Conversation Analytic Perspectives on English Language Learning, Teaching and Testing in Global Contexts

Hanh thi Nguyen, Taiane Malabarba, Hanh thi Nguyen, Taiane Malabarba

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781788922906
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Enseñanza de las artes lingüísticas

This edited volume brings together 10 cutting-edge empirical studies on the realities of English language learning, teaching and testing in a wide range of global contexts where English is an additional language. It covers three themes: learners' development of interactional competence, the organization of teaching and testing practices, and sociocultural and ideological forces that may impact classroom interaction.With a decided focus on English-as-a-Foreign-Language contexts, the studies involve varied learner populations, from children to young adults to adults, in different learning environments around the world. The insights gained will be of interest to EFL professionals, as well as teacher trainers, policymakers and researchers.

1Introduction: Using Conversation Analysis to Understand the Realities of English-as-a-Foreign-Language Learning, Teaching and Testing

Taiane Malabarba and Hanh thi Nguyen

1Introduction

It has been estimated that, by 2020, there will be about 2 billion users of English worldwide – the majority of whom are non-native English speakers, outnumbering native speakers at a ratio of about 4:1 (British Council, 2013). Another estimate puts the number of learners of English as a foreign language at 100 million to 1.1 billion (Baker, 2011: 84). In the European Union, for example, English is the most widely taught foreign language (Cenoz & Gorter, 2013: 591; Eurostat, 2016). As English continues its global dominance as a lingua franca, it is crucial to understand the processes and issues in English education around the world.

This edited volume brings together 10 cutting-edge empirical studies on the realities of English language learning, teaching and testing in a wide range of contexts where English is an additional language or a workplace lingua franca, that is, in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. EFL contexts deserve research attention because they are distinct from contexts in which English is taught and learned as a second language in the target-language environment, that is, ESL contexts. In our view, EFL contexts differ in three main aspects from ESL contexts, and each difference poses practical problems for learners and teachers.

The most important difference is in the availability of the target language. Whereas most ESL learners have ready opportunities to use English ‘in the wild’ outside of the classroom (e.g. Barraja-Rohan, 2015; Yagi, 2007; see also Language Learning in the Wild, 2017; Wagner, 2015), EFL learners’ opportunities to use English are mostly limited to instructional settings such as classrooms (e.g. Cenoz, 2007; Hauser, 2009; Herazo Rivera, 2010; Rao, 2002), arranged online lessons (e.g. Balaman & Sert, 2017; Kozar, 2015; Nguyen, 2016) and class exchange activities online (e.g. Whyte & Cutrim Schmid, 2014). Outside of instructional settings, EFL learners may be exposed to the target language as consumers of the internet and entertainment (music, movies, games, and so on) (e.g. Piirainen-Marsh & Tainio, 2009) or as users of English as a lingua franca at the workplace (e.g. Firth, 2009a, 2009b). How do students and teachers in classroom interaction orient to this limited access to the target language? For example, do teachers strive to use English in their own speech and police the use of English by students to increase their target language exposure and practice? Outside of the classroom, how does language learning ‘in the wild’ take place in EFL contexts?

A second and related aspect that sets EFL contexts apart from ESL contexts is the purpose of language learning. Most ESL learners often have immediate needs to use the target language in their daily lives or future academic and professional careers for immersion in or integration into the target society (e.g. Duff et al., 2000; Menard-Warwick, 2007). In contrast, the relevance of English to EFL learners in many parts of the world, despite general perceptions of English’s socio-economic advantages, is often vague and undefined (e.g. Butler, 2011; Cenoz, 2007; Chang & Goswami, 2011), with the exception of workplace settings where English is used as a lingua franca (e.g. Firth, 2009a, 2009b). How do teachers connect their lessons to the students’ life-world experiences outside of the EFL classroom? How do learners make sense of teaching and testing activities in the target language? At the workplace, how do learners develop language skills in situ as they carry out work-related tasks?

A third and final major difference between EFL and ESL contexts lies in the common language and culture shared by teacher and students. While the teacher and students in an ESL classroom may come from various languages and cultures (e.g. Auerbach, 1993; Nguyen & Kellogg, 2010), the teacher and students in an EFL classroom typically speak the same first language (L1) and share the same cultural values as well as expectations about teaching and learning (e.g. Canagarajah, 1999; Cenoz, 2007). The questions are: Does this shared linguistic and cultural background pull the EFL teachers and students away from the target language in actual classroom interaction and, if so, how does this take place? How do they negotiate and resolve the tension between their expectations and the assumptions of teaching methodologies imported from English-speaking countries?

The authors in this collection will focus on how learners and teachers orient to the above constraints and affordances in English education around the world with respect to three facets: (1) learners’ development of interactional competence; (2) the organization of teaching and testing practices; and (3) sociocultural and ideological forces that may impact classroom interaction. Our goal is to provide close-up glimpses into how English is learned, taught and assessed at the local, moment-to-moment level, both within and outside of the classroom. Such detailed analyses can inform English language teaching (ELT) professionals, teacher trainers, policy makers and researchers about how language learning, teaching and testing are conducted and accomplished, given the constraints and the possibilities afforded by interactional resources as well as social, cultural and political forces in diverse settings around the world.

The present volume extends current understandings by going beyond the description of EFL settings and highlighting specific issues, such as: the negotiation of language choices (in Brazil); teacher–teacher power relationships in co-teaching (in Korea); the tension between teachers’ control and students’ initiations or displays of non-understanding (in Iran and Turkey); teachers’ management of initiation-response-feedback (IRF) sequences to encourage student participation in large classes (in China); and the relevance of English education to marginalized students (in Mexico). Further, this volume covers not only teaching but also learning and testing, involving both classroom settings and settings outside the classroom, such as the workplace (in Vietnam) and oral proficiency tests (in Japan). Finally, and most importantly, the present volume leaves the frequently researched domain of ESL contexts and instead maintains a decided focus on EFL contexts, spanning the continents of Asia, Central and South America, and Europe, and involving varied learner populations, from children to young adults to adults.

While the chapters in this book cover diverse teaching contexts in several continents, they all draw primarily on the data-driven and micro-analytic lens of conversation analysis (CA). Since this is the book’s common backdrop, we will begin with an overview of CA’s conceptual framework and methodological procedure.

2Conversation Analytic Perspective

Conversation analysis is a program of inquiry that aims to understand tacit social order through the concrete details of talk-in-interaction (Have, 2007; Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Sacks, 1995; Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 2007). Sharing ethnomethodology’s standpoint (Garfinkel, 1967, 2002), CA is concerned with the practical methods and commonsense reasoning by members of a culture in everyday activities, and thus takes social interaction as the milieu where social order is created, maintained and negotiated. More specifically, CA considers social interaction to be ‘the basic and primordial environment for the development, the use, and the learning of natural language’ (Schegloff, 1996: 4, emphasis added). In the paragraphs below, we will outline CA’s foundational principles and methodological procedures, and discuss the integration between ‘applied’ CA and compatible research traditions in the analysis of language teaching and learning.

2.1Conversation analytic underpinnings

At its core, CA is defined by (a) its assumption that social interaction is inherently orderly, (b) its emic stance, and (c) its treatment of context as indexically enacted in talk (Have, 2007; Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Sacks, 1995; Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 1997).

CA maintains that social interaction, albeit seemingly messy, is systematic and orderly at all points. That is, participants’ conduct such as pauses, restarts and voice variations are not haphazard, trivial, redundant or meaningless (as in a narrow conceptualization of linguistic competence à la Chomsky, 1965), but are participants’ commonsense methods to construct social order and culture in situ (Sacks, 1995, Vol. 1, Lecture 33). These sys...