Michele de Courcy (University of Melbourne, Australia)

The ESL continuum for the VELS – the research and development process

The ESL continuum project was conceived in order for the Department of Education to meet one of its key priorities, which is improving learning outcomes in literacy and numeracy for higher needs students, of which many are ESL learners. The resources developed as a result of this project will build the capacity of schools to achieve this. Through the use of an ESL continuum based on the ESL stages of development the capacity of teachers to support ESL learners’ literacy development will be further enhanced.

In developing the continuum we aimed to:

• provide an assessment tool for teachers to effectively assess where their ESL students are up to and how to move them forward
• provide a tool for teachers to develop a shared language with which to describe ESL student progress and to have professional conversations with their colleagues
• provide support to teachers in planning for, monitoring and supporting individual ESL student progress toward moving towards the English VELS
• present evidence-based approaches to support improved student learning outcomes in learning English as a second language.

The approach used linked quality of language performance to a pupil’s language competence and then synthesised evidence to produce a standards referenced proficiency framework that can be linked to learning needs and appropriate assessment strategies. A standards referenced framework normally links stages of developmental learning and assessment to procedures for monitoring skill and competence levels and points directly to appropriate points of instructional intervention.

There were several steps involved in our creation of the ESL continuum, which will be described in this presentation:

1. Defining the framework or area of language development
2. Subdividing the framework into language domains
3. For each capability, listing the performance indicators which describe a typical set of indicative activities to be performed
4. For each indicator defining quality criteria that describe the quality of the performance
5. Establishing the relative difficulty of the criteria
6. Interpreting clusters of criteria at approximately the same levels of increasing competence
7. Linking the levels to teaching interventions

Once the criteria were drafted they were placed onto a continuum using the expert judgement of language specialists. The strategy for this approach is based Thurstone’s Law of comparative judgement. The process was undertaken in short workshops using a series of specialists and defined a continuum that would underpin the developmental progression of second language.

Dominique Estival (University of Sydney, Australia)

EL2 Pilots in the Australian General Aviation environment – radio mis-communication

Communicating effectively via the radio in General Aviation (GA) is a challenging task for most pilots. This is even more challenging for non-native speakers of English who are required to master not only a second language but “Aviation English” to communicate with both Air Traffic Control (ATC) and other pilots. In a preliminary study (Estival & Molesworth, 2009), we investigated the extent to which the English language proficiency of pilots whose native language is not English affects their ability to effectively communicate with ATC and its potential impact on safety outcomes.

On the one hand, there is some evidence to suggest that the use of English as a second language may contribute to communication difficulties and that the standard of English employed by EL2 pilots is one of the challenges of radio communication in GA. On the other hand, we also found that pilots consider communicating with ATC to be the least challenging task and that both EL2 and English native speakers rank understanding other pilots as the most challenging task in aviation communication. Both native speakers and EL2 pilots find it difficult to understand other pilots and both experience the same problems communicating with ATC.

This may be explained in part by the intensive training provided to ATC and by the standardized phraseology now regularly employed (Cushing, 1994; Hutchins & Klausen, 1996). In addition, there is evidence to suggest that the quality of the transmission between two aircraft negatively affects effective communication (Shimizu et al., 2002) and that other factors contribute to this problem (e.g., noise and operator expectation).

Our current research is directed towards investigating the underlying problems associated with radio communication, such as comprehension, phraseology, intonation, speech irregularities and the use (or misuse) of pauses, and towards quantifying the frequency of communication problems within GA.

Edgar Schneider (University of Regensburg, Germany)

Global English(es): Diverging or converging?

English is the world's leading global language today, and it is undisputed that this expansion has caused it to become a highly pluricentric language. This is not the only trend today, however – ongoing processes strengthening diversification are countered by homogenizing forces. This lecture systematically surveys sociocultural trends which may be viewed as centrifugal and centripetal, respectively, and presents some new research results along these lines.

Two major diverging forces have produced new standard varieties and "centers" of orientation in the course of time. The first one was the separation of American English, originally motivated by sociopolitical attitudes. How different the two major national varieties of English really are is a matter of some dispute, however. Traditional scholarship tended to downplay the amount of differences to a well-known set of pronunciation characteristics and a few lexical choices and expressions. In contrast, some recent research findings are presented which suggest that differences are much less conspicuous and more subtle but ubiquitous. Secondly, in the twentieth century various postcolonial Englishes have started to go their own ways and to move towards endonormative stabilization in the evolutionary "Dynamic Model" (Schneider, Postcolonial English, CUP 2007). Notably, Australian English can now be accepted as a distinct standard form of its own, with some degree of model status for the Asia-Pacific region, a process which can be traced back to political and sociolinguistic developments of the second half of the twentieth century. New Zealand's variety seems to be following suit, and it is suggested that some Asian varieties, such as those of Singapore and India, may be moving along the same path.

Conversely, two converging trends, re-enhancing supraregional unity, are also identified and discussed on the basis of some new evidence. One is the question of whether an "International English" or an "English as a Lingua Franca" form is evolving – and it is suggested that there is little evidence available to back such an assumption, at least outside a highly restricted domain of formal and detached writing. Secondly, it is widely suggested that British-derived World Englishes are currently undergoing a process of "Americanization", associated with closely related processes such as globalization, westernization and "McDonaldization", and some recent evidence is presented to test such claims. The sociocognitive ramifications of these terms and putative processes, including some characteristic attitudes towards a perceived Americanization, are addressed; the findings of a systematic investigation of this process in South African English are reported; and some pertinent evidence relating to other varieties of English is pulled together. There is indeed some evidence backing the assumption of a growing impact of American English on young speakers in many countries, but this should not be overexaggerated.

In sum, the globalization of English has been characterized by conflicting sociocultural forces and linguistic consequences supporting both diversification and homogeneity, but in real-life oral communication the growth of pluricentricity seems unbroken.

Farzad Sharifian (Monash University, Australia)

Cultural conceptualisations and language: Theoretical framework and applications

This talk focuses on the theoretical framework of cultural conceptualisations, cultural cognition, and language which I have been developing since 2001. It draws on a multidisciplinary background in cognitive science, cognitive linguistics, and cognitive anthropology. The rationale for this work was to establish a framework for the study of language as it is grounded in cultural cognition, as this is a missing link in the interface between the disciplines drawn upon. The model has been inspired by sub-paradigms within the relevant disciplines, such as connectionism, distributed cognition, and Complex Adaptive Systems, all of which have been very useful in modeling group-level cognitive and conceptual systems such as cultural level of cognition and conceptualization.
The talk will also provide illustrations of the applications of the theoretical model of cultural conceptualisations to areas such as dialectal variation, (in Aboriginal English in particular); intercultural communication and intercultural pragmatics; as well as second language acquisition and English as an International Language. The cases presented will indicate the potential of the theoretical framework I have developed to produce a fine-grained analysis of language by exploring its grounding in cultural conceptualisations and thence eventually in cultural cognition.

Eva Bernat (University of New South Wales, Australia)

English Language Teachers in the New Millennium: Complexities and Challenges

In the 21s Century, English language teachers find themselves facing a myriad of challenges. Global shifts in the usage of the English language, inter alia, have called many aspects of TESOL into question, and these shifts have been the subject of considerable debate during the past few years (Sharifian, 2009). What emerges from much of the discussion, is that there seems to be a good deal of uncertainty as to what precisely these shifts mean and how they relate to the language teacher’s expertise, praxis (Edge, 2006; Matsuda, 2006; Llurda, 2005), as well as professional identity (Varghese, 2001; Morgan, 2004).

This paper will identify, describe and critically evaluate in light of recent conceptual debates among scholars the key assumptions behind these emerging shifts in the glocal TESOL context. Specifically, it will consider issues such as the different kinds of skills and knowledge (e.g. intercultural and pedagogical competence) needed to meet the changing nature of the English language, non-native speaker teachers’ (NNSTs) challenges of negotiating current neoliberal marketplace demands, and various pedagogical implications related to appropriating language teaching materials, instructional and assessment methods, while navigating the maize of the postmethods era.

John S. Knox (Macquarie University, Australia)

Perspectives on teaching Applied Linguistics: From a distance up close

Applied Linguistics is in demand. As the field has expanded to investigate and intervene in relatively new areas like professional discourse, new students and researchers have been welcomed to the discipline. At the same time, the language-education roots of Applied Linguistics remain strong, and language education (and in particular English-language teaching, or ELT) is still an important intellectual and economic factor for many or most Applied Linguistics programs (cf. Graddol, 2006).

The size of the international ELT industry has not been lost on individuals and institutions who have an interest in the commercialisation of higher education, nor have the financial arguments supporting distance education. From the mid-1990s to 2008, programs offering language teacher education by distance (LTED) increased from 23 to over 120 (Hall & Knox, 2009). This is obviously related to other developments, including the emergence of the internet and the development of other information communication technologies. Nonetheless, the large number of LTED programs currently available suggests that learning and teaching Applied Linguistics by distance is a social practice which is far more prevalent now than was the case just 15 years ago.

This paper is based on three interviews with experience teachers of Applied Linguistics, in which they were asked for their thoughts and experiences in relation to distance teaching. The paper explores the discursive construction of teaching Applied Linguistics by distance in these interviews: how do these teachers construe and evaluate their experience of this set of social practices? On the basis of this analysis, reflections on the implications of the rise of LTED for the free-ness of Applied Linguistics are made.

References:

Graddol, D. (2006). English next: Why global English may mean the end of 'English as a Foreign Language'. Retrieved April 2, 2007, from http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research

Hall, D. R., & Knox, J. S. (2009). Issues in the education of TESOL teachers by distance education. Distance Education, 30(1), 63-85.