Faces of English Education

Students, Teachers, and Pedagogy

Lillian L. C. Wong, Ken Hyland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351794541
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Languages

Faces of English Education provides an accessible, wide-ranging introduction to current perspectives on English language education, covering new areas of interest and recent studies in the field. In seventeen specially commissioned chapters written by international experts and practitioners, this book:

• offers an authoritative discussion of theoretical issues and debates surrounding key topics such as identity, motivation, teacher education and classroom pedagogy;
• discusses teaching from the perspective of the student as well as the teacher, and features sections on both in- and out-of-class learning;
• showcases the latest teaching research and methods, including MOOCs, use of corpora, and blended learning, and addresses the interface between theory and practice;
• analyses the different ways and contexts in which English is taught, learned and used around the world.

Faces of English Education is essential reading for pre- and in-service teachers, researchers in TESOL and applied linguistics, and teacher educators, as well as upper undergraduate and postgraduate students studying related topics.

1
Faces of English Language Research and Teaching

Ken Hyland and Lillian L. C. Wong

Faces of English may seem a strange title for a book on language education. Perhaps it encourages you, as a reader, to envisage the diversity of the some 1.5 billion people said to be learning the language, or the multiple ways it is used around the globe, from ordering a meal in a Singapore food court to giving a Nobel acceptance speech. It might also make you think of the diverse conceptions of English found in the literature, where it is seen as a lingua franca between interlocutors who share no other language, as an international language of business, tourism, and scholarship, as a tool of repression, as a marker of social class, or as a resource for making one’s way in a world which requires it for professional transactions. However, as we understand it, English is always used in particular local contexts by social groups trying to achieve some purpose or other. We use the language to communicate not with the world but with other members of our social groups, whether these are social, professional, or academic; and this not only means there are many Englishes, but also that the one we choose to use at any given time marks us out as a certain type of person: as, for example, an engineer, dock worker, loving husband, or exchange student.

For us, the idea of Faces of English is a useful way to capture the different facets of teaching and learning English in a way which embraces the perspectives of those involved and which includes some of the key topics currently being debated. Indeed, language education is a multi-faceted enterprise which can be seen from a variety of different perspectives, from its impact on the identities of learners in different contexts, through its effect on a teacher standing in front of her first class in a foreign country, to decisions about designing Massive Open Online Courses or adopting learning analytics to empower language learners. In this book we bring together a range of authors to capture the perspectives of language researchers, theorists, and classroom practitioners on some of these issues of contemporary significance in English language education.

Faces of English was also the theme of a conference hosted by the Centre for Applied English Studies at the University of Hong Kong, where the editors work, in the summer of 2015. Some of the contributors to this book presented their chapters at that conference, and we have recruited others to fill out under-represented areas. In this present form, our aim is to offer an exploratory but authoritative discussion of English language education from an integrated and multifocal perspective, bringing together the three central dimensions of education announced in our subtitle: students, teachers, and pedagogy. In doing so, we hope to present current thinking on issues of central concern to those working in English language teaching.

English language education and educators

Recent decades have seen a rapid expansion in the demand for English language teaching, such that there is concern about the lack of sufficient qualified instructors across the globe (Graddol 2014). This growth, moreover, has been accompanied by almost continuous change, with new challenges, innovative solutions, and novel issues emerging on a regular basis (Hyland & Wong 2013). Teachers constantly find themselves confronted with classroom situations and institutional expectations they have not experienced before, coming to terms with online delivery, flipped classrooms, quality audits, and students from unfamiliar places and with unknown needs. They also find themselves exposed to an ever-growing volume of research, with new journals emerging to report a seemingly endless sequence of experiments, experiences, theories, and insights about teaching and learning. Nor, of course, are teachers merely the passive recipients of top-down demands or research findings; many innovations are initiated by teachers themselves in response to changing contexts. Increasingly, then, an effective teacher is one who is able to make informed choices about the methods, materials, and procedures to use in the classroom based on a clear understanding of the current attitudes, theories, and practices in his or her profession.

Teachers are not a homogeneous group, though. To begin with, they teach in a range of situations, working in schools, colleges, universities, corporate training divisions, and language institutes, and with students of different motivations, proficiencies, language backgrounds, and needs. They come from a range of different educational and language backgrounds, with perhaps 80% of those working in non-native English speaking countries speaking English as a second language themselves (International TEFL Academy 2012). They also work in contexts where English is taught as a Second Language or as a Foreign Language, a distinction based on the language spoken by the community in which English is being studied, and where they enjoy different degrees of freedom to innovate and experiment with their teaching modes, methods, and materials. Some teachers do not work in classrooms at all but in multimedia labs, consultation rooms, or in front of a webcam.

These differences, of course, will have an impact on the kind of English students need and their motivation to acquire it, on the cultural and linguistic homogeneity of the students, on the resources and support available to teachers, and on the opportunities to take risks. There are, however, sufficient similarities between these diverse contexts to identify ELT practitioners as a discrete group with distinct career needs and experiences. Indeed, while the financial situation and job security of many teachers remains brittle, developments over the past twenty years have moved the occupation towards greater professionalism, with standards of integrity, competence, and a body of recognized knowledge becoming more widely accepted. Teachers are now supported by a range of recognized conferences, journals, certification boards, and professional bodies (e.g. TESOL 2016). All of this means there is a growing consensus on some of the main issues, enabling us to assemble topics which are likely to engage those working across a variety of situations, including those in teacher education or professional development courses without any firm idea of where they may find themselves in the near future.

Most importantly, we want to stress that a strong teacher is one who is able to relate classroom activities to relevant research and theory. Unfortunately, much of this research and thinking is scattered and hard to find, so that it often fails to reach those most in need of it. We have sought to address this gap in the present book by identifying contemporary topics in English language education, covering a range of research methodologies, practical applications, and theoretical approaches, and representing some of the best scholarship in ELT from both established experts and classroom practitioners around the world. This collection is therefore, to our knowledge, unique in providing an up-to-date, focused, and broadly conceived discussion of key issues in English language education today.

Structure of the book

The book is divided into four parts with four chapters in each. Part I focuses on issues most centrally related to students and highlights issues of motivation, identity, and learning; Part II addresses teaching and looks at current thinking on classroom pedagogies and practices; Part III concerns learning more directly, and particularly activities outside the classroom; and Part IV looks at different aspects of teacher education and professional development. The topics are timely and the chapters offer a mix of new and updated perspectives on them. Each section begins with more theoretically oriented contributions from well-established experts, followed by more empirically focused studies by practicing educators. All the chapters address the interface between theory and practice, giving a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the areas discussed, and offering a basis for further research. In other words, the following pages present what leading academics are thinking about major areas and what innovative practitioners are doing in their teaching.

Part I: Students: identity, motivation, and learning

In Chapter 2, Bonny Norton examines some of the key concepts of research into learner identity, highlighting her construct of investment, developed as a sociological complement to the psychological construct of motivation. An important focus of the chapter is an expanded model of investment (Darvin & Norton 2015), which responds to an increasingly digital world. Norton argues that debates on identity and the ownership of English are best understood as struggles for legitimacy in the context of frequently unequal relations of power at local and global levels. She exemplifies her theories with data drawn from her collaborative research on English language learning in Canada, Pakistan, Uganda, and Iran. Drawing on wider research in Hong Kong, Chile, the USA, and Mexico, she argues that the challenge for English language teachers, whether native or non-native speakers, is to promote learner investment in the language and literacy practices of classrooms by increasing the range of identities available to English language learners.

Chapter 3 turns to student learning and the relative importance of personal speaking style and task type on second language narrative retellings. Here, Peter Skehan and Sabrina Shum conduct an experimental study where two groups, of native and non-native speakers, complete four video-based narrative retelling tasks of Mr Bean extracts which vary in degree of structural organization. The results suggest that style factors are strongest where students are monitoring their performance, particularly processing at clause-level fluency. Task effects are less general and are strongest when students are trying to conceptualize what to say. For the non-native speakers, accuracy seems to be more task- than style-influenced, so that tasks make a difference where complexity and accuracy of language are concerned, but much less so for fluency. The importance of this study is to suggest performance areas that are likely to be more influenced by pedagogic decisions.

In Chapter 4, Rebecca Toner and Rachel Chaffin explore how students can develop an awareness of their emerging identities as language learners and as members of a local college community. To do this, they focus on the role of reflective practice in an ESL immersion programme, drawing on examples of such an emerging identity from a student’s final reflection project about her immersion experience. They argue that reflective activities necessitate English language development in order for the student to accurately express understanding of and membership in the community, advocating the inclusion of reflection in course design. In this practical chapter, the authors explain how reflection was implemented in activities throughout the course, culminating in the final reflection project. The chapter concludes with the implications of reflection as a vehicle for both identity exploration and language development, and suggests potential gains from the incorporation of reflective identity activities in ESL contexts.

The final chapter in Part I looks at the motivational development and academic decision making of Chinese and international English majors at two universities in China. Aaron Doyle employs an expanded version of Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System (Dörnyei 2009) to explore the formation of students’ English-related aspirational identities—their ideal L2 selves—and the relationship between these emerging selves and English learning motivation. Using a questionnaire survey and a year-long interview study, he shows that because English was not the preferred major for many students there was a decline in motivation during the early years of their study. Eventually, however, the majority of Chinese students formed a clear ideal L2 self, based on using English for academic purposes in graduate schools overseas, which restored direction to their learning. In contrast, most of their international classmates had no clear objective, and this less defined ideal L2 self lacked the specificity needed to recover the lost motivation. Such contrasts in motivational orientations are not unique to Chinese universities, and Doyle concludes with suggestions that can help teachers keep their English major courses relevant and motivating.

Part II: Teaching: classroom pedagogies and practices

In Chapter 6, Rod Ellis argues for the overwhelming importance of ‘input’ in English language teaching. Irrespective of the approach or method a teacher adopts, it will involve exposing learners to some input provided by the teacher, by other students, and in instructional materials. Ellis understands input as providing learners with the data they can process for learning, asking: ‘What kinds of input under what conditions are most likely to foster learning?’ He sets out to answer this question by first discussing some common pedagogic positions, drawing on how ‘input’ is handled in popular teaching guides by exploring commonly held positions about authentic teaching materials, teacher talk, and extensive reading. He then examines what SLA theory has to say about the role of input in L2 learning by considering four key hypotheses: the Incidental Learning Hypothesis, the Frequency Hypothesis, the Input Hypothesis, and the Noticing Hypothesis. Finally, he returns to pedagogic issues and evaluates them in the light of the SLA findings, arguing for the need to acknowledge that incidental learning is as important, if not more so, as intentional learning.

Another approach to pedagogy is advocated by Wen Qiufang in Chapter 7. Professor Wen challenges the text-centred and input-based English teaching methods which are prevalent in mainland China, arguing instead for what she calls a production-oriented approach (POA). This follows the principle of learning centredness founded on the teacher’s careful guidance. With limited class time and few prospects for students to encounter or use English, this ensures the maximum opportunities for in-class learning. It is based on two assumptions. The first assumption, based on an analysis of language use in the workplace, is that professional or business communication is primarily conducted through productive activities (i.e. speaking, writing, interpreting, and translating), with receptive activities (i.e. listening and reading) as mediators. The second assumption, based on Swain’s output hypothesis and adult learning psychology, is that productive activities can yield better learning outcomes than receptive activities. For POA, then, the ultimate objective of adult English learning should be to develop learners’ productive skills with receptive skills as enablers.

Maggie Charles takes a very different approach to classroom pedagogy in Chapter 8. Here she discusses and evaluates the use of self-compiled or do-it-yourself (DIY) corpora in the classroom. She illustrates the approach with reference to an academic writing course for postgraduates, in which students built individual corpora from research articles in their own fields and then used them to investigate the language of their disciplines. Feedback from students highlights both positive and negative aspects of the approach, and these data are supplemented by the views of three teachers who report on their experience of teaching the course. Both students and teachers agree that one of the key advantages of the approach lies in the fact that the students’ corpora are highly specific to their own writing contexts. The chapter argues that the use of DIY corpora enables teaching in multidisciplinary classes to be individualized and provides students with a tailor-made resource for ongoing long-term reference.

In Chapter 9, Anne Peirson-Smith examines the teaching of a popular culture course in a Hong Kong university classroom using a blended and project-based format. The aim of the course is to enhance students’ media literacy and critical engagement in the analysis and creation of online and offline texts. It requires students to work in small teams to visually and verbally create a ‘fashion tribe’ when exploring the notion of identity formation using a montage of images and editorial material. The creative output of each group was shared on a Facebook site following an in-class ‘show and tell’ session. Peirson-Smith argues that a pedagogy of intervention by the teacher in the process of knowledge enquiry helped students see connections between formal and informal academic literacies by blending the horizontal discourses of everyday life with the vertical discourses of education. Student feedback suggests that the approach resulted in a heightened critical awareness of popular culture; enhanced engagement and agency involving knowledge acquisition; and more significant learner autonomy in preparation for life outside the classroom.

Part III: Learning: activities beyond the classroom

David Nunan opens Part III by pointing out that until comparatively recently, the classroom was where language was learned, and the world beyond the classroom was where language was used. This bifurcation began to break down with communicative language teaching, which brought with it experiential learning and the notion that one could acquire a language by using it productively and communicatively inside the classroom. However, until relatively recently, opportunities for activating classroom learning in the world outside the classroom were limited in many parts of the world. Technology, particularly the Internet, has changed this by providing learners with access to a huge variety of authentic material. The proliferation of social networking sites in particular gives learners access to opportunities to communicate with other users of the target language around the globe. Drawing on a series of case studies, Professor Nunan argues that learning through using language in authentic as well as pedagogically structured contexts outside the classroom can significantly enhance the language learning process.

In Chapter 11, Christoph A. Hafner and Lindsay Miller explore a very different approach to out-of-class learning: that of project work. The authors argue that by taking control of their learning when working with classmates, learners can achieve learning gains far exceeding anything which can be accomplished in the classroom. To explore this, Hafner and Miller describe and analyse a team-based digital video project for English for science students. The project involved two main processes: (1) brainstorming and planning, researching, scripting, storyboarding, and experimen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• 1 Faces of English language research and teaching
• PART I Students: identity, motivation, and learning
• PART II Teaching: classroom pedagogies and practices
• PART III Learning: activities beyond the classroom
• PART IV Teachers: education and professional development
• Index