Project-Based Learning in Second Language Acquisition

Building Communities of Practice in Higher Education

Adrian Gras-Velazquez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138313781
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429854712
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book showcases pedagogical tools for learning languages through interdisciplinary project-based learning (PBL). Chapters demonstrate a diverse range of PBL activities that help students build communities of practice within classroom settings, and across local and global communities.

Too often, learning a language can become a static endeavor, confined to a classroom and a singular discipline. But language is dynamic and fluid no matter the setting in which learning takes place. In acknowledging this, this volume explores how PBL and community-engagement pedagogies serve to combine learning goals and community service in ways that enhance student growth and facilitate second language development in an interdisciplinary, multilingual, and multicultural higher education learning environment. Chapters touch on activities and approaches including spoken-word poetry, environmental projects, social activism, study abroad, and in-service learning.

This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of language education, second language acquisition, higher education, and comparative and international education.

Part I
Theoretical Intersections

1
Diversity and Second Language Acquisition in the University Classroom

A Multilingual and Multicultural Setting

María José Coperías-Aguilar

Block and Cameron’s statement at the beginning of the 21st century saying that there was a “consensus that we are living in an increasingly globalized world” (2) is even more real nowadays. Although the concept of globalization has been approached from many different angles, Giddens’s definition, “Increasing interdependence between individuals, nations and regions. Does not just mean economic interdependence. Involves accelerated and universal communication, and concerns also political and cultural dimensions” (xii), is comprehensive and tackles most issues concerned with the notion of globalization. Nevertheless, it is a contentious term, and even if for some people globalization would simply refer to a reality in which people, capital, information, and goods move freely across borders, many others are wary of its consequences (Bauman). Very often, globalization is understood as implying the hegemony of the capitalist system and the domination of the wealthy countries and corporations over the poor ones and the consequent loss of their identity features (Green et al. 10). Sometimes, though, the dominance of the powerful over those with fewer means is seen as an opportunity for the resistance of the latter and the homogenization process that globalization may entail as an opportunity for hybridization rather than uniformity (Block and Cameron 6, 3). Some of the factors that have allowed this phenomenon to increase are more advanced communication and transport technologies, which, in turn, have increased people’s mobility, or hypermobility (Pauwels 42), and a worldwide connected economic and trade system, thus creating transnational communities.

These global networks are based on the ability to communicate among their members, and, consequently, the development in competences in more than one language as well as in the new literacies required by communication technologies is absolutely necessary. Bordieu introduced the notion of linguistic capital to refer to “the capacity to produce expressions à propos, for a particular market” (18), connecting it with other forms of capital, such as economic or cultural, and considered that differences in terms of accent, grammar, or vocabulary might indicate the social position and linguistic capital of the speakers. Nowadays, this linguistic capital is related to the command of communication skills, oral and written, used in different formats and platforms but also to the competence in several languages (Cameron 72; Pauwels 53). Thus, language teaching as a foreign or a second language,¹ and more specifically the teaching of English, has become a commodity. For some English-speaking countries, like the United Kingdom (Gray “Tesol” 88), Ireland (Sudhershan and Brauen 27), and Australia (Humphreys 94), international education has turned into an important economic asset worth billions of dollars, and higher education has become one of the most important export sectors (Healey 334). Globalization is then changing, on one hand, the ways in which languages are learnt and taught and, on the other, the organization of institutions of higher education (Iglesias de Ussel et al. 14).

Linguistic Diversity, Linguistic Uniformity

Despite the globalizing phenomenon just mentioned, which is often considered to bring along a homogenizing effect, Blommaert contends that “sociolinguistically, the world has not become a village” (1) – echoing McLuhan’s global village – and proves this to be so by describing the United States as a multi-accent society in reference not only to the existing varieties of English within the country but also to the accents provided by many other languages (49). As for the European Union, it includes almost 30 countries, over 20 official languages, and around 60 regional languages, plus the languages brought by immigrant populations, which makes Europe a highly multilingual and multicultural area (Tudor 21). Similar phenomena can be found in many other countries, as portrayed by Clyne in reference to Australia (53), and across the world (Cadman and Song 5). Other authors have focused, though, on the super-diversity that can be found especially in cities as a result of the arrival and settling down of immigrants from many different ethnolinguistic backgrounds (Pauwels 43; Hewings and Sergeant 74). Regarding the sociolinguistic circumstances of Europe, its institutions – the Council of Europe, through its Language Policy Division, and the European Centre for Modern Languages, among others – have fostered multilingualism and multiculturalism by developing a wide range of activities and studies (Coperías-Aguilar “Dealing” 73; Coperías-Aguilar “ICC in the Context” 244), and they have established as an inalienable aim the training of teachers who can teach in more than one language (Kelly et al. ii). Despite the efforts of the European Commission to promote language diversity in language learning, Doiz and her associates (“Internationalisation” 347; “Future Challenges” xvii) highlight the predominance of English as a pan-European language of instruction. However, Alcón argues that if we place English within a framework of hybridity, where it is a language of communication and not of identification, English should not be understood as a threat to multilingualism, but, on the contrary, it might provide conditions for developing multilingual citizens (26–29).

Many other voices in different parts of the world have risen in defense of multilingualism, as well as fostering the learning of several languages and allowing our students to draw on their capacity to use them, and against the idea of building linguistically and culturally monolithic societies (Shohamy 209; Doiz et al. “Internationalisation” 345; Wingate 435; Spiteri 9). However, some of these same voices acknowledge the unavoidable prevalence of English in many contexts since, in a globalized world, a shared linguistic code is necessary in order to get messages across to others, and – as Cameron argues – globalization has given new legitimacy to “the long-lived idea that linguistic diversity is a problem, while linguistic uniformity is a desirable ideal” (67).

Even if languages such as French, Russian, and German have played and still play an important role in international communication, and other languages like Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic are gaining ground, it is English that clearly dominates the international linguistic stage (Pauwels 45). There are several reasons for this pervasiveness of English: it has been adopted as the means of communication by many transnational corporations, and their staff – regardless of the place where they are based – need communication skills in this language; there is an increasing number of world organizations, be they official institutions or charities, that use English as their working language; and English has also become the language of academia, especially regarding the dissemination of knowledge either in conferences or publications, as well as in teaching. Consequently, English has become a transnational language with a majority of users for whom it is a second language, that is, a lingua franca. Mauranen defines a lingua franca as “a contact language between speakers or speaker groups when at least one of them uses it as a second language” (8), and Baker emphasizes its intercultural nature and the different linguacultural backgrounds of the speakers (27). At the same time, Wallace argues that this kind of English cannot be standard and will contain regional variations (106), and Janssens and Steyaert prefer the term multilingual franca, thus acknowledging the fact that each speaker will bring his/her personal language experience to the linguistic exchange and highlighting the multilingual context (629).

Nonetheless, the rise of English as a lingua franca has brought about some criticism, and issues of linguistic imperialism have been emphasized since the 1990s by several authors, who criticize the way in which English is promoted and taught (Phillipson, Pennycook, Canagarajah Resisting; Holborow The Politics and The Language; Holliday, Gray The Construction). The manner in which Western, and more specifically Anglo, communicative norms and scientific ways of knowing has been exported has also been questioned (Cameron 68; Cadman and Song 5), as well as the superior status and prestige that English is granted in relation to other languages (Shohamy 197). Another criticism is associated to the idea that, although generally speaking language is not culturally neutral, a particular language is not necessarily linked to a specific country or culture (Coperías-Aguilar “Dealing” 72; Baker 29). In the case of English, it is difficult to decide which would be the native variety that should be taken as the model for the lingua franca, especially considering that for the majority of its users, English is a second language (Walkinshaw et al. 6; Wallace 101). In relation to this, the powerful industry engaged in the production of English textbooks for the international market has also been questioned. These books are mostly produced in English-speaking countries and, as Gray argues, “they are highly wrought cultural constructs and carriers of cultural messages” (“The Global Coursebook” 152), and despite the fact that in recent times guidelines have been issued by publishing companies to their authors to comply with requirements of inclusivity and appropriacy to make them suitable for the global market, and most coursebooks try to deal with a greater variety of materials and sources, ethnocentric values still persist. That is the reason why Corbett contends that rather than producing textbooks for the international market, teaching materials should be addressed to particular communities and become more involved with country-specific publishing (212).

Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Higher Education Institutions

As Healey argues, universities were born global and, as the term indicates, with a universal disposition (334). In Middle-Age Europe, universities already attracted students and scholars from different parts of the western, and sometimes also the eastern, world, and Latin was used as a shared second language in order to promote scientific exchange. Although not a new phenomenon, internationalization in higher education institutions (HEIs) has acquired a new dimension in this century (Pérez Cañado “Globalization” 397) and, if in the United States and Canada it has become almost an institutional priority, in Europe, its multinational, multicultural and multilingual reality has fostered several institutional initiatives for internationalization (Green et al. 21–22).

Increasing numbers of students decide to engage in higher education in a country other than their own; this may be encouraged by established exchange programs, like the Erasmus/Socrates initiative in Europe, or by the prospect of better social or economic opportunities. Drawing upon an OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) survey, Wingate reports that in 2014, around 1.3 million postgraduate students studied outside their country, mostly in universities in English-speaking countries (427). Perrin also reports that Anglophone countries host more than 50% of those students who study abroad (154), proof of which is the fact that, in the academic year 2014–2015, 58% of the students enrolled in full-time postgraduate programs in the UK were international ones or that, in the same year, this kind of student also represented at least 25% of enrolments in Australia, making the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada four of the top six study destinations (Heugh et al. 260; Humphreys 94).

Instead of receiving students at home, what some of these Anglophone countries have been doing is export their HEIs overseas, thus creating what is known as Transnational Education (TNE) institutions. Drawing upon a joint Council of Europe/UNESCO document, Healey defines TNE as “all types of higher education programmes and educational services (including distance-learning) in which learners are located in a country different from the one where the awarding body is based” (335). Perrin reports that in 20...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Theoretical Intersections
• PART II Teaching and Learning
• PART III Immersion and the International
• PART IV Heritage Learning and Language
• PART V Civic Partnerships
• PART VI Case Studies in Creative Communications
• Index