Principles and Practices for Teaching English as an International Language

Lubna Alsagoff, Sandra Lee Mckay, Guangwei Hu, Willy A. Renandya, Lubna Alsagoff, Sandra Lee Mckay, Guangwei Hu, Willy A. Renandya

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136741166
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Didattica
• Thema: Didattica generale

What general principles should inform a socioculturally sensitive pedagogy for teaching English as an International Language and what practices would be consistent with these principles?

This text explores the pedagogical implications of the continuing spread of English and its role as an international language, highlighting the importance of socially sensitive pedagogy in contexts outside inner circle English-speaking countries. It provides comprehensive coverage of topics traditionally included in second language methodology courses (such as the teaching of oral skills and grammar), as well as newer fields (such as corpora in language teaching and multimodality); features balanced treatment of theory and practice; and encourages teachers to apply the pedagogical practices to their own classrooms and to reflect on the effects of such practices. Designed for pre-service and in-service teachers of English around the world, Principles and Practices for Teaching English as an International Language fills a critical need in the field.

Why Another Book on EIL

DOI: 10.4324/9780203819159-1

Another Book on EIL?

Heralding the Need for New Ways of Thinking, Doing, and Being

Lubna Alsagoff

DOI: 10.4324/9780203819159-2

The English Language and Literature department in Singapore where I (and two of my co-editors) work is not unusual in having to balance its responsibilities in teaching and research. Straddled between the needs of the Ministry of Education, where we are to serve as gatekeepers and professors of standards of “internationally acceptable English” (Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 10)—especially given the fact that we are the only teacher education institute serving all of Singapore—and those of our parent university for which we attend to international standards of research, we strive to manage and negotiate a fine balance in how we represent English in our teaching and research in ways that are contextually and culturally appropriate, but which also keep faith to our knowledge of the field. We negotiate this with some apprehension given our fledgling research on teaching and learning in the Singaporean context, but with great passion and conviction, given our call to serve the nation, and our desires for our voices to be heard in the international academic arena.

In the past seven years, with the increasing concerns about Singapore’s “standards of English,” our department has grown. But this growth, happily, has not just been in size, but also in diversity—our faculty members come from all reaches of the globe. Apart from our US, Australian, British, and Canadian faculty, we are also proud to call as colleagues, past and present, Chinese, Congolese, German, Hungarian, Indian, Indonesian, Korean, Malaysian, Myanmarese, Filipino, Taiwanese, Tunisian, and Vietnamese teachers, researchers, and scholars.¹ This inclusivity of faculty representing the different and diverse global communities where English is spoken has been deliberate—an embracing in practice of what we know in theory to be the status of “English as an international language” (EIL) through the purposeful statement of the pluricentric ownership of English, thereby demonstrating what “internationally acceptable English” is.

It is this desire to explore the possible enactments and realizations in practice, of what we know from current theoretical research and discussions on English language teaching and about EIL, that has been the primary impetus for this project. It is a response to the need for new practices in the teaching and learning of English in the many communities it calls home, and for the many multilingual speakers who use it as an additional language to expand their linguistic repertoires. While there have been many recent books about EIL as well as the role of English as a global language written from a wide variety of perspectives, e.g., Block and Cameron (2002), Brutt-Griffler (2002), Canagarajah (2005), Jenkins (2003), McKay (2002), Pennycook (2007), Rubdy and Saraceni (2006), Saxena and Omoniyi (2010), and Sharifian (2009), to name a few, we feel that there remains a need to sound this clarion call for reflection on the way English, in its worldwide spread, is taught to, and learnt by, multilingual speakers and learners across the globe.

This book is celebratory in the sense that it includes a range of perspectives and understandings of EIL, and what it means to teach English as a language that bridges nations and cultures; and which while diverse, agree on the need to herald change, signaling the necessity for new ways of thinking and seeing, and more essentially, of new ways of doing and being, as teachers, students, and scholars. The authors have addressed this call for change in a variety of ways, but again with a confluence of sentiment that privileges the learner and teacher as active participants, that fosters respect for the diversity of speakers who call English their tongue, and that furthers new understandings of classroom and teaching practices that acknowledge the local alongside the global.

Our authors, in each of the chapters, explore innovative pedagogical understandings and practices to properly acknowledge and address the complexity of classrooms, learners, and teachers in EIL contexts. They discuss topics traditionally included in second language methodology courses, e.g., curriculum development, assessment, the teaching of reading, writing, oral skills, and grammar; as well as newer areas, e.g., corpora in language teaching and the use of new media, multimodal texts in language classrooms, with fresh perspectives that explicate and clarify concepts and principles that they believe should inform the practice of the teaching and learning of EIL, and which address the needs of EIL classrooms.

That such a call for change in the way we teach English was necessary, for the editors, was clearly evident. We are all familiar with the seminal and internationally well-established published collections on teaching methods and approaches (e.g. Harmer, 2007; Richards & Renandya, 2002; Carter & Nunan, 2001) which form the staple reading of many beginning teacher-scholars of the field. However, these textbooks on teaching methodology are often premised on contexts of practice, primarily of ESL classrooms in English-speaking communities, that are far removed from the realities of the majority of the global English classrooms of today. In our teacher-education programs, for example, our Singaporean, Malaysian, Chinese, and ASEAN graduate students struggle to understand, extrapolate, and shape this knowledge for enactment in the contexts where they teach, where English is generally learnt, not for integration into an L1 English-speaking community, but for meaning making in local and global conversations; and where English is practiced, not in largely monolingual contexts, but in diversely multilingual and multicultural contexts.

It must, however, be made clear that our intention is not to write an EIL methodology book to replace these other volumes. There can be no one method or teaching approach that can embrace the diversity of contexts and needs that EIL engenders, and that can be locally-meaningful the way such books need to be in order to be useful to teachers and learners. Rather, our goal is for the authors, respected scholars in their fields, to share ideas and principles to guide critical and informed practice and reflection in teaching; and more importantly, to raise questions whose answers can only be discovered by teachers and learners of EIL in each of their unique contexts.

Given these intended perspectives and outcomes, the concept for this book is necessarily founded on a view that EIL is not a hapless consequence of the insidious hand of Western imperialism, but rather as an expected outcome of the inevitable acceleration of globalization that brings with it opportunities (as well as challenges) for change. EIL compels new ways of thinking about language because it is about the transformations of language, culture, and identity into hybrid third spaces (Bhabha, 1994). It is in these hybridized liminal spaces that EIL teaching and learning take place, in which speakers appropriate and shape English, as individuals, and as members of global communities, intra-nationally as well as internationally, in developing their own voices.

The chapters are organized into two sections, with the first, entitled “Calling for Change.” Here the authors question established notions, and present new ideas and ways of conceptualizing what we accept as “taken-for-granteds” in the field. Kumaravadivelu and McKay open the book by setting a general direction and tone for the volume. In the second section, “Implementing Change,” the authors share new approaches to pedagogical practices that are appropriate for EIL teaching and learning contexts. The volume ends with McKay’s fitting conclusion, “Forging Ahead,” in which she draws on her experience and knowledge of the field, and offers a reading of the chapters in the book, and suggests how we move ahead to enact and realize EIL pedagogies.

Note

1. We of course include many Singaporeans as part of our faculty.

References

• Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge.
• Block, D., & Cameron, D. (2002). Globalization and language teaching. London: Routledge.
• Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002). World Englishes: A study of its development. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
• Canagarajah, A. S. (2005). Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Carter, R., & Nunan, D. (Eds.). (2001). The Cambridge guide to teaching English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English language teaching with DVD (4th ed.). Harlow: Longman Pearson.
• Jenkins, J. (2003). World Englishes. New York: Routledge.
• McKay, S. L. (2002). Teaching English as an international language: Rethinking goals and approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ministry of Education. (2010). English Language Syllabus: Normal and Express. Singapore: Curriculum Planning Division, Ministry of Education.
• Pennycook, A. (2007). Global Englishes and transcultural flows. London: Routledge.
• Richards, J. C., & Renandya, W. A. (Eds.). (2002). Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Rubdy, R., & Saraceni, M. (2006). English in the world: Global rules, global roles. London: Continuum.
• Saxena, M., & Omoniyi, T. (2010). Contending with globalization in World Englishes. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
• Sharifian, F. (Ed.). (2009). English as an international language: Perspectives and pedagogical issues. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Calling for Change

DOI: 10.4324/9780203819159-3

Individual Identity, Cultural Globalization, and Teaching English as an International Language

The Case for an Epistemic Break

B. Kumaravadivelu

DOI: 10.4324/9780203819159-4

Introduction

This chapter is based on two inter-related propositions. First, the on-going process of cultural globalization with its incessant and increased flow of peoples, goods, and ideas across the world is creating a novel “web of interlocution” that is effectively challenging the traditional notions of identity formation of an individual or of a nation. Second, the teaching of English as an international language (EIL) cannot remain insulated and isolated from globalization’s impact on the formation of individual identities of English language learners, teachers, and teacher educators around the world.

In this chapter, I present critical perspectives on some of the broad issues concerning the above propositions (for specific principles of teaching, see McKay, this volume). In the first part of the chapter, I briefly outline two familiar narratives of identity formation—modernism and postmodernism—and argue that a third—globalism—is fast emerging as a crucial factor in the construction of identity. I try to highlight how globalism presents challenges as well as opportunities for individuals to exercise their ag...