English A Changing Medium for Education

By Constant Leung, Brian V. Street

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2012 Constant Leung, Brian V. Street and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84769-771-4

Contents

Contributors,
Preface,
1 Introduction: English in the Curriculum – Norms and Practices Constant Leung and Brian Street,
2 What Counts as English? Mastin Prinsloo,
3 The Rise and Rise of English: The Politics of Bilingual Education in Australia’s Remote Indigenous Schools Ilana Snyder and Denise Beale,
4 (Re)Writing English: Putting English in Translation Bruce Horner and Min-Zhan Lu,
5 Multilingual and Multimodal Resources in Genre-based Pedagogical Approaches to L2 English Content Classrooms Angel Lin,
6 Multimodal Literacies and Assessment: Uncharted Challenges in the English Classroom Heather Lotherington and Natalia Sinitskaya Ronda,
7 Beyond Labels and Categories in English Language Teaching: Critical Reflections on Popular Conceptualizations Martin Dewey,
Concluding Remarks Constant Leung and Brian Street,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: English in the Curriculum – Norms and Practices

Constant Leung and Brian Street

Introduction

This book is concerned with English as a medium of curriculum communication, particularly in English as an Additional/Second Language (EAL) contexts. The spread of English in the world in the past 200 years, initially through British colonial expansion and through globalisation of business and industry in more recent times, has been accompanied by a huge demand for English Language Teaching (ELT) in a variety of contexts. EAL is taught and learned in many ways – as a subject in school, university and adult education settings in countries such as China and Brazil; as a language of instruction in English-medium education catering to speakers of other languages in places where English is an official language such as Singapore and Hong Kong and also in some international schools; as a language of schooling for linguistic minorities in countries such as Australia and the UK; and as a vehicular language in content-language integrated language teaching (generally referred to as CLIL) in some schools in Europe and elsewhere. All of this does not even include the vast number of students who travel to English-speaking countries for general and vocational education at all levels. According to Graddol (2006: 101) worldwide there are two billion (approximately) learners of EAL at the present time.

Given the scale and the international reach of this language teaching enterprise, it is important to ask how English has been characterised in the professional language teaching literature, and how far the established characterisation corresponds with the ways in which it is understood and used in contemporary contexts. These two questions are fundamentally related to a number of pedagogic issues such as the content, methodology and norms of teaching and assessment (see Nunan, 1991; Richards & Rodgers, 2001, for a discussion on the connections between teaching methodology and conceptualisation of language). In this introductory chapter we will look at the ways in which English language has been discussed in the professional literature with a view to exploring the possibilities for conceptual broadening. We will first focus on the emergence of the concept of communicative competence and how it has been a major influence on curriculum development and professional practice in ELT for the best part of the past 30 years. Next we will suggest that, in the light of our changing understanding of how language works and the diverse and dynamic ways in which English is being used as an additional language in the world, the notion of communicative competence, as understood in language teaching, should take greater account of a practice view of language use (instead of a norm-based view). By a practice view we are referring to an understanding that has emerged especially in ethnographic and sociological studies that addresses not only the form and content of languages but also the social meanings and uses associated with them.

Some of the developments in the related field of literacy studies are instructive here. Distinguishing between events and practices in the literacy field, Street (2000: 21) suggests that

the concept of literacy practices … attempt[s] to handle the events and the patterns of activity around literacy but to link them to something broader of a cultural and social kind.

And part of that broadening involves attending to the fact that in a literacy event we have brought to it concepts, social models regarding what the nature of this practice is and that make it work and give it meaning.

In the sociological literature, the work of Bourdieu (1991, and also Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) has been particularly significant in challenging narrow models of language and events and replacing them with a broader conception of social capital and practice. As Grenfell (2012: 67) notes, earlier theorists

defined the study of language in terms of its formal, structural properties. Even the Chomskyan revolution of the 1950s is predicated on the notion of an ‘ideal’ speaker and, thus perfect competence. For Bourdieu, this model is simply something that does not exist. Moreover, the consequent methodology that seeks to see sense and significance in terms of an ‘internalist’ reading of language itself basically overlooks all the contextual (social, cultural) components that give linguistic events their meaning.

At first glance it may seem that in making this appeal to a more socially and culturally oriented approach to language and literacy, we are adopting an unnecessarily large canvass. However, as the classroom vignette in this chapter will show in a moment, what goes on when teachers and students engage in talk and in reading and writing is not a simple matter of manual driven didactic transmission. Indeed, the ways in which they use English to ‘do’ teaching and learning are unavoidably situated in a wider context of social norms and practices, curriculum affordances and constraints, and institutionally induced relationships, and at the same time, all the participants in the classroom activities are themselves social actors investing in particular social and cultural choices.

In the final section we will explore the conceptual implications of a practice-oriented notion of communicative competence for understanding the multifaceted manifestations of English in classroom and curriculum contexts. This discussion will draw on research in a number of related fields such as English as a Foreign Language (EFL), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), language education and literacy studies (including NLS – ‘New Literacy Studies’). We will use EAL as a super-coordinating term to refer to English whenever the speaker/learner already has another language, but will defer to the relevant ‘native’ nomenclature such as EFL and ELF where appropriate, particularly in citations (see Dewey, Chapter 7 this volume, for a detailed discussion on diverse contexts of and labels for ELT).

Communication as Language

The focus on communication in ELT has been a relatively recent phenomenon. In the 1950s language teaching, particularly foreign language teaching, was predominantly concerned with grammar and lexis delivered through a variety of teaching methods, for example, grammar translation and the audio-lingual method. For reasons of focus and scope we will not be providing a discussion on the move away from grammar-oriented approaches (see Howatt & Widdowson, 2004: Chapter 19; Richards & Rodger, 2001, for a discussion). Suffice it to say that the limitations of the grammar-based approaches were increasingly discussed in the 1960s and 1970s, and the merits of more real life-oriented approaches received extensive attention in the language teaching literature during this period. Halliday (1973, 1975; also Halliday et al., 1964) and Hymes (1972, 1977, 1994) were among those whose work made a significant contribution to the shift from a grammar orientation. We will now provide a brief account of the influential work of Halliday and Hymes to provide a perspective on the intellectual sensibilities of the principles underlying ELT practice today. (For a synopsis of the key ideas that influenced this paradigm shift, see Canale & Swain, 1980a; Leung, 2010, for an account of the impact of sociolinguistics on language teaching.)

A key concept in the work of Halliday and his associates is function in language. By function is meant the relationship between meaning and language expression (of which grammar is a part), which ‘reflects the fact that language has evolved in the service of particular human needs … what is really significant is that this functional principle is carried over and built into the grammar, so that the internal organization of the grammar system is also functional in character’ (Halliday, 1975: 16). Seen in this light, meaning-making underpins the ways in which (any) language as a system is developed. More importantly for this discussion, meaning-making shapes the ways in which language is used. For Halliday language use can be broadly understood as serving three functional purposes, referred to as meta-functions in the Hallidayan literature:

• ideational – this meta-function is concerned with the use of language as a means to talk about the world and about oneself; it is instantiated whenever a ‘speaker expresses his experience of the phenomena of the external world, and of the internal world of his own consciousness’ (Halliday, 1975: 17);

• interpersonal – individuals, through language expressions, can adopt a role or a position in relation to other participants, express their own values and views; so language is a means ‘whereby the speaker participates in … [a] speech situation’ (Halliday, 1975: 17) and, at the same time, a means for entering into particular social relationships with others;

• textual – language is seen as an enabling means for ‘creating text’ (Halliday, 1975: 17); language is the linguistic means deployed by speakers and writers to form spoken and written texts to make meaning in context; vocabulary, grammar and discourse organisation are all part of the means to form a text (increasingly other semiotic means such as graphics and video are also seen as text-forming means, see Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001).

These three meta-functions are analytical constructs; in actual language use all three are co-present. For instance, verbs such as ‘argue’, ‘contend’, ‘express’, ‘think’ and ‘say’ could be used to represent the same speech event, but ‘she argued …’ has a very different discourse value than ‘she said …’. The two different lexical choices (textual meta-function) represent two different descriptions of a self-same event (ideational meta-function) indicating two different speaker positions. From a language teaching point of view this functional view of language and language use offers a propositionally and socially nuanced way of thinking about teaching content in relation to matching teaching focus to learner needs (see Schleppegrell et al., 2004, for an example of pedagogic application of this approach).

The work of Hymes on ethnography of speaking was also influential in the re-orientation of language teaching; indeed his work on the concept of communicative competence can be seen as a key influence on the development of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). For Hymes, when a child learns to communicate through language they have to learn how to use words (in utterances) in socially appropriate ways. So, having a grasp of words and grammar rules will not suffice; there are social conventions of use. By observing the ways in which language is used methodically one can build up a picture of language practice. The actual ways in which language is used in context can be arrived at empirically by asking these questions:

Whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible;

Whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of the means of implementation available;

Whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated;

Whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed, and what its doing entails. (Hymes, 1972: 281, original emphasis)

These empirical questions are clearly relevant to language teachers interested in finding a way to understand what counts as appropriate language form in context of use. This approach to understanding language not just as a lexis-and-grammar system, but also as language practice in context, allows teachers to gain greater traction on issues regarding appropriate models of language use for teaching.

Transforming Communication to Communicative Language Teaching

This broadening of the concerns of language teaching to take account of the importance of the ‘social’ in language use provided an important impetus for the development of CLT within ELT. In a series of papers Canale and Swain (1980a, 1980b; also Canale, 1983, 1984, among others) put forward a theoretical framework for communicative competence for additional/second language teaching which comprises four component competences:

(1) grammatical competence – this component refers to ‘knowledge of lexical items and of rules of morphology, syntax … and phonology’ (Canale & Swain, 1980b: 29);

(2) sociolinguistic competence – this component is concerned with ‘… the extent to which utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different … contexts depending on contextual factors such as status of participants, purposes of interaction, and norms and conventions of interaction …’ (Canale, 1983: 7);

(3) discourse competence – this component addresses ‘[u]nity of a text … achieved through cohesion in form and coherence in meaning. Cohesion deals with how utterances are linked structurally and facilitates interpretation of a text. For example, the use of … pronouns, synonyms … coherence refers to the relationship among the different meanings in a text, where these meanings may be literal meanings, communicative functions and attitudes’ (Canale, 1983: 9);

(4) strategic competence – this component attends to ‘… verbal and nonverbal communication strategies that may be called into action to compensate for breakdowns in communication due to performance variables or to insufficient competence [grammatical and/or sociolinguistic]’ (Canale & Swain, 1980b: 30), and speaker actions that can ‘… enhance effectiveness of communication (e.g. deliberately slow or soft speech for rhetorical effect)’ (Canale, 1983: 11).

It can be readily seen that there are traces of Halliday’s and Hymes’ work in this formulation of communicative competence. The influence of the concept of communicative competence has not dimmed in 30 years. It would be no exaggeration to say that it has set the parameters for curriculum and pedagogic discussions in language education worldwide. For instance, the politically and institutionally influential Common European Framework for Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Council of Europe, 2001) – a set of outcomes specifications designed to inform curriculum and assessment development – claims to be built on the concept of communicative competence. ELT, as pointed out earlier, continues to refer to communicative competence as its conceptual bedrock for CLT. Commercially produced textbooks, for instance, often make explicit claims of lineage to communicative competence; for example, Kay and Jones (2009) and Oxenden and Latham-Koenig (2006) link their contents to specific levels of proficiency specified in the CEFR.

There is, however, a difference between the conceptually and analytically oriented discussions on the social dimensions of language and language use, and the ways in which they have been rendered as principles in language teaching. The conceptual insight that there is an intimate connection between socially situated meaning and language form (e.g. Halliday), and the research imperative that communicative competence is to be established empirically through ethnographic observations (e.g. Hymes) have been re-contextualised as teaching (and learning) how to do things with language using ‘appropriate’ forms of language, implicitly normed on what native-speakers would say. Modal verbs such as ‘would’ and ‘could’, for example, are often presented as appropriate choices for polite expressions, pedagogically this kind of information is interwoven into teaching and learning activities. For instance, Brown’s (2001: 43) formulation of CLT includes using classroom teaching techniques and learning activities ‘to engage learners in the pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes’, and making the teacher ‘a facilitator and guide …’ and ‘[s]tudents are therefore encouraged to construct meaning through genuine linguistics interaction with others’. Over time the ‘pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language’ has come to be interpreted in terms of what is likely to be said and done in idealised (and imagined) native English-speaking scenarios; in a fundamental sense the notion of language practice has morphed into pedagogic prescriptions (see Horner & Lu, Chapter 4 this volume, for a wider discussion). Perhaps the demands for ‘teachable knowledge’ in conventionally teacher-led pedagogy cannot easily accommodate the more research-oriented impulse that was embedded in the pioneering discussions on communicative competence. The need for a body of stable and usable samples of language in teaching is, in all probability, incompatible with a research sensibility that treats knowledge as provisional. In one way or another, communicative competence in ELT has come to be understood in terms of learners’ capacity to reproduce what putative native-speakers would say in any given projected scenario (Leung, 2005). (For a wider discussion on native-speakerness, see Leung et al., 1997.)

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