsequent friend. Ajarn Rajavadee was a pivotal presence in the English Department, and to have had

32 Par t 1: Over v iew

her personal support was influential in my research presence being readily accepted: staff without exception made me very welcome. I initially approached Ajarn Rajavadee and asked her to inform colleagues of my intended research, for which purpose I provided an information sheet in English and Thai. Each participating teacher, on the basis of that discussion and further discussion with me when I visited the site, signed a consent form which provided the usual conditions of anonymity, confidentiality and the right to withdraw at any time and without explanation. The entire process was also approved by my university’s Ethics Committee.

Teachers In my initial request, I had sought the participation of between four and eight teachers, and because a number of staff expressed interest in the project, the higher number was achieved. As previously noted, the English Department at that time had some 21 full time teachers, of whom seven were Westerners. Because my project was concerned with the use of Thai in the classroom, Western teachers had been excluded from the study. However, when I made my first visit, I met one Australian teacher who was bilingual in English and Thai, and who agreed to become the ninth teacher in the study. Three other people were involved in the research process in the role of transcriber/translator. These were final year English-Major students selected by Ajarn Rajavadee as among the best in the faculty, and were paid by me to undertake this task. Assistance was necessary because I am not able to read or write Thai, and was thus not able to notate the Thai audio-recorded components of lessons. The three translators worked as a team, and provided first, transcription in Thai script, second, transliteration into Roman script and third, translation into English. Of the nine teachers, eight were Thai, and one was Anglo-Australian; five were female, and four male (Table 3.1). All were qualified at Master’s level; and three possessed doctorates. Their teaching experience ranged from 3 to 38 years. All had also undertaken postgraduate study overseas: mainly in the US, but also in Australia and Singapore. The eight Thai teachers were expert speakers of English, whom I would rate at near-native speaker level. The single Anglo-Australian was similarly expert in Thai.

Students As noted, I observed 10 classes. These ranged in size from 14 to 58 students, giving a total of 371 students who formed part of this study. I will provide some brief information about the students and their English language proficiency levels.

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Table 3.1 Teachers’ details

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Dr Chai Dr Bua Ajarn Nanda Dr Patcharin Ajarn Somchay Ajarn Rajavadee Ajarn Murray Ajarn Nuteau Ajarn Laksana

L1

m/f

Thai Thai Thai Thai Thai Thai English Thai Thai

m f f f m f m m f

20–29

30–39

40–49

50–59

x x x x x x x x x

In this, and in many Asian tertiary contexts, there are two key factors relating to students’ EL competence. First, most students’ admission to university normally depends in part upon their English examination mark. Second, in most institutions, all students in all faculties must undertake English study. I would like to make a comparison here between practices in East and West. It is hard to imagine a scenario where university admission for every student in say the UK or the US depended in part upon their exam result in a compulsory foreign language – in Chinese, for example; or where every student was required to undertake credit-bearing subjects in Chinese in order to complete their degree programme. I make this comparison in order to highlight the distinction between two types of students of EFL: compulsory and elective – sometimes known as General English (or EAP) and English-Major. In Thailand, for example, admission to university is obtained competitively as judged by High School GPA and the University Entrance Exam. Places for the study of English Major courses are highly sought after; such students are considered to be motivated to learn, and at an advanced level of proficiency. On the other hand, General English is a compulsory subject of study for all university students. The L2 proficiency of such students is markedly lower than that of English Major students; and their level of motivation is also often found to be significantly lower, particularly in the case of Science and Technology streams. The distinction between these two groups will be familiar to university teachers in many parts of Asia, and is confirmed in the research literature for Thailand (e.g. Noon-Ura, 2008; Tayjasanant, 2014). FL teachers in Western countries will recognise a similar difference between compulsory and elective foreign language study at high school.

34

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Language proficiency ratings In providing descriptions of students’ EL proficiency levels in this study, I have made informal judgements based on my experience as a past examiner for IELTS (the International English Language Testing System). Descriptors for IELTS Proficiency Bands 1.0–9.0 may be found on the IELTS website (2013). Overall, I would rate the General English students at this university, at around IELTS Band 3.0 (approximately equivalent to TOEFL 400). The Band 3 summary descriptor is as follows: Conveys and understands only general meaning in very familiar situations. Frequent breakdowns in communication occur. (IELTS, 2013: 12) And overall, I would rate the English-Major students, at around 6.0 on the IELTS scale (or around 500 TOEFL). That is, they have: …generally effective command of the language despite some inaccuracies, inappropriacies and misunderstandings. Can use and understand fairly complex language, particularly in familiar situations. (IELTS, 2013: 12)

Classes A summary of teachers, classes and students is provided in Table 3.2. Table 3.2 Teachers, classes and students Students

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Teacher

m/f

Classes

Yr

Eng Maj

IELTS

No. ss

Aj Laksana Dr Chai Aj Nuteau Aj Murray Dr Patcharin Aj Rajavadee Dr Bua Aj Somchay Aj Nanda

f m m m f f f m f

Oral English EAP EAP Oral English Foundations Foundations Foundations Reading Critical Reading Critical Reading

2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 3 3

         

3 3 3 3 3 5 6 6 5 6

52 30 53 31 51 58 25 14 16 41

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Data collection Triangulation of data was achieved by establishing multiple sources (observation and interview), and in selecting multiple participants (nine teachers and 10 classes). Moreover, member-checking occurred after my first visit to Isara in 2002, when an initial analysis of each lesson was mailed to the teacher of that class, and again during my second visit in 2004. At that later point, I was able to hold discussions with individual teachers which enabled their views on my views to feed back into the analysis (see Table 3.3).

Lesson observation All but one class was in the form of a ‘double period’ of just under two hours in length. For eight of the teachers, I observed one class; and for the ninth, two classes were observed. Accordingly, 10 classes were analysed, totalling some 19 hours’ lesson time. For the purpose of audio- recording, a personal microphone was placed on each teacher’s lapel, and recording was activated for the whole lesson. Classes were conducted in a new building where classrooms were furnished with ceiling fans but, with one exception, without air-conditioning. Lessons were scheduled from 8am to 6pm, with noticeable variation of room temperature, which ranged from the mid-20s Celsius in the morning to the mid-30s by late afternoon. My field notes recorded both the more common classroom activities, and unusual events or moments of pedagogy; they were comprised of description, reflection and demographic information, as predicted by Bogdan and Biklen (1998). In obtaining observation data, I did not rely upon predetermined categories, nor did I design a protocol for the purpose of this study. Lessons were attended to with two foci. The first was the ways in which the teachers used L1 and L2 in each lesson: the apparent functions and effects. The second was Table 3.3 Data collection Stage of data gathering

Date

First visit to Thailand

Jan 2002

Prior to second visit

Second visit to Thailand Post second visit

Type of data

• Lesson observation • First Interview: all 9 teachers My analysis of the first observation, consisting of around 5000 words per teacher, forwarded to each teacher in question (together with interview questions for the second interview). Mar 2004 • Second Interview: 8 of the 9 teachers Aug 2004 • Second Interview: 9th teacher (in Sydney) Jan–Feb 2005 • Follow up clarification sought from Ajarn Rajavadee (email & phone)

36

Par t 1: Over v iew

an attempt to capture something of the diversity of the EFL classrooms witnessed in order to present a more ecological picture.

Teacher interview At the time of my first visit to Thailand in January 2002, each of the nine teachers was interviewed for approximately one hour within two weeks of the observed lesson. Interviews were conducted face-to-face on site, and audio-recorded, with the researcher concurrently making written notes. Interviews were semi-structured in nature, with the aim of guiding but not constraining discussion. Key questions had been mailed to participants before the visit took place in order to allow time for reflection. In March 2004, a second visit was made to Isara for the purpose both of seeking participants’ feedback upon the analysis conducted to date, and to explore various issues which had emerged in the data. As a prelude to the second visit, teachers were sent three documents: my analysis of their earlier 2002 lesson and interview, each of which ran to some 5000 words, some questions directly related to that teacher, and a set of key questions applicable to all participants. On this follow-up visit, I interviewed eight of the nine teachers. The ninth teacher had returned to Australia to undertake postgraduate study, and I was able to interview him in Sydney in October 2004. Interviews have been coded (IV1) for the first set, conducted in 2002, and (IV2) for the second, conducted in 2004. (See Appendix A for Interview prompts.) I mention here one issue which had important implications for the research process: the medium of communication selected for interviews. I as the researcher/interviewer was a native speaker of English, with only a basic proficiency in Thai. When preparing to interview Thai teachers, I knew that although they were expert speakers of English, there would certainly be more abstract or personal dimensions which would come more easily when construed in Thai rather than English. However, to conduct these interviews in Thai would require the services of an interpreter; and it was difficult to see how this could be arranged without loss of face. Moreover, I was not sure where I might find someone locally whose L2 proficiency exceeded that of my participants. I made the best of things, therefore, by staying with English and attempting to couch interviews in the most supportive and culturallysensitive ways as possible, as well as by mailing teachers ahead of time with planned interview questions.

Data analysis Data analysis has been described by Miles and Huberman (1994) as consisting of three processes of reduction, display, and the drawing of conclusions, with the latter requiring classification and transformation. In this study, these

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various processes did not occur in a linear fashion, but rather, took place recursively and spirally throughout data collection and analysis. Moreover, these were processes which were noted to happen unconsciously as well as consciously, acknowledgement of which is sometimes under-represented.

Lesson observation All Thai language spoken by teachers was transcribed and translated into English by Thai research assistants. Selected parts of lessons where teachers spoke in English were transcribed by me, and the remainder summarised. Audio-tapes, lesson transcriptions and field notes were searched for patterns of pedagogy, initially to investigate teachers’ use of L1 and L2, and also more broadly, to identify emergent points of interest. The initial analysis of lesson observation data was done through categorising teacher behaviour by pedagogic function according to L1 and L2 use. Attempts were then made to see whether the patterns identified could be related to existing patterns and descriptors. A good ‘fit’ was not found, and so, new frameworks were created. These are illustrated in the chapters dealing with Pedagogy (Part 2). But it also emerged that in every class, there was data which related not only to Pedagogy, but also to individual processes of language learning, and which had implications for teachers’ professional roles. These two domains were categorised as Personal (Part 3) and Professional (Part 4), and form the remainder of the analysis. In each lesson, various episodes were selected for micro-analysis. ‘Episode’ here does not refer to a teacher-delineated part of a lesson (Lemke, 1990), but to an extract chosen by the researcher for its analytical value. Thus an extract has no demarked pedagogic or rhetorical function per se. These are brief ‘moments’ of a lesson, with no single micro-analysis exceeding three minutes in time. Selection of extracts was made on the basis of either their typicality or their atypicality. That is, sometimes it was found valuable to establish what was a frequent or salient pattern of pedagogy or language use, and at other times, the point of interest was a departure from the norm.

Teacher interview Set 1: 2002 Nine hours of interview data was transcribed and searched in an iterative fashion for themes of salience or significance to the teachers or to me. The first set of interviews resulted in a total of 59 themes, which naturally formed five thematic categories or macro-themes. Set 2: 2004 At this stage, preliminary analysis of both interviews and lessons had been completed, and I had formed clear ideas of the lines of enquiry I wished

38

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to pursue. Topics for the second round of interview were thus focused on these issues. A further nine hours of data was recorded and transcribed from this second round of interviews.

Part 3: Scenes from Classes As noted earlier there were nine teachers who were observed and interviewed. In later chapters I will discuss various themes that emerged from these teachers’ classes and interviews – themes which relate to Pedagogy, the Personal, and the Professional. But here I would like to provide an ethnographic flavour of this South East Asian context – through scenes taken from three classes, which are linked to comments by teachers at interview. I first give some visual information which I hope will aid in describing the atmosphere I experienced. There are commonalities to be found within educational settings across the globe; but it is the differences which can often interest – and sometimes attract – outsiders to a culture. As noted earlier, respect for teachers has been traditionally high in Asia, and generally remains so to this day. In this Thai setting, all teachers were formally attired and immaculately presented. They remained standing or seated, but did not approach students’ desks, nor raise their voices in excitement or annoyance. Students were dressed according to the university’s requirements – white shirt/blouse, and dark blue pants/skirt – and seated with ease, poise and apparent harmony. When students spoke, they did so in a quiet, reserved manner; nearly always in response to a teacher’s question. The relationship observed between Thai teachers and their students was different from what I am used to seeing in Western contexts: it combined warmth with formality; care with distance. Material events were seen to embody respect: I observed that when students left their seats and passed the teacher’s desk to write on the blackboard, each student made a wai. This is a gesture which in that form and usage is confined to Thailand, Laos and Cambodia (though originating from the Indian ‘namaste’). Palms are placed together at chest level, raised towards the head at the same time that the head is lowered, and accompanied by a bow (male) or curtsey (female). It is a mark of respect initiated from junior to senior, and reciprocated unless, as here, the status differential is great. For Westerners, it is sometimes difficult to appreciate the degree of respect held in Asia for older people, authority, and education: as noted above, to be a teacher in Thailand accords highly privileged status and commensurate responsibility. The ambience of lessons in Thailand was different too – sometimes animated, usually calm, but never, in this study, unsettling, provocative, nor, to borrow Canagarajah’s

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terms, ‘hyperactive’ or ‘supervoluble’ (1999: 191). Students nearly always appeared to be attentive, ‘present’, ‘grounded’ in their learning, even when, as can happen in education everywhere, materials or their delivery were lacklustre. Scenes from three of the nine classes will now be presented. Selection is made in order to show the range of EFL teaching undertaken at this site. Thus we have General English and English-Major classes, from different faculties, linked to skills–focus as set out below: Teacher Ajarn Laksana Dr Chai Dr Bua

Faculty Nursing IT & Engineering Humanities

Type of class General English General English English-Major

Focus Listening, speaking, pron. Reading, writing Reading, writing

I start with an overview of each lesson and its objectives; illustrate some key features by presenting brief extracts of classroom talk; and discuss the teacher’s own views as expressed to me at interview. Ajarn Laksana Faculty Nursing Type of class General English Focus Listening, speaking, pronunciation Textbook Journeys: Listening and Speaking, by Adams and Setsuko (2001) Unit 12: How much is it? The lesson was held in the university’s language laboratory, a room which was exceptional in being both carpeted and air-conditioned. Listening and speaking equipment was set up at individual desks; both teacher and students made use of headphones. Students were quietly attentive throughout the lesson. The teacher was a senior lecturer with a calm presence and resonant voice. The lesson consisted of the teacher guiding students through the Adams and Setsuko textbook. Of all the classes observed, this was one of only two whose primary concern was with oral language development – listening and speaking – and the only one which included a focus on pronunciation. While listening activities are included in most EFL textbooks, it is in my experience frequently the case that EFL teachers omit those parts, sometimes because of time or lack of perceived importance, or because equipment is not available. Speaking in terms of pair work activity is similarly unutilised, sometimes because class sizes are perceived to preclude the activity, sometimes because pair work itself is not seen as valuable by the teacher, and sometimes

40

Par t 1: Over v iew

because spoken language is not prioritised within the curriculum as a whole (Wongsothorn et al., 2003). The sub-skill of Pronunciation is often neglected in both ESL and EFL (Derwing, 2010; Szpyra-Kozłowska, 2015), and in many Asian contexts tends to be taught indirectly, that is, by exposure to the teacher’s performance of English, with only occasional corrections being made in class. But in the present lesson, the teacher gave explicit pronunciation instruction in areas of linking and final consonant clusters, with some standard ‘listen and repeat’ drills. Audio-recordings were focused on intensively, assisted by the high quality sound available through language lab equipment. The teacher also focused upon grammar and vocabulary according to the textbook, which covered the following points: • • •

word form/class: countable vs uncountable nouns; articles; classifiers (infrequent in English, but a focus of the textbook, as in ‘a pair of trousers’).

It is quite striking to compare the kind of communication achieved when this teacher used L2 (English) alone (Extract 3.1), and when she drew upon both L1 and L2 (Extracts 3.2, 3.3). First we look at L2 alone. Here in Extract 3.1, towards the start of the lesson, L2 was used extensively to provide variations of the IRF protocol of Teacher Initiate; Student Respond; Teacher Feedback (Cullen, 2002). The extract starts with a simple IR (lines 1–2); proceeds to IRF with an ‘echo’ F-move in line 5 and a ‘recast’ F-move in line 7); then returns to IR (lines 7–8). (For transcription conventions, see Appendix B.)

Extract 3.1: Ajarn Laksana 1

T:

2 3 4 5

Ss: T: Ss: T:

6 7

Ss: T:

8

Ss:

where is the speaker now. where is the speaker now. she, is she at home? no. is she at school? no. no. where is she. she is at shop. she is at the shop. what is she doing at the shop. talking to her friend? no.

I R I R F

I R

F

I R

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Clearly, this kind of IRF is neither linguistically nor intellectually stimulating. On the other hand, it can provide secure and graduated support to learners with limited L2 competence. A key issue for teachers must be how often, and at what length, to make use of this discourse pattern. Second, we see how the teacher drew upon both L1 and L2 in what I will call a Bilingual Blend (Extract 3.2). Ajarn Laksana was following the textbook focus on classifiers; and by drawing upon L1 could localise the grammar point, and relate it to these Nursing students’ own needs:

Extract 3.2: Ajarn Laksana 1 T: 2 T:

could you give me the name of some more items that we call ‘a pair of’? we have got socks, jeans, gloves, what else. ิ พยาบาล คุณตอ้ งใชอ้ ะไรในการทาํ แผล a pair คะ คุณเป็ นนิ สต you are nurses. what do you need when you clean a wound. a pair of what.

Similarly, the teacher used L1 in order to draw attention to the meaning of a delexical verb in English (Extract 3.3):

Extract 3.3: Ajarn Laksana 1

T:

2 3

T: T:

4

T:

ดูสาํ นวนตรงนี้ ดว้ ยนะคะ see this idiom here ‘Can I have a look?’ หมายความวา่ ไง what does this mean? ้ หน่อย ขอดูใชไ่ หมคะ ขอดูเสื้อตัวนัน [I] would like to see, right?

These brief extracts give a first taste of the different roles and functions of L1 and L2 use found in the study. At our first interview, Ajarn Laksana said that she aims to use English as much as possible in class, and finds that she can do so for most of the time with English-Major students, but for much less of the time with General English students such as those seen in the present lesson. While she was keen to maximise the use of L2 in the lesson, however, Ajarn Laksana commented that if English was used beyond the students’ capacity to follow, the following situation could occur: At the end of the class, they [students] came to the teacher and asked: ‘What did you say, teacher? I did not understand anything at all’.

42

Par t 1: Over v iew

And commented that: If the situation is like this, is it worth speaking all English through the period? Or is it better if we use some L1 to understand some difficult points? Ajarn Laksana confirmed that she finds it valuable to use L1 in the teaching of L2 vocabulary, grammar and usage, and gave examples in each field as follows.

Vocabulary The Thai word sabaii สบาย is usually translated as ‘healthy’, as in the ้ meaning How are you? or literally ‘health good everyday greeting สบายดีมัย? [question marker]’. Sabaii can also mean ‘comfortable’, in the sense of ‘airy’ or well-ventilated, for example. And it can be used figuratively, to describe a non-demanding event: ‘How was the exam?’ โอ้ สบาย ‘Oh, easy’. Ajarn Laksana pointed to the difficulty of illustrating these shades of meaning if confined to the target language of English. She also highlighted the prime importance of broad vocabulary development for EFL – a view with which many teachers will concur: When I asked students about their problem in learning English, the first thing most students tell me is ‘I don’t know vocabulary … I can’t translate’.

Grammar According to Ajarn Laksana, L1 can again enable the teacher to make direct contrasts between the less familiar L2, and what is already known to students from the grammar of their first language. Ajarn Laksana gave the example of English answers to negative questions, as in: You’re not coming? No, I’m not. But in Thai and many Asian languages: You’re not coming? Yes [I’m not].

Usage Ajarn Laksana pointed out that the same Thai expression ไมเ่ ป็ นไร mai pen rai is used to cover three different meanings in English: you’re welcome; never

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mind; and it doesn’t matter. Unless the difference is explained to students, they may, for example, substitute it doesn’t matter, when you’re welcome would be appropriate. Overall, Ajarn Laksana concluded that the use of L1 enables teachers to communicate with accuracy, check understanding and save time. However, she stressed that these uses of L1 were only to be seen as a support and not a replacement for striving to achieve maximum use of English: We try not to translate at the beginning. We try to use some other ways first … at the end of the difficult point we can translate. As the teacher points out, in order to maximise learning, it is crucial to stretch students as far as possible in L2. But L2 alone cannot access students’ full learning potential, for it is only translation which allows for students to draw upon the intellectual richness of their first language in developing their understanding of the relatively limited second. Dr Chai Faculty Type of class Focus Topic

IT General English Writing: procedural genre Writing a recipe for Papaya Salad (som tam)

The aim of this lesson was for students to write a procedural genre in the form of a recipe in English for the traditional Thai dish of Papaya Salad (som tam). It was intended to be a foundation for later academic writing in this field. I present the lesson here with the proviso that it is an unusual one, in that it draws upon concrete, experiential learning. Personally, I had not seen this kind of learning before in an Asian EFL context, and I believe that it would rarely be found, particularly at tertiary level. Dr Chai, who was in his 20s, was both relaxed and enthusiastic in his teaching, and spoke at a fast pace, nearly always in Thai. The teacher’s use of English appeared mainly at the beginning of the lesson in his task instructions. For the remainder of the lesson, Thai was nearly always used in student group-work, in student questions and in the teacher’s replies, with English reserved for the written task. The lesson was shaped as follows. Students were divided into three large groups, and one member from each was required to leave the classroom. A cook from the local market had been invited to the class, who then demonstrated how to make the Papaya Salad dish. Each group made notes, and later

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reconstructed these to form a recipe in English. When each group’s representative returned to the classroom, s/he was to make the dish according to her/ his group’s created recipe; and the cook would judge its quality. I will now comment in more detail on each of these stages of the lesson.

Stage 1: Demonstration and note-making I was interested to observe the introduction into the class of an outsider. In this case, the visitor was a market vendor, who would not normally have received education beyond primary level, and would be regarded as of low social status. On the other hand, the vendor was a guest, an older woman, and moreover an expert in the making of Papaya Salad. The tenor I observed was both warm and respectful.

Stage 2: Group work to write up the recipe This activity produced a great deal of purposeful language on the part of students – in Thai – as they pooled their notes in order to construct a set of instructions in English. The teacher encouraged students to ask him or the vendor for assistance. In fact, they did check with him on numerous occasions for the English vocabulary (Extract 3.4).

Extract 3.4: Dr Chai เฮ้ ไมต s.a.u.c.e. ไง ่ อ้ งใส ่ salt. fish แลว้ ก็ sauce ที่แปลวา่ No, it’s not salt. Fish and sauce. ‘Sauce’ is spelled s.a.u.c.e., right? Sauce มะเขือเทศอะไรยังงี้ It’s the same spelling as in ‘tomato sauce’. A secondary discourse was that of the teacher’s guidance in the task (Extract 3.5):

Extract 3.5: Dr Chai หรื อวา่ เขียนเป็ น 1–2–3 อยา่ งนี้ หรื อเปลา่ หรื อวา่ เป็ น เป็ นโดยบรรทัดไปเลย Do you want to write in steps 1–2–3? Or just write them line by line? During the group activity, I observed that a few students turned their attention to reading books or newspapers, and that the teacher made no response. It appeared that not every student embraced the different approach of this class. Of interest to me was students’ apparent understanding that to withdraw in this way would be allowed by the teacher. Similar behaviour – though unusual in Thailand – has been reported by Ratkam (2012), and this was a point I was keen to follow up at interview.

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Stage 3: Group representatives make Papaya Salad according to their group’s recipe The cook was guided by the teacher as to how she should judge the dishes (Extract 3.6):

Extract 3.6: Dr Chai แลว้ พี่จดอันนด ่ ว้ ยนะครับ แลว้ ใหค ้ ะแนนไดเ้ ปลา่ พี่ Could you write down mistakes and give them points? จับเวลาดว้ ยนะครับ กลุม ่ ไหนทาํ เสร็จ แลว้ ก็อร่อยดว้ ยนะ And check the timing, which group is going to finish first, and which dish is tasty? The cook was supportive in her feedback to students, but did point out errors of ingredients missed or wrongly balanced. An indicated earlier, this lesson was an unusual one. In his first interview, Dr Chai explained that he was midway through his PhD project, which was being supervised in the US on the topic of social-constructivist approaches to teaching writing. The lesson which I observed was a part of that research project, which provides an interesting intertextuality across continents and cultures: from Thailand (Dr Chai’s continuing research), to the US (his research supervision), to Australia (my own data analysis) and back to Thailand (where Dr Chai and I discussed the data further). Dr Chai told me that he explicitly followed Vygotskian constructivist learning principles. He aimed to lead students to new understanding by setting tasks which were within their Zone of Proximal Development, and which created the need for peer input and feedback. Dr Chai also noted that an associated goal of the lesson was socio-affective, whereby students would learn to cooperate by undertaking a task which could not succeed without collaboration. As noted above, I observed that most – but not all – students appeared to have enjoyed the lesson and remained on task. However, given the unconventional nature of the activity, I wondered how students might perceive its educational value, and I asked Dr Chai whether some students could think that ‘If it’s not serious, it’s not learning’. Dr Chai agreed that indeed Sometimes study has to be serious … not fun all the time. He also acknowledged that not all students responded well, and reported in a light-hearted way that in another class where he was employing similar methods, some students had said to him Ajarn [teacher], stop it … just TEACH us!

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As to the few students mentioned earlier who had not paid attention in the current lesson, Dr Chai explained why he did not intervene: I am not that direct. I don’t want to scold them … I don’t want to make the class stressful. If they don’t pay attention, maybe they have something else [which] distracts them … Maybe I am too kind. I asked whether Dr Chai’s approach was often found at university level. He responded that it was not: Many ajarn [teachers] here, they’re so strict, you know, and the students complain to me, and he commented on his own style of teaching: It’s my nature – I’m not the type who forces people. Dr Chai feels that it has been important to try and better engage students in their learning, for English is generally perceived by General English students just as part of the curriculum, and thus students don’t pay much attention. Dr Chai further related that he had become interested in the social constructivist theories of Vygotsky and Bruner because of his own ideas on how language is learnt by social means. He commented that although in Thailand we don’t have these theories, we know anyway. I interpret this latter comment as a view of theory being answerable to practice; that is, where one is not privileged over the other. It is possible to view any learning experience in terms of its cognitive, socio-affective and linguistic dimensions. In this lesson, it is clear that in accordance with his stated perspective on the social nature of learning, Dr Chai had favoured cognitive and socio-affective over linguistic. In regard to the use of L1 (Thai) to produce L2 (English) written texts, I believe that for local EFL teachers in Asia, this practice will often be a familiar one (as indeed for foreign language teachers in the West – see Scott & De La Fuente, 2008). On the other hand, for ESL teachers whose experience has been confined to English-speaking countries, it may appear puzzling. But here again, local goals of L2 learning may differ, and it is important to note to note that the EFL curriculum in general tends to focus upon the written word, with relatively little attention given to students’ spoken L2 development. Dr Bua Faculty Type of class Focus Topic

Humanities English-major Reading Passages Two, by Richards and Sandy (2000a) Unit 12 Getting down to business

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47

The first two classes were comprised of General English students; with the third, we move to English-Major students. I would suggest that it is usually the level of students’ L2 proficiency which is the biggest single factor in determining how we teach a second language. A related factor in EFL contexts (and for that matter in Western FLT contexts) is whether students are required to study by the government, or whether they have elected to do so. It is this latter group to which we now turn, and where we will see major differences in students’ capacity, performance, and attitude. As indicated earlier, such students had achieved entry to the programme goal by highly competitive examination. Consequently, they were considered by their teachers to be both motivated and proficient; and according to my observations, this was an accurate view. The atmosphere in the present class was very positive; the teacher was dynamic and friendly. I observed a solidarity between teacher and students, and an enthusiasm for learning. In the first extract below, the teacher was working through the set textbook by Richards and Sandy (2000a), focusing on a passage dealing with temperaments and personality types. In order to localise and personalise key concepts, the teacher had provided pictures of five people in turn and asked students to describe them in English. The pictures were of Ms Machaa, a Thai pop singer; Mr Jesetaporn, a Thai actor; Mr Taksin, the Thai Prime Minister; George W. Bush; and Osama Bin Laden. An interaction relating to George W. Bush is focused upon here (Extract 3.7).

Extract 3.7: Dr Bua 1 2 3

T: S: T:

4

T:

5 6 7 8 9 10

S: T: S: T: Ss: T:

((holds up picture of G.W. Bush)) George W. Bush. oh right, he is the President of America. class okay… ((teacher briefly recounted incident of Bush having recently choked on a pretzel – 10 seconds)) okay class, can you think of any words that you know you want to use to describe him? what is that? can you – can you think of any? absolutely. pardon? absolutely. absolutely, um. can I ask what do you mean by ‘absolutely’? (L) (L) what is that. uh – you mean ‘extreme’? is that, is that what you mean? no, what is ‘absolutely’ here.

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11 12

Ss: T:

13

S:

14

T:

15

T:

16

T:

((inaudible)) uh – huh, yes, just try – if you – you can speak Thai also if you want. pardon? เด็ดขาด decisive (L) detkart is that? she want to say detkart. what is that. very what? very detkart. (L) you know that right okay uhuh – what is that? ((name of best student)), can you get, get get the word? not yet, right, coming soon, okay, uhuh. and he’s detkart, one thing, and what else.

The use of the term เด็ดขาด detkart was notable. When, as indicated above, one student offered the adverb ‘absolutely’ rather than the adjective required by the context, the teacher first suggested an alternative in English: ‘extreme’. Perceiving that this was either not understood by the student, or did not accord with the student’s intended meaning, the teacher directed students to discuss the meaning, using Thai if they wished. The offering then by students of the Thai word เด็ดขาด detkart was accepted by the teacher as a description of G.W. Bush. The term itself does not have a direct equivalent in English, but may be glossed as ‘decisive’, ‘firm’, ‘strong-willed’, ‘absolute’ or ‘dictatorial’. Teacher input in the lesson as a whole was approximately 90% in English and 10% Thai. The use of English as the main medium of instruction for this class appeared to be appropriate both to students’ proficiency level and to the requirements of the task. I was struck by the breadth and depth of L2 use in this lesson, where the teacher successfully drew upon familiar content as a basis for less familiar language, ‘talking around’ ‘key vocabulary and concepts through definition, paraphrase, exemplification, and leading questions. Additional use of English in the lesson as a whole was to give instructions, to elicit oral responses from students, and to offer encouragement. Although the teacher pushed students as far as possible to engage in the L2, Thai was used as shown above to check meanings of difficult words and to accept or expand upon students’ responses, as well as to duplicate instructions already given in English. At our first interview, Dr Bua confirmed her approach to teaching new language items as follows: • •

give English input first; some students will understand, others only partly; tell students a definition given in an English-English dictionary;

A Case Study in Thail and

• •

49

create personal or local exemplification; switch to Thai in order to check/confirm understanding.

Dr Bua noted that once she perceived that students were having problems in comprehending, she would not proceed: I don’t see the point in going on and not making sense. She would then move into Thai so that everyone has the same understanding. Dr Bua referred to her own experience as a learner of English. When her teachers used English only, she had benefited from it, but friends who were weaker learned nothing and wasted time. Dr Bua also noted the use of Thai for supporting a good relationship with students, for example, through jokes. When students worked in groups, Dr Bua would prefer them to use English, but she accepts that they do not feel competent to do so. In this case, she feels (as had other colleagues) that the value of group work lies in students being able to assist each other in their learning and fulfil the task which usually consisted of producing a written L2 text. By the time of our second interview, Dr Bua had assumed the headship of the English Department, and was able to give an overview of continuing staff discussions on the issue of how best to balance L1 and L2 in the classroom. She reported that a major issue for staff was how to achieve an aim of maximum L2 exposure and yet manage to complete the common syllabus on time. This again may be a vital issue for teachers working in EFL and FLT contexts, but less familiar to those working as ESL teachers. The students observed were highly motivated, as demonstrated by their enthusiasm to engage with the teacher and to complete tasks. Given the positive attributes of this class, then, I was surprised that group work activity was, as noted, conducted exclusively in Thai. When the teacher set up the activity, she did offer students the choice of using Thai or English – but Thai was universally selected. Why? My view is because the aim of the task was to produce a written text in English, rather than to develop oral communication skill. If the teacher had instructed these advanced-level students to operate within L2 rather than L1 for their group task, I believe that they would have done so (and this has been my own experience when teaching similar EFL classes). However, the outcomes would have been different. Group work conducted in the target language offers gains (L2 ‘languaging’, or comprehensible ‘output’ on the part of students, through which their overall, and specifically the spoken L2 would develop), but also losses (limited cognitive engagement and metalinguistic discussion afforded, thereby reducing the likely quality of a written text in English). This practice provides an insight into local EFL goals, and distinguishes these again from the broader spoken focus which is characteristic of ELT in many Western settings. ****

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Overall, what struck me most clearly when observing these classes was the embedded nature of L2 learning. We can see this both linguistically, in the subtle and swift blending of L1 and L2 across all three scenes presented; and culturally, with references to students’ own Nursing domain, to a local dish, and to an ‘untranslatable’ descriptor of a foreign (US) leader. That is: there was a linguaculture which was shared by teachers and students; and the second language was accommodated into this existing knowledge. The accommodation happened sometimes by direct translation, and sometimes by teacher explanation. But the key feature was, as noted, that all teachers were bilingual, and in a position to use their linguistic and cultural knowledge to predict and respond to what might be familiar, less familiar, or challenging to their students.

Part 2 Pedagogic

4

Bilingual Teacher Talk

In the previous chapter, I introduced the Thai context, and presented extracts from lessons and interviews which gave a picture of EFL in this Asian context. In the present chapter, I wish to look more closely at classroom data, focusing on what I will call bilingual teacher talk − that is, at the ways in which teachers use both L1 and L2 in class. The purpose of this chapter is to construct a descriptive framework: the categories identified are intended to be of value to teachers and teacher-educators in the analysis of bilingual classroom practices. I started my analysis by going through transcripts and field notes for each lesson observed, and attempting to categorise teacher talk. By comparing one lesson to the next, it became possible to identify distinct communicative functions across the whole group. Various attempts were then made to relate these functions to existing patterns and descriptors, which included the IRF sequence (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975); Christie’s (following Bernstein’s) pedagogic and regulatory registers (1994); the Communicative Orientation of second Language Teaching scheme (COLT – Allen et al., 1984; Spada & Fröhlich, 1995); the latter’s development into the Functional Language Alternation Analysis of Teacher Talk framework (FLAATT – S.H. Kim, 2001; S.H. Kim & Elder, 2005); Canagarajah’s (1995) identification of 17 micro functions of teacher L1 use; and a 12-part scheme offered by Üstünel and Seedhouse (2005). However, the categories used by existing studies were found to be better suited to a particular context (EFL, ESL, FLT); to be lacking a bilingual dimension; or to focus at a level of detail which although appropriate for research purposes, would be difficult for teachers to apply to an analysis of their practice. With regard to the IRF, for example, it was found that while Step 1 (Initiate) seemed familiar in these Thai classrooms, Step 2 (Respond) was sometimes absent, and Step 3 (Feedback) could either be absent, or more commonly was of a different (bilingual) nature and (nonevaluative) function. The FLAATT, on the other hand appears at first to be well suited to the analysis of bilingual lessons. But its level of detail is 53

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greater than that sought in the present study (30 ‘teaching acts’, or functions, in S.H. Kim [2001], reduced to 16 in a later paper by S.H. Kim and Elder [2005]). Moreover, existing analyses of classroom discourse have generally aimed to document the whole range of functions, using categories such as pedagogic, linguistic, interpersonal, and management. But my interest in the present chapter is confined to the first of these − the pedagogic function. So, through a process of comparing and refining, the patterns initially identified in the present data have been reduced to six, manageable, functions of teacher talk. These six functions will first be outlined briefly, and then exemplified by classroom extracts. Function 1, Animating, refers to the teacher’s oral rendering of written English, nearly always taken from the textbook. This activity gives students − particularly in low-tech environments − an opportunity to hear how written L2 actually sounds. The term is borrowed from Goffman (1974), although used more narrowly here. Function 2, Translating, occurs when the teacher translates words or phrases: generally from L2 into L1, and occasionally, vice versa. Function 3, Explaining, can occur in L1 or L2: principally when the teacher provides information about the grammar, meaning, usage or culture of the L2 − explaining what is; but also when s/he gives instructions in the classroom − explaining what to do. Function 4, Creating, refers to teacher use of L2 for the purpose of meaning-based communication. It is connected to the notion of ‘comprehensible input’ which has retained widespread popularity among language teachers. But the new term Creating has been coined for two reasons. First, there are serious concerns about the ‘input’ metaphor itself and its ‘learner as machine’ basis (R. Ellis, 2001). And secondly, the new term seeks to capture something of the richness of a teacher’s ‘message abundancy’ (Gibbons, 2003), which is here taken to include strategies such as paraphrase, exemplification, personalisation and localisation, the creative dimensions of which are sometimes underestimated. Functions 5 and 6 are termed Prompting and Dialoguing. Both refer to the teacher’s initiative to engage students in whole-class response, and build on the classic distinction between two types of teacher-student interaction. The first is medium-oriented, focusing on language itself, here termed Prompting; and the second is message-oriented, concerned with the exchange of meaning, here termed Dialoguing. The following sections will explore in more detail how these functions of teacher talk were seen to play out in the present study.

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(1) Animating Animating was a staple function observed to occur across all classes in the study when teachers read aloud to students parts of the prescribed monolingual textbooks. Exemplification of this function is provided in the context of the second function, Translating (see Extract 4.1 below). It might be noted that in providing a local performance of a global textbook, this function affirms the teacher as an expert ‘channeller’ of L2, and thus represents a key professional accomplishment. In my experience of working with teachers in hundreds of EFL classes in Asia, I have often noted the pride with which L2 Animating is displayed, as well as the anxiety sometimes produced by such performance.

(2) Translating A fundamental and frequent use of L1 in this study was the direct translation of written English text into spoken Thai. The following example comes from Dr Patcharin’s class of non-major students (Extract 4.1). The lesson was based on the set text Passages 1 (Richards & Sandy, 1998: 93), Unit 10: ‘The Art of Complaining’. (Words from the textbook appear in single inverted commas.)

Extract 4.1: Translating and Animating: Dr Patcharin 1 2 3 4

‘You have the right to be on a flight’. คือเคา้ ตอ้ งได้ไปเที่ยวบิน this means that you must be able to be on the flight. ‘You have booked’. ที่ ไดบ ๊ เอาไว้ ้ ุค you have booked.

animate translate    

Here is seen a protocol which was common across the study as a whole: the association of Animating and Translating. That is, the teacher would read aloud the written L2 text, and translate it by word or phrase into L1 − a technique also called ‘English-annotation’ in Lin’s studies of Hong Kong English classrooms (e.g. 1996). Through it, a link is provided between the written L2, which is animated − rendered orally − by the teacher, and then translated – conveyed into L1. Translating has been traditionally discouraged in ELT,

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principally because it is seen to reduce students’ attention to and experience of L2. But on the other hand, the practice may be seen to provide, as here, speedy, accurate understanding of L2 − and presumably on the part of all students. For this reason, and for many others, I strongly support the reinstatement of translation as the ‘Fifth Skill’ of language learning. Further rationale, and ideas for teaching and learning, may be found in Guy Cook’s important book on the topic (2010).

(3) Explaining Explaining by the teacher can take two forms: (a) giving information about the sounds, grammar, meaning, usage or culture of the L2 − explaining what is; or (b) giving instructions in the classroom − explaining what to do.

(a) Explaining what is This type could occur in L1 or L2, or more commonly, as a blend of the two languages. Extract (4.2) below is taken from Ajarn Laksana’s beginner class of (General English) Nursing students. The teacher had introduced the topic in English, and then entered into some brief drilling of vocabulary items. When she came to the phrase ‘a box of chocolates’, students did not successfully link the final sound of the second word to the beginning of the third, which occasioned the following explanation in Thai:

Extract 4.2: Explaining in L1: Ajarn Laksana 1 มี linking ดว้ ยนะคะ อยา่ ลืมนะ there is linking too, don’t forget. don’t forget. ่ มโยงกัน ้ ตน 2 ถา้ คาํ หน้าจบดว้ ยพยัญชนะ คาํ หลังขึน ้ ดว้ ยสระ เวลาออกเสียง เราจะตอ้ งลากเสียงเชือ if the first word ends with a consonant sound, and the next word begins with a vowel sound, when we pronounce these words, we must join the sounds together. 3 เราเรี ยกวา่ linking sound นะคะ we call it ‘linking sound’, okay? ้ box ลงทา้ ยดว้ ย x ใชม ๊ ้ ตอ้ งอา่ นวา่ 4 เพราะฉะนัน of ขึ้นตน ่ ั ยคะ ้ ดว้ ยสระ เพราะฉะนัน so, ‘box’ ends with ‘x’, right. ‘of’ begins with a vowel. so we must pronounce: 5 a box of อีกที ‘a box of’ once again.

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The next two extracts come from Dr Patcharin’s Intermediate lesson, where the teacher is explicating the textbook passage. In the first (4.3), the L1 is used to provide lexical information; in the second (4.4), grammatical:

Extract 4.3: Explaining in L1 and L2: Dr Patcharin (i) 1 Resolve หมายความวา่ อะไรคะ มาจากคาํ วา่ solve. ้ 2 Resolve อืม หมายความวา่ จะไดผ ่ ั ยคะ ้ ลใชม Resolve what does this word mean? It derives from solve. Resolve mean to get a result, right?

Extract 4.4: Explaining in L1 and L2: Dr Patcharin (ii) 1 ‘Complaint’. You add a ‘t’ after complain. 2 เติมตัว t ลงไปเป็น noun. It’s a noun หมายถึงอะไรคะ คาร ้ ง หรือการตอ่ วา่ หรือคาร ้ งนะคะ ํ อ ํ อ Add ‘t’ [to ‘complain’] then it becomes a noun. It’s a noun, which means what? A petition or a complaint or a petition, right? In the following, more extended extract (4.5), it may be seen how explaining of grammar occurs mainly in L2 [lines 2, 5, 7, 8, 11], and is supported at one point by L1 [line 10], as well as by direct translation [lines 3 and 6].

Extract 4.5: Explaining in L1 and L2: Dr Patcharin (iii)

1

2 3 4 5 6 7

‘Complaining works because companies don’t want dissatisfied customers’. ‘Complaining works’. in this case it means ไดผ ้ ล it works – uh – ‘because companies don’t want dissatisfied customers’. dissatisfied. satisfied. พอใจ satisfied you add ‘dis’. ‘dis’ means ‘not’, right? not. ‘dissatisfied’ means ‘not satisfied’ customers.

animate translate explain L1/L2 

L2   L2  L2

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8 ‘Not sure you can do it?’ 9 ((means)) if you are not sure you can do it. that’s the complete sentence. 10 ประโยคที่เต็มก็คอ ื the complete sentence is: 11 if you are not sure you can-uh, if you are not sure you can do it.

animate translate explain L1/L2  L2 L1 L2

Explaining can also draw upon the medium of L2 exclusively. Such a choice clearly offers students greater exposure to the target language and takes place in a meaningful context of ‘classroom language work’. On the other hand, there are limitations inherent in talking about L2 exclusively through the medium of L2, as is well known to any monolingual ESL teacher. An extract follows from Dr Bua’s English-major class, where she was discussing a textbook passage relating to ‘Temperament’.

Extract 4.6: Explaining in L2: Dr Bua 1 T:

what is ‘temperament’. I would like you to try this definition. I take it from London – what is that! ((teacher corrects herself)) the Longman Dictionary. 2 T: okay ((teacher reads out the definition)) they say that, they say that ‘Temperament is the basic nature of human beings’, right, ‘the way you react to a situation’. 3 T: what is that. I, uh, according to this, it’s ‘basic nature’ – you understand ‘basic nature’? no? what is that, ‘nature’? 4 S1: earthly 5 T: ah – (L) kind of, but, but, (L) um, okay, let me try this. 6 T: for example, if you talk about your temperament, okay, 7 Ss: ((murmuring)) 8 T: class, listen to me please. okay. 9 T: temperament. for example, I would like to probably elaborate on that. 10 T: for example, I think it’s also, it’s a distinctive way that you, you know, the way that, you know, you think you will react. 11 T: for example, for example, I myself I can tell myself that I am quite impulsive. impulsive. do you know the word impulsive?

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12 T: no? yes? ((name of best student)) what is that. impulsive, impulsive. 13 Ss: ((no response)) 14 T: for example, I sometimes act immediate. I want to act quickly, so I did not think very carefully. so I kind of describe myself like uh impulsive, sometimes. 15 T: and also, probably I am a person with that kind of temperament. Clearly, explaining abstract nouns such as ‘temperament’ is difficult if done through the medium of L2. In the two-minute extract shown above, the teacher chose to base her explanation upon a monolingual English dictionary, which led to a focus on ‘basic nature’. Students did not appear to know ‘basic’, and gave a reasonable English synonym for ‘nature’ − ‘earthly’ − but one which did not fit this context. The teacher then attempted to personalise the discourse by referring to an aspect of her own ‘temperament’ or ‘basic nature’ − that of being ‘impulsive’. Unfortunately, this term was also not known to students. As the lesson progressed, the teacher spent a further 1.5 minutes using only English in order to guide students towards the meaning of ‘temperament’. Finally, Dr Bua asked for the meaning in Thai, and students correctly produced the Thai term: สภาวะอารมณ์ (sapawa arom). The extract is an interesting example of the relative merits of L1 and L2 use. On the one hand, the teacher took 3.5 minutes of L2 to arrive at an understanding which could have been achieved within seconds through the use of L1. On the other hand, those 3.5 minutes provided meaningful input in L2 which was relevant to the lesson, and challenging for students’ learning. Perhaps we see here an optimum balance between L2 exposure and L1 accuracy?

(b) Explaining what to do As indicated above, there are two types of explaining: (a) explaining what is − as just illustrated; and (b) explaining what to do, concerned with classroom instructions. Two examples of the latter are presented. The first (4.7) occurs at the start of Ajarn Murray’s class of post-beginner IT and Engineering students.

Extract 4.7: Explaining what to do: Ajarn Murray 1

ok. today, we’ll start looking at Unit 7, page 37. Unit 7, page 37.

2

now [3] please open your books … quickly, page 37. quickly, I’m not going to use the books now, ok? I’m not going to use the books now. I just want you to look at the picture.

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The second extract, again at a juncture of a lesson, occurred in Ajarn Laksana’s post-beginner class of Nursing students (4.8).

Extract 4.8: Explaining what to do: Ajarn Laksana 1

if you want to buy the … where are you going to buy them. do you know the place?

2

please turn back to page 45 to see places on the page and try to let me know where you can buy these items.

3

ok. look at page 45 for a few minutes.

4

and try to see for [sic] the places where we can buy these items, or these things.

This use of L2 to convey simple classroom instructions can, as here, provide ready exposure and practice. On the other hand, if the task is complex or abstract, then exclusive use of L2 can pose significant problems in explanation. Many teachers will have experienced the use of textbooks which are written exclusively in the L2, and where the instructions are more difficult to understand than the exercises themselves.

(4) Creating As indicated above, the term ‘Creating’ refers to the teacher’s use of L2 for meaning-based communication. Most lessons observed in this study consisted of accessing written texts taken from prescribed textbooks by animating them, and then explaining and/or translating. But creating goes further to engage students in L2 which expands the content and associated language beyond what is given by the textbook. This ‘created’ L2 is thus both newly heard and solely in the oral mode. How then does teachers’ Creating work to effectively convey meanings in L2? It may be seen to do so through choice of content (semantics) and language (lexico-grammar). In terms of content, the teacher can build upon what s/he knows of learners’ current knowledge. This was evident in scenes presented in the previous chapter: Dr Bua, for example, referred to familiar Asian, American and Arab world figures as a warm-up for the textbook topic concerning personality types; Dr Chai used son-tam making to scaffold an instructional written genre; Ajarn Laksana related the lesson’s grammar point to the domain of her nursing

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students. In terms of language, the Creating function can provide both message simplification and message abundancy, thus including repetition, grammatical and lexical simplification, redundancy, paraphrase and circumlocution. We look at four extracts in more detail. The first (4.9) is taken from Ajarn Nanda’s class of advanced English-major students, where a reading passage had touched on the notion of ‘social issues’.

Extract 4.9: Creating: Ajarn Nanda 1

so what are the possible sides of the issue?

2

should we move the คลังแสง munitions dump from Pak Ton to another place?

3

not to be with the community? right ok.

4

so this is the issue.

5

or should we move the community? ((humorous voice; students laugh)) should we move the คลังแสง munitions dump, or should we move the community, okay? so this is the issue.

Here, the teacher may be seen to draw on students’ existing semantic field in her presentation of fresh L2 input and to thereby embed the target language within students’ cultural knowledge. This is a competence which is uniquely available to a bilingual/bicultural teacher. The notion of linguaculture, introduced in Chapter 2, is valuable here: we see how L2 linguaculture can be accessed through the teacher’s use of L1 linguaculture as a base. Next, a moment from Ajarn Laksana’s post-beginner class (Extract 4.10), which was triggered by the appearance of the term ‘best-seller’ in the monolingual English textbook.

Extract 4.10: Creating: Ajarn Laksana 1

‘Best-seller’ ….

2

at the moment Harry Potter is the best-seller book.

3

everybody knows and reads it.

4

the shop-owner got a lot of money from selling this book.

5

so, Harry Potter is the best-seller at the moment.

6

understand this?

It may be seen that here we have a semantic thread which is formed by lexical devices of simple repetition, endophoric reference and substitution

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around the new lexical item of ‘best seller’. As is characteristic of spoken language, there is congruence achieved through processes/actions being represented by verbs, participants/objects by nouns, and cohesive links by conjunctions (Halliday, 1985a). Further transparency of meaning is achieved by the teacher’s selection of highly frequent lexis which is accessible to a range of learners. Moreover, her text is less grammatically intricate than expected in everyday spoken English, and in that respect less cognitively demanding: the number of clause complexes is low, with the two instances limited to simple parataxis (making use of the conjunctions ‘and’ and ‘so’) rather than hypotaxis. The cumulative effect of these features is to create transparency of meaning, and to thereby enhance opportunities for students to comprehend and learn. The features of classroom discourse identified above may also be seen in the following extract from Ajarn Murray’s class (4.11). Here the teacher is eliciting from students the names of rooms and using their responses to spin out a commentary in L2. One student offered the word ‘attic’, though such a room would rarely be found in Thailand itself.

Extract 4.11: Creating: Ajarn Murray (i) 1 T: in Australia, most people don’t have an attic either. it’s the same. [as Thailand] 2 T: but some places in Europe, and many places in the north of America, and in Canada, have attics. often, people use the attic for storage, okay? to keep things in. okay? 3 T: or sometimes, um, it can be a bedroom for the children, because it’s quite small, and the children don’t need a high room, right? so sometimes, people use it for a bedroom for the children. It may be seen again that the teacher draws upon accessible content (the differences in architecture which relate to climate); and again, that language is made transparent through simplification, repetition and paraphrase. Clause complexes are similarly all paratactic (‘but’, ‘and’, ‘because’, ‘so’)? and there is enhanced informality through the use of fillers ‘okay?’ and ‘right?’ An interesting point of creating occurred later in Ajarn Murray’s lesson where the teacher probably misjudged his students’ knowledge. (Although, as it may be recalled, this teacher was Anglo-Australian, expert in Thai as well as English, and had lived in Thailand for 10 years.) Here, the teacher was responding to a student’s use of the word ‘flat’ for accommodation (4.12).

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Extract 4.12: Creating: Ajarn Murray (ii) 1 T: ok most British people will use the word ‘flat’. 2 T: most American people use the word ‘apartment’ or ‘condominium’, okay? 3 T: condominium feels a little bit high class. that’s about all really. I think really they’re the same thing. 4 T: yeah – the British are a bit flat, right? – so they use the word flat 5 Ss: ((no response)) 6 T: they’re not good fun like Australians. 7 Ss: ((no response)) The extract again illustrates the teacher’s capacity to create content which is relevant to the Thai students’ perspective: learners are often interested in both linguistic and cultural differences between the US and the UK. However, the attempt at humour through word-play did not appear to succeed − for students exhibited neither smiling nor laughter in my observation of that moment. In Thai, the English ‘flat’ (noun), and ‘flat’ (adjective) are represented, as one might expect, by different words. Thus I would suggest that students did not respond because they were unaware of the polysemy of the English word, and therefore of the teacher’s play upon it. (Additionally, at a discursive level, students may not have been aware of the friendly rivalry which is sometimes seen between Australia and Britain.) The extract is of interest because it signifies that when Creating L2, even expert and bicultural teachers may not always succeed in achieving comprehensibility. As well as teachers’ choice of content, and choice of language, I will mention one other resource drawn upon in the Creating of L2: what we may call extra-linguistic semiosis. This was seen, for example, in the use of images of world leaders, or the experience of som tam-making. In nearly all other instances, such semiosis was confined to prescribed commercial textbooks and their visual illustrations. The remaining two major functions of teacher talk established in this data – Prompting, and Dialoguing − describe occasions where the teacher directly solicits responses from students. The degree of teacher control varies, with students’ responses either closely guided, as in the case of prompting; or more openly sought, as in dialoguing. As noted above, the two functions may also be distinguished as medium-oriented (prompting) and messageoriented (dialoguing).

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(5) Prompting Three examples are given, followed by a brief discussion. The first below is from Ajarn Murray’s class (4.13).

Extract 4.13: Prompting: Ajarn Murray 1 T:

there’s one more room outside your house, that I think you MIGHT have. Where you keep your car. 2 Ss: garage 3 T: garage. Good. How do you spell ‘garage’ 4 Ss: g, a, r, a, g, e. 5 T: very good. garage. good. 6 T: do you have a garage at your house? do you have a garage? 7 Ss: ((students murmur)) 8 T: yeah, you do. yeah? no. aah – you just park your car outside. okay. right. okay, good. good. The second extract is taken from Dr Bua’s English-major class (4.14).

Extract 4.14: Prompting: Dr Bua 1 2 3 4

T: T: Ss: T: Ss: T:

((showing picture of Osama Bin Laden)) but what about this guy. what about him, what about him. evil. what is that, what is that. evil. evil you think – oh wow! okay. what else. can you think of. ah what is his name. Ss: Osama Bin Laden. T: Osama bin Laden okay. and he is name like number one terrorist right now, right, okay? the most wanted, right. okay?

The third (4.15) is taken from Ajarn Nanda’s advanced English-major class on Critical Reading.

Extract 4.15: Prompting: Ajarn Nanda 1 2

T: the author’s ‘point of view’. what does it mean. what is it about. S: the author’s feeling.

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65

T: the author’s ?… feeling. the author’s opinions, the author’s ?… attitude. everything, okay? ((?… indicates high rising tone + pause))

The Prompting examples illustrated above suggest that there was value in having the expert language user provide cues of a simple nature which could guide learners just enough and not too much in their development of L2. Such interaction in the form of IRF has been the subject of significant criticism for many years (e.g. Barnes, 1976; Lemke, 1990), principally on grounds of its superficiality. However, in the language class, there may be times, as here, when depth of cognition may not be desirable – if it distracts students from achieving transparency of comprehension, or accuracy in production of targeted language (van Lier, 1996: 152). Instead, as we see above, prompting can provide a predictable framework which enables students to proceed securely in the L2. There was also an interesting variation of prompting, which occurred when teachers posed questions to their students, but without allowing for a response. In that respect, the teacher’s discourse is more like monologue than dialogue. However, there may be more happening here than meets the eye/ear. For although the teacher’s questions are rhetorical in effect, they do serve to provide a discourse where students are positioned as interlocutors who are ‘primed’ to respond. A similar practice has been identified in some classrooms of Hong Kong (Scollon, 1999) and China (Tsui, 1996; Xie, 2011).

(6) Dialoguing Both prompting and dialoguing draw students into the picture: in both, the teacher initiates, and students respond. But when prompting, the teacher has an expectation of what students’ answers will be − her focus is usually upon a point of language/form. In dialoguing, on the other hand, students’ responses can be less predictable and more open: the focus is more upon the message itself. While dialogic teaching has been a mainstay of Western educational theory and to some extent practice for some time (Alexander, 2008), its use by teachers in this study was limited. I will give examples from four classes.

(i) Dr Patcharin The extract below (4.16) follows a textbook exercise which had required students to put into order four nominated stages of culture shock (Tourism,

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Emptiness, Recovery, Acceptance). The teacher then asked students to report their answers in L2, and sought to elicit student explanation of their answers. We pick up the lesson in the last part of the report-back.

Extract 4.16: Dialoguing: Dr Patcharin 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

T: S: T: S: T: S: T: S: T: S: T: S:

OK, the acceptance stage. OK. how will you feel in this stage. you don’t want to go back home. you don’t want to go back home- why not! why not! uh?! ((inaudible to teacher and researcher)) why – why! ((laughs)) why don’t you want to go back home! ((inaudible to teacher and researcher)) uh? จะพูดวา่ ไงดี what should I say? [L] OK! say something [L] ((inaudible to teacher and researcher)) what? ประมาณวา่ ยังไงดี เอาภาษาไทยกอ่ นละกันนะคะ ้ ไดแ ยอมรับในสิง่ ที่แตกตา่ งภายในประเทศนัน ้ ลว้ ก็จะแบบวา่ เอออยูไ่ ด้ how should I say it. in Thai first then. accept the differences between the countries, then er it’s okay to live there. 14 T: OK. now you are familiar with the- with the environment. with the people, right? you get to know the people. you know the way around, you - you can do everything by yourself now. OK. you seem to enjoy living there, right? This extract was of note because until this point, a major part of the lesson had been the teacher’s Prompting of students to display their knowledge of the descriptors provided in the textbook. At this point, however, a student chose to respond ‘authentically’, inasmuch as her response did not mirror the written text under study, and presumably it therefore represented the student’s own voice. The teacher sounded amazed, with her voice increasing in volume and in pitch range (rare occurrences in Thai classrooms). It took six or seven fairly quickly repeated questions in order to elicit a reason from the student. This exchange represented a rare moment when a student offered a personal view to which the teacher responded spontaneously. The following extracts are similarly interpreted as Dialoguing because of their two-way communication and their focus on message rather than on form.

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(ii) Dr Bua Dr Bua’s lesson on Temperament had started with a warm-up activity describing popular Thai figures, including Ms Machaa, a pop singer, and Mr Jesetaporn, an actor (see earlier scene presented in Chapter 3). Here, the teacher is guiding students to think beyond physical descriptors to more challenging ways of describing people. Three brief extracts are shown, in sequence (4.17, 4.18, 4.19).

Extract 4.17: Dialoguing: Dr Bua (i) 1

T: Ms Machaa. okay. this ((the description so far)) is all about physical description, right. physical description.

2

T: what about, I’d like you to give me,

3

T: you know her, right?

4

T: so can you give me some description of her? – emotional aspects or attributes?

5

S1: lonely.

6

T: wow! (L) do you think she is lonely? What else. She is lonely.

7

T: why! Why do you think so.

8

S2: her ex-husband.

9

T: her ex-husband. She divorced her ex-husband.

10

T: what else?

11

T: ((name of student)) said she’s kind of a lonely person.

The teacher then introduced a comparison between Ms Machaa and Mr Jetsaporn.

Extract 4.18: Dialoguing: Dr Bua (ii) 1

T:

2

S3: they are human beings ((not ironic))

3

T:

okay, right, they are human beings. definitely right.

4

T:

and they are popular. Thai people know them.

do you think they have something in common?

And a little later, after discussing gender, the teacher returned to Ms Machaa.

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Extract 4.19: Dialoguing: Dr Bua (iii) 1

T:

2

S3: she is half Thai and another nationality.

3

T:

4

S4: German?

5

T:

what else. and you know exactly? do you know exactly what another half of her is? German? so I don’t know either

In these extracts it may be noted that students are drawing upon their world knowledge and expressing personal opinions. It may also be noted that although this kind of teacher talk is described as ‘dialoguing’, in fact, overt contributions on the part of students in this study were brief. This was true of the study as a whole: in nearly all instances, students’ L2 responses to teachers were found to be one word, phrase or clause in length. In this respect, my findings are similar to those of Pennington, who reported in her study of EL learners in Hong Kong that no student produced an utterance of longer than a single clause (1995: 97). Similarly brief student L2 responses are reported in studies of FL classrooms undertaken by Butzkamm (1997) and Morgan (2003). While verbal contributions on the part of Thai students were indeed brief, however, I describe this process as interaction for two reasons. First, all natural language is shaped with an interpersonal dimension, as described by Halliday’s ‘tenor’ (1985b), and Bakhtin’s ‘addressivity’ (1986). Moreover, in the above extracts, students are positioned by their teacher as respondents, albeit with varying degrees of freedom in their response. Thus the function/ form of the teacher’s language moves from declarative/statement to interrogative/question. Additionally, studies of inner speech and private speech have indicated that although in many cultural contexts, students’ overt responses are minimal, and are considered to be acceptably so, such students may nevertheless mentally interact ‘intensively’ with the teacher’s words (Jin & Cortazzi, 1998: 104; see also Ohta, 2001; de Guerrero, 2004, 2005; Bao, 2014).

(iii) Ajarn Nanda The following two extracts show how a dialoguing ‘moment’ may appear only briefly, but may serve to engage students in the lesson. The teacher was working through a short story entitled ‘To an old friend’, in which a middle-aged woman relates her chance meeting with a man who had been a close childhood friend. The woman’s account is regretful of what might have been. In the first extract, Ajarn Nanda links the written text to

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students’ present classroom environment (lines 6–8). We see here how animating, explaining, prompting and dialoguing can co-exist (4.20).

Extract 4.20: Dialoguing: Ajarn Nanda (i)

1 T:

((reading from written passage)) ‘You looked at your watch and said you had an appointment to meet your fianćee.’ 2 T: so this is the question in number 4. paragraph 5 and 7: 3 T: ‘What is the meaning of each paragraph?’ 4 T: so ‘you looked at your watch’. 5 T: what’s the implied meaning. 6 T: if in this class, you look at your watch very often? 7 Ss: you want to go 7 T: so, it mean that you want to leave, right? 8 T: maybe you have an appointment, or maybe you get bored – such a boring, tiring lesson.

ani- exp- pro- diamate lain mpt logue ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Later in the story, the main character asked the other about his former ‘dream’ or ambition in life. The teacher turned to the class and asked each student to nominate their own ‘dream’.

Extract 4.21: Dialoguing – Ajarn Nanda (ii) ani- exp- pro- diamate lain mpt logue 1 T:

((reading from written passage)) ‘Have you become the astronaut of your dreams?’ 2 T: first of all you have to think about the denotative meaning – the lexical meaning. 3 T: so what is the meaning of ‘astronaut’. 4 S1: a spaceman who goes out. 5 S2: who travels in the space. 6 T: when you were young, what’s your dream. you dreamt to be? ((addressing the class))

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

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The teacher’s animating and prompting again was enlivened by a dialoguing question. The latter initiated a process which then engaged students in producing a range of spoken responses in L2, as well as their teacher in building upon these responses. The exchange was accompanied by chatter and some laughter, as students revealed their dreams to be married, an English teacher, or an artist, for example.

(iv) Dr Patcharin It was noted earlier in the discussion about prompting that a common pattern in the classes observed was for the teacher to apparently pose a question, but answer it herself. Those ‘rhetorical’ questions served, as indicated earlier, to position students as potential responders without their actually having to produce L2 in a whole-class setting. There was another pattern however, also commonly met, where the teacher asked questions, expected a response, but did not get one. The following example is one of the more extended examples observed, and may be regarded as a ‘failed attempt’ at dialoguing. It occurred as Dr Patcharin was working through a written L2 passage in the textbook Passages 1 (Richards & Sandy, 1998: 94) with her General English students. Imagine you have just learned that you will be moving abroad in a few months. How would you feel? Answer these questions. (1) Would you be afraid of moving to a foreign country? (2) Why or why not? How would you prepare for culture shock? (Richards & Sandy, 1998: 94)

Extract 4.22: Dialoguing: Dr Patcharin

1

T:

2 3

T:

4

T:

5

T:

‘Would you be afraid of moving to a foreign country?’ [2] now, would you be afraid of moving to a foreign country? [6] would you like to answer that question: ‘Would you be afraid of moving to a foreign country?’? เขา้ ใจคาํ วา่ ‘afraid of’ มัย้ do you understand ‘afraid of’? to be afraid of. what does it mean ‘afraid of’, to be afraid of. uh?

ani- tran- diamate slate logue ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓

Bilingual Teacher Talk

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Ss: กลัว afraid. T: okay กลัว afraid. T: would you be afraid of moving to a foreign country? [2] T: yes or no. [1] T: uh? [0.5] Ss: yes. T: yes. why. [2] T: why. [5] T: why. [4] T: mm? [3] T: why. [2] T: who would like to answer the question. [4] T: now, if you cannot answer the question and if you don’t want to answer the question, okay move further.

71

ani- tran- diamate slate logue ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Out of 13 dialoguing moves by the teacher, only two achieved a response by students. As an observer of the lesson, I was struck by both the number of repetitions which the teacher made of her initial question, and the length of wait-time she created. Overall in the 65 second segment, 35 seconds consisted of silence. In my experience of Western contexts, I have rarely seen either phenomenon occurring to this degree, unless teacher or students were demonstrating intransigence of some kind. But here, I did not read this as being the case. It was my judgement in observing the lesson that students had ‘understood’ the teacher’s L2 questions. Thus we may say that the meaning of the teacher’s question was not the cause of students’ difficulty. Rather, the problem may be identified as students’ reticence to create a dialoguing response on call. I interpret their non-response as follows. First there was the immediate context of the dialoguing move. Up to that point, the lesson had followed a structure of animating/translating, with some prompting: when a dialoguing type question was posed by the textbook, it may have appeared as an abrupt departure from the prior discourse. But secondly, the question related to personal feelings, which in Thai culture would not normally be expressed in a public domain such as a classroom. However, when I asked Dr Patcharin about this point at our first interview, she gave a different explanation. Looking instead to the bigger picture

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of EFL in Thailand. Dr Patcharin indicated that she experienced students’ lack of response as unexceptional − usual, even, and pointed to students being non-English major, whom she regarded as having been forced to learn and hard to motivate. Further, Dr Patcharin indicated that she wanted me as a Westerner to understand that different patterns L2 use are likely to occur when Thais are taught by a Thai teacher or by an English native speaker. Her comments as follow were highly ‘spoken’ and I have therefore glossed most pronoun references. The phrase ajarn farang means Western or Caucasian teachers. If we [Thai students] are among Thai, we tend to know that I [Thai student] have to show respect to you [Thai lecturers], so I have to behave myself. But for ajarn farang, okay, they [Thai students] say that ‘I don’t have to behave myself’, and therefore students tend to speak up more. Dr Patcharin also made the significant comment that it is more natural to speak a language to a native-speaker, but if we speak English amongst Thai, it is not natural. In other words, Thai students’ reticence to speak English in class was attributed to an artificiality in the Thai teacher-Thai student situation, and one which would no longer pertain if the teacher was an English speaker. Another teacher, Ajarn Rajavadee, had made a related comparison between Thai and Western classrooms: In Western culture, probably if students don’t want to share ideas it means they don’t like you. They don’t like the way you teach; they get bored with the class. But here, it doesn’t mean that. I believe that these insights can be of great value to Western teachers working in Eastern contexts: they show why certain EFL classroom practices may be more easily achieved by monolingual native speakers (e.g. dialoguing) and others by local bilingual speakers (e.g. explaining or translating).

Flow of bilingual discourse The six pedagogic functions which have been described above are intended to make sense of the complex production of teacher talk. But while these functions are clearly distinguishable, I would like to emphasis the seamless bilingual blending which was seen to occur. The teacher may translate, and then prompt whole class interaction; s/he may explain in L1 or L2; then return to animate the L2 written text, with all this happening in a matter of seconds.

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Several examples have already demonstrated how functions operate together; the following extract (4.23) provides a more extended sample. It is taken from Dr Patcharin’s class drawn upon earlier, and is based upon the following written paragraph from Passages 1 called ‘Getting what you are entitled to’. Stand up for your rights You have the right to receive a product you ordered in a timely manner. With airlines, you have the right to be on a flight you’ve booked. Always demand satisfaction when your consumer rights are violated. (Richards & Sandy, 1998: 93)

Extract 4.23: Flow of bilingual discourse: Dr Patcharin ani- tran- exp- promate slate lain mpt [L2] [L1] [L2] [L1] 1 ‘You have the right to receive a product you ordered in a timely manner’. uh? ‘Timely manner’.

✓

✓

2 หมายความวา่ อะไรคะ what does it mean. 3 ทันเวลา ในเวลาที่พอเหมาะ in time. in the appropriate time.

✓

4 when you pay, you will get your … product.

✓

5 if you are- sorry! ((teacher makes mistake))

✓

6 ‘You have the right’. uh ‘You have the right to receive a product you ordered’.

✓

✓

7 ‘You order’. ‘You order’ modifies ‘a product’. ✓

8 สินคา้ ที่เราสั ง่ a product you ordered 9 ‘in a timely manner’. 10 ‘with airlines’,

✓ ✓ ✓

11 for example, ‘with airlines’ 12 สายการบิน airlines

✓

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ani- tran- exp- promate slate lain mpt [L2] [L1] [L2] [L1] 13 uhh ‘You have the right to be on a flight’ er ‘to be on a flight’.

✓

14 ‘You have booked’. uh-huh.

✓ ✓

15 ‘You have booked’, modify ‘a flight’. 16 ‘You have the right to be on a flight’. 17 คือเคา้ ตอ้ งได้ ไปเที่ยวบิน this means that you must be able to be on the flight

✓

18 ‘You have booked’. ๊ เอาไว้ you have been able to book. 19 ทีไ่ ดบ ้ ุค

✓

20 ‘Always demand satisfaction’. ((repeated))

✓

✓

✓

✓

21 คืออะไรคะ what does this mean. 22 ‘Demand’ แปลวา่ ? ‘Demand’ means? 23 ตอ้ งการนะคะ ตอ้ งการ เราตอ้ งแสดงออกถึงความตอ้ งการของเรา need, right? need. we must express our need… 24 …when you pay.

✓ ✓

✓

It may be seen that the predominant teaching sequence consists of Animating supported by both Translating and Explaining. Prompting appears in the above text in its rhetorical form, where the teacher posed several questions, appeared to anticipate no reply, and answered them herself. The alternation of languages and functions displayed in this extract demonstrates a seamlessness in the bilingual discourse constructed by this teacher, and one which was apparent across the data collected in the study as a whole. **** I have presented here a bilingual framework of teacher talk consisting of six pedagogic functions of Animating, Translating, Explaining, Creating, Prompting and Dialoguing which afford different kinds of learning

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opportunities specifically relevant to the bilingual classes experienced by many EFL (and FLT) students as follows. Animating enables language learners to listen to L2 which is already ‘anchored’ in writing. This cross-modal experience may be considered unremarkable in ESL contexts, but in many EFL contexts, particularly those with low/unreliable technology, the teacher’s capacity to ‘re-channel’ is vital for students’ familiarisation with the foreign tongue, and represents a key attribute of the teacher’s professional status. Translating is clearly a pedagogic function through which communication can soar, with meaning rapidly and accurately conveyed, and a different classroom tenor afforded. It is ironic indeed that this use of L1 is precisely what has been dismissed by ESL orthodoxy. Explaining is of course a fundamental part of teaching. When conducted in L1, Explaining can be achieved in a swift, accurate and inclusive manner. When conducted in L2, it can additionally provide message-oriented teacher talk. Creating happens when teachers draw upon resources of semantics and lexicogrammar in order to modify and contextualise L2 communication in ways that will render it more transparent and accessible to learners. Prompting and Dialoguing both offer means for the teacher to bring student responses into the picture. Overall, the analysis shows how bilingual teacher talk represented a default pedagogy in this Asian EFL context. Through a functional analysis, it has been determined that judicious use of L1 in this context is both principled – there are readily discernible causes and effects of teacher language choice; and productive – the L1 serves as a resource for embedding new forms and meanings from L2. As noted earlier, in supporting the use of L1 in ELT, we do not wish to reduce the opportunity for maximum L2 use; and this is a view repeated without exception by writers who have reconsidered the role of L1 (e.g. V. Cook, 2001; Macaro, 2001; Butzkamm & Caldwell, 2009). However, here are bilingual learners, with bilingual teachers: clearly, the first linguaculture already imbues the hearts and minds of both. It we pretend that this is not so, we will ignore this resource for learning which is profound, catalytic and unique.

5 Intercultural and Intertextual Dimensions

In the previous chapter, I analysed bilingual teacher talk: looking at what functions were achieved through, for example, Translating, or Prompting. In the present chapter, I take an intercultural perspective on pedagogy, exploring how teachers cross languages and cultures in their EFL classes. I begin with the work of Bakhtin (1981), who described all language as heteroglossic, that is, composed of ‘many tongues’ in the form of voices, registers, discourses. Thus: The word … is half someone else’s. It becomes one’s ‘own’ only when the speaker populates it with his own intentions, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. (Bakhtin, 1981: 294) And: At any moment … there are immense, boundless masses of forgotten contextual meanings, but at certain moments … they are recalled and invigorated in renewed form (in a new context). (Bakhtin, 1986: 170) What Bakhtin (1986) thus offered was a view of language which was opposed to the Saussurean split between ‘langue’ and ‘parole’ (Chomsky’s later ‘competence’ and ‘performance’); and which was opposed to any notion of language as ‘neutral medium’. On the contrary, as indicated above, Bakhtin saw every instance of language as deeply embedded in a particular speaker, moment, and context − a view which of course resonates with Hallidayan theories of language as social semiotic. For our purposes, Bakhtin presents an additional perspective on language which sees that words and ideas are constantly in evolution as they pass from one speaker to another, from one context to another − and in this case, from one linguaculture to another. 76

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Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia was developed into that of intertextuality by Kristeva, who asserted that: ‘any text is constructed of a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another’ (1966, 1980: 66). Since then, intertextuality is said to have become ‘one of the most commonly used and misused terms in contemporary critical vocabulary’ (Allen, 2000: 2). Here, I follow Kristeva’s early view of intertextuality: the idea that whenever we understand or produce language, we draw upon all our previous experiences of it. Or as Lemke explains: ‘the intertexts of a text are all the other texts that we use to make sense of it’ (1992: 259). These early discussions of heteroglossia and intertextuality provide fresh perspectives on a learner’s encounter with texts which are in that learner’s mother tongue. But what I do in this chapter is to apply the principles of intertextuality to second language texts. First, I note that there are two types of intertextual practices which are conventionally distinguished, here called explicit and implicit. Explicitly, we can draw upon past words either directly – for example by quoting, reciting or mimicking; or indirectly − for example, by summarising, paraphrasing or parodying. These explicit ‘intertexts’ may be culturally shared − e.g. ‘To be or not to be’; or ‘One small step for (a) man’; or ‘Yes, we can’. Alternatively, they may be personal to an individual. In my case, for example, the phrase ‘Is anyone passing the kitchen?’ has a particular ‘flavour’ because of its use in my childhood − but this flavour is unlikely to be shared in quite the same way by other people. Fairclough calls this explicit use of others’ words ‘manifest intertextuality’ (1992: 85). Implicit intertextuality draws upon past ideas rather than actual words. It is what Fairclough calls ‘interdiscursivity’ (1992: 85), referring to discourses, styles and genres. So, for example, as an English teacher I may write test questions based on questions I have previously written and also upon my experience of others’ test questions. And I know how to create the academic register of this book because of my experience of reading and writing other academic work. More broadly, I may understand a current Western media discourse around ‘Asylum Seekers’ on the basis of my experience of other discourses such as globalisation, mobility, and compassion. Intertextual analysis may be applied to any semiotic system, including for example image (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996), or music (Klein, 2005). It has become a mainstay of both literary and linguistic studies, but there, it is most often applied to monolingual written texts, with relatively little attention paid to intercultural intertextuality either in literature or in translation studies (for exceptions see, respectively, Fokkema, 2004; Schäffner, 2012). In ELT, the notion has rarely been applied to written texts – even those of EAP,

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according to Holmes (2004: 60); and spoken discourse in L2 classrooms has similarly been the focus of very few intertextual studies (Duff, 2004). Importantly, then, the majority of intertextual studies have been both written and monolingual. Discussion of spoken intertextuality across two languages is rare, and I believe that this perspective help us to see how two (or more) linguacultures connect in the minds of bilingual EFL learners. Thus in the following discussion, I draw upon the notion of intertextuality to illuminate teachers’ EFL classroom language under the following conditions: it is spoken rather than written, may be bilingual or monolingual, is conducted with students learning English as a foreign language, and is located in an Asian rather than Western setting. One other point: I have followed convention in distinguishing between the two forms of intertextuality − explicit (manifest) and implicit (interdiscursive). However, when we deal with bilingual texts, it may be argued that all are implicitly intertextual, in that we draw upon discourses/genres/styles from the first linguaculture to make sense of the second linguaculture. On the other hand, instances of explicit intertextuality may more readily be identifiable in a text. Thus all six extracts here are instances of implicit intertextuality, with three of these additionally demonstrating explicit intertextuality. Extracts 1 and 2 are monolingual; Extracts 3, 4, 5 and 6 are bilingual. 1 Dr Bua: ‘they love their countries’ This extract (5.1) is taken from Dr Bua’s English Major class, later in the same lesson cited in Chapter 4. It may be recalled that the topic was temperament and personality types.

Extract 5.1: Monolingual Intertextuality: Dr Bua 1 2 3 4 5

T:

do you think, ah, these two alike, are alike? ((George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden)) have something in common? Ss: yes T: yes, well what is that. ((laugh)) S1: they love their countries. T: yes, they love their countries. and some other traits, some other characteristics … mm probably they are very much different, right?

As I observed the conduct of the extract above, I was struck, as a Westerner, by the Thai teacher’s question about a possible commonality between a Western leader and an Arabic leader; and note that while she carefully accepted the student’s response they both love their countries, the teacher also observed that in other respects, the two leaders differed. This text may be seen to construe the world from a number of discourses operating within the

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Thai context (Fairclough’s interdiscursivity), and I will briefly set out my understanding of those which relate to religion and socio-politics. Firstly, as noted in Chapter 3, the Buddhist religion/philosophy occupies a significant visible and invisible part of the Thai social fabric. And in the lesson observed, I suggest that this ‘unspoken voice’, with its non-evangelical, antiviolent foundation, constructs a particular perspective upon the two ‘foreign’ leaders under discussion, each of whom avowedly embraced either Christianity or Islam, and through whose leadership a global struggle had formed. Secondly, Thai people frequently refer to the fact that their country alone in the South East Asian region was not colonised by Western powers through the adroit handling of first, Britain and France, and later, the US. Today, while the Thai media is generally pro-Western and pro-American, there is also, as in many parts of the world, some uneasiness at the extent and use of American power. A socio-political discourse of ‘Thai-ness’ enables in this context a solidarity between teacher and students which can observe and comment upon non-Thai ‘others’. In short, these discourses shared by a Thai teacher and her students were those which I might as a Western ‘outsider’ observe but not easily enter. And in this specific instance, because I had not contemplated such a commonality between George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden, I believe that my own world view was expanded by the Thai discourses which I met. 2. Ajarn Nanda: ‘How are you?’ In the previous chapter, we met another episode from this lesson which related to the short story ‘To an old friend’. Extract 5.2 below occurred when the female narrator reports her chance encounter with a formerly close friend: ‘You stopped and said: “how are you?”’ The teacher’s stated lesson aim was to explore what she called the ‘connotative meaning’ of various texts. Her goal at this point was to demonstrate that given the intensity of the unexpected meeting, the use of this everyday greeting revealed the man’s lack of interest in his companion. In the following lines, the teacher starts by discussing greetings across cultures.

Extract 5.2: Monolingual Intertextuality: Ajarn Nanda 1 2 3

T: T: T:

4

T:

so what does it mean, ‘how are you’. it is in Thai ‘where have you been, where are you going’ – right? do you need to give a correct answer? do you need to give a definite answer? do you have to show where you are going, where is your destination?

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Ss: T: T: T:

no. no! so it is like a social foundation. in English, ‘how are you’, it is very common. you can greet any people and people say ‘how are you’. and, and, do you need a definite answer? 9 Ss: no. 10 T: and when you greet you and say ‘how are you’ what is your response. 11 Ss: fine, thanks. 12 T: ((in chorus with students)) and, how, are, you. ((slowly)) (L) 13 T: And you suppose the other person will say ‘I’m, fine, thank, you’ ((slowly)) 14 T: so you don’t say: ‘I, am, very, well, … thank, you.’ 15 T: no, because if you do, the person you are talking to will disappear, you see … maybe in front of the building. Ajarn Nanda explains the passage entirely within L2, even producing the explicit Thai intertext ‘where have you been’ through the medium of English, rather than by quoting the Thai words. We see how interdiscursivity is also created in the teacher’s words. First, as she compares the English ‘how are you’ with the Thai ‘where have you been’ or ‘where are you going’, Ajarn Nanda points to discursive similarities across English and Thai, for in both languages, such greetings are a ‘formality’ which do not require a ‘truthful’ reply. Secondly, the teacher further embeds her explanation by positioning students as ‘knowers’ of what is appropriate in the foreign tongue. That is, presumably the formal answer of ‘I am very well, thank you’ is one which students would have learned early in their L2 study; but now, they are recognised as advanced learners who can make fun of that earlier learning. Here, the conventional greeting is ‘repopulated’ with new ‘intentions’ (Bakhtin, 1981: 294). I was surprised to see students and teacher join in an unprompted chorused utterance where each word was produced slowly and as in a list: ‘and, how, are, you’. It may be that this is a parody which had happened on previous occasions in class, and that even a third layer of intertextuality is being produced through that history. In both the above extracts, the notion of intertextuality provides a valuable tool for understanding how meaning flows across languages and cultures. That is, although both interactions take place entirely in L2, they are discursively embedded in L1. In the first case, the shared cultural understanding enabled a commentary on global affairs; and in the second, upon L2 itself. We now move to the analysis of bilingual texts.

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3. Ajarn Laksana: ‘best-seller’ The first six lines of this extract were previously analysed in Chapter 4 for their pedagogic function of ‘Creating’ in L2. Now I view a longer extract and from an intercultural perspective.

Extract 5.3: Bilingual Intertextuality: Ajarn Laksana 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

T: T: T: T: T: T: T: T: Ss: T:

11

S1:

12

T:

13

T:

ดูสคิ ะ let’s see! ‘best-seller’…. at the moment Harry Potter is the best-seller book. everybody knows and reads it. the shop-owner got a lot of money from selling this book. so, Harry Potter is the best-seller at the moment. understand this? เออ mmm. ((inaudible)) โอ้ ไมต ่ อ้ งแปล อา้ ถา้ แปล คุณจะแปลวา่ ยังไง oh no need to translate. ah – if [you/we] translate, what will you say. หนังสือที่ ขายดี book [which] sells the most. หนังสือที่ข่ ายดีท่ีสุด book [which] sells the most; the most of all. ภาษาไทย ขายดีเป็ นเทนาํ ้ เททา่ ไปหามานะ ทาํ ไมตอ้ งเทนาํ ้ เททา่ in the Thai language, ‘best seller’ is equivalent to [literally] ‘pour water, pour [at the] jetty’. [I would like you to] go find out why we say ‘pour water, pour at the jetty’.

This brief interaction is rich in intertextuality. It may be seen that Ajarn Laksana illustrated the idiom ‘best-seller’ by a reference to Harry Potter − an instance of ‘manifest intertextuality’ which draws upon globalised English language/culture. The teacher prompts students to produce the Thai meaning, which they provide correctly, and which the teacher echoes. Ajarn Laksana relates a Thai idiom to the English idiom: เทนํา้ เทท่า, tae nam, tae tha meaning literally ‘pour water, pour [at the] jetty’ − a second instance of manifest intertextuality, but this time within the Thai language/culture. The teacher then indicates that students should find out where the expression comes from. I was interested to discover myself that in this idiom, ท่า tha has no equivalent in English. It glosses ‘the place on the river where people go to wash and bathe’. The ‘closest’ English word is ‘jetty’, in its identifying of a spot where humans

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leave land for water. But here is a world of difference, with the full Thai idiom interpretable as ‘selling like the water we pour over ourselves when we bathe on the bank of the river’, or less literally, ‘sales pouring [down/away] like water’. In this ‘Harry Potter’ text, we can see that the teacher has translated an English idiom into Thai, and that she did so by incorporating another step – from idiomatic to congruent meaning – within each language. The effect of this interdiscursivity is both to clarify meaning and to enrich semantic links across L1 and L2, thereby serving to create depth in a learner’s processing of text and to improve retention in the memory (Nation, 1990). Thus Figure 5.1: (i)

best-seller

English

(ii)

book which sells the most

English

(iii)

หนังสือขายดี book which sells the most เทนาํ ้ เททา่ sales pouring like water

Thai

(iv)

Thai

idiomatic ↓ congruent ↓ congruent ↓ idiomatic

Figure 5.1 Four steps of bilingual intertextuality: Ajarn Laksana

Steps (iii) and (iv) above are also of interest because not only is the meaning of an English idiom clarified to Thai students, but the teacher can re-place the ‘other’ meaning into a Thai context which is semantically deep and culturally familiar. Such bilingual intertextuality provides a richness of semantic support which may be contrasted with the conventional monolingual provision of an English synonym or paraphrase to explain meaning, the latter process which would be limited to steps (i) and (ii) above. 4. Ajarn Murray: ‘Buddha-image’ As illustrated earlier, the teacher was eliciting from vocabulary related to rooms in dwellings. Students could provide an English term if it was known to them; if not, they offered Thai, which the teacher would then translate. At this point in the lesson, one student had suggested หอ ้ งพระ hong pra, a room which exists in Thai culture but not normally in Western culture. The phrase หอ้ งพระ hong pra translates literally as ‘room + Buddha image’, and the teacher responded as follows:

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Extract 5.4: Bilingual Intertextuality: Ajarn Murray (i) 1 S1: หอ้ งพระ hong pra 2 T: หอ้ งพระ hong pra 3 T: I don’t know how to say that in English either. maybe ‘Buddha Image room’, ‘room for the Buddha Image’? นะ [persuasive particle] 4 S2: monk room? When a second student offered Monk room as a possible translation into English, the teacher explained why this would not be appropriate, and continued in Thai and English (Extract 5.5):

Extract 5.5: Bilingual Intertextuality: Ajarn Murray (ii) 1 T: คือวา่ ไมม ่ ใี นวัฒนธรรมตะวันตก ไมม ่ ีหอ้ งพระโดยเฉพาะนะ ้ ก็ ไมไ่ ดม ื เฉพาะนะ ดังนัน ้ ีช่อ in Western culture there is no Buddha Image Room, so there is not a specific name for it. 2 T: Buddha Image Room. it sounds a bit funny. but I don’t think it’s a ‘monk’s room’. The teacher talk here draws upon both L1 and L2 in order to consider how to render meaning interdiscursively across language/cultures. In this way, students are acknowledged as ‘knowers’ of a shared culture, and are enabled to extend their prior knowledge into another culture. That is, the Buddha Image Room is a focal part of Thai people’s lives, where it is the custom to pray and meditate. Students might or might not have been aware that neither the room nor the custom/religion is a part of most Westerners’ lives. And so they were led to see how Thai culture may seem to non-Thais. As Ajarn Murray put it (IV1), Thai learners need to be able to: … disseminate knowledge of Thailand and Thai culture to people who don’t speak Thai … to talk about profoundly Thai things using English. The language of the above text again illustrates the semantic richness offered by bilingual intertextuality, this time in three rather than four steps (Figure 5.2). (i)

หอ้ งพระ hong pra

(ii)

Buddha Image Room [+ explanation in English] หอ้ งพระ hong pra [+ explanation in Thai about English]

(iii)

Figure 5.2 Three steps of bilingual intertextuality: Ajarn Murray

Thai ↓ English ↓ Thai

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Thus for these students there comes learning about intercultural practices, and learning about the nature of language. As indicated above, students have been guided beyond their existing semantics to a place where they are able to see the familiar anew − to see a part of their culture from an outsider’s perspective. And students’ metalinguistic understandings have been developed as the teacher talks about the challenges of transposing the meaning of a culturally-embedded term from one language to another. 5. Ajarn Murray: ‘hut’ The teacher at this point assisted students by providing a Thai term krathom as a prompt for the English word ‘hut’.

Extract 5.6: Bilingual Intertextuality: Ajarn Murray (iii) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

T: Ss: T: Ss: T: T: S1: T: S1: T:

12 13

T: T:

how about … กระทอ่ ม krathom hut. hut. good, how do you spell ‘hut’. h, u, t. very good. hut. good. do you live in a hut? yes. [L] oh, do you really, ((name of student))? sure! [L] ((ironic)) you’re lucky, because it’s nice and cool, and it’s easy to clean. อยูก่ ั บใคร ตุีกแก who do you live with. a gecko? is it a single … ตุก ๊ แก gecko? are there any other kinds of house you can think of?

Here will be considered the intertextual relations between krathom and ‘hut’ (Figure 5.3). I will examine first my own perception of these two terms, and then speculate as to their meaning for Thai students in this study and for their expatriate English teacher. (i)

กระทอ่ ม krathom

(ii)

hut

(iii)

commentary [using Thai discourses]

Thai ↓ English ↓ Thai and English

Figure 5.3 Three steps of bilingual intertextuality: Ajarn Murray (ii)

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To me as an English speaker originating from the UK, the visual image of a hut is a small, old, stone building in a rural setting. On the other hand, the Thai word กระทอ่ ม krathom gives an image of a traditional Thai wooden house on stilts with a veranda, shutters for windows, and cattle housed below. A krathom is to someone like me both environmentally sympathetic and aesthetically pleasing; but to Thai youth, such dwellings are unsophisticated, old-fashioned, and lower class. When Ajarn Murray was eliciting words for dwellings in English, and the students offered กระทอ่ ม krathom in the Thai language, he supplied the English translation of ‘hut’, but maintained a Thai rather than English semantic, as indicated by his response: with buffalos underneath … geckoes above. I wondered whether Ajarn Murray held a similar semantic flavour for ‘hut’ in English as I have described for myself above, and whether, in the context of this lesson, he nevertheless kept to students’ existing Thai cultural concept. When I suggested this to the teacher at our second interview, he confirmed my interpretation, indicating that for these learners at this level, Although I did have access to both images, I elected to stay with the Thai sense, and also noting that had this been an advanced class, he would have drawn upon the cultural difference to explain that an ‘English language’ image was more likely to be of a little stone hut in the mountains. Thus, through explicit intertextuality, the teacher moved from L1 to L2; and through implicit intertextuality, or interdiscursivity, he stayed within L1. The result was, simply, that students were experiencing talk about Thai culture through the medium of English. This decision had been consciously taken by the teacher, who believed, as noted above, that students need to be able to talk about profoundly Thai things using English. The significance of the teacher’s capacity to perceive something of what the students perceive (i.e. the culturallyinfluenced visual image) is profound: it could not be replicated by a monolingual teacher. Equally significant is the teacher’s bi-cultural perspective that what the students need is to first be able to talk about their own, rather than the foreign culture through the medium of L2. Such ability is a vital but neglected part of EFL, where international coursebooks often assume that learners’ L2 needs are confined to L2 culture (Canagarajah, 2003; Shin et al., 2011). 6. Ajarn Nanda: ‘Prime Minister’ The following extract occurred in Ajarn Nanda’s advanced English-major class in relation to a reading passage entitled ‘Fire at the Old Depot’. In order to localise this text, the teacher drew upon a related current issue in Thailand, which concerned protests by local residents against plans to build a Munitions Dump close to a populated area.

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Extract 5.7: Bilingual Intertextuality: Ajarn Nanda 1 2 3 4 5

and so what’s the comment from the present Prime Minister here? คิดใหมท ่ าํ ใหม่ [Proverb]: ‘think [something] new; do [something] new.’ he went there [R] and [R] he talked to the mob, and what did he say. yes. ‘I understand what’s the problem, I have got all the problems.’ ‘I won’t do anything that will …? cause the problem to …? the environment, to the communities, to the country.’

(It should be noted that the projected response of the Prime Minister is in fact ironic, as the latter was known for his tendency to speak rather than act.) In this text, we see how the teacher, by virtue of her shared language and culture with students, can embed L2 in existing L1 cultural knowledge. She does so by drawing upon students’ familiarity with a current political issue in Thailand, by identifying a salient characteristic of the Prime Minister, and by linking his stance to a familiar Thai proverb. The presence of L1 in the shape of a Thai proverb is small, but it retrieves a traditional linguistic/cultural artefact, serving both to recontextualise students’ learning experience and to provide a socio-affective connection among teacher and students. Figure 5.4 outlines four levels of intertextuality in this part of the lesson. The first is the text under study, ‘Fire at the Old Depot’ (English). Second is the teacher’s pedagogic voice (English). Third, the teacher articulates the voice of the Thai Prime Minister (English), and fourth, she projects the Prime Minister’s recitation of a proverb (Thai). (i)

‘Fire in the Old Depot’

(ii)

Teacher’s voice

(iii)

Prime Minister’s voice

(iv)

Proverb

English ↓ English ↓ English ↓ Thai

Figure 5.4 Four steps of bilingual intertextuality: Ajarn Nanda

It may be noted that the process of embedding takes the students back to their own linguaculture, thereby again deepening the semantic links

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between English and Thai, and enhancing learning. We also have the interesting intertextuality afforded by the Thai prime minister’s projected words being rendered both in Thai (through the proverb), and in English (through the teacher’s commentary): a richly intercultural moment. 7. Ajarn Laksana: ‘a blessing’ Figure 5.5 below offers another instance of language mediating culture which occurred not in the teaching of Ajarn Laksana’s lesson, but in the process of translating it for this project. (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

‘Have a nice day’. [teacher reads from the textbook] อวยพรกัน [translation by teacher] a blessing [mis-translation by translator] to wish someone well [correct translation]

English ↓ Thai ↓ English ↓ English

Figure 5.5 Intertextuality and translation

The English phrase ‘have a nice day’ had been construed as ‘a blessing’ in Thai by my translator. However, I was not sure if the translation was accurate − as the term ‘blessing’ in English of course carries a restricted religious meaning, whereas the phrase ‘have a nice day’ does not. Upon checking, I found that the teacher’s gloss in Thai had in fact been correctly given as the equivalent in English of ‘to wish someone well’. That is, the teacher, being an ‘advanced bicultural speaker’, had drawn upon an English intertextual meaning in her translation. However, the translator, being somewhat less experienced interculturally, had glossed a Thai intertextual meaning of ‘blessing’. This is a small moment in the discourse, but I believe revealing of the different stages of intertextuality which develop in the repertoires of even advanced L2 speakers. **** Intertextuality has been seen here in both manifest (explicit) and interdiscursive (implicit) forms, and across both monolingual and bilingual texts. An analysis of micro-texts such as the Harry Potter/Thai proverb and the Buddha Image was able provide a fresh view of the intercultural dimension of second

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language learning, and points to the semiotic restructuring which must accompany this process. Accordingly, the analysis confirms Bakhtin’s view of language as being full of meanings which ‘are recalled and invigorated in renewed form (in a new context)’ (1986: 170); as well as Halliday’s view of language and culture as co-constitutive − that there is an ‘essential dialectic relationship between language and the social semiotic systems within which language functions as a realisation’ (interviewed by Thibault, 1987: 617). This analysis also supports the psychological view of the bilingual learner proposed in V. Cook’s multi-competence model, where two (or more) languages act in synergy, and where, as indicated earlier, because ‘L2 users have L1 permanently present in their minds … all teaching activities are cross lingual’ (1992: 202). But here I have enhanced this psychological perspective with a cultural/linguistic one. And once again we are reminded how the learning of L2 is embedded in L1; how the new meanings of the target language flow into and expand the existing semantics of the first language. All in all, then, we see that an intercultural analysis of bilingual classroom discourse, conveyed here using the tool of intertextuality, can add a fresh perspective to the analysis of pedagogic function which was provided in the previous chapter. Indeed, to have one of these perspectives without the other would seriously limit our understanding of what happens when teacher and students engage in a foreign tongue.

6

Ten Principles of L1 Use

Scenes from Thai classrooms were presented in the previous three chapters: some 38 extracts were explored for their pedagogic and intercultural dimensions. Now I move to what teachers said about their pedagogy, and attempt to draw out actual principles for L1 classroom use in EFL. Why principles? Because to my knowledge, in the various literature dealing with L1 use, there is very little which draws out patterns or features to this level of abstraction in ways that can be of value to teachers. By searching the interview data obtained from teachers, and linking this to my own classroom observations, I identified seven broad principles for L1 use. Then I compared these principles with studies of other language classrooms, and found that there were an additional three principles which seemed to apply elsewhere, but not to this particular context. For a rounded picture, then, I will conclude this chapter by presenting all 10 principles as a framework for describing how L1 is used across a diversity of EFL classrooms.

Seven Principles of L1 Use I first present the principles identified in my data (Table 6.1). These fit into three broad categories used in mainstream educational theory: • • •

Cognitive, that is, relating to development of intellect, or thinking, or knowledge. Affective, relating to emotions and interpersonal relations. Pedagogic, relating to teaching and learning. I will describe each of these in turn. 89

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Table 6.1 Seven principles of L1 use in L2 teaching

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Categories

Principles

Use

Cognitive Affective

L2 knowledge Solidarity Collaboration Time-effectiveness Comprehensibility Inclusivity Contingency

To explain L2 vocabulary, grammar, usage, culture To facilitate easy, ‘natural’ interaction in class To develop team-work abilities To make good use of limited classroom time To ensure that meaning is conveyed successfully To ensure that all students can participate To respond to immediate teaching/learning needs

Pedagogic

(1) Cognitive: L2 knowledge Using L1 to explain L2 vocabulary, grammar, usage, culture As noted earlier, students’ L1 has been called our ‘most formidable cognitive resource’ when learning a second language (Swain & Lapkin, 2005: 81). In this study, every teacher made use of L1 in order to explain various formal, semantic and pragmatic features of L2. Rationale for such L1 use has been embraced by a number of commentators, and three large-scale studies identified this as the most common function of teachers’ L1 use (Crawford, 2004; Liu et al., 2004; Hall & G. Cook, 2013). At interview, all teachers stated that it was necessary to use L1 for this purpose. Ajarn Laksana, (IV1), as noted in Chapter 3, gave examples of how she uses L1 to explain English vocabulary, grammar and usage, pointing to the value of being able to contrast L1 and L2 forms and functions. Ajarn Somchay (IV1) noted that whenever we come to difficult vocabulary, I find it’s a waste of time to describe and explain it in English. And in regard to writing, he believes that students usually try to make logical sense in their L1, and then convert into English in their minds. This teacher had neatly put the question to me: If you study L2 in Australia, do you think in L1? The point is a powerful one: any of us who has learned a foreign language through formal instruction should recall how we first tried to make sense of a new ‘L2 world’ through our existing ‘L1 world’. The cognitive depth of L1 was similarly captured in a comment made by Dr Patcharin (IV1): if we would like to get down into the real meaning, the deep meaning, we can use Thai. Again we can see the embeddedness of learning: how any learning depends on our existing knowledge; how we experience the new from within the known. For we can ask: What is more familiar and comfortable than the mother tongue? And what feels more foreign than new language imperfectly understood?

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Ajarn Murray (IV1) noted that he always uses Thai to explain new language, both for grammar and lexis. He pointed out that if using only English to explain vocabulary, most teachers will give synonyms, and these in fact may mislead students. As he put it: the trouble is… how are they [the synonyms] different? In my own experience as a teacher educator, this is a point not often accepted by ESL teachers, although it has been documented for some time (e.g. George, 1978; Nation, 1990). Ajarn Murray believes that rather than offering potentially confusing synonyms in the target language, more accurate meaning can be provided by translating into L1. He noted that this was particularly the case when dealing with L2 words which are close in meaning. An example he gave was of distinguishing between stubborn and headstrong. While this first principle of L1 use, the ‘cognitive’ function, was nominated here in regard to teachers’ communication with students, it seems that we should also acknowledge how L1 operates as a cognitive tool for teachers themselves. For example, Ajarn Laksana (IV2) observed: As we are Thai teachers, we plan in Thai and try to produce in English. We cannot think in English in different situations like idioms or difficult patterns of language. This was a view also expressed by Ajarn Rajavadee (IV2): When explaining English text, even me, I have to translate and have to think what sentence to produce. Teachers’ comments remind us of the constraints and challenges that can be posed by L2 use – even for those with expert L2 proficiency who participated in the present study.

(2) Affective: Reduce anxiety, enhance solidarity Using L1 to facilitate easy, ‘natural’ interaction among students and teacher As noted earlier, one of the most common problems raised by language teachers is the reluctance of many students to speak the target language in class − and this is documented as widely in Western foreign language classrooms as in Eastern. There has been identified a particular kind of negative emotion associated with L2 learning: ‘foreign language anxiety’. The concept

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is related to ‘performance anxiety’ but distinguished from it. For the foreign tongue can produce a: disparity between the ‘true’ self as known by the language learner and the more limited self as can be presented at any given moment in the foreign language. (Horwitz et al., 1986: 128) Anyone who has learned a second language in formal settings will recall the many emotions which L2 performance can draw forth, one of which is this anxiety; and also, perhaps will recall the mental energy required to sustain performance in a new language. In my own teacher training programmes in Australia, I have sometimes demonstrated a monolingual L2 teaching episode of half an hour or so – teaching it not as a ‘shock’ lesson, but in a friendly way (Forman, 2015b). At the end of that session, teachers’ feedback always focuses primarily on how they felt: feelings not only of anxiety of course but also sometimes of excitement, competition, and emotional tension resulting from the concentration required. In the present study, when teachers did return from the L2 to L1 – even briefly – several teachers made reference to the dissipation of anxiety which occurred. Ajarn Rajavadee noted (IV2): I feel relief; they [students] feel relief: we understand the same point now. Ajarn Nanda expanded on the ‘anxiety-reduction’ role of L1 for both teacher and students with a valuable metaphor (IV2): I usually use English. I use Thai for the teacher and the students to take a break from the things that are not real, so it’s a kind of relaxation…. Even though you can do it [speak English] perfectly, even though the students can understand it perfectly, you have to take a break. Like at a football match. Then you are very energetic once you have the ball back at your feet. My field notes, too, record that at such points of return to L1, there was often a visible easing of tension in the classroom. The literature also includes some interesting studies which result from an academic her/himself undertaking to learn a second language, where here too, affective factors predominate (e.g. Edstrom’s study of Spanish, 2006). The L1, then, may serve to reduce anxiety on the part of students. It may additionally support a sense of solidarity or rapport among students and their teacher (as found by Kim & Elder, 2005, for example).

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It’s like you’re sharing your Thai-ness at the same time…because you’re both [teacher and students] engaging in a foreign language. (Dr Chai, IV2) Using L1 gives close interaction - we are native Thai. (Ajarn Nanda, IV2) From another perspective, Ajarn Rajavadee (IV2) noted that the cultural content of English textbooks was often ‘alien’ to students, and commented that therefore: … it brings you closer, because you’re trying [with] each other [teacher and students] to work together, to access something out there. If you’re accessing something inside, like Thai history, you don’t have the same sense that there’s us and that [‘that’ meaning ‘outside’]. I found this point a revealing one, as the teacher took it for granted that this kind of explanatory work could only take place because of the linguistic and cultural capital of L1 that she shared with students.

(3) Affective: Collaboration Using L1 to develop teamwork abilities This principle for using L1 was one not anticipated by me. It was seen most clearly in the classes of two particular teachers. Dr Chai’s som tammaking lesson was demonstrated earlier. Another teacher, Ajarn Nuteau, used L1 for similar reasons − in order to achieve learning goals which were broader than purely linguistic (L2) ones. Both these classes were composed of low EL proficiency students who were engaged in mandatory study and who were generally perceived to have low motivation. Their teachers seemed to be less concerned with actual English language outcomes – perhaps expecting that these could not be very high − than with socio-affective educational processes. As Ajarn Nuteau put it (IV1): [students] have ability, they have creative ideas, but they don’t know how to express themselves… And if I force them to speak English, then this may obstruct their real ability. Ajarn Nuteau also noted that it was the capacity for team-work which employers particularly sought of graduates. Thus in his classes, while the completion of exercises related to an English text would contribute to developing students’ L2 reading and writing proficiency, it was the process of achieving the written task together which would develop their deeper learning. The teacher stressed the social goal of the group task: If one fails, the others fail.

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(4) Pedagogic: Time-effectiveness Using L1 to make good use of limited classroom time Successful teaching in any context requires the teacher to make the best possible use of classroom time. In many FL contexts, students’ exposure to the target language outside the classroom may be limited or non-existent, and the time allocated to that subject often amounts to only a few hours a week. In this case there is an additional challenge for teachers in providing the best balance between two languages: how to maximise students’ experience of the target language without ‘losing’ students in the process. A number of teachers in the study commented on the time dimension of L1-L2 use. Dr Bua, for example, was a teacher whose classes with advanced English Major students were clearly English-dominant, but she reported (IV2) that colleagues had said to her: because you use so much English in your class right now, you cannot catch up with your lessons (that is, cannot cover the set curriculum in time). Dr Bua acknowledged that this was a dilemma, as on the one hand she strongly believed in using as much English as possible in her classes, but on the other, using Thai would save time. Ajarn Rajavadee was of a similar view, commenting (IV1) that: I often say to my colleagues that just one question I have to repeat four or five times [in English], and I wouldn’t get any answer – I just waste the time. [But] If I say directly in Thai I can get some response. Again, this is a principle widely documented in the research literature (e.g. Nation, 2003; Nagy & Robertson, 2009).

(5) Pedagogic: Comprehensibility To ensure that meaning is conveyed successfully Comprehensibility here refers both to the ‘content’ of lessons and the procedures/instructions necessary to manage them. In both cases, the general principle observed was that English was used to the maximum that it was appropriate; and Thai functioned as a back-up or replacement when meaning was unclear or particularly demanding. This principle has been noted in a range of existing studies, e.g. Carless (2008), Hall and G. Cook (2013), Barnard and McLellan (2014b). In interviews, teachers frequently commented on the need to adjust proportions of L1 and L2 use according to the level of students’ comprehension. Ajarn Rajavadee, for example, indicated that she preferred to begin her lessons in the L2, English, and if I see that a lot of students don’t understand the

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lesson, then I have to change into Thai. She indicated that she checks students’ comprehension by attending to the look on their face (see also Tian & Li, 2014: 34), or by asking display questions, pointing out that if you keep going on, you just lose them, right? And Dr Chai indicated that when he started teaching English at university, he had used L2 as the main medium of instruction, but student evaluations had asked him translate into L1. He said of this (IV1): I could speak English, but I don’t want to, because the students will not get any knowledge. As reported in Chapter 3, Ajarn Laksana (IV1) stressed that L1 must be a support to comprehensibility, rather than a replacement for maximum use of English: It is the duty of the teacher to guide students, not to tell at the beginning. Try to guide until they don’t know how or where to go, then end with some translation. Ajarn Laksana refers to ‘guiding’ the students first through L2, and then L1, which we may interpret as a ‘double scaffold’ of students’ learning. Her comment is a simple but profound statement of educational philosophy, which resonates with sociocultural theories of learning, as in Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of students’ Zone of Proximal Development, and the related strategy of Scaffolding (Bruner, 1986; Gibbons, 2002). There is one other means through which L1 can assist comprehensibility which has been alluded to in the literature. It is said to occur in when teachers’ own L2 proficiency is not at an advanced level, and therefore limits their ability to use L2 in class (for example, as self-reported by teachers in a study conducted by Liu et al., 2004: 621). None of the teachers in the present study indicated that L2 competence was a hindrance to their own L2 use; nor did my field notes record any instances which were apparent to an observer. More broadly in Asian − and other − contexts, this factor may come into play in some less well-resourced environments, particularly in the school sector.

(6) Pedagogic: Inclusivity Using L1 to ensure that all students participate In any class, in any country, there will be a range of abilities among students. I suggest that there a special dimension of language classes whereby different levels of ability take on even greater importance than in other

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subjects; and that this may be linked to the intensified personal nature of communicating in another tongue. Possibly every language learner has had the experience of getting ‘lost’ in an L2 lesson; and the problem is that once this happens, getting back on track is difficult. Dr Bua referred back to her own experiences of learning English, and noted that although she herself had benefited from exposure to the target language, weaker students in that class learnt nothing and wasted time (IV2). Ajarn Nanda asserted that when she uses L1, all students can participate in the lesson, not only those proficient in L2 (IV2). Ajarn Somchay declared that if some students are seen to follow the lesson, while other are lost, the latter will become nervous and frustrated … will not be confident … [and] may hate English (IV2). This inclusivity principle has been under-examined in the EFL literature until recently (see Kormos & Smith, 2012; Hall & G. Cook, 2013). However, ‘diary studies’ of L2 learning can leave us in no doubt about students’ reactions to being ‘left behind’ in a language lesson (Bailey & Nunan, 1996; de Courcy, 2005).

(7) Pedagogic: Contingency Using L1 in response to students’ immediate level of attention/participation This principle is regarded as linked to but distinguishable from principles of inclusivity and comprehensibility. It refers to the teacher’s role in responding to students’ emerging classroom needs (van Lier, 1996), and was particularly notable in two higher-level classes conducted by Ajarn Nanda, where students were following the same syllabus on the same day. The second class, of higher EL proficiency, was conducted with a higher proportion of L2, as might be expected. However, towards the end of that class, the teacher moved to communicate almost entirely in Thai, because she perceived students to be exhausted, commenting that in the heat of the day…it’s stifling (IV2). That is, contingency upon immediate learning conditions was a determining factor of L1/L2 use. Another form of contingent L1 use is referred to by Macaro (1997): the tiredness of the teacher her/himself, and this was also apparent to me as I observed the class in question.

Additional Principles of L1 Use I have outlined seven principles for L1 use which characterised the classrooms of the present study. But this is one context only; and the research literature reveals additional principles which have been commonly

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identified, but evidence for which did not appear in this context. These were three in number, and relate to classroom discipline, or classroom management, which I will call principle (8); globalised communication (9); and political positioning (10). I now discuss these principles, and note that their relative importance will naturally depend upon a particular educational and sociocultural context.

(8) Pedagogic: Classroom management Using L1 to maintain classroom discipline It has already been noted that Thai cultural traits of respect, courtesy, and harmony are readily observable in daily life and in classroom settings (Hallinger & Kantamara, 2001). Teachers are highly respected in Asia in general, and in Thailand in particular: in my experience, the behaviour problems sometimes found in Western classrooms are rarely seen. In the present study, no teacher made reference to this principle for L1 use, nor did I observe it. However, studies conducted in contexts other than Thailand commonly refer to L1 use as beneficial or necessary in maintaining classroom discipline – in both Eastern and Western settings (Lin, 1996; V. Cook, 2001; Ferguson, 2003; Hall & G. Cook, 2013).

(9) Socio-political: Globalised communication Using L1 to enable students to move flexibly and effectively across two languages The blending of two languages, traditionally known as code-switching or code-mixing, and more recently re-visioned as translanguaging, has been documented by sociolinguists as a staple of communication among bilinguals. As noted earlier, there has been increasing support for bilingual pedagogies (e.g. Butzkamm & Caldwell, 2009; Levine, 2011; García & Li, 2014); and, as also noted earlier, there is solid evidence of bilingual classroom practices found in, e.g. Hall and G. Cook (2013), or Barnard and McLellan (2014b), as well as in the present study. For a historical overview of classroom codeswitching studies, see Lin (2013a). The ability to blend two or more languages in communication is clearly bound up with heightened international mobility and contact, and some have urged that it should become a defined aim of L2 pedagogy (V. Cook, 2001; Turnbull & Dailey-O’Cain, 2009a; Levine, 2011; Canagarajah, 2013; García & Li, 2014). However, to my knowledge, this notion is yet to appear in EFL as a curriculum goal or in published materials (though for ESL, see recent work in translanguaging by Hesson et al., 2014). Certainly there was

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no suggestion by any teacher in the present study that they were seeking to develop bilingual discourse capacities in their students.

(10) Socio-political: Political positioning Using L1 to resist the political dimensions of global English The position of English in post-colonial contexts is necessarily politically charged: attitudes towards its global and local presence are often complex. In such contexts, the use of L1 in the L2 classroom can be an act of resistance or solidarity. Such use has been documented in Asia by, for example, Canagarajah for Sri Lanka (1995), and Lin for Hong Kong (1996), as well as in a great deal of African writing over many years (see the volume edited by Martin-Jones & Heller, 1996). However in Thailand, and in most of South East and East Asia, English does not play a post-colonial role. And while some teachers in the present study were critical of Western cultural influences on young people, they displayed no antipathy towards the current status or role of English. On the contrary, there was a general welcoming of English as a ‘lingua franca’; some positive suggestions that it could become Thailand’s official as well as de facto second language; and disquiet only that Thailand was not keeping pace with its neighbours in EL educational outcomes. Certainly, there are good grounds to be wary of triumphalist discourses relating to the global spread of English. By triumphalist, I mean descriptions which assume not only that the spread of English is useful, but that its lingua franca role can ‘triumph’ over other languages and even cultures. But at the same time, I believe that it is important to affirm agency, by which I mean the capacity of local practitioners to appropriate or take and develop what is useful about English for local needs. Such agency is clearly apparent in the practices observed in the present study, and in teachers’ recorded beliefs. It may be noted that while a number of recent studies have identified ‘guilt’ as associated with L1 use in L2 classes (Copland & Neokleous, 2011; Swain et al., 2011; Hall & G. Cook, 2012; Kirkpatrick, 2014), there was no such feeling voiced here. I suggest that this may result from two factors in particular. First, while ELT orthodoxy in Thailand clearly does favour L2 use (Tayjasanant & Robinson, 2014), university teachers may nevertheless exercise considerable autonomy in their classes. Secondly, my role as researcher was that of a former colleague, and one who was interested in how and why L1 is being used, rather than in the supposed defects of such practices. Having discussed seven principles of L1 use in the present study, and then briefly identified three principles which did not appear, I will, for completion, set out all 10 in Table 6.2.

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Table 6.2 Ten principles of L1 use in L2 teaching Categories

Principles

Use

(A) Principles of teachers’ use of L1 – identified within this study 1 Cognitive L2 knowledge To explain L2 vocabulary, grammar, usage, culture 2 Affective Solidarity To facilitate easy, ‘natural’ interaction in class 3 Collaboration To develop team-work abilities 4 Pedagogic Time-effectiveness To make good use of limited classroom time 5 Comprehensibility To ensure that meaning is conveyed successfully 6 Inclusivity To ensure that all students can participate 7 Contingency To respond to immediate teaching/learning needs (B) Principles of teachers’ use of L1 – identified beyond this study 8 Pedagogic 9 Political 10

Class management Globalisation Resistance

To maintain discipline To enable students to code-switch To question the spread of English

The principles identified in the present study derive from teachers’ reflections on their practices. But actual use of L1 is neither new nor unusual in foreign language contexts. As Canagarajah notes (1999: 110): ‘We have simply started discovering what has always been true’; a view recently confirmed by Hall and G. Cook (2013: 17) as follows: Those who accommodate the use of learners’ own languages in class are not isolated examples of poor practice within ELT, but are, in fact, typical of many ELT practitioners around the world, albeit teaching in ways that have been widely ignored by the language teaching and learning literature over the past century. It is my experience and observation that the native language constitutes the most fundamental part of our selves. Moreover, L1 is a free and natural resource − as ‘green’ as the hills. It is ironic therefore that the L1 is precisely what has been denied for so long by monolingual methods. I do not think that Paul Nation goes too far when he remarks of L1 classroom use that: ‘It is foolish to arbitrarily exclude this proven and efficient means of communicating meaning’ (2003: 5).

Part 3 Personal

7

Identity and Alterity

In Part 2, Chapters 4–6, we looked at pedagogy: how and why L1 and L2 are used by EFL teachers. With Part 3, Chapters 7–9, we move from pedagogy to look at the personal dimension of L1 and L2 use in EFL classes. Earlier, in Chapter 2, I noted the heightened interest in language and identity over the past decade or so. It should be noted, however, that a great deal of work to date has been located in naturalistic, rather than formal educational settings, and drawing as it does upon personal biographies of L2 learning, displays the strengths and limitations of self-reported data. Indeed, Kramsch (2009: 2–3) speaks of the field being ‘flooded’ with accounts of language learning by bilingual or multilingual individuals. But what about instructed foreign language learning? Block (2007a, 2007b) discusses studies of identity which relate to three domains of ESL, Study Abroad, and FLL (the latter including EFL), and observes that theorising in the third of these has produced only a handful of papers, and that where identity development has tended to occur, if at all, it has been in terms of learners’ sense of self as learners, rather than as a self entering into a second language/culture. It is therefore a matter of debate regarding the extent to which identity work can occur in FLL. On the one hand, Block declares that ‘the prospects for TL-mediated subject positions… are minimal to non-existent’ (2007a: 137); while Lee (2009: 121) responds that such contexts instead represent ‘a rather prolific site to examine the multi-layered nature of identity’. There is some evidence which supports Lee’s position in studies of foreign language learners conducted by, e.g. Belz (2002), or Kramsch (2009). However, such studies are nearly always of European languages which possess ‘areal affinity’, are conducted in Western contexts, and with advanced learners who are successful in their second language study. My interest here, on the other hand, is not with what we may see as such relatively privileged students, but rather with those whose first language is distant from the second, who are located in an Asian context, and who may or may not be advanced or successful learners. In this regard, I note relevant studies located 103

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in China (Lo Bianco et al., 2009), Indonesia (Lamb, 2009; Lamb & Budiyanto, 2013) and South Korea (Hadzantonis, 2013). In the present chapter, I consider what kind of interpersonal roles are taken up when speaking L2 in Thai EFL classrooms, in order to test Block’s particular claim about the restricted nature of identity development which may thereby occur.

Alterity My main analytical tool here is the notion of alterity: the state, feeling or condition of being ‘other’, or of being ‘othered’. In Philosophy, the concept was significantly developed by Levinas (1999, 1970), who saw interactions with others as serving to (peacefully) challenge and recreate one’s sense of self. In social science, alterity has been theorised in both structural ways (anthropology) and post-structural (cultural and post-colonial studies). In the latter perspective, alterity, like identity, is mutable, dissolvable and polyphonic; and like identity, sediments according to our actions and words. In Applied Linguistics, the notion of alterity barely receives a mention. Instead has been favoured the related concept of otherness, particularly cultural otherness (Palfreyman, 2005; Kramsch, 2009; Pennycook, 2012) through which the self is explored usually in relation to ‘other’ groups of people (racial, ethnic, religious and so on). But in my analysis, I will make use of the term alterity for two reasons. First, I would like to keep something of the affirming, humanist flavour that was originally offered by Levinas. Second, my focus is not upon relations between the self and cultural others. Instead, I take a psychological approach, looking within the self to see how alterity may be evoked by the experience of moving into a new language. Identity and alterity are thus seen to be embedded within an individual – a view which incorporates Carl Jung’s notion of the ‘alterous’ shadow (1938). Working with this concept of alterity can offer a fresh means of exploring the interpersonal dimension of L2 learning: what roles are available to learners, and how such roles may encourage or discourage the move into a new tongue.

Categories of Interpersonal Role My analysis of classroom data established five broad categories of interpersonal role: Enacting, Playing, Displaying, Acting, and Animating. The last of these, Animating, was already discussed in Chapter 4 in its pedagogic function; here, I attend to its interpersonal function.

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Enacting First, enacting, a term used by Halliday (1995: 257) to describe the interpersonal stratum of meaning which is present in all verbal communication. Here, I use the term more narrowly to represent the creation of ‘unmarked’ tenor relations among participants. In its enacting function, the speaker ’s voice may be regarded as performing a relatively unmediated, ‘authentic’, or ‘natural’ self; and thus represents her/his core identity. However, the authenticity of this role in L1-mediated communication becomes limited when a learner begins a move into L2-mediated communication. That is, ‘being oneself ’ within a second language, particularly when developed through formal instruction, may first happen in only confined or sporadic ways unless there are strong scaffolds to support it. Of the five interpersonal roles identified here, L2 enacting thus represents the furthest on the cline of alterity: it is the most ‘othering’; the most challenging. The following classroom texts will illustrate the extent and nature of the L2 enacting which was observed in the present study. In short, I found that this performance type occurred in two forms: content-based, that is, meaningbased communication relating to the content of the lesson at hand; and what I will call procedural, which ranged from roll-call or task instructions to classroom management. I consider first, teacher-initiated, and then, studentinitiated enacting.

Enacting: Content-based The following example from Dr Patcharin’s Year 1 General English class (Extract 7.1) was analysed earlier for its pedagogy, where it was seen to exemplify ‘Dialoguing’ between teacher and students. Here I re-present the text from the perspective of interpersonal roles. As may be recalled, this lesson was concerned with stages of going overseas to live and returning to the home country. At this point, students were reporting back orally their written answers to the textbook exercise.

Extract 7.1: Dr Patcharin: Enacting (i) 1 2 3 4 5

T: S: T: S: T:

okay, the acceptance stage. okay. how will you feel in this stage. you don’t want to go back home. you don’t want to go back home-why not! why not! uh?! ((inaudible to teacher and researcher)) why-why! ((laughs)) why don’t you want to go back home!

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Students here were expected to display their knowledge of descriptors which had just been taught (such as ‘be excited about’, ‘look forward to’, ‘worry about’ and so on). But instead, one student chose to respond by offering not a phrase required by the exercise, but a personal view. In this sense, we may say that the student was enacting L2. And the teacher in turn, instead of proceeding with her display of key vocabulary, enacted a ‘real’ response. In fact, in this case the enactment was so ‘natural’ that as the dialogue continued, the student switched into her L1, Thai, in order to explain herself fully to the teacher (which response the teacher then elaborated upon in English).

Extract 7.2: Dr Patcharin: Enacting (ii) 1

S:

2

T:

ประมาณวา่ ยังไงดี เอาภาษาไทยก่อนละกันนะคะ ยอมรับในสิง่ ที่ แตกต่างภายใน ้ ได้แลว้ ก็จะแบบวา่ เอออยูไ่ ด้ ประเทศนัน how should I say it. in Thai first then. accept the differences between the countries, then er it’s okay to live there. OK. now you are familiar with the – with the environment. with the people, right? you get to know the people. you know the way around, you – you can do everything by yourself now. OK. you seem to enjoy living there, right?

At another point in the same part of this lesson, when students provided a descriptor of ‘homesick’, the teacher turned away from the textbook’s comprehension questions, and enquired of the students whether they had in fact ever been abroad. None had done so, and the teacher enacted another ‘real’ response, which sought to reassure students:

Extract 7.3: Dr Patcharin: Enacting (iii) All of us, just guess, right? Nobody knows exactly what’ll happen to you. Next, we look again at Ajarn Nanda’s lesson based on the short story ‘To an old friend’. As indicated in Chapter 4, the teacher started to build the field by discussing greetings in English and Thai. She now elucidates further.

Extract 7.4: Ajarn Nanda: Enacting (i) 1

T:

2

T:

when you are greeting to the one you love, to the one you are looking for, to meet, do you say ‘how are you’? so in Thai, you are waiting for your girlfriend, okay? maybe, so what should you say. you are looking for her, you are very glad to see her. what should you say, in Thai.

Ident it y and Alter it y

3 4 5 6

Ss: S1: Ss: T:

7

T:

107

((murmur – indistinct)) คิดถึง I miss you/I’ve missed you. (L) คิดถึง I miss you/I’ve missed you. I’m waiting for you, I’m looking for you, I’m missing you. not just ‘how are you’ and that’s it.

The teacher here moves from a more traditional ‘annotation’ of the English written text into a different interpersonal role. She does so by enacting a pattern from the shared Thai culture, and bringing students into the discourse − using mainly English but with brief recourse to Thai. The impact of the teacher’s enacting role was enhanced by her expansion of phrases, along with expressive intonation formed by wide pitch contours and increased voice projection. In another advanced English-major class, Ajarn Nanda (Extract 7.5), had elicited from students some examples of current social issues, which included a proposed curfew for young people in Thailand, the current government’s performance, and industrial zoning restrictions. The latter point related to controversy over an explosion which had recently occurred at a munitions dump located in a populated area. The teacher took up the students’ contribution as follows.

Extract 7.5: Ajarn Nanda: Enacting (ii) 1

T:

explosion? yesterday? or day before yesterday. so what, what’s the issue.

2

T:

yes, so we should move [it]. what do we call /kræsen/. I don’t know how we, we use in English, Ajarn? ((addressing me as observer)). so it’s like a place that we collect like stock for military weapons that are dead, that are….

3

RF:

cemetery?

4

T:

no. ah, no. ((turns to re-address the class; many students discussing quietly in Thai))…and the place, and the place and no, huh? huh? and the place, and the place that you, you you collect it. you see, these are military weapons, may be out of use or may be oldfashioned, and should get destroyed something like that, and then we have to collect them into one place, and there’s an explosion. okay, oh, in Thai we just call /kræsen/.

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This extract illustrates two important points related to enacting L2 in an EFL context. First, as in the previous examples shown, the teacher’s talk was focused on meaning, in distinction to the form-based explanations which characterised most parts of most lessons in this study. In the teacher’s spontaneous communication, we can observe her use of repetition, pausing and hesitation − features more usual in everyday conversation than in formal teacher talk. Not that such performance is inappropriate: on the contrary, I believe both that it signifies a speaker’s more ‘natural’, un-selfconscious self, and that it also provides students with valuable L2 experience of a less formal register. Secondly, it may be noted that the spontaneity of communication also resulted in the emergence of a term /kræsen/ for which a ready translation could not be found. This may remind us of the risks taken by FL teachers when enacting L2 in the classroom, for it takes a high level of proficiency to be able to provide the L2 equivalent of any infrequent lexis that may occur. However, this potential block in communication was deflected by the teacher, who continued to use L2 to enact meaning but at the same time allowed for a brief recourse to L1 in order to ensure understanding. That is, after the teacher’s appeal to authority in the form of myself as native-speaking researcher had failed (a memorable cameo), she seemed comfortable to proceed without the English translation – perhaps making the judgement that it was not important for her students to know this word. One further example is provided from Dr Chai’s class, where the teacher expanded upon a student’s question by again checking with me as researcher:

Extract 7.6: Dr Chai: Enacting 1

T:

((to a student)) usually you call it, uh, monosodium glutamate

2

T:

((to the researcher)) hey Ross, what is the nickname for monosodium glutamate.

3

RF:

MSG?

4

T:

MSG, right.

This extract (7.6) illustrates the enacting which was afforded between two expert speakers of English, Dr Chai and myself, when a ‘genuine’, rather than ‘display’ question was posed. The moment is also revealing for the informal tenor which Dr Chai adopted. In Thai culture, as indicated earlier, it is not appropriate to publicly address a teacher simply by name (that is, without an honorific). Thus Dr Chai, consciously or unconsciously, displayed

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an ‘English’ cultural enactment through addressing me by my first name in the public domain of the classroom. In this way, students were briefly exposed to register variation in L2 (though without their attention having been drawn to it, it is hard to know how many students may have noticed the usage).

Enacting: Procedural The second type of enacting, ‘procedural’, generally occurred briefly at the opening and closing of lessons (when calling the roll, or dealing with assigned work); and in the giving of task instructions or managing the class. Some routine examples were given in Chapter 4 to illustrate the pedagogy of ‘Explaining what to do’ − Extracts 4.7, 4.8. Additionally, at times, teachers’ attention to procedures in the classroom produced instances of less predictable language − illustrated here in two examples from Dr Patcharin’s lesson. In the first, where the teacher was working through the set textbook, Dr Patcharin turned to remind students of prior learning (Extract 7.7):

Extract 7.7: Dr Patcharin: Enacting (procedural) (i) 1

T:

‘entitled to’ – to give somebody the right to have or do something.

2

T:

I wrote it down on the blackboard last week.

3

T:

so you know those two – the meaning of those two words – already.

In the second, the teacher voiced her annoyance that only a few students were responding to whole-class questioning (Extract 7.8).

Extract 7.8: Dr Patcharin: Enacting (procedural) (ii) 1

T:

how about somebody else.

2

T:

there is only one student in this class? huh?

3

T:

okay, what do you think.

These less routine kinds of procedural enacting were also brief, and infrequently met, but they show the teacher engaging in ‘authentic’ classroom communication, where she focuses on meaning, and plays out ‘real-life’ interpersonal roles. On the whole, as noted in Chapter 4, students themselves proved to be reticent in using the L2 for communication, with responses limited both in quantity and in spread of students. As for student-initiated enacting, this was

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rare indeed: and perhaps unsurprisingly so, given the high respect accorded to teachers and older people in most Asian contexts. But one rather exceptional instance was observed to occur − unusual because it was not only student-initiated, but challenged the teacher’s authority, albeit in an ‘underlife’ way. During another class of Ajarn Nanda’s which took place in the late afternoon, students had become somewhat restless, and the teacher chose to chide them by alluding ironically to a written text which she was explicating. The passage was in the character of a young man looking back at his schooling, and when Ajarn Nanda came to the words ‘The teacher thought I was stupid’, she looked around the class and laughed softly. One student responded ‘Why do you laugh?’ in effect challenging the teacher to make explicit the comparison. The question was audible to the class, and to me as observer, but the teacher chose to ignore it and resume her reading of the written text. This represented an interesting, but as noted, exceptional initiative on the part of students. In the above illustrations of classroom discourse, I believe that the focus was upon meaning over form; upon message over medium; upon ‘authentic interaction’ rather than the display or recitation of knowledge. In this way, I believe that participants were enacting, to the best of their various abilities, an L2-mediated identity: how it felt to communicate not in their ‘natural’ L1-mediated persona, but in an ‘alterous’ L2 far removed from their own. However, as has been noted above, recorded instances of enacting were relatively rare, with the exception of routine classroom instructions. As noted, this role is the most ‘advanced’ on the cline of L2 alterity: its infrequent occurrence was a matter of interest and concern to me, and will be pursued later in this chapter.

Playing A second performance role observed in these classes was (verbal) playing. In this type of performance, the speaker continues to present her/his own voice inasmuch as s/he speaks words which s/he has created. However, there is performed both the self and a parodied self, resulting in a duality, a ‘double voicing’ (Bakhtin, 1981). The teacher now has the latitude to pretend that s/he, students, or the situation which they are in, are other than they are perceived to be. That is, a dimension of play can be created from the incongruity between what is (the ‘real’ us) and what is not (how we are positioned). I suggest that play, in the sense that it is ‘not real’, can function to protect speakers from full disclosure of ideas or feelings, and in this sense, may offer, in comparison to enacting, a ‘safer place’ for L2 students in their journey into L2 alterity.

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Moments of play occurred occasionally in the study overall, and extensively in Ajarn Murray’s post-beginner class. Here, as shown in a previous episode, groups of students had been allocated a room of a house, and were required to work in Thai to come up with a list of relevant English vocabulary items. In the following Extract 7.9, students were reporting back items associated with ‘bathroom’.

Extract 7.9: Ajarn Murray: Playing (i) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

T: S: T: S: T: S: T: Ss: T: Ss: T: T: T: Ss: T:

what else do you have. shelf. shelves – uh-huh – you have a shelf to put things on – good! a chair. a chair, right? – a small chair, right, a small chair. okay, good. a window. a windo:::w! ((long glissando downwards)) (L) door! wall… ceiling. floor. yep. a boyfriend. (L) uh-huh? three boyfriends, uh huh? three boyfriends, two husbands, three dogs, (L) a cat, a fish, a penguin, a duck.

It may be seen that when students offered ‘window’, the teacher exploited the obviousness of the item in two ways. First, he added similar fixtures such as ‘door’ and ‘ceiling’; and then took the opportunity to move into the clearly incongruous by nominating ‘boyfriends’, ‘husbands’ and various animals. Students continued to list items from the bathroom. When one group nominated ‘book’, the teacher teased them, and the students responded, as follows:

Extract 7.10: Ajarn Murray: Playing (ii) 1 2 3 4

S: T: T: T:

a book. a book. oh good. do you READ?! ((surprised; high voice)) do you read? do you read books? ((name of university)) students read BOOKS!

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5 6 7 8 9 10

Ss: T: S: Ss: T: T:

(L) I can’t believe it. OR… is it just a picture book. picture book. nude book. ((L; some squeals)) okay, a nude book. okay, what else.

Here, the teacher positions students as being non-studious, or even nonliterate, the latter at least an incongruous state for university students. But the students ‘trump’ him by playing along with his positioning, and claiming that not only would their book be of pictures, but of nude pictures, an image clearly disreputable, and perhaps particularly so in Asian contexts. The limitations of students’ verbal L2 responses are evident in this class; but their willingness to participate in playing was seen to be greater than in the previously-described role of enacting. As noted earlier, play offers a dual role. Through it, a learner can journey into L2 alterity while at the same time retaining a sense of her/his core identity. Playing in L2, therefore, may be a useful role for learners, even in classroom settings. More broadly, it affords creativity in language learning, the latter which as Carter (2004) points out, is a ubiquitous but often under-recognised feature of everyday language use.

Displaying This third role is ascribed to occasions when a teacher wished to explain or illustrate an English form or function, and as such it was the most frequent kind of performance observed. Displaying too realises a duality of role, but in a way which differs from the process of playing. Here, the speaker seeks to display various kinds of knowledge or skill in the medium of a second language, thus construing the role of ‘teacher’ or ‘student’. At the same time, of course, the speaker cannot but retain her/his known identity, or existing sense of self. As noted above, students were for the most part reticent to participate in the classroom enacting of L2 communication; and playing was extensively taken up in only one class of the study. However, students were more likely to participate when a more predictable response was required − in the display of knowledge/skill. Display is more structured, focused and narrow; the margin for error is significantly less; and because the teacher knows well what kind of answer s/he seeks, students may respond in choral or group form, thus avoiding the risk an individual answer would carry. In short, more predictable display questions afford less of the ‘unknown’; and a more

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conventional classroom tenor is established between teacher and students. On the cline of alterity to identity, therefore, this category is at a mid-point, following enacting and playing. Three examples follow. The first is from the same lesson as the Acceptance text above, and addresses a grammatical point familiar to teachers of English (Extract 7.11).

Extract 7.11: Dr Patcharin: Displaying 1 2 3 4 5

T: S: T: S: T:

how do you think you will feel. I will feel exciting. you will feel exci::? ted. excited. you will feel excited. right. SOMETHING is exciting, but you will FEEL excited. okay.

The second is taken from a post-beginner class conducted by Ajarn Laksana, where the limited nature of display is illustrated in conventional IRF fashion (Extract 7.12).

Extract 7.12: Ajarn Laksana: Displaying 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

T: Ss: T: Ss: T: Ss: T: Ss:

what is she doing. buying something. she is buying something. what is she going to buy. hm? a sweater. a sweater. sweater. is it for herself? no. for whom. for her mother.

The third example occurs in Ajarn Rajavadee’s intermediate class, where she is explicating the prescribed textbook (Extract 7.13).

Extract 7.13: Ajarn Rajavadee: Displaying 1

T:

okay, a little bit earlier than three o’clock. so that means you’re punctual. คืออะไรคะ what is that. what is that in Thai. come on, speak. (L). what is it in Thai?

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2

S1:

3

T:

4

Ss:

5

T:

กาํ หนด-การ schedule. no, ไมใ่ ชห ่ มาย- กาํ หนดการ not schedule. คืออะไรคะ ถา้ เราพูดถึง เรื่ องเวลา what is it if we are talking about time ตรงตอ่ - เวลา punctual. ้ ตรงตอ่ เวลาใชม ่ ั ยฮะ ah, punctual, isn’t it.

The fourth extract (7.14) is taken from Ajarn Murray’s class.

Extract 7.14: Ajarn Murray: Displaying 1

T:

2 3

Ss: T:

4 5

Ss: T:

quickly, look in your book. what’s it called – a room under the ground. what’s that called. basement basement, good. basement. good, basement. it’s a room under the ground. do you usually have basements in Thailand? no no, not usually, right?

In all four examples, attention has turned to displaying knowledge about the target language, rather than enacting message-oriented communication. Now we have a ‘duality’ where the ‘display’ of a L2 role by teacher or student is overlaid upon one’s ‘natural’ L1 self. (For a longer exemplification, and in a higher level class, see also Extract 4.23 in Chapter 4, which was there analysed for its pedagogy.) In the performance roles explored to this point, I have illustrated a range of identity positions and argued for a difference in tenor achieved by each kind of performance. In all three of those roles, the speaker was creating her/his own words in the L2, with varying degrees of guidance by the teacher – moving from the greater freedom of enacting through the more restrictive roles of playing and then displaying. Now, we move to performance roles where a speaker takes on another’s words; where the discourse is more intensely scaffolded, and the journey into L2 is significantly less alterous. I term these remaining two roles acting and, drawing upon Chapter 4, animating.

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Acting Acting, the fourth interpersonal role, requires the projecting of a persona which is clearly and unambiguously not the self; and yet, of course, the self remains part of the performance. Here, the speaker has to not only understand the semantics and pragmatics of another’s words, but how to project them in ‘lifelike’ situations. Acting can range from theatrical performances to classroom role-play or dialogue creation/performance. At the theatrical end, the English Department at Isara presented plays in English each year: two mentioned to me were ‘Romeo and Juliet’, and ‘My Fair Lady’. These productions were not among the data collected, but mention is made because they form a part of students’ experiences. In its more limited form of classroom role-plays/improvisations, acting can offer a range of ways to create and act out ‘another’, while at the same time affording students the security of programmed language. Thus, organised in the L2 classroom as pair/group work with a goal of interaction rather than performance (see Maley & Duff, 1982), acting can foster the use of the target language in highly scaffolded ways. For a rare description of this kind of performance in Asian EFL, see Lamb and Budiyanto’s 2013 account of student dialogues at secondary schools in Indonesia. In this fourth kind of interpersonal role, acting, we see less of a movement towards L2 alterity, and therefore less of a threat to the core, L1-mediated identity.

Animating L2 Finally, there is a performance type called animating, a term I have already used in Chapter 4 to refer to oral production of the written word. In that context I looked the pedagogic function of animating; here I turn to its interpersonal function. In daily life, animating is most often found in situations such as news-reading or reading aloud to a child. But in EFL classes, as noted earlier, this process is a foundational element of classroom performance, as through it, the written text of monolingual imported textbooks is animated − brought to life. Animating can be seen as a reduced or preparatory form of acting, in that it represents, as it were, just the ‘reading’ of a role. It produces spoken performance in a voice which is the least alterous for the L2 learner, and accordingly, affords the least challenging kind of performance. And for students at Isara, animating appears to have been particularly non-threatening because it often took the form of a choral rather than individual animation of written text. (Similar outcomes might be obtained from, for example, the recitation of Jazz Chants, or the singing of songs.)

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Here, students can ‘dip a toe’ into the L2 without threat to self or group identity − provided that they do not too readily relinquish the sounds of L1 in their English pronunciation, as indeed they did not. I was interested to see the ease and harmony with which students performed choral animation of written text even when going beyond a single sentence, although one might well have predicted otherwise. That is, students were able, as a class and without being led by the teacher, to broadly synchronise the production of prosodic features such as intonation contours, the demarcation of tone-groups by pausing, and the isochronous tendency of the English foot (which contrasts with the syllable-timed prosody of Thai). Moreover, the paralinguistic feature of pace was also successfully synchronised. I have seen and used myself a similar technique when teaching English, but with the vital distinction of having the teacher’s voice as lead. I asked Ajarn Somchay at interview why he thought students were successful in performing in this way. He indicated that he found the practice unremarkable: It’s with the culture. Thai students are trained in that way. We do things uniformly… right from when they were kids (IV2). On a cline of alterity, animating is placed as the ‘least alterous’ L2 performance role. In animating, as in acting, of course the speaker’s personality remains, but her/his expression of L2 is now more limited; and educationally, this role offers another kind of learning experience, one more highly-defined and scaffolded. It has been recorded that of the five L2 roles produced in the classroom, displaying was the dominant performance type, where L2 was treated as ‘object of study’ whose forms and functions were displayed to pedagogic ends; and that animating proved to be a staple role entered into readily by both teachers and by students. Indeed, a frequent pattern was a two-step of animating followed by displaying. This pattern could occur in micro fashion, within a few seconds, or in larger steps constituting several minutes. In all such cases, this sequence gives a common pattern of the teacher moving back and forth from less to more alterous in the presentation of self − albeit within a restricted range.

The problem of L2 enacting in EFL There is one performance type that I would like to consider here in more detail − enacting, and for two reasons. First, because it was not frequently seen, with the exception of some routine procedural enacting; and second, because in my view, the limited presence constitutes a disappointing aspect of the pedagogy observed. Central to a sociocultural view of learning and to a functional view of language is the notion that a learner needs to engage with, participate in, and appropriate the second language in order for the

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language to become part of the learner, and for the learner to become part of the language. However, although meaning-based interactions were occasionally sought of students by the teacher, they were rarely gained. It was previously reported that while student group work formed a part of several classes, such communication took place almost entirely in L1, with the aim, usually, of producing an L2 written text. As noted, there are good grounds for this practice. However, it is also important to create spaces for students to be ‘stretched’ to communicate in L2, so that their fluency develops, and so that they develop strategies for the negotiation of meaning in the target language. It has to be said that such spaces were largely absent. When I raised the matter of L2 enacting with teachers at interview, there appeared to be three major factors which circumscribed the tenor of communication. First, although all teachers strove to use English when appropriate, a number perceived this situation to be ‘artificial’; as being a classroom device which can disable participants’ ‘real’ selves. As one teacher put it: If we speak English amongst Thai it’s not natural – we are pretending. (Dr Patcharin, IV2) Another said of the English parts of lessons: It’s not the real you, not the real students, not the real teacher. (Ajarn Nanda, IV2) Secondly, there is the didactic function of classroom discourse. When English is seen to be an object of study, performance can be constrained: It’s more planned rather than just spontaneous (Ajarn Somchay, IV2). Additionally, as noted earlier, teachers who did strive to maximise their use of English found that without the time-saving capacity of L1 explanation and translation, they could fall behind in the syllabus. Thirdly, possibilities to enact in English were limited simply by students’ relatively low EL proficiency levels in a majority of − though not all − classes observed. As noted in Chapter 3, Dr Bua (IV1) commented on her response to students’ comprehension difficulties: I don’t see the point in going on [in L2] and not making sense. On the other hand, Ajarn Rajavadee (IV2) pointed out that when she reverted to Thai: I feel relief, they [the students] feel relief. We understand the same point now.

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Overall, I would stress again that every teacher was committed to using the greatest amount of L2 which they considered that students could follow. They also appreciated that it was their responsibility to guide and lead students in this respect. As Ajarn Murray (IV1) succinctly put it: You have to force the students to use English or they won’t. However, the interpersonal analysis which is provided here can offer an explanation of why, despite teachers’ desires in this respect, there was so little English spoken by students in class; and so little ‘communicative’ English spoken by teachers themselves. **** This chapter has affirmed the Hallidayan perspective that language always functions both interpersonally as well as ideationally: concerned with the self, as well as with ideas. The fact that, as demonstrated, students were often reticent to speak in L2 does not signify an absence of the interpersonal. As indicated in Chapter 4, evidence is provided by studies of inner and private speech, as well as by ‘diary studies’, that reticent students may nevertheless be highly engaged in learning at both affective and cognitive levels. So, the interpersonal is always present, but not always apparent. To enact within L2 is challenging, and in this study, it was found that enabling supports were rarely provided. On the other hand, classroom performance of L2 in less ‘alterous’ roles produces less threat to identity. That is, embedded constructions (through highly scaffolded words in displaying; through prepared texts in acting and animating), can allow for less self-conscious use of the L2. To return to Block’s assertion that identity work within the specific context of the FL classroom is limited in nature, the present analysis appears to support his case. Teachers, as noted above, while committed to the use of L2 in class, often saw it as artificial, time-consuming or constrained by the relatively low proficiency levels of many students. For students, English was a language far distant from their own, and its associated cultures similarly distant; as revealed earlier, no student had travelled outside Thailand. As noted, four of the study’s 10 classes were English-major, composed of enthusiastic learners who had gained highly competitive places; the remaining six were mandatory classes, where most students demonstrated a lack of interest in, though rarely actual resistance to study. However, for both groups, the English language appeared to remain principally an ‘object of study’ to be animated or displayed; rather than to be enacted or played. L2 here is a long way, in fact, from what Kramsch has described as ‘the potential medium for

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the expression of [foreign language learners’] innermost aspirations, awarenesses, and conflicts’ (2009: 4). And yet, does the limited range of interpersonal roles documented in the present study necessarily mean that FL contexts are ‘relatively unfertile ground for TL-mediated work’ as Block suggests (2007a: 144)? Perhaps it is not the fertility of the ground but the practice of its cultivation, which in FL contexts need to be more intensive. In other words, when the rich environmental and social factors associated with second language or study abroad contexts are missing, the classroom itself needs to aim to compensate − and this is of course traditionally the challenge of foreign language teaching. Particularly in such settings, and when the target language is distant from the first, the teacher is vital in providing a diversity of roles intermentally so that students’ intramental development can subsequently occur (Vygotsky, 1978). In terms of pedagogy, I propose that teachers may develop a base-line awareness of the interpersonal roles which their lessons do afford − such as those which have been broadly identified here as enacting, playing, displaying, acting and animating. If a teacher can perceive these distinctions, s/he can evaluate whether the range and balance of roles are optimal. Thus, simply, a teacher could use the framework to consider: What am I asking of students in terms of their identities?; and How does this impact upon students’ capacity/confidence to speak? For example, if we look at enacting L2, most if not all teachers will have some experience of how it feels to provide brief classroom instructions in L2 (procedural enacting). Teachers may consider how such simple exchanges may be developed into the wider and deeper forms of content enacting. Then, they may examine displaying L2 in class, and how this may be extended or varied beyond simple IRF exchanges. The crucial balance between these two primary pedagogic roles of enacting and displaying may be assessed. As for playing, this role was extensively seen in one class, but rarely in others. An individual teacher may reflect upon the value of incorporating part of this everyday process into an instructional setting. The two roles of acting and animation have been described as less alterous, and are therefore are expected to produce less self-consciousness on the part of students: teachers may consider how to exploit these ‘safe places’ as a springboard into more challenging L2 performance roles. Overall, with such enhanced awareness, teachers may become better placed to guide students on their journey into a second language and culture.

8 Language Play

The previous chapter investigated the personal dimension of EFL classes through the lenses of identity and alterity. One of the five interpersonal roles identified was that of playing. As noted, playing was seen sporadically across the whole study, but extensively in only one class – that of Ajarn Murray. This chapter will explore language play – principally of Ajarn Murray’s class – more deeply, and for two reasons. First, I believe that despite G. Cook’s seminal work (1997, 2000), language play remains neglected in ELT theory (see also Bell, 2011), and that it can fulfil many functions in opening up the second linguaculture to learners. So, the present chapter’s in-depth analysis can add to the handful of existing studies of language play located in Asian EFL. Second, as noted earlier, while eight of the nine teachers of this study are local Thais, bilingual in English, the ninth, Ajarn Murray, is an expat Anglo, bilingual in Thai. This chapter, therefore, may be of particular interest to other expat teachers across Asia. For many such teachers, it may not be possible to develop the high degree of bilinguality demonstrated here by Ajarn Murray. However, from my personal experience, and from observation, I would suggest that any move in that direction could benefit a teacher’s understanding of students, and enhance her/his potential contribution to local practices. I explore first the nature of language play and verbal humour before moving to analyse in depth some episodes of ‘humorous language play’ found in the present study.

Language Play, Humour and Creativity Language play has at times been associated with creativity, verbal art and verbal humour, in sometimes overlapping, and sometimes conflicting ways (G. Cook, 2000; Pomerantz & Bell, 2007). The present study relates these 120

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concepts as follows (Figure 8.1): verbal humour is seen as one form of language play; language play in turn is one form of verbal art; and linguistic creativity serves to underpin all three.

Humour Play Art Creativity

Figure 8.1 Relationship of verbal humour, play, art and creativity

In a brief overview, I outline the nature of verbal humour itself, consider studies concerned with language play from an SLA perspective, and present a theory of verbal art which constitutes the chapter’s analytical tool.

Verbal Humour In psychological terms, verbal humour has been theorised in three principal ways: as a form of superiority/aggression; as enabling the release of inhibitions; and as a response to incongruity. By incongruity is meant the juxtaposition of one level of meaning against another level of meaning; and it is this perspective which predominates in linguistics today, first in Raskin’s ‘Semantic Script’ theory (1979, 1985), and then in Raskin and Attardo’s ‘General Theory of Verbal Humour’ (Attardo, 1994, 2001). A sociological perspective on humour has been construed from the literary work of Bakhtin, in particular through his notions of ‘double-voicing’ and ‘carnival’. The act of double-voicing, ‘inserting a new semantic intention into a discourse’ (1984a: 189), allows a speaker to take on characteristics of others’ speech; and may be done for humorous as well as other purposes. The Carnival festival of medieval Europe is offered as an image of usurping power, reversing relationships, abandoning ideology in favour of pleasure: and notably, of doing so in a collective way (Bakhtin, 1984b: 255). For Bakhtin, then, laughter can be ‘directed towards something higher – towards a shift of authorities and truths, a shift of world orders’ (1984a: 126).

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Language Play and SLA As noted earlier, verbal humour is regarded in the present study as one form of language play. The majority of work relating to L2 play has been summarised by Belz and Reinhardt in 2004; and that relating to verbal humour by Bell in 2005. (For connections between humour research and ELT, see also Bell, 2011.) There exist few studies to date which have explored language play in an Asian EFL context – for example Sullivan in Vietnam (2000a, 2000b), Lin and Luk in Hong Kong (2005, 2007); and more recently, Pham (2014) in Vietnam and Kang (2015) in Korea. Moreover, the sole studies which give attention to the teacher’s role in L2 classroom play appear to be those cited above, along with that of Bell (2009). That is, the majority of research has been conducted into the language play of students. Clearly, if we compare the language play produced when the teacher ‘calls the shots’ in a whole-class setting with that produced by students in pair/group interaction, different conditions will apply. That is, in a whole-class setting, the teacher will necessarily determine what is admissible as play. Moreover, due to the enlarged audience of a whole-class setting, an enhanced performance dimension will emerge. Therefore, here I focus on the language play of the teacher, and the opportunities it affords for student learning.

Verbal art The functional linguistics of Hasan (1985) was identified in Chapter 2 as a sound basis for the analysis of verbal art. According to Hasan, verbal art is created through three semiotic strata of verbalisation, symbolic articulation and theme. The first stratum, verbalisation, represents what is required to communicate in any meaningful piece of language – the constellation of phonology/graphology, lexico-grammar and semantics. It equals a ‘straight reading’, so to speak. But verbal art induces a second layer of semiosis, symbolic articulation, which allows that: ‘… one order of meaning acts as a metaphor for a second order of meaning’ (1985: 100). When looking at verbal humour, as here, this symbolic articulation can be seen to happen in the tension between congruent meanings/wordings and incongruent meanings/wordings (or double-voicings, following Bakhtin). The third stratum, which Hasan calls theme, represents a ‘hypothesis about some aspect of social man’, and may be regarded as ‘closest to a community’s ideology’ (1985: 99). In the present study, however, Hasan’s notion of theme/ideology will be replaced by that of discourses. It may be recalled from Chapter 2 that discourses are taken to be ‘ways of thinking’ and ‘ways of meaning’ in the world: they co-exist

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← the semiotic system of verbal art Semantics Lexicogrammar

← the semiotic system of language

Figure 8.2 Verbal art: three strata (Adapted from Hasan 1985: 99, Figure 4.1: Verbal art and language)

within a person, may change, and may be conscious or unconscious. Thus the term is preferred here because it may afford a greater sense of the individual learner and his/her agency (see Figure 8.2).

Two types of humour In the present study, I analyse texts from two perspectives. First I term discursive humour that which is produced through the patterning of symbolic articulation and discourses. This kind of play has also been described as ‘referential’ (Attardo, 1994), ‘semantic’ (G. Cook, 1997), or ‘propositional’ (Ritchie, 2003). In the discursive type of humour, an audience or interlocutor may be positioned as lacking in socially appropriate qualities – for example, intelligence or sophistication. Second, I term linguistic humour that produced by variation of lexis, syntax or phonology; sometimes known as ‘word play’. Both types of humour are, of course, at the same time discursive and linguistic; what changes is the particular focus (Figure 8.3). The class investigated is that of Ajarn Murray introduced earlier – compulsory, low level General English. As noted earlier, students in such classes are often less than motivated in their study of English. Given that

discursive

discourses

symbolic articulation

verbalization linguistic

Figure 8.3 Verbal humour: two foci

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all Thai students study English for at least six years at secondary school, the performance of students here indicated that their L2 learning to date had not been very successful. I make note of one feature which is handled slightly differently in the following transcription: the representation of laughter. Because laughter comprises an important part of the analysis in this chapter, I move from the (L) abbreviation used earlier in the book to a more delicate representation. Building on Chafe (2007), I now make use of the @ symbol to indicate both time and intensity/spread of laughter. Thus for time, three symbols @@@ indicate three seconds. Intensity has been represented as either individual voices, called ‘sporadic’, or sufficient students to produce a ‘chorus’, where the @ symbol is bolded. See Table 8.1. Table 8.1 Representation of laughter Example

Time

Intensity

@ @@

1 sec 2 secs

Sporadic: individual voices can be distinguished Chorus

Two sets of texts will now be presented: the first set exemplifies discursive humour (Extracts 8.1, 8.2, 8.3), and the second, linguistic (Extracts 8.4, 8.5, 8.6).

Type 1: Discursive Extract 8.1: Shampoo, toothbrush [34 seconds] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

S: T: S: T: S: T: S: T: S: T: S: T:

shampoo. shampoo. powder. powder. right! comb. comb. how do you spell ‘comb’. c, o, m, b. c, o, m, b. comb. good. good. tissue paper. tissue paper. good. toothbrush. toothbrush.

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13

T:

14 15

Ss: T:

16 15 16

Ss: S: T:

17 18

Ss: T:

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ใช ้ด้วยเหรอ do you use them? ((deadpan tone)) @@ อ๋อเหรอ ค ดิ ว่าพวกเราไม่เคยใช ้เลย oh yeah. I thought you never used them. ((high voice; disbelieving tone)) @@ toothpaste. toothpaste. how do you spell ‘paste’. ((voice returns to normal pitch & tone)) p, a, s, t, e. very good. toothpaste. good.

It may be seen that students nominated a number of items, including shampoo, powder and comb, all of which the teacher had accepted with occasional checks on form. But when a student offered toothbrush, the teacher took the opportunity to tease the class that they did not use toothbrushes. Incongruity thus resulted from the students’ imagined contravention of a discourse of hygienic practice, which itself is implicated in broader discourses of sophistication or social class. Following Hasan, we may see a tri-stratal production of meaning: Verbalisation congruent images of shampoo, powder, comb, tissue paper, toothbrush Symbolic representation incongruent image of students not using a toothbrush Discourses hygienic practice, sophistication, social class. The teacher’s first playful question in line 13 was produced ‘deadpan’; and then in line 15 his move from instruction to entertainment was more clearly signalled by raised pitch and animated intonation. Students responded twice with sporadic laughter, which lasted 2 seconds on each occasion (and as such, was the mildest humour exemplified here). It is notable that the teacher’s humorous initiative signalled an openingup of interpersonal roles in the classroom, serving to reduce social distance between teacher and students, both at that moment and as the lesson unfolded. Indeed, 20 seconds later we see a student-initiated instance of verbal humour (Extract 8.2).

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Extract 8.2: Shower, water [68 seconds] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

S: T: S: Ss: T: Ss: T:

8 Ss: 9 T: 10 Ss: 11 S: 12 T: 13 Ss: 14 T: 15 16 17 18 19

S: T: Ss: Ss: T:

20 Ss: 21 T: 22 Ss: 23 S: 24 T:

shower. shower. good. shower. yep! water. @@@@@@ ((some sporadic claps)) yep! water. @@@ อยา่ ลืมฝาผนังนะฮะ don’t forget the ceiling. ม ดี ้วยนะ that’s there too. @@@ พื้นก็มีนะ there’s also the floor. @@ @@@@ floor ((student translates the teacher’s Thai word into English)) คาํ ตอ่ ไป floor next word is floor. @ @@@ แน่นะ are you sure? @ telephone telephone? ((high pitch – amazement)) @@@ (??) you have a telephone in the bathroom? you be careful okay? you could get electrocuted. I can just imagine – somebody calls him ((a student)) in the bathroom, right? and he’s in the bath? and somebody calls him. ฮัลโล hallo ((English loan word, with Thai pronunciation)) /ɕɕɕɕɕɕɕ/ ((sound of being electrocuted)) @@@ สมนาํ ้ หน้า it serves you right. @ a TV. a TV? ((disbelief ))

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25 26 27 28

Ss: S: Ss: T:

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@@ (??) @ you guys are over the top.

In the above episode, it may be seen that immediately following the nomination of shower by one student, another student offered water, which occasioned six seconds of sustained laughter among the class, including some sporadic claps. This I interpret as humour on the part of a student who presumably realised that to mention water directly after shower was incongruous because shower predicates water. The teacher took up this move in providing equally ‘obvious’ lexical items of ceiling and floor in Thai, with a further student translating the latter back into English. Students continued to parody the task through listing items such as telephone and TV, which are clearly inappropriate to a bathroom, and which enabled the teacher to invent a crisis situation produced by using a telephone in the bath. My field notes record that the teacher’s pretence of being electrocuted was accompanied by mimed gestures as well as by his vocal rendition of crackling electricity. This episode, which lasted just over a minute, was accompanied by chorused student laughter at eight specific points, as well as by occasional chuckles through the exchanges: it represented one of the most evidently enjoyable parts of the lesson. The discursive humour of this episode operates in two ways. First, it is incongruous to ‘state the obvious’, as did the student with his nomination of water following shower. In so doing, the student created a parody of the educational task itself, and the teacher showed solidarity with this resistance by building on the parody in his response. Second, when the teacher took up this play, he positioned students as courting danger in their enjoyment of technology, and thereby created discourses which relate to safety and recklessness. Verbalisation congruent images of towel, shower, water, TV, telephone, bathroom Symbolic representation a) incongruent juxtaposition of water after shower b) incongruent juxtaposition of TV and telephone with bathroom Discourses a) students parody the task itself; resistance & solidarity b) safety and recklessness

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Directly continuing from the above extract, we see another parody on the teacher’s part (Extract 8.3).

Extract 8.3: Trees, pot plants [49 seconds] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

T: S: T: S: T: Ss: T: S: T: Ss: T: Ss: T:

14

T:

15

T:

16 17 18 19

S: T: S: T:

20 21

S: T:

what else? trees. what? ((high voice – amazement – continues to line 13)) trees. trees. you have trees…in your bathroom. okay, cool! @ @@ elephants? @@ a waterfall? @ servants? @ (3 secs) d’you mean pot plants? plants. ((voice returns to normal pitch)) ใช่ไหมครับ พวก อา-พวกต้นไม ใ้ นกระถาง isn’t it. pot plants. a::h. plants in pots. right? yeah. pot plants. okay pot plants. good. what else do you have. a bar. a bar? ((not clear whether the student was referring to a bar for alcohol)) (??) oh right, a ba::r. ((tone of ‘dawning comprehension’)) okay, like a bar like to hang things from? okay, good. yep. rubbish bin. rubbish bin? yes, good.

The teacher took advantage of students’ error in offering the word trees instead of plants as a possible bathroom item. His response was ironic, suggesting that if trees were present, then why not other large entities, setting up a dissonance between the congruent image of a bathroom, and incongruent images of a waterfall, servants and elephants (the latter which would in Thai culture be associated not only with wealth but specifically with

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royalty). Ajarn Murray thus created a humorous positioning of students as being grandiose, and contravening a key discourse of humility. Verbalisation congruent image of bathroom Symbolic representation incongruent juxtaposition of trees, waterfall, elephants Discourses students as grandiose; lacking in modesty In the three examples shown above, we may see that play was created through the tensions formed by the simultaneous creation of two realities, or double-voicing. That is, first there is the enacting of social relations to realise relatively expected, known, congruent meanings – in this case, relating to a simple vocabulary exercise undertaken by second language learners. Second, there is the playing with social relations to realise relatively unexpected, ironic, incongruent meanings. This dialectic process is seen to entail a move from verbalisation to symbolic representation, and to produce new discursive positionings.

Type 2: Linguistic In the instances of which follow, the focus shifts to language itself, which is no longer ‘as it should be’. Many teachers will have experienced L2 learners’ capacity to create new meanings/forms through their knowledge of one language allied to a partial command of a second language. In the three examples below, the teacher himself creates new forms/meanings through word-play. I will cite the examples, and then provide a gloss of all three (Extracts 8.4–8.6).

Extract 8.4: Apartment, togetherment [44 seconds] 1 2 3 4

S: T: Ss: T:

5 6

Ss: T:

apartment. apartment. good. how do you spell ‘apartment’. a, p, a, r, t, m, e, n, t. good. no problem. you know that word. you know, I think the word ‘apartment’ is very stupid. ((murmur – 2 seconds)) no really, I think it should be called a ‘together-ment’.

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7

T:

8

T:

9

T:

10

T:

11

T:

12

T:

13

T:

14 15

Ss: T:

16 17

T: T:

18

S:

19

T:

20

T:

21

Ss:

ใช่ปะ don’t you think? เพราะอยู่ด้วยกันหมดเลยในตึกเดียวกัน because people live together in one building. เนอะ do you agree? น่าจะเรี ยกวา่ togetherment. it should be called togetherment. ไมใ่ ช่ not apartment. ((high squeaky voice indicating surprise/indignation)) เนอะ วา่ มัย๊ right? you think so? ((very high squeaky voice indicating surprise/indignation)) เออ ใชป ่ ะ I think so. is it right? ((maintains very high squeaky voice)) @@ อือ แปลกประหลาด yes, strange! ((squeaky voice falls from very high to high)) I don’t understand. it’s very strange. เนอะ right? ((voice returns to normal range and timbre)) แยกเป็ นหอ้ งๆ it separates into many rooms. ้ เหรอ มันแยกเป็ นหอ้ งๆใชไ่ หม ออ๋ คิดอยา่ งนัน ah, that’s how you think of it? it separates into many rooms, right? okay คนนี้ ออกแบบเองใชไ่ หม okay. this person designed it yourself, right? @@

Extract 8.5: A single house [48 seconds] 1 2 3

T:

what kind of house do you live in. what kind of house do you live in. Ss: บา้ นเดี่ยว detached house. ((literally a single/sole house)) T: บา้ นเดี่ยว บา้ นเดี่ยว detached house. detached house.

L anguage Pl ay

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 10

11

T: how do you say that. Ss: บา้ นที่ยังไมแ ่ ตง่ งาน house which is not yet married. T: well! ((gasp)) @ Ss: @@ T: that’s a TERRIBLE translation! no! no! @ that’s terrible! what is a single house? a house… that’s not… married! right? Ss: @@@@@ T: you’re terrible! I’m gonna throw a chair at you if you say that again! no::. okay, you can say… it’s a detached house. or, a singlestorey house. most people would just say ‘a house’. T: เนอะ do you agree? T: house. ก็พอ that’s enough. T: house ธรรมดา normal. ((= normal house))

Extract 8.6: Bottom, bottle [79 seconds] 1 2

T: T:

7 8 9 10 11

let’s start with the kitchen. okay? ชว่ ยอา่ นกันใหฟ ้ ั งหน่อยครับ ชว่ ยอา่ นกันใหฟ ้ ั ง มีอะไรบา้ ง please read together. please read together. what have you got. T: what’s in the kitchen. quick! Ss: refrigerator. T: refrigerator. T: ชื่อเลน ่ วา่ what’s its nickname/short name. S: fridge. T: fridge. very good. fridge. Ss: @ ((not apparent why some students laugh here)) T: fridge. fridge. ah. what else. quick! S: /btn/

12 13 14

T: what? S: /btn/ Ss: /btn/

3 4 5 6

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15 16

T: T:

17 18

Ss: T:

19 20

Ss: T:

21 22

S: T:

23 24

Ss: T:

25

Ss:

26

T:

27

T:

bottom? ((deadpan voice)) bottom มันไมไ่ ดอ้ ยูใ่ นหอ้ งครัว มันติดตัวมาเนี่ ย bottom is not in the kitchen, it’s attached to your body. ((deadpan voice)) @@@@@@@@@@ ((with some chatter and some shrieks)) ใครเขียนวา่ bottom ทะลึ่ง who wrote this bottom. NAUGHTY! ((indignant voice)) @@@ ((laughter continues, diminishing, through the teacher’s next line)) ตอ่ ไปนี้ อาจารยจ์ ะไมย่ น ื ขา้ งๆคุณหรอก กลัว from now on, I will not dare to stand beside you. I’m scared! (??) @@ หา huh? (??) หมอ้ pot? ((not clear whether a student had nominated ‘pot’ as another kitchen item, or whether it is a devoicing of the initial phoneme of ‘bottle’)) ((8 seconds: students chatter and eventually settle down, with some pronouncing ‘bottle’ correctly)) ้ า่ ง ใชไ่ หมครับ ขา้ งลา่ ง หรื อกน bottom คือชั นล ้ ก็ได้ อื้อ bottom is the lower area, isn’t it. the lower part or buttocks. YES! ((long glissando downwards)) ah. what else. ((normal voice))

In the first of these three extracts, the teacher forms the neologism of togetherment by analogy with apartment; in the second, he joins with students to create a pun on the two meanings of single; and in the third he chooses to misunderstand students’ rendering of bottom for bottle (which had resulted from the typically Thai substitution of final /l/ by /n/ or /m/, combined with epenthesis of the final consonant cluster). Extract 8.6 is of some note because the teacher’s performance of outraged sensibility produced what was the most visibly enjoyable part of the lesson, with a majority of the class engaged in laughter which was sustained for some 10 seconds, and which included chatter as well as sporadic squeals by some students. What the teacher was doing here, of course, was positioning students as flirtatious/sexually suggestive, a discourse entirely inappropriate to the classroom. And because the positioning was so incongruous, its humorous impact was particularly strong; it was indeed a carnivalesque moment. When I have described the exchange to Australian colleagues, some questioned whether this kind of classroom interaction is appropriate,

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particularly on the part of a male Western teacher located in Thailand. But as an observer of the class, I can say that the atmosphere was light, and as far as I could tell, no offence was caused. At the same time, I would agree that in other hands, this kind of interaction could go astray – and we know that ‘pushing boundaries’ is often both the pleasure and danger of humour. In the first two texts above, there is apparently little of discursive consequence: as indicated earlier, their focus is firmly upon the linguistic end of humour. The third ‘Bottle’ text is notable, however, in that linguistic humour leads to discursive humour. That is, the teacher’s contrived misunderstanding of students’ phonology (verbalisation) enabled a tension at the symbolic stratum, which in turn could humorously position students to their detriment in the discursive stratum. Now looking briefly across all six examples cited, there is one other point of note in the teacher’s performance, which relates to its paralinguistic dimension. We can observe that Ajarn Murray’s speech varies in pitch – moments of high or very high register, vowel-lengthening, and one descending glissando; tone – indignant, amazed, disbelieving, deadpan; and timbre – squeaky voice. Further, he makes use of a gasp, and the vocal effect of crackling electricity. These paralinguistic elements function in three ways. First, they can be funny in themselves. Second, they intensify the playfulness of the teacher’s spoken language. And third, they signal to any students who may not have quite followed the verbal humour that a change of footing has occurred.

A descriptive framework for humorous language play Building upon Hasan’s framework of verbal art, it was found that humour in the language play of the classroom investigated could be effectively described in terms of a tri-stratal scheme of verbalisation, symbolic representation and discourses. Further, while language play – like all language use – necessarily has both discursive and linguistic dimensions, instances in this case were observed to tend towards the discursive. This application of functional linguistic theory has been complemented by a psychological view of humour as resulting from encounters with incongruity; and further informed by Bakhtinian sociocultural perspectives of double-voicing and carnivalesque spirit. It may be noted that the effects produced by humorous incongruity may disrupt/transgress mores but may of course just as well serve to reinforce them. In this particular lesson, at one level, the discourses in play are conservative ones of propriety and respectability in Thai culture. In this sense, the teacher’s humour serves to reinforce ‘appropriate’ behaviour. But on the other hand, as indicated above, teacher and students did cooperate in a second

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discursive process which tended to the transgressive: the parodying of the lesson itself. And so, while the primary activity was the implementation of a syllabus concerned with different kinds of dwellings and rooms in English, there was a secondary activity which parodied the first. The lesson might thus be glossed as something like this in the heads of student and teacher participants: yes, we know that we have to follow a boring textbook – but we can make it interesting and funny ourselves. When I later shared this interpretation with Ajarn Murray (IV1), he confirmed my view, stating that his goal was to enliven an otherwise dull text and topic, and that he had been particularly conscious of factors such as time of day, students’ tiredness, and their general lack of interest in the study of English. This kind of play recalls Sullivan’s similar observation of a Vietnamese EFL class (2000a: 83), where teacher and students collaborated to transform ‘what might have been a dry practice to a clever exercise in imagination’. Further illustration is provided in Pomerantz and Bell’s study of advanced FL learners of Spanish, whose parody of a ‘boring’ conversation topic created ‘emotionally charged, linguistically rich discussion’ (2007: 566). And in a Hong Kong EFL classroom described by Lin and Luk, students were seen to have ‘animated, indecent fun’ as they extemporised beyond the set text (2005: 88). The present analysis would endorse the view put by Lin and Luk, following Bakhtin, that humour should not be seen as ‘merely individual reaction to some isolated, “comic” event’ but instead is constituted by ‘collective practices of social and ideological critique’ (2005: 78). Indeed, as demonstrated in the extracts above, the playfulness performed by both teacher and students did ‘create alternative realities’ (G. Cook, 2000: 5) through carnivalesque elements of parody and inversion.

The teacher’s role As noted earlier, there is little enquiry to date into the role of the teacher in producing and enabling language play in L2 classrooms; and clearly, there are significant differences in the capacities of teachers and students to create and engage in such play. The teacher is in a position of institutional power, by which s/he has the right to operate in two different registers – the ‘regulatory’ and the ‘pedagogic’ (Bernstein, 1996). In regulatory terms, it was the teacher who signalled, through his discursive positioning, that fun could be made both of students and of the educational topic/task. It was the teacher who initiated play, or encouraged students to play further; and, as may be seen in each extract, it was the teacher who determined when play should revert to ‘work’.

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In pedagogic terms, Ajarn Murray was seen to confidently create language play concerned with English lexis, semantics and phonology. Also, by means of his command of Thai, Ajarn Murray was able to embed L2 play within L1 so that meaning remained transparent to all members of the class. And as a result of his knowledge of both Thai and Anglo cultures, the teacher could successfully exploit the discursive positioning of students as, for example, unsophisticated, reckless, or grandiose. Thus in this teacher-led, whole-class setting, on the one hand we lose the kind of free-wheeling sound-play seen, for example, among the young children in Cekaite and Aronsson’s study (2005); or the provocative, sexualised banter initiated by adolescent learners in Lin and Luk (2005). But in its place we see on the part of the teacher here as in studies by Sullivan (2000a, 2000b) – skills both regulatory and pedagogic which produce L2 input finely calibrated to students’ competence, and moreover, which can integrate ‘play’ moments with ‘work’ in productive ways. Looking at the study overall, no other classes were seen to use humour in these extended ways; there were recorded some brief moments only, all of which were only ‘mildly’ humorous in my judgement. We may recall, for example, Ajarn Nanda’s lesson (see Chapter 4, Extract 4.9) when the teacher made the ironic suggestion to students: ‘Should we move the munitions depot or move the village?’ with humour resulting from the incongruity of moving a village occupied by people rather than an industrial entity. Another humorous moment occurred in Ajarn Laksana’s drill-type activity illustrated in Chapter 3 (Extract 3.1).

Extract 8.7: Ajarn Laksana 1 2 3

T: Ss: T:

4

Ss:

where is she. she is at shop. she is at the shop. what is she doing at the shop. talking to her friend? no.

When the teacher and I were discussing this sequence at interview, Ajarn Laksana pointed out that her question about whether the customer in the shop was ‘talking to her friend’ was intended to be ironic, for: You can meet your friend somewhere else rather than at a shop. So you’d better do some other thing at the shop. (IV1) Ajarn Laksana’s comment was of interest to me, since – possibly due to cultural differences – I had not perceived the question as ironic.

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In Dr Chai’s som tam lesson, as described earlier, a local cook had been brought into class in order to judge the results of students’ dishes. The teacher commented:

Extract 8.8: Dr Chai เนี่ ยนะโทษคนทาํ ไมไ่ ด้ ตอ้ งโทษคนเขียน If it [the dish] is good or bad, it depends on the writer [of the recipe] not the maker. This I interpret as the teacher positioning students as being competitive, and his disrupting of expectations about who could claim responsibility for winning. One student followed up the teacher’s comment by assuring the cook:

Extract 8.9: Student in Dr Chai’s class ไมต ่ อ้ งเกรงใจนะครับ No need to show deference to us. The phrase is a common face-saving formula in Thai. Here, I interpret it as being used ironically, to mean ‘Don’t be afraid to praise us’. In all such moments, the humour was of a discursive rather than linguistic nature. Moreover, unlike Ajarn Murray’s lesson, instances were few, brief, and not always marked by laughter. Now looking back to Asia and considering the ‘licence’ for humorous language play in EFL contexts, I would like to note that while Ajarn Murray’s classroom was unusual, and while it is probably true to say that there is in some ways a greater freedom of role available to expatriate native speakers, I have also seen such extensive use of language play on the part of a Thai teacher at the same institution (in a department outside that of languages). That is, a similarly adventurous role can be taken by a Thai teacher, though it is certainly atypical.

Play and students’ learning Finally, I will consider affective, sociocultural and linguistic dimensions of students’ learning in Ajarn Murray’s class.

Affective My field notes and audiotapes record that there was a warm, responsive atmosphere, with considerable smiling and laughter in evidence. I observed that although students’ L2 production ability was limited, their desire and

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effort to participate was high, and quite different from the verbal reticence which characterised the majority of other lessons observed in this study (and which is often commented upon in EFL contexts – e.g. Liu & Jackson, 2008). It would appear that the cathartic effect of humour may have reduced or even removed the particular anxiety which relates to foreign language learning (Horwitz et al., 1986). At the affective level, then, the study suggests that teacher-led language play may have a positive impact upon students’ engagement in the learning process. Also of note here is the different tenor afforded by whole-class interaction in comparison to that recorded in previous studies of pair/group interaction. On the one hand, pair/group settings enable maximum verbal participation among students, with arguably a broader range of role and topic available when ‘away from the teacher’s eyes’. On the other hand, when fun/ laughter erupt across an entire class, the collective experience is heightened in intensity: it may then happen, as Bakhtin puts it, that ‘the individual body ceases to a certain extent to be itself’ (1984b: 255).

Sociocultural Secondly, as noted earlier, while in many respects the teacher’s play served to reinforce existing mores of propriety and respectability (i.e. you should be modest, and it is funny if you are not), in terms of larger educational discourses, this was not necessarily the case. Instead, here was a carnivalesque unsettling produced through teacher and students’ collaboration in parodying the set topic and text. It is in this sense that Lin and Luk (2005) point to humour’s capacity to liberate from ‘dominant discourses’. At the same time, as students experience and respond to their teacher’s playing across two languages and cultures, they are learning to become interculturally competent. Language play is an essential part of L2 proficiency (G. Cook, 2000: 150); and humour itself is, as noted, a crucial part of sociolinguistic competence in any culture.

Linguistic We may say that because language play – like metaphor and analogy – requires understanding on more than one level, it produces additional cognitive stimulus; and through deeper processing, more effective and enduring learning is likely to occur (Craik & Tulving, 1975; Asthana & Nagrani, 1984; Yonelinas, 2002: 457). Moreover, language play has the potential to raise students’ metalinguistic awareness, with marked forms of L2 serving to draw attention to form and/or function. Some of the linguistic play seen here was seen to offer such opportunities, with students’ attention being drawn variously to lexis, phonology, and semantics. Verbal play can thus serve to

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develop students’ awareness of language forms while, as G. Cook notes (2000: 193) ‘avoiding the sterile way in which such a focus has been achieved in traditional syllabuses’. **** In recent years, language play has been seen as contributing to a broadening of the parameters of communicative approaches, which have come under criticism for a tendency to view language in predominantly ‘transactional’ ways (G. Cook, 2000; Carter, 2004; V. Cook, 2007). While there are many good arguments for opening up what is considered to be communication, special consideration is required in determining the place of humorous language play in the classroom. It is not suggested here that humour be regarded as a necessary part of teaching, for pedagogic style is created out of the teacher’s personality and is attuned to context. Moreover, a surfeit of humour could become counter-productive: a little goes a long way. It is also important to acknowledge that humorous language play needs to be handled with care. However, it may also be said that such humour is a form of verbal art which emerges from creativity, and shades into wit, into intelligence, all of which are dimensions of daily language use; and so the experiences afforded by humorous language play may indeed represent a valuable resource for second language classrooms.

9

Teachers’ Views of L1 and L2 Performance

This third part of the book has been concerned with the interpersonal dimension of language learning. In Chapter 7, I explored how students’ L2 identity was restricted or expanded by certain classroom roles, and in Chapter 8, how language play can stimulate creativity and pleasure in language learning. In the present Chapter 9, I turn to the teachers themselves, to explore how they feel when they use each language in class. This had not been part of the original intention of my study, but I was struck, in our first interview, by Ajarn Murray’s comments about: …the pleasure of [being in] a completely different socio-cultural context, using a completely different language… and how exciting! You’re a different person…. You get new roles opened to you. So, while the overall focus of my project had been how L1 and L2 were used for pedagogic purposes, I now determined to additionally pursue with Murray and the other eight teachers how this notion applied to their own performance of both English and Thai in class. The comment noted above had impacted strongly upon me for two reasons. The first was due to my own observation that teachers’ use of two languages in class was a default mode in this EFL context and that the move from L2 (English) into L1 (Thai) was often marked by a release of psychological tension which was visible in students’ posture and sometimes audible in their breath. Secondly, I found that Ajarn Murray’s observation resonated with my own past and present experiences of learning second languages (principally Welsh, French and Thai), in the process of which I have variously felt ‘othered’, ‘engaged’, ‘truer’ and ‘depersonalised’, with such processes engendering feelings of tension, fear and joy.

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Lin et al. (2002: 307) have written about how L2 impels their ‘quest[s] for expanded selves … to define who we are and what we shall become’. Kramsch speaks lyrically of learners ‘who take intense physical pleasure in acquiring a language, thrill in trespassing someone else’s territory, becoming a foreigner on their own turf, becoming both invisible and differently visible’ (2003: 256). And the notion of ‘feeling different in a foreign language’ has also been explored by Pavlenko and Dewaele (2001–2003) in a survey of Bilingualism and Emotion, with findings confirmed and expanded in their later studies (Pavlenko, 2006; Dewaele, 2011). In seeking to explore what happens when individual teachers present the self in a classroom setting, I again draw upon a post-structural perspective of identity; linking this to culture and education in Thailand.

Identity and L2 Performance As noted earlier, enquiry into identity may be said to be flourishing (see for example Pavlenko, 2006; Mantero, 2007; Lin, 2008, as well as the inception in 2002 of the Journal of Language, Identity and Education). I also noted earlier that recent years have seen the publication of a great many naturalistic accounts of identity processes experienced by bilingual speakers; but that there has been considerably less enquiry into the identity formation afforded by instructed L2 learning, particularly in EFL contexts. If we consider identity issues relating to language teachers, there have of course been important studies, mainly located in English as a Second Language (ESL) settings and concerned with the political and professional status of Non-native English Speaking (NNES) teachers who have often been marginalised (e.g. Braine, 1999; Mahboob, 2010). But studies of language teachers who are located in the very different world of EFL are rare (for some examples see part of Duff & Uchida’s 1997 study in Japan; Llurda & Huguet in Spain, 2003; Tsui in China, 2007; L. Phan in Vietnam, 2008; Atay & Ece in Turkey, 2009). Such studies of local EFL teachers evince different concerns, as might be expected, which often relate to teachers’ own understandings of L2 language and culture. However, the issue of how language teachers’ identities are impacted by their actual performances of L2 in classroom settings has not, to my knowledge, been explored to date.

Seeking teachers’ views As indicated above, my interest in this area resulted from one teacher’s comment in an early interview; and I thus undertook to follow up the issue

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in the second round of interviews with all nine teachers. In exploring identity, however, I was mindful of Hastings and Manning’s comment that discussions in this area have tended ‘to spread disquietingly and amorphously to end up absorbing all the familiar independent variables of sociolinguistics we would ever talk about’ (2004: 3); and so I was concerned to focus on one particular context of use – here the L2 classroom. I also realised that notions of identity and its performance were ones that had cultural connotations, and might not be easy to discuss, despite participating teachers’ expertise in two languages. Therefore I took care to word the relevant interview question as follows, allowing for the notion of ‘identity’ itself to emerge in discussion:

Interview 2, Question 5: Performing in English Some people have written about how they feel different when they communicate in their second language – they may speak in different ways and about different topics. Can you compare the way you communicate in Thai and the way you communicate in English in the classroom? For example: • • •

Do you feel like you are ‘performing’ in English? Do you take on different kinds of roles in English and Thai? Do you speak/behave in different ways in each language?

Even with the precautions outlined above, I found that ensuing interview discussions on this topic were not easy. However, in the case of seven of the nine teachers, valuable responses were generated; in the eighth case, a minimal and dissident response was obtained; and in the ninth, discussion became confused, with imminent loss of face, and so I dropped the topic. In the next section I will present data taken from the second set interviews (IV2) with the eight responding teachers, together with a short commentary; following this will be a broader discussion of points of interest. In the tables below, comments are reproduced verbatim. 1. Dr Chai The teacher was in his late 20s, and had recently completed doctoral studies in the US. His observed classes were innovative, informal, relaxed (Table 9.1). It is clear that for Dr Chai, English functions to ‘open up’ his communication with students, both in field (topics) and tenor (role relationships). In

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Table 9.1 Dr Chai L2 [English]

L1 [Thai]

• More open; less hierarchy

• My role… is very respectable; I have to keep distance a little bit • I have to use some words not too harsh • It’s like you’re sharing your Thai-ness

• I feel that students are my friends • A culture [which] doesn’t treat people at different levels; everyone is just equal • Wide range of topics

• Cannot have a wide range of topics

Thai, on the other hand, he follows the more conventional role of a teacher, which as noted above is high in status and great in power distance. I was intrigued by Dr Chai’s comment that in Thai he had to use ‘some words not too harsh’; and I interpret this both culturally and linguistically. A central concept in Thai culture, as noted earlier, is that of ‘face’; in particular here, the maintaining of ‘negative face’, that is the avoidance of ‘troubling’ someone. Thus both lower and higher status speakers are expected to be moderate in manner and speech so that harmony prevails. Linguistically in Thai, there are a range of devices to realise these semantics, which include circumlocution, euphemism, as well as various mitigating ‘particles’, any or all of which Dr Chai may be referring to here. 2. Dr Bua The teacher was in her mid-30s; and had completed doctoral studies in the US. Her observed classes were dynamic and engaging (Table 9.2). Table 9.2 Dr Bua L2 [English]

L1 [Thai]

• [can say] some things that I probably cannot say in Thai or I shouldn’t say in Thai. • If students want to speak to me in English, they use English very directly. • I feel more comfortable.

• In Thai, especially for [= because of] the different status, we beat around the bush and then get to the point. • Even the way you write … It is well documented … is indirect in Thai.

We meet a similar ‘opening up’ effect of English communication here with Dr Bua. Her comment about Thai indirectness of speech will ring bells with any Westerner who has spent time in Thailand or with Thai students. Again, this is seen in Thai discourse moves, where direct requests,

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explanations and so on are not favoured, as well as in Thai grammar, where mitigation is prevalent (‘Not quite arrived’; and ‘Married already or not yet?’ are examples encountered early by most foreigners). The teacher’s comment about student directness in English, however, is a little surprising to me; and it is hard to know how much this may be a result of cultural opening up or how much due to limited competence in the L2. We also need to consider that although both teacher and students are using L2, they already share an L1 and culture. Would Thai students be similarly direct with a non-Thai teacher when using English to communicate? In my own experience, no. 3. Ajarn Nanda The teacher was in her late-50s, and had studied overseas for a relatively short period. She occupied a high status position in the university; her teaching displayed both confidence and verbal expressivity (Table 9.3). Table 9.3 Ajarn Nanda L2 [English]

L1 [Thai]

• [speaking English] can open up a different part of our personality • It’s not the real you, not the real students, not the real teacher, because we are still non-natives • [you] slow down your pace of speaking

• It’s a kind of relaxation …[we use Thai in order] to take a break • I know you [students] understand what I’m saying

Again we meet the sense of L2 English as opening up the self; but on the other hand, Ajarn Nanda draws our attention to the performance quality of L2, where neither teacher nor students can show their ‘real’ self. What is ‘real’ is of course debatable, but I interpret the teacher’s remark as referring to the disparity between our limited competence in L2 compared to the ease and naturalness of L1 use. I also include this teacher’s comment about the slowing down of speech because although it might appear unimportant, so much of what we present to the world rests in ‘how we say it’. Slowness of speech would usually indicate, in this pedagogic context, the teacher’s adjustment to students’ L2 proficiency. But psychologically, slowness is also associated with other, more restricted kinds of expression such as those constructed when talking to the very young, aged or infirm. Thus this manner of speaking may be regarded as weighing more on the inhibiting rather than liberating side of the scales.

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4. Dr Patcharin This teacher was in her late-50s, and had completed a doctorate in the US a considerable time earlier. She was a person of some gravitas (Table 9.4). Table 9.4 Dr Patcharin L2 [English]

L1 [Thai]

• If we speak English among Thai, it’s not natural; we are pretending • It makes me uncomfortable [because] I don’t know if students understand or not • It takes time to find the words

• If we would like to get down into the deep meaning, I prefer to use Thai

The previous teacher’s comment about pace in English is echoed by Dr Patcharin. Moreover, there are elements of tension here, for this teacher cannot be sure if her L2 communication is successful with all students; and she also feels the artificiality of using L2 in this foreign language setting, where students and teacher share a first language and culture. We may be reminded again of the often underestimated differences between EFL and ESL contexts; the latter usually multilingual, with transplanted learners whose L2 speaking development is a high priority for meeting their resettlement needs in the new country, but the former usually sharing a first linguaculture, and studying the L2 at a distance both geographic, and sometimes discursive. Dr Patcharin’s comment about Thai offering ‘deep meaning’ can also remind us of the embeddessness of L2 within the greater semantic depth of L1. 5. Ajarn Somchay The teacher was in his 50s, and had undertaken master’s studies overseas a considerable time earlier. His lessons were traditional, calm, quiet (Table 9.5). Table 9.5 Ajarn Somchay L2 [English]

L1 [Thai]

• It’s more planned rather than just spontaneous

• I can speak my mind • I think the students feel closer to me in Thai

I will respond to Ajarn Somchay’s view below, along with that of Ajarn Rajavadee.

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6. Ajarn Rajavadee The teacher was in her early-50s, and had undertaken postgraduate study overseas a decade earlier. Her lessons took a traditional approach, especially with grammar, and were marked by energy and zest (Table 9.6). Table 9.6 Ajarn Rajavadee L2 [English]

L1 [Thai]

• I don’t feel open when I use English in class. • [using English] in class is for the benefit of the students

• I feel relief; they [students] feel relief; we understand the same thing now

Comments by both these teachers (5) and (6) support those of Dr Patcharin in respect of the ‘monitored self’ which emerges with their use of L2 in the EFL classroom – a performance which we may expect to be more planned, pedagogically-focused and thus restricted in some ways. Similar, again, are the closer tenor relations afforded by communication in the shared L1. The prevalence of affect in teachers’ remarks may not be unexpected, if we accept that the interpersonal drives learning. What is perhaps unexpected, though, is its ready acknowledgment at interview by teachers who appeared to hold quite traditional power-distance relations with their students. As indicated earlier, my experiences in this study (and elsewhere in Asia) have led me to see kinds of teacher-student relationships that were quite different from those with which I was familiar in Western contexts; combining distance with care. For example, most Thai teachers held strict expectations of student behaviour (e.g. of dress), but at the same time offered flexibility on matters such as student lateness to class; for myself as an Anglo-background teacher, the converse would apply. 7. Ajarn Murray The teacher was Anglo-Australian, in his 30s, and bilingual in Thai. His lessons were intensely communicative, with personal engagement at a high level throughout. As noted earlier, it was Ajarn Murray’s comments which initiated this line of enquiry; and he also serves a valuable role in discussion by enabling comparison with his Thai colleagues. I have chosen to classify Ajarn Murray’s comments by L2/L1, as with the Thai teachers above; rather than by Thai/ English as would also have been possible. In other words, I prioritise the L2/ L1 status of the language instead of the language itself (Table 9.7).

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Table 9.7 Ajarn Murray L2 [Thai]

L1 [English]

• Easy-going, relaxed, ruder • A fun language, and it’s really easy to make wicked jokes in, so why not! • You’re a different person; you get new roles opened to you.

• Much more of a teacher • More serious, strict, regimented • A lot more organised

L2 here (Thai, for this teacher), gave an ‘opening out’ similar to that experienced in L2 (English) some of his Thai colleagues, and again, similarly to those colleagues, he was a more conventional teacher in his L1 (for him, English). As noted in Chapter 8, Ajarn Murray exemplifies what is not an uncommon sight in EFL teaching across Asia – the expatriate teacher whose classroom behaviour is less formal, and often more playful, than that usually expected of local teachers. In a different sense from Kramsch’s intention, but to borrow her words: Ajarn Murray is enjoying ‘the privilege of the non-native speaker’ (2003), and what it affords for his own presentation of self. I would also like to draw attention to Ajarn Murray’s perception that Thai is a ‘fun language’ in which one can make ‘wicked jokes’. This teacher spoke further of the propensity for word-play within Thai, in particular for spoonerisms and puns, noting that Thai phonology extends substitution not only of phonemes of words, but to lexical tones (confirmed by Komin, 1990: 234). Here we can see how what Ajarn Murray perceives as L2 structural differences can lead to different roles being explored within that language. So in his case, it may be not only the experience of L2, but also in part the structure of L2 which enables different roles to be explored; as well as, of course, one’s own position as a ‘foreign’ speaker of that language. 8. Ajarn Nuteau The teacher was in his 40s, and had studied one year overseas some time ago. His lessons were particularly well organised and structured, with traditional teacher-student roles. I record below Ajarn Nuteau’s view, which was in distinction to the other teachers in the study: I believe it [relationship with students] depends on the personality of the teacher not the language used.

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The teacher expanded on his point as follows: If the teacher seems to be hostile to the students, even if you use English or Thai, your hostility will show up … I never show any negative feelings to them … Remember, it’s because they don’t know, they come to the classroom. This particular teacher had elsewhere affirmed his encouraging but formal relationship with students, disclosing, for example, that he enforced a strict dress code whereby students who wore sandals instead of shoes to his class would have marks deducted; and expressing dislike of male students’ long hair. It seems then that for this teacher, tenor relations were rather distant in both languages. Teachers’ perceptions will now be examined in more detail, initially with regard to their views of performance of L2, then of L1, and finally in respect of patterns across both languages.

L2 in the classroom There are some interesting complexities apparent in teachers’ views of L2 performance. Seven of the eight teachers noted significant differences in performance according to language. Three teachers (1, 2, 4) indicated that when using their L2, they felt more open, more relaxed, more equal, and could say things they would normally be less likely to say in L1. Those teachers’ views accord with that of a teacher in Atay and Ece’s study (2009: 28), who reported: I feel more convenient when speaking in English. I become more talkative. I feel I can speak about every subject, even about the taboo(s). Similarly, perceptions of English as allowing ‘relaxed informality’ were held by all three L1 groups – French, German and Japanese – who participated in Ellwood’s study of international students enrolled at an Australian university (2004: 128). But on the other hand, four other teachers in the present study (3, 4, 5, 6) noted an ‘unreality’ or unnaturalness of the roles and relationships enacted in L2. For the latter, in fact it was in L1 (Thai) rather than in L2 (English) that they could relax. Perhaps, rather like the classic dual view of anxiety in its ‘facilitating’ or ‘debilitating’ forms, L2 classroom performance could pull teachers ‘either way’. That is, when a speaker moves away from the comfort and security of her/his first language into the alterity of the second, s/he may experience either opening or closing of roles in that language. (Possible

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explanatory factors for this are discussed in the later section entitled ‘Comparing L1 and L2’.) A second interesting paradox arises. On the one hand, there is reported a sense of closeness which may result from students and teacher ‘conspiring’ to communicate in an ‘other’ tongue: I feel that students are my friends [when communicating in English] (Dr Chai); [I can say] some things that I probably cannot say in Thai or I shouldn’t say in Thai … more direct (Dr Bua). On the other hand, it is also the case that Thai teachers’ communication in English must be modified in order to reach their students: It makes me uncomfortable [because I don’t know if students understand or not (Dr Patcharin); It’s more planned than just spontaneous (Ajarn Somchay). Thus again the effect can go one of two ways: for there is tension between the solidarity offered by a ‘joint adventure’ on the one hand, but on the other, a power differential between teacher and students which has increased because of the disparity between each party’s L2 proficiency. Lastly, there is the affective impact experienced when performing L2. As noted in the opening of this paper, the Australian teacher had spoken of the pleasure and excitement resulting from speaking in a completely different sociocultural context using a completely different language (IV1). The responses of the Thai teachers, on the other hand, were not of this intensely emotional flavour. There are a few ways in which to interpret their stance. Possibly the Thai teachers’ experiences of L2 were simply different – that is, less deeply felt. Or perhaps more probably, their responses reflected Thai cultural conventions which limit the expression of personal feelings in the public domain. Additionally or alternatively, there may be a third factor which was alluded to earlier: the limitations of interview data having been obtained only in English.

L1 in the classroom When Thai teachers spoke of their roles in L1, they usually emphasised its overall ease of communication: I feel relief; they feel relief ( Rajavadee), I can speak my mind (Ajarn Somchay); its solidarity effect: …you’re sharing your Thai-ness (Dr Chai), I think students feel closer to me in Thai (Ajarn Somchay); indirectness: We beat around the bush and then get to the point (Dr Bua); and conventionality: My role as a teacher is very respectable (Dr Chai). These perceptions may be seen as a product of teachers’ existing interpersonal relations with students being enacted within familiar Thai pedagogic discourses. That is, whereas the use of L2 may afford a reduction of teachers’ normally distant status, and opens up changed ‘speakings’ in the classroom, the use of L1 is associated with conventional tenor relations, which by their familiarity require less attention and energy on the part of teachers and students. The view of Ajarn Murray, as the sole Anglo teacher, was similar in one of these

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respects – that of conventionality. For him, too, when reverting to his L1 (in this case, English) Ajarn Murray became more serious, strict, regimented, thus fulfilling the traditional expectations of a teacher’s management role and status. (Further comparisons cannot be made between Ajarn Murray and his students, due to the absence of a common L1 between them.)

L1 and L2 compared The reported ‘liberating effect’ of operating in a second language as discussed above seemed to be associated with three factors among this group of teachers: age, recent/extensive experience of L2, and formality of classroom tenor, all of which, by and large, were also associated with each other. Thus it may be noted that the three teachers – Dr Chai, Dr Bua, and Ajarn Murray – who had spoken most enthusiastically about the opening up effects of the L2 on their classroom performance, were also the youngest in the group (aged from late 20s to mid-30s). Moreover, I can report that their L2 proficiency was very high, with Dr Chai and Dr Bua having recently undertaken doctoral study in English in the US; and Ajarn Murray having lived and worked in Thailand for the previous 10 years. Additionally, according to my classroom observations, it was these three teachers who held the most interactive and least traditionally formal relationship with their students. On the other hand, Ajarn Nuteau, who did not perceive a difference when performing L2; and Ajarn Patcharin, who did not respond to this question, were among the most senior participants in the study; had not recently studied in an Anglophone context, nor for longer than a year; and displayed a high degree of formality in their classroom stance. It seems possible, therefore, that in order for an L2 ‘opening’ to ‘kick in’, there needs to exist a certain level of interactivity and reduced formality in the language classroom (or vice versa), and that such classroom features are more likely to develop when a teacher is younger and has recently spent extended time in a foreign country. (In suggesting this, I do not propose that ‘younger is better’, but simply note what appeared to be a pattern in the lessons observed.) Another major point here relates to how teachers perceived English, with various ‘freedoms’ being ascribed by Thai teachers to that particular language. Thus, Dr Chai commented of English that there is less hierarchy… it doesn’t treat people at different levels; everyone is just equal. And Dr Bua noted that if students want to speak to me in English, they use English very directly. My interpretation here is that Dr Chai and Dr Bua were referring in part to the effects of structural and/or discursive differences between the two languages. In Thai, for example, there is an elaborate system of address which depends on

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age, status and solidarity/distance. The single-choice English pronoun ‘you’, for example, compares with at least six everyday choices in Thai (which include ‘younger sister/brother’, ‘grandfather’, ‘auntie’, ‘teacher’), and another six or so less frequently used options. In addition, there are a number of ‘particles’ to express formality in Thai which do not have equivalents in English (Khanittanon, 1988). Moreover, some teachers believed that the discursive content of what could be said in English differed from what was possible in Thai. For example, it was noted by Dr Chai, that using English offered a wide range of topics and by Dr Bua, that she could say some things that I probably cannot say in Thai or I shouldn’t say in Thai. These comments support the opening effect of English, here by particular contrast with the greater verbal restraint which operates in Thai culture (O’Sullivan & Tajaroensuk, 1997). It is also possible that when L2 speakers perceive English in these ways, they have been influenced by global discourses which position it as the language of modernisation, globalisation, and sometimes democracy. But can these perceived differences be ascribed only to the particular nature of English – its linguistic features; its discursive position/role in the world today? Or could some, at least, be associated with a move into any L2? The presence of Ajarn Murray as the sole native speaker of English in the study can offer some insights here. If it were the specific nature and role of English itself that prompted Thai teachers’ perceptions, then Ajarn Murray’s views about English would presumably have been similar to those of his Thai colleagues – but in fact the reverse was true. For whereas some Thai teachers felt that they were more open when using English, and others that there was an ‘unrealness’ of role, the English speaking teacher himself felt more serious, strict, regimented when communicating in English. Ajarn Murray’s anomalous position suggests, therefore, that differences in English and Thai may have been perceived by teachers only in part because of the qualities of English itself; and that in part it may be the ‘foreignness’ of any L2 linguaculture which offers a newness of role. In short then, it is the intersection of language type, discursive status, and roles which serves to shape performance possibilities. **** Interview data has demonstrated a belief held by nearly all teachers that their performance, roles, and affective states do vary according to whether they are speaking English or Thai in the classroom. The analysis brings out some implications of L1-L2 performance for teachers’ roles and identities. Selection of language can be seen to inevitably function as role choice, with bilingual options now constituting a wider and qualitatively different repertoire of one’s identity. Such a view must render illusory a simple notion of

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language as code (as in ‘code-switching’ – see also Lin, 2013a), and points to the flows between L1 and L2 which create new performance possibilities, and new dimensions of self. Implications for pedagogy are two-fold. A journey into another language inevitably is a journey into other ways of seeing the world: for language, as Halliday notes, ‘actively construct[s] reality’ (1995: 259). This journey may frequently provoke excitement and anxiety, among other affective states. Those who have travelled such a path with success – the EFL teachers in this study, for example – represent not only excellent models for their students, but repositories of knowledge about the feelings and thoughts that have accompanied the process. In Chapter 7, I suggested that teachers who are aware of the range of interpersonal roles they play in the classroom can better evaluate the impact of particular roles on students’ learning. By extension, I suggest here that teachers who can talk about performing L2, and the opening up or inhibiting effect of its performance, may do their students a great service in leading them to understand the affective foundations upon which L2 learning rests.

Part 4 Professional

10 Global EFL Textbooks

In Part 2 of this book, I explored pedagogy. Part 3 turned inwards to examine the personal. Now, Part 4 turns outwards to explore the bigger factors which shape EFL teachers’ professional lives. In the present Chapter 10, I analyse the role of L1 in accessing monolingual L2 textbooks; Chapter 11 explores the global domains of ESL and EFL; and concluding Chapter 12 draws together threads of pedagogy, the personal, and the professional. During the course of my research in Thailand, it emerged that three teachers were presenting the same Foundation English subject by means of the Passages textbook series (Richards & Sandy, 1998, 2000a), and that local bilingual teachers’ use of this monolingual international publication was problematic. Thus I was impelled to explore key features of the series itself, and to look at the ways in which teachers responded to it both in class and at interview. In particular, I wished to find out the extent to which teachers’ bilinguality could aid in making accessible to students the language and culture of such texts. That is, how did the use of L1 mediate the meanings presented in a monolingual English textbook? It must first be said that for majority-world foreign language teachers and students across the globe, the textbook is the curriculum. As Akbari has noted, ours is not simply a ‘postmethod’ era, but one of ‘textbook-defined practice’ (2008: 647). However, in many contexts, such textbooks are Western imports: Kumaravadivelu speaks of the ‘vice-like grip the Anglo-American textbook industry has on the global ELT market’ (2003: 565). When exploring the impact of EL textbooks worldwide, there have been two approaches: to focus on content, or upon pedagogy. Content analysis of textbooks has received considerable attention for some decades; and is addressed in volumes by Tomlinson and Masuhara (2010), Gray (2010) and Harwood (2010). However, when we look at pedagogy – the ways in which teachers deal with such textbooks on a daily basis – there still exists only a handful of empirical studies, despite repeated and sometimes urgent calls by, among others, Sherman (2010), Guerrettaz and Johnston (2013), McGrath (2013) and Tarone (2014). The present chapter attempts to link content analysis directly 155

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with teachers’ practices, in order to better understand the impact of the global textbook upon local pedagogy.

Textbooks in ELT Two significant early studies of the textbook identify it as ‘the basic medium of education’ (Dendrinos, 1992: 13), whose authority is ‘beyond criticism’ (Luke et al., 1983, 1989). There are particular implications for language teaching. Kubota (2003: 81) refers to a continuing assumption that ‘textbooks convey accurate facts about the target culture and language’; and the role of such resources is of course particularly intense when the target language and its associated cultures are distant from the local L1. Globally, there are two ‘tiers’ of EL textbooks (Waters, 2009). State school systems generally rely upon nationally-produced materials, and this is confirmed for ASEAN countries, including Thailand, by Bao (2008). Universities and private colleges, on the other hand, generally have more choice, and tend to favour global textbooks because of their authority, prestige, and attractive presentation.

Content Analysis In the 1970s and 1980s, textbooks received a great deal of criticism in relation to their monocultural, classist, sexist and racist features. But by 2002, Gray could report on editors’ PARSNIP principle, which excluded from publication areas concerned with Politics, Alcohol, Religion, Sex, Narcotics, Isms and Pork. Since the rise of globalisation and neo-liberalism, there has been an acceleration of critiques relating to the ideologies or discourses presented in commercial materials (Gray, 2013). Tomlinson (2008), for example, describes ELT textbooks’ continued ethnocentricity in relation to content; their assumptions about ‘the best ways to learn’; and the ways in which nonWestern cultures are positioned ‘superficially and insensitively’ (2008: 320). Now, as Gray (2010: 3) notes, feminism, multiculturalism and globalization have been ‘selectively co-opted’ to position students as individualistic, globally mobile, and consumerist. And if we consider intercultural learning, Nault has asserted that ‘no well-designed ELT course books exist that explicitly focus on crosscultural and multicultural themes from a global perspective’ (2006: 323). In the Asian region, seven series of ELT textbooks were examined by Shin et al. (2011), who confirmed these books’ ethnocentricity as well as their superficial approaches to ‘culture’.

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Pedagogy Analysis It is the case, of course, that the content of textbooks is one thing: what teachers do with the texts may be quite another (Sunderland et al., 2001). Although within education more broadly, textbook pedagogy has been extensively studied, in ELT it remains under-researched. Moreover, I would stress that the context of my study is EFL; and thus not considered here are ESL studies such as those by Gulliver (2010) in Canada, or Shawer (2010) in England. Within Asian EFL, there have been a few studies which survey local teachers’ views on the use of textbooks (e.g. Chandran, 2003, in Malaysia; Zacharias, 2005, in Indonesia). But there have been inexplicably few studies which explore how local EFL teachers treat ‘materials in action’. Notable exceptions include Canagarajah’s Sri Lankan ethnography (1993a, 1993b), which provided verbal and graphic evidence of student resistance to both the US textbook and the teacher’s ‘imported’ communicative methodology. As for Thailand, the only existing studies are those conducted by Boriboon in the impoverished north-east ‘Isarn’ region (2008a, 2008b). Here, the author himself taught part of the New Headway series, and compared the effects of un-mediated lessons with those where he had successfully localised both content and activities. As noted above, there has been a great deal of attention to the content of textbooks: this has resulted in a number of analytical frameworks (see Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2010). But frameworks for analysing the pedagogy associated with textbooks have been far fewer. The present study is inspired by, and seeks to build upon, the work of Sunderland et al. (2001), which found that the discourses of textbooks (in their study, specifically discourses of gender) could be ‘endorsed’, ‘subverted’, or ‘ignored’ by classroom teachers. A text is regarded as being endorsed through a teacher’s ‘explicit positive comment’, ‘being dealt with uncritically’, or ‘through simply being taught’ (2001: 277). On the other hand, a text may be subverted by the teacher’s ‘explicitly or implicitly confronting a particular representation’ (2001: 277). A third option is for the teacher to ignore the discursive positioning of a text. This may happen because s/he does not notice the positioning; notices, but decides it is not ‘important or interesting’; or does not address an issue for pedagogical reasons (2001: 277).

Lessons Observed The three classes discussed here consist of Year 1 students who were undertaking their six credit-point compulsory subject English 101, also known as ‘Foundations English’. At the time of this study, the subject had a

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Table 10.1 Focus of analysis, lessons 1–3

1 2 3

Topic

Focus of analysis

Source

The Art of Complaining Getting Down to Business On the Other Side of the World

Culture: discourses Language: semantics Language: grammar

Passages 1 Passages 2 Passages 1

total enrolment of some 1900 students, constituting 28 classes in all. Students had been streamed into two levels according to their results in the national University Entrance Exam. The lower level followed Passages 1, and the higher level, Passages 2. Each of the three observed lessons has a different focus of analysis which results from how teachers responded to the textbook. These foci are summarised in Table 10.1. For each of the three lessons, I will present a brief outline of the class, an extract from the textbook itself, and then examine both content and pedagogy. Lesson 1: Dr Patcharin Passages 1 (1998: 93) Unit 10: Lesson B: Point 8:

The Art of Complaining Let’s do something about it! Consumer Complaints: Getting what you are entitled to

Dr Patcharin opened the lesson by briefly reviewing previous work; for the remainder of the time she worked her way through the textbook. The episode discussed here occurred at the start of the lesson’s new work.

Textbook extract Most people who experience a problem while traveling, shopping, or dining out do not complain. They tolerate bad service and inferior products without making a sound. Why? Many feel complaining won’t do any good – but they’re wrong. Complaining works because companies don’t want dissatisfied customers. Not sure you can do it? Here are some strategies to use when things go wrong….[strategies

1 and 2 omitted]

3. Stand up for your rights. You have the right to receive a product you ordered in a timely manner. With airlines, you have the right to be on a flight you’ve booked. Always demand satisfaction when your consumer rights are violated.

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4. Demand a perk or a discount. Let’s say you were promised a hotel room with an ocean view, but got a view of a brick wall instead, or you were assigned an aisle seat in the front of the cabin on an overseas flight, but got a seat in the middle section all the way in the back. You should do something about both of these situations – ask to be compensated with a special discount or perk.

(Richards & Sandy, 1998, Passages 1, Student’s Book, p. 93)

Content analysis The unit in question presents a cosmopolitan, affluent lifestyle which includes overseas travel and holidays spent at hotels with ocean views: it is imbued with discourses of consumerism and individualism. However, it is a truism to say that much of the world is not like this. In Thailand, for example, while there is wealth, much is concentrated in few hands, and mainly in Bangkok. More than 70% of the population follow a near-subsistence rural lifestyle. Currently, university teachers earn the equivalent of around $US500 per month; and the great majority of university students, particularly in the provinces, lead simple, frugal lives. This text may be described as a hortatory exposition genre which seeks to persuade the reader to act, and gives explicit directions for how to do so. However, there are a number of cultural assumptions made here which could mislead many L2 students, whether located in a Western country or in the present Asian context. First, it is the case that second language speakers are often positioned differently when communicating with native speakers of that language (Norton, e.g. 2000). Second, complaining in any context is likely to be a sensitive, if not charged area of communication. Thirdly, the textbook does not acknowledge that different cultures might conceive of ‘complaining’ in different ways, but this is in fact significantly the case in Thailand. In any discussion of Thai culture, the concept of face must be prominent (Hallinger & Kantamara, 2001). This notion is expressed frequently in Thai daily life through the phrase /kre ca/. With a literal meaning of ‘constricted heart’, the term is often held to be both untranslatable and essentially Thai. But in fact, it equates to the English ‘negative face’ – the desire not to impose upon others. /kre ca/ indexes the high value placed in Thai culture upon preserving social harmony and avoiding face-threatening acts. One key strategy in maintaining face is indirectness of speech (Chaidaroon, 2003). In this light, it is not surprising that the processes which we meet in this passage – of demanding, insisting and complaining – would in Thai culture be not only inappropriate, but indeed proscribed (Patterson & Smith, 2001).

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Pedagogy analysis Here, I will consider first how the teacher dealt with the textbook in class, and then her views of the lesson as voiced later at interview. Extract 10.1 illustrates the lesson’s predominant protocol, which was largely monologic, with occasional IRF exchanges.

Extract 10.1: Dr Patcharin: Booking a flight 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

‘You have the right’. uh ‘You have the right to receive a product you ordered.’. ‘You order’. ‘You order’ modifies ‘a product’. สินคา้ ที่เราสั ง่ a product you ordered ‘in a timely manner’. ‘With airlines’, for example, ‘with airlines’. สายการบิน airlines uhh ‘You have the right to be on a flight’ er ‘to be on a flight’. ‘You have booked’. uh-huh. ‘You have booked’, modify ‘a flight’. ‘You have the right to be on a flight’. คือเคา้ ตอ้ งไดไ้ ปเที่ยวบิน this means that you must be able to be on the flight. ‘You have booked’. ทีไ่ ดบ ๊ เอาไว้ you have been able to book. ้ ุค ‘Always demand satisfaction’. ((repeated)) คืออะไรคะ what does this mean. ‘Demand’ แปลว่า ? ‘Demand’ means? ตอ้ งการนะคะ ตอ้ งการ เราตอ้ งแสดงออกถึงความตอ้ งการของเรา need, right? need. we must express our need… …when you pay.

In my analysis, I applied the framework offered by Sunderland et al., in particular, the categories of subvert, ignore, and endorse; and with some modification, this proved to be a useful tool. In the above extract, we may say that of subversion, there is apparently none. That is, we do not see the teacher ‘explicitly or implicitly confronting a particular representation’ (Sunderland et al., 277). The teacher thus provided an assiduous ‘annotation’, with each English word and phrase pronounced, explained, and translated into Thai.

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Moreover, as captured in audio-tapes of the lesson, Dr Patcharin’s speech was animated and authoritative in tone, with wide pitch contours and assertive rhythm. Her ‘exhortatory’ performance thus served to intensify an endorsement effect. But there is a point which adds some complexity here. It relates to a brief but revealing moment which occurred when the teacher simply asked students if they had ever been abroad. It transpired that none had done so; nor had any student travelled by plane. As earlier reported in Chapter 7, the teacher reassured the class as follows: All of us, just guess [what would happen if you went abroad], right? Nobody knows exactly what’ll happen to you. As noted above, the majority of Thai university students lead frugal lives, and the teacher would have been aware – as I myself was – that her students were very unlikely to have engaged in foreign travel. I suggest that by publicly acknowledging this fact, the teacher provided another stance towards the text which provides a fourth option in addition to the subverting, endorsing, and ignoring categories described above. This stance I will call distancing: it refers to a positioning of text and audience as distant from one another. Through it, the teacher frames the resource as a foreign artifact which is a part of the study of English in Thailand, but which may not relate to students’ lived experiences. Thus, whether or not the discourses are deserving of endorsement or subversion may be immaterial: they are simply placed at a distance. I suggest that this fourth stance is one more likely to be found in an EFL environment such as the present one, where teacher and students share a common linguaculture which is in many ways removed from the Anglo-American text and its discourses. In my later interview (IV2) with Dr Patcharin, although we did not touch on the particular ‘complaining’ discourse illustrated above, the teacher had read my initial data analysis, and offered some valuable further observations. In particular, Dr Patcharin’s ‘distancing’ stance was now amplified, as she identified the Passages 2 textbook as culture-bound, and not relevant for Thailand: The students don’t have enough information to carry on the activities. They don’t know what to talk about…. We [Thais] learn about Western countries, but we don’t learn the language to describe Thailand at all… Isn’t that strange! ((spoken in a rueful tone))

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These comments reveal a view of learners as having been silenced: first, through not knowing enough about Western culture to speak; and second, through knowing plenty about Thai culture, but not having been taught how to speak of it in English. Dr Patcharin also pointed to the authority of the textbook, which is written by native speakers of English with information from their own country; and pointed to the limited agency which she as an EFL teacher felt in relation to localising this resource: Most lessons are taught after [according to] the textbook: this controls the way teachers present the lesson…. I know what I SHOULD do for students, but I don’t have TIME to create the activities or the environment that will make the students learn the language more. Additionally, Dr Patcharin confirmed what I had observed in this and most other classes in the study, that she deleted all pair and group activities which appeared in the textbook. Dr Patcharin noted that such activities are usually inappropriate because they require students to express themselves. When I queried the latter phrase, Dr Patcharin explained: to speak up, to say something, to exchange… personal information. As was noted earlier, a key Thai cultural value is that of social harmony. Such harmony encourages a focus away from the individual: as Hallinger and Kantamara put it, ‘Thai people seldom think in terms of “I”; rather their primary point of reference in any social or work-related venture is “we”’ (2001: 394). Thus in the classroom, declarations by students in respect of personal information would usually run counter to cultural expectations. Lesson 2: Dr Bua Passages 2 (2000a: 109) Unit 12: Getting down to business Lesson B: The New Worker Point 6: Working with others: The value of difference In the first lesson examined here my focus was on the discursive content of the text and its relevance to the Thai context. In the current lesson, I explore the semantics of the reading passage, and its consequences for pedagogy.

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The following textbook episode occurred about one third of the way into the lesson, following a warm-up speaking activity.

Textbook extract Your temperament is the distinctive way you think, feel, and react to the world. All of us have our own individual temperaments. However, experts have found that it is easier to understand the differences in temperament by classifying people into four categories: Optimists. People with this temperament must be free and not tied down. They’re impulsive, they enjoy the immediate and they like working with things. The optimist is generous and cheerful and enjoys action for action’s sake. Realists. People with this temperament like to belong to groups. They have a strong sense of obligation and are committed to society’s standards. The realist is serious, likes order and finds tradition important. Pragmatists. People with this temperament like to control things and want to be highly competitive. The pragmatist is self-critical, strives for excellence, focuses on the future and is highly creative. Idealists. People with this temperament want to know the meaning of things. They appreciate others and get along well with people of all temperaments. The idealist is romantic, writes fl uently and values integrity.

Source: Ludden, L. LaVerne, 1998, Job Savvy: how to be a success at work (Richards & Sandy, 2000a, Passages 2, Student’s Book, p. 109)

Content analysis The four key terms presented in the extract above are Optimist, Realist, Pragmatist, and Idealist. But according to the cultural and linguistic knowledge I have of English, these are incorrectly defined. I will first gloss my own understanding, taking ‘pragmatic’ as an example: Practical, realistic, looking for a way to act which may not be perfect, but which will provide a solution. Generally a positive term, and could be contrasted with ‘idealistic’, the latter which may denote ‘positive but impractical’. Later, in order to check how other expert speakers might understand the passage, I constructed a cloze summary of the Passages extract which deleted only those four terms, and at a seminar at my university took the opportunity to ask the dozen or so academics present to complete the clozed passage. None was able to do so. Upon further investigation, it was possible to trace three steps of intertextuality which had caused this problem. In brief,

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the Passages textbook had slightly adapted the Ludden 1998 source which it cites, and the latter had in turn idiosyncratically reworked parts of the Keirsey and Bates 1978 classic: Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types.

Pedagogy analysis The lesson was in four parts. Part 1 was a teacher-devised warm-up activity, which localised the topic and utilised teacher-produced visual support. Part 2 moved to explication of the textbook. For this higher-level class, Dr Bua used English for the majority of the time, with Thai used for key vocabulary; and engaged in greater use of IRF interaction. In Part 3, students were placed into four large groups, each of which was allocated one of the categories of temperament and the relevant paragraph from the reading passage. The students’ task was to check their understanding of the extract, create their own description of the key term in English, and to relate it to an actual person or persons. In Part 4, one student from each group was required to report back to the class as a whole, for which purpose s/he moved to the front of the room (Extract 10.2).

Extract 10.2: Dr Bua: ‘pragmatist’: student report-back 1

S:

2 3 4

T: S: T:

the pragmatist want to be the leader of the group, and they competitive, and it’s, they’re critical and want, um, want to be the number one of the group and serious and … mm something that that they do. uh-huh? yes. okay. thank you. class, give him a big hand. ((applause))

It may be recalled that the written passage had described pragmatists as follows: ‘…like to control things and want to be highly competitive’ (Richards & Sandy, 2000a: 109). It is not surprising, then, that the student group’s reconstruction of ‘pragmatic’ was of someone who want to be the leader of a group, and want to be the number one. Later in the feedback section, the teacher asked which personality students had found to match this temperament: they responded Osama Bin Laden. Looking at this second lesson, we can see a more straightforward position taken by the teacher. Without subversion, without distancing, it may be said that the teacher attempted to endorse the textbook (though in fact, through its incoherence, the textbook subverted the teacher). At interview (IV2), Dr Bua indicated that when she and a colleague had visited Bangkok to select a Year One textbook, the present resource seems okay at first glance. However, her experience of it had been negative, and the

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department would not be using the series again. Dr Bua described the book as very culture-bound. She viewed this as problematic in two ways. First, some culture is so complicated, and sometimes it doesn’t make sense even to her as teacher. Second, the cultural distance of the text impacted negatively on students’ participation: It is far, far away from students’ prior knowledge and experience…. [Students] cannot assimilate to what they already know…. It kills interest and motivation. When I approached the issue of what I had seen as incorrect meanings in the text, Dr Bua volunteered that she was aware of students’ difficulties, acknowledging that the key vocabulary probably doesn’t mean the definition given by the dictionary, and speaking with regret of how much we hurt students sometimes. It seemed to me therefore that this part of the lesson had a negative impact not only upon students’ learning, but also, as evidenced by Dr Patcharin, upon a teacher’s sense of worth. Lesson 3: Ajarn Rajavadee Passages 1 (1998: 99) Unit 11: On the other side of the world Lesson B: Globe-Trotting Exercise 3A: Mixed Conditionals In this third lesson, we focus upon a grammatical exercise. Exercise 3A partly copied below is preceded by a boxed set of three sentences which illustrate ‘transformations’ into the second and third conditionals (though this terminology is not used). Within the exercise is provided a model answer to Item 1 as follows:

Textbook extract Exercise 3A Grammar focus: Mixed Conditionals A. Rewrite this information as conditional sentences. Then compare with a partner. Have you ever been in similar situations? (1) Mark and Steve didn’t make a hotel reservation, so they’re spending the night in a train station. If Mark and Steve had made a hotel reservation, they wouldn’t be spending the night in a train station.

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(2) My mother doesn’t speak any English, so she was afraid to explore New York on her own. (3) I forgot to bring my camera with me to Thailand, so I can’t take any pictures of the beautiful temples.

(Richards & Sandy, 1998, Passages 1 Student’s Book, p. 99)

Content analysis The content of this exercise, such as it is, maintains the theme of international travel seen in Lessons 1 and 2; and the teacher’s stance again appeared to be one of endorsement. For these reasons, I will move to analysis of pedagogy.

Pedagogy analysis The grammar point was conditional forms of the verb – a staple of EFL textbooks, as well as being disproportionately represented in various multiple-choice type grammar tests. Students were already familiar with conditional forms; the teacher commented at the start of the lesson: I believe you have studied this since you were in High School. Before tackling the textbook itself, the teacher reviewed the forms of the ‘three conditionals’, following the traditional classification of (real) first, and then (unreal) second and third conditional forms. Ajarn Rajavadee provided her own examples for this purpose, extracts from which appear as Extract 10.3.

Extract 10.3: Ajarn Rajavadee: 3 Conditionals First conditional 1 2 3

if it rains, I won’t go out. ((also written on the blackboard)) อันนี้ เราใช้ ในกรณีไหนคะ when do we use this. ื เป็ นไปได้ อันนี้ คอ when it’s possible.

Second conditional 1 2 3

if I were a millionaire, I would buy ten cars. ((also written on the blackboard)) ้ ครูไมใ่ ช่ millionaire ใชไ่ หมคะ เพราะฉะนัน ้ อันนี้ เป็ น condition ที่สอง เพราะฉะนัน actually, I am not a millionaire, right? so, this is the second condition. เพราะฉะน้น ชว่ งเวลาที่เราใชก ้ ั บ condition ที่สองนี้ เราใชก ้ ั บเหตุการณ์ท่ี อะไรคะ ปัจจุบัน so, [how about] the period of time for which we use the second condition. when do we use it. [for the] Present.

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ุ ารณท ถา้ เราสมมุตใิ นเหตุก ์ ่ีเป็ น present time แลว้ ก็เป็ นเหตุการณท ์ ่ีเราคิดข้ นมาเอง นะคะ สมมุตขิ ้น ึ มาเอง นะคะ [We use this] if it is an event that happens in the present time, and comes from our imagination. Third conditional 1 2 3

if I had come earlier yesterday, I wouldn’t have missed my exam. ((also written on the blackboard)) เป็ นจริงไหม…ไมจ่ ริง แลว้ เป็ นสง่ ที่เกิดหรื อยัง เกิดขน ้ หรื อเปลา่ คะ≈ is it real? no. has it happened yet or not yet … ้ อันน้ เป็ นสง่ ท่เราสมมุตขิ น เพราะฉะนัน ้ มาจาก ่ ้ ≈ เหตุการณ์ความจริงทีมันไมไ่ ดเ้ ป็ นไปตามอยา่ งนัน it’s come from our imagination. we suppose/imagine that the event happened and it did not happen as we wanted it to….

I now turn to a micro-analysis of Item 2 in Exercise 3A: My mother doesn’t speak any English, so she was afraid to explore New York, and set out what I would regard as three (out of several) likely answers to this question. But before proceeding, I would ask the reader to anticipate what her/his own response might be. The three options are summarised in Table 10.2. Option (a) follows the model answer the textbook had provided for Item 1, regardless of the fact that the original verb tenses differ. Alternatively, Option (b) follows the closest of the textbook’s model transformations. But the answer actually provided by the Thai teacher in class was Option (c), which replaces ‘spoke’ with the more appropriate modalised form ‘could speak’. Table 10.2 Three likely answers to Item 2, Exercise 3 (A), Passages 1, p. 99 1st clause

2nd clause

My mother doesn’t speak any English,

so she was afraid to explore New York.

(a) If my mother had spoken some English,

(a) she would not have been afraid to explore New York.

(b) If my mother spoke some English,

(b) she would not be afraid to explore New York.

(c) If my mother could speak some English,

(c) she would not be afraid to explore New York.

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Which of these answers is ‘correct’? I consulted the Teacher’s Manual, which gave an option which differed from all three above, and which I will call Option (d): (d) If my mother spoke some English, she wouldn’t have been afraid to explore New York on her own.

(Richards & Sandy, 2000b: 243) My reading of (d) is that it represents a US dialect variation, where the simple past may often replace the past perfect more commonly found in British and Australian English. However, I suggest that each of these four answers could be correct, depending on context. The problem seen here is that conditionality, part of the system of modality in English, is a rich and complex area which cannot be done justice by a structural approach. Any decontextualised grammatical teaching will diminish L2 meanings and increase the learning burden. But the presentation of these three ‘conditional’ patterns as transformations is additionally problematic because although we may discern structural relationships among the three forms, there is not a corresponding functional relationship. As I observed the lesson then, it came as no surprise that when students proceeded to complete this exercise individually in writing and read their answers aloud to the teacher, not a single item was correct. In my later discussion with Ajarn Rajavadee (IV2), she acknowledged the extensive effort that she and students had applied to understanding this part of the textbook, and, like Dr Bua, she regretted the possible impact upon students’ learning: Maybe I followed the textbook too closely…. The student is the victim! As to why she had attended to the book so carefully, Ajarn Rajavadee referred, as had her colleagues, to its authority: It has been written and trialled by the native speaker, so we just follow what it says in the text. Paradoxically then, the book’s arguable strength of having been written by native speakers may also be its major limitation. For future teaching at Isara University, Ajarn Rajavadee confirmed that: We won’t use that book again … It does not serve our purpose … It’s not relevant to the students’ purpose.

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The impact of the global textbook This chapter has offered offer a rare glimpse of how a global textbook is used by EFL teachers in an Asian context. It has been demonstrated that all three teachers rendered a ‘faithful’ account of the monolingual text, treating its content and language as authoritative and trustworthy. In each case, this entailed an assiduous explication of the written passages from the text which made extensive use of students’ L1 to translate and explain meanings. The content of the written passages would thus appear to have been endorsed by teachers. However, in Lesson 1, there was observed an explicit distancing on the part of Dr Patcharin. That moment was brief, but I believe it reveals a stance which resonates with all three teachers’ recorded comments at interview, which were highly critical of the textbook – its content, assumptions about audience, lack of relevance to their students, and the difficulties posed for them as EFL teachers. Why, despite local teachers’ high level of L2 proficiency, and their ready recourse to L1 for conveying meaning, were these books often inaccessible? Tomlinson and Masuhara (2010: 410), point to four major themes which recur across the 23 studies reported in their edited volume, one which is ‘the geographical, cultural and linguistic distance between the producers of many coursebooks and the people who use them’. I would suggest that this gap, if unaddressed, can be described as a form of cultural self-absorption. So, if we examine the rationale in the Teacher’s Manual of Passages (2000b), while its objectives include the development of ‘communication’, we find no mention of social or cultural dimensions, let alone intercultural learning. (It may also be noted that according to Tomlinson and Masuhara’s survey, little appears to have changed in 2010 since the Passages series was published in 1998 and 2000; a point further confirmed by Tomlinson in 2013.) It is fair to note that the textbook provides oral pair-work sections which sometimes direct learners to relate topics (e.g. the Education System) to their own country. However, these meanings are of limited value to formal learning unless they are transmuted into the more valued and reflective mode of written texts. In other words, by confining such cultural comparisons to occasional oral work, they remain marginal. The ‘other side’ of textbooks is, as noted, what teachers do with them. Following approaches proposed by Sunderland et al. (2001), and more recently, McGrath (2013), we may ask: why does the teacher herself not utilise L1 to intervene in the text, in order, for example, to subvert, question, or simply to introduce cross-cultural comparisons for students’ benefit? At interview, teachers gave two sets of reasons. First, there is the prestige of foreign publications which are written by native speakers, and which may

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present important cultural information in an authoritative and attractive way. Local teachers may not feel they have the legitimacy to question such texts; and more generally may feel ambivalent about teaching ‘foreign’ culture (Luk, 2012). I wonder if I, as a non-native speaker of Thai, would not feel a similar deference if teaching a monolingual Thai language textbook to students in Australia or the UK? Secondly, time is an issue. Local teachers’ development of materials is seriously limited by large class sizes, associated marking, and heavy teaching loads, as well as by low pay, which often obliges teachers to take on additional private work. What emerged in this micro-account of ‘materials in action’ was unexpected and disheartening. The impact of the textbook was seen to be less than positive not only for student learning outcomes, but also for teachers’ professional role. Overall, these findings lend strong support to critiques of Western ‘global’ textbooks (Canagarajah, 2005; Nault, 2006). As noted earlier, we are in an era of ‘textbook-defined practice’. In terms of content, this particular textbook, in common with many others on the market, promotes various individualistic, aspirational, Western discourses. In the episodes examined here, these included travelling, consuming and complaining – all of which were not only largely irrelevant to Thai and presumably many other students’ lives, but in some cases ran directly counter to cultural expectations. For local EFL teachers, then, responding to such content can be problematic, for no matter how expert a non-native speaking teacher may be, there will probably always be a need to rely upon the authority of publications to back up her/his knowledge of the target language/cultures. Again, a comparison with foreign language teachers in Western contexts may be useful. It would be hard to imagine a non-native teacher of, say, Japanese, located in the UK, relying upon a textbook and teacher’s guide written exclusively in Japanese, by Japanese native speakers who had little or no knowledge of British students. But this pattern is precisely what is expected of EFL teachers who work with global textbooks in many Asian contexts. In terms of pedagogy, there is a history of Western educational research which affirms teachers’ roles as curriculum developers, and which views this process as one which can lead teachers’ own professional development (Shawer, 2010; McGrath, 2013). But the contextual factors associated with EFL as distinct from ESL must be more fully acknowledged. In the present EFL study, classes contained up to 60 students; teachers were expert but nonnative English speakers; there was no individual teacher choice in selection of materials nor, for that matter, time to adapt; and the environment was one where English was an object rather than medium of study. ****

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Despite the Thai linguaculture which was shared by teachers and students, and despite the frequent recourse to L1 in order to explain language and culture, major problems have been identified in how teachers dealt with an international EFL textbook. Given these problems, and teachers’ stated views, what could be possible ways forward? Clearly, these involve both publishers (‘producers’) and teachers (‘consumers’). We know that teachers can, as Sunderland et al. demonstrate, subvert the content of any text. However, there was no evidence of such subversion in the present study. At best was noted a ‘distancing’, which did not allow for a questioning of the content of the text. Of course, professional development programmes always have the capacity to promote change, and I strongly support McGrath’s (2013) view that materials evaluation and development be made central in teacher education. However, given the contextual factors described above, I suggest that the major driver here is the curriculum, which means the textbook, which means the publisher. The content of materials needs to be both local and global (Shin et al., 2011) in order to use students’ existing knowledge as a basis for exploration into global understandings. For similar reasons, L1 should be embraced rather than shunned in these texts – and should appear in both spoken and written modes – in order to create the flows of meaning illustrated in Lin’s genrebased, multimodal approach (2012, 2015) or Canagarajah’s (2013) translingual practice. Clear and workable proposals have already been made for the production of bi-cultural and bilingual textbooks by for example Feng and Byram (2002) in China, and Bao (2008) in South East Asia. Here, teams of local and nonlocal players would bring together expertise in languages and cultures; political, ethical and pedagogic considerations would be fully addressed; and the strongest possible materials be created for local teachers and students.

11 EFL and ESL Domains

This is the second of two chapters which look at the Professional dimension of EFL, and the last discussion chapter before the book’s conclusion. The foundation of my research has been a Thai university, selected in order to capture some of the distinctive features of teaching English in ‘Expanding Circle’, Asian, EFL contexts. What I would like to do now is develop many of the observations I have made throughout the book regarding the professional domain of Asian EFL – and I will do so by taking the learner as a focus point. That is to say, if we consider, say, a Thai or Chinese or Korean student of EFL, located in her/his homeland, what do her/his learning conditions have in common with those of an immigrant to the US or Australia who now studies ESL? To date, there is one area where contextual difference has been richly explored: that of language variety, both within the more traditional World Englishes domain, and recently in debates around the role of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). But as Bruthiaux has pointed out (2010), studies relating to language variety have not been matched by enquiry into the pedagogic needs of learners and their teachers. Indeed, for most teachers in most EFL contexts, notions of whether to choose a standard or Lingua Franca variety of English for teaching purposes would be irrelevant or even invisible (Young & Walsh, 2010). For as noted in the previous chapter, in most EFL classes, the curriculum is the textbook; and EFL teachers’ vital concerns usually relate to personal L2 proficiency, cultural understandings, and the challenges of teaching large classes, over long hours, and sometimes with little training. To describe global contexts in all their complexity would be a huge task (though see V. Cook, 2009); and even to discuss the Asian continent, as I do here, is highly challenging. There are many variations which are impossible to capture; however, I believe that detail may be omitted in order to produce some useful descriptors and generalisations. It should be noted therefore that my interest is not in exploring some of the shifting, hybrid, practices of ELT worldwide: not to look at interesting cases such as some Spanish immigrants to the US for whom English falls between ESL and EFL; or some Danish 172

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university students whose English-medium education provides another blurring of the distinction; or some Bengali speakers whose advanced English proficiency manifests in seamless code-switching or translanguaging. Instead, my concern is to identify broad ELT characteristics which may be of use to teachers and teacher trainers in understanding ‘the bigger picture’ of English worldwide, specifically in Asia. In Chapter 2, I noted that since the early 20th century, the major distinction within language teaching has been one which focuses on language context – that of ESL and EFL. Context-based too, but with a geo-political dimension, we have B. Kachru’s celebrated but increasingly questioned model of three global ‘circles’ of English: the Inner Circle (native-speaking), Outer Circle (post-colonial), and Expanding Circle (the rest of the world). There exists quite a range of other terms which have some currency in ELT, or which are proposed to have: for a full description, see Seargeant (2010). Two are of value in this discussion. The first is English as an Additional Language (EAL). This is a term now sometimes used simply to replace that of ESL in countries such as the UK or Australia; however, it was coined to represent a particular sub-set of ESL in post-colonial (Outer Circle) contexts, and it is in that sense that it will be used here. The second is English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), a notion which has had a major impact upon research – although less on practice – over the past 10 years. However, what these terms and others have in common is that they, like the Three Circles, possess a certain ambiguity as to what is being described: language variety, language use, location, and/or the learner. In this chapter, I attempt to identify and compare global patterns of ELT without either over-simplifying or over-complexifying. First, I do accept that the basic distinction between ESL and EFL, though sometimes clouded, remains valuable today. Then, of the four components identified above – language variety, language use, location, the learner – I will focus on the learner. Thus I believe that the many factors which characterise global ELT can be prioritised to a workable five in number, which are the basis for this discussion: learner context; medium of instruction; exposure to L2; monolingual/bilingual teachers; and the learner’s L1.

Features of ELT Worldwide Learner context: Planted or transplanted The learner is clearly the foundation of ELT pedagogy, and as indicated earlier, the most useful distinction identifies whether s/he is immigrant,

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that is, has ‘transplanted’; or whether s/he remains in situ – as we may say, ‘planted’. The experience of immigration has been well documented from cultural, sociological, and psychological perspectives, and is represented in popular discourses of ‘the immigrant dream’. This process is expected to have a major impact upon an individual’s identity, as well as upon their motivation to learn L2. Overall, what the transplanted experience engenders is an intensification of threats to and opportunities for the learning of English; but at the very minimum, English is a tool for survival in the new country. In contrast, for most ‘planted’ EFL learners, such intensity is often limited – perhaps very limited – though experiences differ according to students’ L2 proficiency level and access to technology (cf. Belz, 2002). While a transplanted learner has to face the challenge of English as a dominant language, a planted learner may have no such need. Indeed, while there is no denying much of the world’s intense desire to learn English, we are starting to discover that for considerable numbers of learners, at least in the school system, English can be seen as difficult or irrelevant to their lives (see Lin [2005] in Hong Kong; Lamb [2009] in Indonesia; Ryan [2009] in Japan; Hayes [2010] and Draper [2012] in Thailand). As has been shown throughout this book, even at university level there often exist clear discrepancies of motivation between ‘English major’ students, who have usually faced strong competition for places, and ‘non-major’ students across all faculties, who may be reluctant to engage in the English study which is prescribed by governments. In this respect, we may note similar antipathies towards foreign language learning which exist in the US, UK and Australia. It is notable, for example that Australia recently recorded its lowest-ever enrolment in foreign language study at matriculation level (some 8% of Year 12 students graduating with a foreign language in 2013). I would suggest that it is this contextual feature of FL learning, i.e. plantedness, where L2 may be perceived to have less value and relevance, that can often serve to reduce students’ motivation to engage and succeed in their studies.

Medium of instruction A second key factor in global ELT is the quantity and kind of English to which a learner is exposed in the classroom: principally, whether English is experienced as a medium of instruction which will normally entail exposure to L2 for upwards of 20 hours per week; or as a school/university subject normally focusing upon language over content, for 2 to 4 hours per week. This factor of medium of instruction brings together two existing categories of ESL and

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Bilingual Immersion. English-medium programmes thus vary considerably, from the classic Canadian models to those in EAL contexts such as India (with its 10% of English-medium schools, and 90% English-subject, according to Annamalai, 2005), and more recently in EFL contexts such as China and Japan. One significant difference lies in access, with Canadian bilingual programmes being part of public education, whereas in both EAL and EFL contexts, English-medium schooling tends to be available only to a minority of affluent families. On the other hand, English is also learned as a school subject in many EAL contexts, as well as right across EFL contexts such as China, Europe, South America. In respect both of quantity (hours of exposure) and kind of English (content-based or language-based), students of English-as-a-subject are clearly disadvantaged compared to students who experience Englishmedium instruction. The restricted nature of English-as-a-subject is similar in many respects to the learning of foreign languages in Anglophone countries. In those contexts, as noted, when languages are optional they tend to be taken by few students; and there is frequent criticism of piecemeal approaches to curriculum, limited hours of instruction, and the equating of learning objectives across both European and Asian languages despite their relative degree of difficulty for L2 learners. Clearly, the curriculum issue of quantity (hours of exposure) and kind of English (as a subject or as a medium of instruction) is also associated with other factors, including quality of instruction, as well as perceptions of L2 – its status/role/value – on the part of families, community and governments. But there are two important points here. The first is simply that few studies have acknowledged that English-as-a-subject is the model experienced by a majority of learners in Asian EFL contexts, and thus consequences for majority teaching/learning practices have rarely been considered. The second is to recognise that within most EFL contexts, the two types of learning co-exist; a fact not addressed by existing classifications of ESL/EFL/EAL, or the Three Circles model.

Exposure to L2 So far we have looked briefly at EL learners – whether immigrant or not; and their exposure to L2 within the classroom – whether English as Medium or English as Subject. A third major factor relates to L2 exposure beyond the classroom. For an immigrant learner, e.g. in the UK, L2 will generally be experienced beyond the classroom through extra-curricula or community activities which may be social, cultural, religious, sporting, and so on. English is the national

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language, the common tongue, and saturates the media. On the other hand, in China, Japan or Thailand, for example, schools have traditionally set up activities such as English clubs in order to encourage their students to interact in the L2; and more recently, the Internet has provided new possibilities for online interactions in the target language. In most EFL contexts, English is also encountered through popular culture. However, the English of movies, pop music or written media tends to be comprehensible only to the most advanced L2 learners. In my experience, even university-level EFL students usually struggle to make sense of these sources unaided: and for the average secondary-school student, they offer little which is accessible. It may be seen that from a learner’s perspective, EFL contexts cannot usually provide anything like the range of possibilities for L2 use which are available in an English-speaking country – and this of course has been one of the traditional challenges in the teaching/learning of any foreign language.

Bilingual or monolingual teachers As noted earlier, in English-speaking countries, ideology, methodologies, and the fact of mostly multilingual classes has led to an expectation that teaching will be monolingual in practice. In non-English speaking countries on the other hand, again as previously noted, most teachers are generally not monolingual, but bilingual speakers who share a first language with their students. While theorising of bilingual teaching has been consistently developed in the work of, for example Vivian Cook, Ernesto Macaro, Angel Lin and others, and while bilingual EFL practices have been documented as widespread across the globe (Hall & G. Cook, 2013; Barnard & McLellan, 2014b), institutional opposition to L1 use has if anything intensified in recent years. The issue of L1 and L2 is of course bound up with the roles of NS and NNS teachers. Leaving aside for the moment the problematic nature of these terms and concepts, it should be noted that learners themselves are usually clear on this matter, and assert that here are advantages to be gained from both kinds of teacher (Ma, 2012; Macaro & Lee, 2013). However, the benefits of native-speaking teachers of English are always available to immigrant students of ESL, but not usually in EFL (despite various ‘foreign teacher’ schemes). And the benefits of bilingual L1-speaking teachers are nearly always available to EFL students, but rarely to ESL immigrant students. In my own teaching and research, I have found that a ‘foreign’ NS of English can offer fluency, act as cultural informant, and indeed provide an experience of crosscultural communication. However, s/he may know little of the students’ L1, and rarely has the bilingual capacity to explain through the medium of that L1. A ‘local’ NNS bilingual teacher, on the other hand, is likely to be less

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fluent in L2, and less embedded in its culture; but can well relate L2 to L1, and explain points of grammar or culture within the medium of students’ first language. I would suggest that students who are deprived of either one of these types will also miss out on certain positive dimensions of learning the L2.

The learner’s L1 Here I move from a comparison of EFL and ESL learning contexts to consider the particular challenges experienced by EFL learners who have an Asian, rather than European, language as their L1. Comparisons of languages are bread and butter (or rice and salt) to linguists. Ringbom and Jarvis confirm what is surely well-known to teachers, that ‘learners of a closely-related language have a far smaller learning burden…’ (2009: 117). There is, however, surprisingly little research which explores the differential rates of progress in L2 English experienced by students of specific L1 backgrounds. But if we turn the tables, as it were, another way to understand this point can emerge. Here we can explore the differing rates of progress not of learners of L2 English, but of English-speaking students of other L2s. While this is not a wholly reversible relationship (due to the relative markedness displayed by various languages) such a perspective may offer valuable insights. The US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the largest language training centre in the world. It gauges foreign languages’ relative ease/difficulty for English speakers, and provides programmes of differing lengths as required. The following amounts of intensive face-to-face tuition are set for the achievement of a Level 3: General Professional Proficiency (Jackson & Kaplan, 2001): Category 1 – includes Dutch, French, Italian Category 2 – includes Greek, Russian, Vietnamese Category 3 – includes Arabic, Chinese, Korean

23–24 weeks [575–600 hours] 44 weeks [1,100 hours] 88 weeks [2,200 hours].

Thus, for example, an English-speaking learner of Chinese would be expected to take over three times longer to reach the same level of proficiency as s/he would if learning French. In Australia, a national curriculum report confirmed that languages such as Japanese and Mandarin would require ‘something like three times as much study as European languages’ (NBEET (1996: xii). And Kirkpatrick (1995), in the secondary school sector, and over a longer time-scale, proposed a similar but somewhat higher allocation of 2400 to 2760 hours’ study for English speakers to achieve basic proficiency in Korean, Japanese or Mandarin. A rare comparative study of learners

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of Japanese, French, Italian and Indonesian, found that levels of achievement were lower on all four language skills of Japanese compared to the other three languages (Brown et al., 2000). Yet how often do we take account of the differential linguistic distance which is experienced by particular L1 groups when planning curriculum, writing materials, benchmarking learner progression, and developing teacher training programmes? I believe that this is a crucial and neglected factor in understanding Asian EFL. While clearly, the categories identified by the FSI as above were not created with the intention to assist EL teachers to better understand learners of English, they may nevertheless offer valuable insights into learner diversity. Kramsch has noted a ‘resurgence’ of interest in linguistic relativity, and welcomes the opportunity for placing it ‘at the core of language acquisition and use’ (2004: 235; see also Pavlenko e.g. 2011). A good start would include factoring L1 into our expectations and comparisons of L2 learner progress in foreign language contexts. At the very least, it would seem valuable to acknowledge a two-way divide between learners who have cognate or noncognate language backgrounds.

Summary: Challenges and Limitations of Each Feature The learner: Planted or transplanted? As noted earlier, there are learning factors which differ by reason of a learner’s location. Transplanted (ESL) learners can gain from, but may also be unsettled by changes to identity and affiliation which result from the move to a foreign culture and schooling environment. Planted (EFL) learners, on the other hand, can gain from the affective security of remaining in their home culture and within a familiar system of schooling; but may lose out on the personal, linguistic and cultural opportunities afforded by resettlement in a new land.

English as medium, or English as subject? There is overwhelming evidence that bilingual immersion works well for language majority students, such as English-speaking learners of French in Canada, or Chinese learners of English in China. However, when language minority students immigrate, such immersion can be experienced as submersion. That is, experiencing English-medium instruction in an EFL setting may

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offer better learning outcomes than experiencing it in an ESL setting (Gibbons, 2006: 61–62). English taught as a subject, on the other hand, as experienced in the great majority of EFL contexts, offers a highly limited form of language learning. Rather than criticise such students’ progress in L2, as often happens, we should perhaps be surprised that they achieve as much as they do.

Learning L2 beyond the classroom: Wide or narrow exposure? As well as in-class L2 exposure, we need to consider learners’ opportunities for L2 exposure beyond the classroom. In some, e.g. East Asian, countries there are few such opportunities in daily life other than those experienced, largely unmediated, via electronic media. On the other hand, in most ESL settings there are opportunities for rich exposure to linguistic and cultural experiences beyond the classroom.

Learning with bilingual or monolingual teachers? Most EFL and EAL programmes make use of local teachers who are bilingual both in their students’ language and to varying extents in the target language. While methods of instruction vary, of course, even those programmes which attempt to exclude the shared L1 will be taught by teachers who know well their students, and who can anticipate points of ease and difficulty from having trodden that path themselves. As has been demonstrated throughout this book, learners can benefit greatly from having a guide who can explain, translate, and correct accurately through the shared L1. In ESL settings, on the other hand, bilingual teaching is rarely practised, thus depriving students of their greatest cognitive, social and cultural resource: the mother-tongue.

The role of the learner’s L1, and its linguistic distance from L2 Anyone who has taught multilingual classes in ESL, or who has taught EFL in different parts of the world, will know the kinds of benefits and limitations commonly experienced by learners from different language backgrounds. Texts such as Learner English (Swan & Smith, 2001) can also provide teachers with invaluable information. But more broadly, in discussions of comparative learner progress, as well as of teaching materials and practices, this dimension tends to be neglected. Most European EFL learners are advantaged to some extent by their L1 background (as well as by cultural and geographical connections). On the other hand, for most Asian learners, the L1 provides little specific advantage in learning English in terms of pronunciation, grammar or lexis.

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Understanding and Respecting EFL A majority of learners of English world-wide remain planted in their own context, learn L2 as a subject, and experience limited use of L2 beyond the classroom. Additionally, those of Asian-L1 backgrounds are likely to have few cognate elements across their L1 and English. Thus, through the combination of these four features, most Asian EFL learners are arguably disadvantaged compared to most ESL learners. However, if we look at the capacity of the teacher to provide bilingual guidance and support, this factor alone offers clear advantages to EFL learners over ESL learners. It is ironic, then, that bilinguality is precisely what has been proscribed from ELT for the past century, and remains devalued by educational authorities in many countries. I suggest that an acknowledgement of these five factors can form one significant step in truly becoming ‘respectful of the EFL constituency and what it can achieve under difficult conditions’. In this respect, we may wish to reposition EFL away from the ‘E’ and towards the ‘FL’; in other words, to recognise the commonalities which are shared in the teaching of all foreign languages, including English. I do not wish to suggest that there are not challenging features experienced by learners in ESL contexts. But for a number of years now, we have read accounts and analyses of the immigrant experience in regard to language, culture and identity: this is a rich and well-researched field. My argument here is that there is no equivalent attention given to the EFL learners who constitute a world-majority; and it is this gap that my book has started to explore. Thus I would like to highlight the following points. First, for local EFL teachers in Asia, I hope that my description rings some bells. In my many years of training Asian EFL teachers – both in Asia and in Australia – I have been struck time and again by the inappropriateness of many Western methodologies. Why? Because such methodologies assume that the teacher is a native speaker who through her intuitive command of the language can produce accurate and fluent English ‘on call’ – although such levels of expertise are far from the norm in foreign language teaching; that EFL learning can be physically and culturally designed to afford student ‘communication’, when local class sizes, curriculum and culture often proscribe such practices; and that students’ goals are to use English in encounters with native speakers, whereas in fact students’ needs for English usually extend to its role as local, regional or global Lingua Franca. Second, for NS English teachers and teacher-trainers whose careers are mobile across EFL contexts, I hope that better understanding of the conditions as outlined here can create enhanced respect and collegiality. When working in

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various Asian countries, I have sometimes heard expatriate native-speaking English teachers criticise local teachers’ practices. Occasionally these criticisms may be justifiable, but more often than not, they reveal a limited understanding of the local environment, of learners’ needs, and the constraints experienced by local teachers (see also Appleby, 2010; Widin, 2010; Bright & L. Phan, 2011; Dobinson, 2012). A greater appreciation of the features of EFL would lead us to reconsider practical issues of methodology and curriculum. These have been addressed in few publications to date, but notable are books by Deller and Rinvolucri (2002), Holliday (2005), Butzkamm and Caldwell (2009), Turnbull and Dailey-O’Cain (2009b), G. Cook (2010) and Kerr (2014), together with recent papers by, for example, E.-Y.J. Kim (2011), Lin (2012, 2015) and Oga-Baldwin and Nakata (2014). Lastly, for curriculum writers and publishers, I reinforce the conclusions reached in the previous chapter: collaboration with local EFL practitioners is simply the best way to create materials and strategies which can optimally and justly address the needs of EFL students and their teachers.

12 Conclusion: Productivity at the Boundaries

In this second decade of the 21st century, we have come to an interesting point in documenting and evaluating the place of L1 in teaching L2. Until recently, received ELT wisdom has seen the default EL classroom as a monolingual one. This position has informed all dimensions of ELT: International textbooks and materials, such as the ‘Passages’ series examined in this study; teacher training, according to my current experience and as confirmed in the literature (e.g. He & Lin, 2013); and in the monolingual focus and indeed bias of the SLA research field. Accordingly naturalised discourses of ELT have emerged which favour monolingual, native-speaking teachers of English at the expense of bilingual, non-native speaking teachers of English. Yet, the great majority of EL teachers in the world today are not monolingual but bilingual or multilingual, and share a first language and culture with their students. In recent years, a shift of theoretical position in regard to L1 use has clearly occurred. As noted earlier, Ellis and Shintani (2014: 235) assert that ‘the pendulum has swung firmly in [L1’s] favour’. Moreover, a study of nearly 3000 teachers in over 100 countries confirms that bilingual practices are a staple of L2 teaching (Hall & G. Cook, 2013). Yet, as also noted earlier, ‘zerotolerance [of L1] policy is still the norm in many Asian educational systems’ (Barnard & McLellan, 2014a: 8). This dissonance between what teachers are doing and what they are told they should be doing is clearly problematic, and has led to numerous calls for analysis of actual classroom practice. It is to such calls that this research has responded. As such, it represents, to my knowledge, only the second book-length case study set in an Asian EFL context (following that of Song and Andrews in China, 2009). Moreover, other studies, while of great value, have been mostly small-scale and structurally-based, seeking to identify the forms and functions of L1/L2 use in classrooms. This book too has employed a structural approach in its 182

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exploration of bilingual pedagogy. However, no other studies to date have, to my knowledge, gone further to enhance our view of that pedagogy by connecting inwards (to the personal) and outwards (to the professional). In these respects, the study has offered a uniquely three-dimensional analysis. Each dimension is now briefly outlined.

Pedagogy The study has created new descriptive categories – six functions of teacher talk – which reworked conventional notions of comprehensible input and IRF in order to account for what happens when not one but two languages make up teaching and learning. Linked to observed classroom practices were teachers’ own views, which produced a framework of 10 principles for L1 use in L2 teaching. Both these constructs are intended to be of use by teachers in analysing what they do (functions of teacher talk); and why (principles for L1 use). Revealed has been the blended nature of L1/L2 pedagogy, which builds up through intricate, often rapid, moves into a seamless discourse. The bilingual intricacy commonly observed is a phenomenon that goes against recommendations in the research literature that teachers should consistently separate L1 and L2; but here it was a practice regarded as fecund rather than fuddled. Similarly, a traditional ‘interference’ view of language contact has been repositioned as bilingual intertextuality, the latter notion allowing the intellectual newness of L2 to be viewed as being embedded in the familiar richness of the L1; and where both languages can be seen to flow into each other through a ‘multicompetence’, intercultural model of learning. It was observed time and again in this study that for students in lower-level classes, exclusion of L1 would have denied the single most powerful resource available for making meaning and performing identity; and that in the case of high-level classes, while absence of L1 would have had a less severe impact, opportunities would nevertheless have been greatly reduced for insights into language, culture and self. In short, the study has constructed a bilingual pedagogy which can analyse and affirm the ‘third’ spaces that are enabled by a move into a second tongue. I would like again to assert that while this study supports a positive role for L1 in L2 classrooms, it does not make unbalanced claims. Indeed, it reaffirms the need to develop the most appropriate uses of L2 in ELT on the part of both teachers and students. But through the emic accounts presented here, we may be better informed as to how and why teachers choose to balance their use of two languages in the classroom, and information gathered should be of value in further studies of bilingual EFL pedagogy.

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The Personal Dimension My analysis has confirmed the function of all natural language as not only representing experience but constructing social relationships. Accordingly, a move into an L2 cannot happen without changes to one’s repertoire of social roles and therefore to one’s self. Teachers were able to speak of how they performed differently in Thai and English, and of the affective dimension of these speakings: such accounts are rare in the ELT literature. Of particular note were the ways in which teachers’ relationships with their students were affirmed through the departures from and returns to the home base of L1; and how the L2 for these teachers often represented the new, the unreal, the possible. By analysing interpersonal roles as has been done here through a poststructuralist lens of alterity/identity, it may be possible to better interpret what we ask of students in performing L2 in class – from unthreatening ‘animations’ of text to more challenging ‘enactments’ of meaning. Progress in L2 is progress in L2 linguaculture, and must involve identity development: an appreciation of this process may enable teachers to alternately accommodate and then extend students’ capacity to perform in the second language. One interpersonal role presented itself as being of special interest: the way in which ‘verbal play’ stimulated both teachers and students to engage with L2. ‘Playing’ as part of adult ELT has been dealt with only sporadically until recently, and is of interest for what it may reveal of how we see ourselves and our worlds. In this study, play served to create meaningful and enjoyable moments of interaction which appeared to release some of the anxiety more usually associated with L2 performance. Overall, when a Thai speaker is learning English, or when I am learning Thai, we gain opportunities to move into ‘third spaces’, wherein new representations of experience and new role repertoires are created, and through which new intercultural mediation is made possible. Practices of translation were seen to imbue the classrooms of this study. I would suggest that these familiar, and in a sense apparently transparent practices, may be compared to the SLA process constituted within a learner’s mind. Translation itself can never transfer equivalence in meaning, and this is of course its limitation and strength: as Rushdie puts it, while ‘something always gets lost in translation … something can also be gained’ (1982, 1992: 17). So the commonality of linguistic translation (of text) and linguistic learning (by a person) lies in semiotic reconstruction which both grows and at the same time retains something of what was already there.

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The Professional Dimension Curriculum/textbooks I have over many years observed what can happen when global ELT is exported unexamined to Asian countries: through my own teaching in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam; and through my doctoral students’ projects in those countries as well as in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Middle East. This study offered a micro-analysis of ‘materials in action’ in Asian EFL – how teachers and students actually responded to an ELT textbook in class – and thus contributes to the handful of such studies conducted to date. The classroom practices examined here have demonstrated both the strengths and constraints of teaching English in Asian FL contexts. On the one hand, teachers were expert and confident speakers of L2, with a high degree of bilinguality resulting in part from having completed postgraduate study in English-speaking countries. Nevertheless, their classroom effectiveness was seriously impeded by the cultural and linguistic content of the prescribed monolingual textbooks. For many years, textbooks have been variously criticised for their homogenisation, consumerism, vacuousness, sexism and racism. It was disappointing to see how little contemporary books had changed in many respects and that the approach to language was often reductionist, structurallybased, and sometimes plain confusing. There appears to be in these ELT textbooks a strange lack of awareness of and interest in second language learners, their teachers, their cultures, their languages. It is concluded that commodification of education and the discourses which accompany it, which include Phillipson’s ‘fallacies’ of monolingualism and native speakerdom, are alive and prospering.

EFL and FLT The political dimension of the commodification of education may be seen in the flow of ELT from Centre to Periphery (or as we may say, from ‘over-developed’ to ‘developing’ countries). The textbook is one part of this process, as are other channels of communication: conferences, workshops, academic publications, and the presence in Asia of expatriate teachers from English speaking countries. At this macro level, it is possible to recognise how various ELT discourses and channels of communication serve to embody the Centre’s interests; and such a perspective can help to explain how the professional domain of EFL is positioned within global ELT.

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A major investigation of this study has been the repositioning of EFL away from the E and towards the FL. Through this repositioning, EFL practice may be ‘liberated’ in a number of ways. First, professional concerns may be more clearly identified as differing from those of ESL (immigrant) and EAL (post-colonial) domains of ELT. Second, a repositioning may assist in problematising the export to EFL contexts of methodology such as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) or Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) – see, for example, L. Phan (2008); Adams and Newton (2009); Butler (2011); Lin (2013b); and Nguyen (2014). Instead, locally-appropriate methodology and curriculum can be freshly developed – such as Lin’s genre-based, bilingual, multi-modal approach (2012), and her re-visioning (2015) of an L1-infused Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Thirdly, by repositioning EFL as a form of FLT, there is enabled an affirmation of the power of the first language in bilingual teaching/learning. For as has been shown, in the FL context, it is expected that the teacher will be bilingual; whereas in the ELT context, it has been assumed that s/he will be monolingual or act as such.

Global Englishes The global effects of the spread of English have been documented in this study with respect to curriculum, methodology, and professional domains. It was notable that some teachers ascribed certain communicative features to the nature of the English language itself, referring to its equalising, participatory effects upon social and pedagogic roles. As was suggested earlier, it is not possible to know the extent to which such effects are attributable to the nature/ role of English, or to its difference from L1, or to the move into any foreign language; but it was the existence of teachers’ beliefs that was of interest, because of the opening possibilities that English was then enabled to produce. While visible and audible impacts of English are perceptible across Asia, I have been struck time and again by how English seemed to have become ‘absorbed into’ local cultures; and how teachers exercised agency in their beliefs and practices. The West is only a hyperlink away, and cultural distance is often exoticised by Easterners as it is by Westerners, but at the same time English does not often appear to be seen as a threat to personal, professional or cultural discourses (see also L. Phan, 2009; Hayes, 2014; Pu & Pawang, 2014). As Dr Chai told me of his return to Thailand after a six year absence: When I came back from America, I thought in English … But, for some behaviour that I grew up with, that’s quite the same … Like if I want to go to the temple; if I want to treat you [people in general] with respect; these things will stay with me.

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Accommodation of others has been a feature of Thai culture throughout its history. However, alongside such accommodation, and within Thailand’s ‘veneer of modernity’, Dr Chai reminds us: these things will stay with me.

Implications for Professional Practice Throughout this book, I have argued that it is crucial to acknowledge and affirm the strengths of local bilingual NNS teachers, and in this I seek to build upon the ‘re-imagining’ of TESOL teacher identities proposed by, for example, Lin et al. (2002), Pavlenko (2003) and Mahboob (2010). However, I do not suggest for that FL teaching can be maximally achieved by local teachers alone (such as the Thai teachers in this study), any more than I would suggest that in Australia, FL teaching could be maximally achieved by local teachers (such as an Anglo-Australian teacher of Japanese). For I have seen what additional and complementary benefits can be offered by ‘target language native speakers’ in both contexts (e.g. Japanese native speakers in Australia; English native speakers in Thailand): that is, value as ‘informant’ and ‘resource’, as well as the intercultural communication and challenge which is then available to students. As to the optimum balance of the two types of teacher at one site, this will depend on various contextual factors; but at Isara, as noted, it was the expressed view of staff that the current proportion of 2:1 local to foreign teachers on the English programme worked well. I would like to also consider Western-based TESOL/Applied Linguistics programmes, which in recent years have included large numbers of teachers from the Asian continent. At my university, for example, around half of our postgraduate intake consists of international students; and in other institutions, the percentage is higher. Overall, the needs of the EFL constituency have been little considered by programmes across the English-speaking world (as documented by Llurda, 2005; Liyanage & Bartlett, 2008; L. Phan, 2008; Widin, 2010; Chowdhury & L. Phan, 2014). For example, Dobinson (2014: 15) currently documents the ‘difference and deficit’ reported by Asian teachers in their Western training; and Bao (2014: 9) asserts that ‘the hierarchy between Western and non-Western knowledge continues to be strong’. Perhaps paradoxically, many university programmes do address the sociopolitical dimensions of global ELT through subjects of a similar name or those more traditionally called Language Planning – at my university, we have a subject Global Englishes, for example. However, appropriate methodology and curriculum for bilingual EFL classes in Expanding Circle countries are not often

188 First and Second L anguage Use in A sian EFL

explored. And so, crucial issues for EFL teachers tend to be neglected, such as: • • • • • • •

the optimum use of L1 and L2 in class; the relevance of, and alternatives to CLT, TBLT, and CLIL; translation as the ‘fifth skill’; interculturality, or ‘thirdness’ as a curriculum goal; how to evaluate, adapt and create teaching materials (monolingual/bilingual, global/local, high-tech/low tech); the vital differences between literacy development as L1 and as L2; how to balance NS and NNS expertise.

Western institutions need to fully address these issues and others, if they wish to equitably meet the needs of world-majority NNS participants in their TESOL/Applied Linguistics training programmes. In making the above points, I am taking up what I think is important for Western TESOL educators (such as myself) to consider in our programmes. At the same time, I stress that we should not underestimate the agency of local teachers to appropriate what is of value in Western education and to link this to their own local knowledge. Such agency has been richly described in a recent monograph by Pu and Pawang (2014: 98) who commented of Chinese teachers returning from Western TESOL study that they: …did not think the West got it right all the time. They did not perceive Western theories and pedagogies as prescriptive knowledge….They viewed their training interpretively, as a lens through which they could reevaluate and rethink their own knowledge. … [Teachers] were constantly evaluating their training in light of their classroom realities in China. The authors urge that Western teacher education programmes should ‘infuse teacher insider knowledge from multiple perspectives’ (Pu & Pawang, 2014: 99). It is in so doing that we can, as proposed at the start of this book, start to answer Canagarajah’s (2005) call to ‘reclaim the local’.

Interculturality I would like to conclude with a description of ‘Edge Effects’, taken from Bill Mollison’s Introduction to Permaculture (1991), part of which was presented in the inscription to this book. Something of what I have tried to explore

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about the relationship of languages and cultures is here described with grace and insight: An edge is an interface between two mediums: it is the surface between the water and the air; the zone around a soil particle to which water bonds; the shoreline between land and water; the area between forest and grassland. It is the scrub, which we can differentiate from grassland. It is the area between the frost and non-frost level on a hillside. It is the border of the desert. Wherever species, climate, soil, slope, or any natural conditions or artificial boundaries meet, we have edges. Edges are places of varied ecology. Productivity increases at the boundary between two ecologies (land/water; forest/grassland; estuary/ocean; crop/orchard) because the resources from both systems can be used. In addition, the edge often has species unique to itself. (Mollison, 1991: 26) This ecological metaphor has been chosen because it captures something of the multicompetent L2 speaker, whose ‘productivity increases’ as s/he uses ‘resources from both systems’; and who is thereby enabled to move into a third space, which ‘has species unique to itself’.

Appendix A

Guidelines for Interviews (1) [January 2002] (1) Interview based on lessons observed (A) Background – teacher – teaching programme – students (B) Use of L1 and L2 – in lesson observed – in general (C) Important parts of the lesson – successful – difficult (D) Any other points (2) General Discussion (A) Background to teaching English in Thailand (B) General use of L1 and L2 (C) Different kinds of English teaching (D) Impact, or lack of impact, of English/American language and culture on Thai language and culture. 190

Appendix A

191

Guidelines for Interviews (2) [March 2004] (1) Value of foreign language learning What do you consider to be the benefits for students? (2) Ways of language learning How do students best learn a foreign language? (3) Language of thought In your English classes, to what extent do you think in Thai? (For example when preparing a grammar explanation, responding to students, etc.) (4) EL Textbooks What do you think of the ones you are using? (valuable/appropriate/ accessible?) (5) Performing in English Some people have written about how they feel different when they communicate in their second language – they may speak in different ways and about different topics. Can you compare the way you communicate in Thai and the way you communicate in English in the classroom? For example: Do you feel like you are ‘performing’ in English? Do you take on different kinds of roles in English and Thai? Do you speak/behave in different ways in each language? (6) Metaphors for English Can you think of any metaphors to describe English – its position in Thailand, or the ways in which it is learned or taught?

Appendix B: Transcription Conventions

Language Thai English English translation phonemic script

กพ ็ อ person house / /

Intonation contours . ? , !

falling rising level/low rise rise/fall

(statements and wh-questions) (polar questions and challenges) (lists and continuation) (intensity/animation)

Vocalisms/pauses (L) @ @@ (3) …

laughter [regular font] one second of laughter where individual voice(s) can be heard [bold font] two seconds of laughter forming a chorus effect pause in seconds pause of less than one second

Manner CAPS ::

emphatic lengthened vowel 192

Appendix B: Transcr ipt ion Convent ions

193

Metatranscription [R]

repeat

(??)

unintelligible

[]

researcher glosses/explains text

(( ))

[italic font] researcher’s comment on manner or meaning.

Abbreviations IV1 Interview 1 IV2 Interview 2

Transliteration I have occasionally made use in the analysis of Thai words which are commonly used by English speakers in Thailand, or which are key to the discussion; these have been transliterated into English, as in som tam, ajarn, following the Thai Royal Institute Romanization System (1967), this being most commonly used system used by English language publications in Thailand and in Romanised street signage. In this approximately phonetic system, aspiration of initial stops /p t k/ is represented by ‘h’, as in the town of Phuket, and the post-vocalic /r/ is non-rhotic, signifying instead vowel length, as in ajarn. Full details are available in the Thai language at the Thai Royal Institute’s website and an updated version in English is available on Thai Airways’ website.

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Index

acting 115 alterity 103–199 (see also identity) animating 55, 75, 115, 184 anxiety 55, 91–92, 125, 151, 184

Cook, V. 14, 18–19, 27–28, 176 creating 58, 60–63, 69, 75 culture 12, 15–16, 18–22, 86–88, 98, 135, 143, 169–171, 186 (see also interculturality, and Thailand – culture)

Bakhtin, M.M. 76–77, 80, 88, 121 Bao, D. 22, 187 Barnard, R. and McLellan, J. 10–11, 28–29 bilingualism classroom extracts 78–97 identity 150 pedagogy 6, 41, 72–73, 97, 175, 178 multicompetence 19, 27, 88, 97 translanguaging 19, 97 students 88 teachers 41, 72 textbooks 171 theory 18–19, 53 Block, D. 103, 118–119 Buddhism 30–31, 82–83 Butzkamm, W. 27–28, 75

dialoguing 54, 63, 65–72 double-voicing 121, 129, 133 Ellis, R. and Shintani, N. 28–29 enacting 105–110, 116–119 ESL and EFL 3–7, 23–29, 33, 72, 97, 140, 144, 157, 169–170, 172–181 explaining 54, 58–60, 75 Fairclough, N. 77 Firth, A. and Wagner, J. 17 Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) 24, 27, 119, 174–8, 186 Gray, J. 156

Cambodia 4–6, 185 Canagarajah, A. 99, 157, 188 carnival 121, 132–134, 137 China 20–23, 65, 188 code-switching 10, 28, 97, 153, 173 (see also L1 and L2) Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 5, 49, 186, 188 Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) 20–21 Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) 7, 186, 188 Cook, G. 120, 138 (see also Hall and Cook)

Hall, G. and Cook, G. 26, 29, 99 Halliday, M.A.K. 12–16, 62, 88 Hasan, R. 15, 122–123 Hong Kong 29, 55, 134 (humour – see playing) identity 14, 103–119, 140–151, 184, Indonesia 29, 115 intercultural 77–87, 156, 183, 188–189 interpersonal 13–15, 68–69, 104–151, 184 intertextuality 45, 77–88, 163, 183 211

212

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IRF (Initiation Response Feedback) 40–41, 53 Japan 29 Korea (South) 29 Kramsch, C. 26, 140, 146, 178 L1 and L2 (see also translating) dimensions affective 91–93 cognitive 89–91 pedagogic 94–97 general 5–7, 149ff, 176ff, 182ff oppose L1 26–27 support L1 27–29 Laos (Lao PDR) 4–6, 21, 185 Levinas, E. 104 Lin, A.M.Y. 11, 186 linguaculture 16 Macaro, E. 27, 75 monolinguality 25–26, 59, 72, 182 NS and NNS 24–26, 72, 120–138, 140, 146, 180, 187–188 Phan, L. 31, 187 playing 15, 110–112, 120–138 prompting 54, 64–66 Pu, H. and Pawang, F. 188 (reticence – see silence) scaffolding 95 Second Language Acquisition (SLA) 16–17, 182

silence 20–22, 70–72, 109, 118 Sociocultural Theory (SCT) 17–18, 45–46, 95 (see also Vygotsky) sociopolitical context 79, 97–99, 186–187 Song, Y. and Andrews, S. 10 students – English major, and nonmajor 33, 47, 93, 174 (see also Thailand – students) Sunderland, J., Cowley, M., Leontzakou, C. and Shattuck, J. 157 systemic-functional linguistics 12–13, 15, 27, 122 (see also Halliday) Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) 7, 186, 188 teacher training (TESOL) 6–7, 181–182, 187–188 textbooks 39, 134, 155–171, 185 Thailand culture 71–72, 79, 81–83, 85–87, 128–129, 133, 142–143, 147, 149–150, 162, 186–187 learning 30, 97, 116, 145 students 32–34, 38–39, 44–46, 72, 110 teachers 8, 31–32, 38, 66,108–109 (religion – see Buddhism) Tomlinson, B. 169 translating 7, 26–29, 42–43, 55–56, 91, 108, 117, 188 (see also L1 and L2) Turnbull, M. and Dailey-O’Cain, J. 169 Üstünel, E. and Seedhouse, P. 28 verbal art 15, 122–123, 136 (verbal humour; verbal play – see playing) Vietnam 3–5, 29, 122 Vygotsky, L.S. 17, 46, 95, 119 Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (see also Vygotsky) 17, 45, 95