Research Centre into Language Education and Acquisition in Multilingual Societies

RCLEAMS Newsletter: Issue Number 2 (Feb 2010)

Contents

Introduction

New Appointments

Visitors

Seminars and Conferences

Project News: English as a Lingua Franca in Asia (ELFiA) project

Related Postgraduate Study Programmes

Members’ Notable Achievements

Members’ Recent Publications

Introduction

Welcome to the second edition of the newsletter of The Research Centre into Language Education and Acquisition in Multilingual Societies (RCLEAMS). You can keep up to date with the Centre’s activities by consulting the website (www.ied.edu.hk/rcleams), but we shall also be issuing a newsletter three times a year in October, February, and May.

New Appointments

Dr Andy Gao joined RCLEAMS in January on a year’s secondment from the Department of English.
John Patkin joined in January as Senior Research Assistant on the English as a Lingua Franca in Asia (ELFiA) project. The ELFiA project is this newsletter’s highlighted project (see below).
Two of our current doctoral students, Lee Hyewon and Lu Ruifeng are also working in the Centre as Research Assistants.

Visitors

Professor Azirah Hashim. Professor Hashim was, before her current sabbatical, Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Malaya. She is also leader of the University of Malaya’s ELFiA team and she worked with members of the RCLEAMS’ ELFiA team while she was here.
Professor Harmut Haberland of the Cultural and Linguistic Practices in the University (CALPIU) unit housed at Roskilde University, Denmark, will spend the first three weeks of March at RCLEAMS, working on the Linguistic Ecology Project

Seminars and Conferences

The RCLEAMS-sponsored symposium entitled ‘Trilingualism and trilingual education in minority regions in China: Comparative multiple-case studies in minority autonomous regions’ was held at the Hong Kong Institute of Education on 18-19 December 2009 and Bob Adamson’s report on the symposium follows below.

The first symposium for the research project, Trilingualism and trilingual education in minority regions in China: Comparative multiple-case studies in minority autonomous regions, was held at Hong Kong Institute of Education, on 18-19 December 2009. The event was opened by Professor Andy Kirkpatrick, the Director of RCLEAMS.

The symposium marked the launching of a major project to investigate how communities in general and schools in particular in ethnic minority areas of China are coping with the curriculum demands that call for the development of trilingualism in the minority language, Putonghua and English.

The project is currently jointly funded by RCLEAMS and the ESRC Bilingualism Research Centre at Bangor University in the UK, and future funding is being sought from different sources. The Principal Investigators are Prof Bob Adamson (RCLEAMS) and Dr Feng Anwei (Bangor University).
The symposium brought together scholars from across China: Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Jilin, Gansu, Qinghai, Guangdong and Hong Kong. The purpose was to The symposium brought together scholars from across China: Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Jilin, Gansu, Qinghai, Guangdong and Hong Kong. The purpose was to share participants’ analyses of the current state of trilingualism in these areas, and to decide on common approaches to future data collection, analysis and presentation.

The sessions focused on different areas of China and identified the issues and dilemmas relating to the implementation of trilingual education policies. A common theme was the difficulty in finding sufficient teachers of English who could teach through the ethnic minority language. In many areas, primary students had to learn English through Putonghua, adding to the cognitive and linguistic load in mastering an already complex and alien language.

In the next phase, the research teams in each area will carry out further investigations using ethnographic and survey instruments and it is planned that they will meet again later in 2010 to share their new findings. The project is intended to make a significant contribution to the research literature in the area of trilingual language education, and to shape future policies in both mainland China and Hong Kong.share participants’ analyses of the current state of trilingualism in these areas, and to decide on common approaches to future data collection, analysis and presentation.

Other Seminars and Conferences

You Xiaoye of Penn State University gave a seminar entitled ‘Writing the Devil’s Tongue’ on January 5th 2010.

RCLEAMS will be hosting the ‘Languages of Education: The Chinese Context’ at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, October 22-23 2010.

Next year RCLEAMS also host the 4th International Conference on English as a Lingua Franca 26-28 May 2011.
The Second International Conference of the World Chinese Rhetoric Society will be held at the Hong Kong Institute of Education from 28-30 July 2010. Further details are available at: http://blog.sina.com.cn/worldrhetoric2008

Presentations by RCLEAMS members:

Bob Adamson will attend the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society International Conference at Plovdiv, Bulgaria on 9 - 12 June 2010.

Phil Benson will give a plenary speech entitled From places to spaces: EFL after YouTube at the 9th Wenshan International Conference at National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan to be held on 29th May 2010.

Andy Gao will be presenting Autonomy at all costs: a tale of a disabled learner at the IATEFL Conference in Harrogate, England (April 7-11) and Shifting motivations in Chinese secondary school English teachers’ career narratives at the ‘English Education for Today and Tomorrow: The Road Ahead’ Conference, hosted by Shantou University, China (16-18 April).

Michelle Gu will present a paper entitled Transformation of Chinese English Learners’ National Identity: A Longitudinal Study at the ‘English Education for Today and Tomorrow: The Road Ahead’ Conference, hosted by Shantou University, China (16-18 April).

Andy Kirkpatrick will give keynote addresses at the following forthcoming conferences:

The CamTESOL Conference in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (27-28 Feb) Learning English in ASEAN: myths and principles.
The ‘English Education for Today and Tomorrow: The Road Ahead’ Conference hosted by Shantou University. Learning English and other languages in multilingual settings.
The LIA (Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia Amerika) Conference in Bali, 28-30 April World Englishes across cultures: arguments for the multilingual model and a multilingual pedagogy.
The 3rd International Conference on English as a Lingua Franca, the University of Vienna, 23-26 May. English as an Asian Lingua Franca.

He will also be attending the TESOL Convention in Boston (24-26 March).

Sam Leung will be giving an invited talk at the International Forum on English Language Policies and Practices in Asia in Taipei (March 26-27, 2010). He will be presenting and chairing a symposium entitled “Learning to read English and Chinese by children” at the 55th Annual Convention of the International Reading Association (April 25-28, 2010) in Chicago, USA. In July, he will go to New Zealand to attend the 23rd World Congress on Reading to co-present a paper and chair a symposium on “Reading English in L2 in early years”

David CS Li will be attending the ‘Professionalising multilingualism in higher education: Developing plurilingual individuals and multilingual institutions’ Conference in Luxembourg (4-6 February).

Jane Lockwood will be attending the Language Testing and Research Colloquium at the University of Cambridge in April.

Tong Ho Kin presented Articulating Secondary School Language Teaching to the University Curriculum at The Symposium on ‘Language Issues for University Graduates, Hong Kong (Jan 23rd).

John Trent will be attending the TESOL Convention in Boston (24-26 March) where he will present the results of the RCLEAMS- funded project on boundary-crossing teachers. The title of the session is Second-career English teachers and the discursive construction of teacher identity.

Wang Lixun will present a paper The Compilation of the ELFIA corpus: the Asian counterpart of VOICE at the 3rd international conference of English as a Lingua franca at the University of Vienna in May

Project News: English as a Lingua Franca in Asia (ELFiA) project

Details of RCLEAMS’ projects can be found at the website. In each newsletter, however, we shall highlight a particular project.

The featured project for this newsletter is the English as a Lingua Franca in Asia (ELFiA) project.

Abstract

The major role of English in Asia today is as a lingua franca. English is the de facto lingua franca of the grouping of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and with the signing of the ASEAN Charter in December 2008 will assume official status as the working language of ASEAN. English is also the working language of the extended grouping known as ASEAN + 3, which includes the ten states of ASEAN plus China, Japan and Korea.

To put this another way, the use of English by English-knowing multilinguals for whom English is not a first language represents today’s major role of English in Asia. When, for example, Thais, Vietnamese, Indonesians and Chinese meet, the language they are most likely to use as a medium of communication – as a lingua franca - is English.

To date, however, little research has been done into English as a lingua franca in Asia although we have completed a preliminary study on ASEAN lingua franca use, funded by the Australian Research Council.
This proposal seeks to build significantly upon this preliminary study and to establish a corpus of spoken English as a lingua franca in Asia. This corpus will help us to better understand how English is used in Asia and allow us to analyse its linguistic features and the communicative strategies of its speakers.
Our aim is to collect a corpus of one million words of naturally occurring, spoken, interactive data of English being used as a lingua franca in Asia. The collection of such a corpus will allow us to:

(i) analyse and describe the distinctive linguistic features of Asian ELF;
(ii) identify any shared distinctive linguistic features;
(iii) identify and describe the types and causes of any breakdown in communication;
(iv) identify and describe the communicative strategies of Asian ELF users.

The findings will have significant implications for the study of intercultural communication in the Asian region, as well as for English language teaching.

Professor Barbara Seidlhofer and her team at the University of Vienna has collected a million word corpus of European ELF, the VOICE corpus. The Asian ELF team is working closely with the VOICE team. This collaboration is crucial, as it is important for us to compare our findings with the European findings. Thus another important outcome of this research will be to allow us to compare the features and use of Asian ELF with those of European ELF.

Teams have been established in different Asian settings to help ensure the corpus represents a geographical spread. Teams have already been formed at the University of Malaya, the National Institute of Education, Singapore, The Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation (SEAMEO) Regional Training Centre (RETRAC) in Vietnam, Ateneo de Manila University and the SEAMEO Innovation and Technology Centre (INNOTECH) in Manila. The year 2010 will be a mjor data collection year. The teams and key personnel are listed below

Names of Partners

University of Malaya. Team under the leadership of Professor Azirah Hashim and Dr Jagdish Kaur.
National Institute of Education, Singapore [part of the Nanyang Technological University, NTU]. Team under the leadership of Associate Professor Low Ee Ling.
Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation (SEAMEO) Regional Training Centre (RETRAC), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Team under the leadership of Dr Dang Van Hung.
Ateneo de Manila University, Manila, the Philippines and SEAMEO INNOTECH. Team under the leadership of Dr Ethel Valenzuela and Dr Isabel Martin.

The overall leaders of the project of the project will be the team based in the Research Centre for Language Acquisition and Education in Multilingual Societies under the leadership of Professor Andy Kirkpatrick. Other members include Professor David CS Li, Dr Wang Lixun and John Patkin. Two members of the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) team, Marie-Luise Pitzl and Stefan Majewski, visited RCLEAMS in the week beginning October 12th and conducted workshops on the use of the VOICE corpus software and Voicescribe.

MA in Teaching Chinese as an International Language;
MA in Teaching English as an International Language;
MEd in TESOL
Doctorate of Education (Language Education)

There are currently 30 doctoral students in the Language Education Area of Study.

The Institute will also be offering PhD places for the first time this year

For information on these courses please visit The Graduate Programmes Office (http://www.ied.edu.hk/gpo/).

Those interested in doctoral work in the field of Language are also invited to contact RCLEAMS directly.

Members’ Notable Achievements

Andy Gao has been invited to serve on the editorial and advisory board of TESOL Quarterly, a great honour for a young scholar.

Members’ Recent Publications (2009 and later)

Bob Adamson
Adamson, B. (2009). The language dilemma for Hong Kong schools. In Popov, N., Wolhunter, C., Leutwyler, B, Mihova, M., Ogunleye, J. & Bekirogullari, Z. (Eds.), Comparative education, teacher training, education policy, social inclusion and child psychology (pp.177-182). Sofia, Bulgaria: Bureau for Educational Services.
Adamson, B. & Feng, A. (2009). A comparison of trilingual education policies for ethnic minorities in China. Compare, 39(3), 321-333.

Phil Benson
Benson, P. (2009) Making sense of autonomy in language learning. In R. Pemberton, S. Toogood, & A. Barfield (Eds.), Maintaining Control: Autonomy and Language Learning (pp. 13-26). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Benson, P., Chik, A, Gao, X., Huang, J. and Wang, W. (2009). Qualititative research in 10 language teaching and learning journals, 1997-2006. Modern Language Journal, 93:1, 79-90.

Andy Gao
Gao, X. (2010). Strategic language learning: The roles of agency and context. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Gao, X. (2009). Review: Standards for ESL/EFL teachers of adults, TESOL Quarterly, 43 (3), 560-562.
Trent, J. & Gao, X. (2009). “At least I’m the type of teacher I want to be”: Second-career English language teachers’ identity formation in Hong Kong secondary schools. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 37(3),253-270.
Gao, X. (2009). Ethical Challenges in Internet-based Research on Language Learners’ Autonomous Learning: Personal reflections. Independence, IATEFL Learner Autonomy SIG Newsletter, 46, 13-17.
Gao, X. & Trent, J. (2009). Understanding mainland Chinese students’ motivations for choosing teacher education programmes in Hong Kong. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 35(2), 145-159.
Gao, X. (2009). ‘English corner’ as an out-of-class learning activity. English Language Teaching Journal, 63(1). 60-67.

Michelle Gu
Gu, M. (2010). National Identity in EFL learning: A Longitudinal Inquiry. Changing English, 17 (1).
Gu, M. (2010). Identities constructed in difference: English language learners in China. Journal of Pragmatics, 42 (1), 243-256.
Gu, M. (2009). The Discursive Construction of Second Language Learners’ Motivation: A Multi-level Perspective . New York , Bern, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang Publishing Group.
Gu, M. (2009). College English learners’ discursive motivation construction in China. System, 37 (2), 300-312.

Andy Kirkpatrick
Kirkpatrick, Andy (2009). 八股文是生是死？in陈汝东, 修辞学论文集, 黑龙江人民出版社: 30-42 (Is the Baguwen dead or alive? In Chen Rudong (ed.) Selected Articles on Rhetoric.)
Kirkpatrick, Andy (2009). English as the working language of ASEAN: pedagogical principles and implications. In C Ward (Ed). Language Teaching in a Multilingual World: Challenges and Opportunities. RELC Anthology Series 50. Regional Language Centre, Singapore: 215-232
Kirkpatrick, Andy (2009). English as the international academic language: implications for ‘other’ knowledge. In F. Sharifian (Ed.) New Perspectives on Language and Education Clevedon: Multilingual Matters: 254-270.
Kirkpatrick, Andy and Andrew Moody (2009). A Tale of two songs: Singapore versus Hong Kong. English Language Teaching Journal (ELTJ) 63(3): 265-271.

David CS Li
Li, David C.S. (2009). Learning English for Academic Purposes: Why Chinese EFL Learners find EAP so difficult to master. In Pedro Martin & Isabel K. León Pérez (eds.), Communicating Science: ESP Studies at the Outset of the 21st Century. Special issue of Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 59: 33-46.
He, Deyuan and David C.S. Li (2009). Language attitudes and linguistic features in the ‘China English’ debate. World Englishes 28(1): 70-89.

Tong Ho Kin
Tong, Ho Kin (2009). From “The horses are running around on errands” to “It is by the poems that the mind is aroused of; it is by the rites that the character is established; it is from music that the finish is consolidated”, Journal of North East Normal University (Philosophy and Social Science Edition), V.237, 104-109.从“诗无邪”到“兴于诗，立于礼，成于乐”, 《東北師範大學學報》(哲學社會科學版)
Tong, H.K. (2009). Enjoy Family Reading of Classics. In Y.L. Man (Eds.), The New Learning Power of Language. Hong Kong: QEF and HKIEd. 共享溫馨家庭讀經樂, 《語文學習新動力》

John Trent
Trent, J. (2009). Teacher education as identity construction: Insights from action research. In press, Journal of Education for Teaching.
Trent, J. (2009) Enhancing oral participation across the curriculum: Some lessons from the EAP classroom. The Asian EFL Journal Quarterly, 10(1), 258-272.
Trent, J. & Gao, X. (2009). “At least I’m the type of teacher I want to be”: Second-career English language teachers’ identity formation in Hong Kong schools. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 37(3), 253-270.
Gao, X. & Trent, J. (2009). Understanding mainland Chinese student teachers’ motivations for choosing a teacher education programme in Hong Kong. Journal of Education for Teaching, 35(2), 145-159.

Wang Lixun
Wang, L. (2010). Implementing and promoting blended learning in higher education institutions: comparing different approaches. In Ng, E. M. W. (ed.) (2010) Comparative Blended Learning Practices and Environments (pp. 70-88). Hershey/New York: Information Science Reference.
Xu, Z. & Wang, L. (2010). Discourse Analysis on Hybrid Learning and Teaching and the Changing Roles of Teachers and Students in Hong Kong. In Wang, F.L, Fong, J. & Kwan, R. (eds.) (2010) Handbook of Research on Hybrid Learning Models: Advanced Tools, Technologies, and Application (pp. 284-298). Hershey/New York: Information Science Reference.

The Department of Early Childhood Education at HKIEd will be hosting the International Conference on Teaching and Learning of English in the Early Years in the Asia-Pacific Region (28- 29 May 2010). The Conference aims at setting up a platform for discussion and sharing of initiatives, pedagogical practices and research findings regarding the teaching and learning of English in the early years. Papers related to one of the themes (Themes: Curriculum, pedagogies and assessment; Language and literacy development; Language education policies; Teacher education; Home-school partnership) are welcome. Abstract submission: An abstract of 300 words or less should be sent to Dr Lornita Wong, Dept of Early Childhood Education at

tleey@ied.edu.hk on or before 1 March, 2010. The name of presenter(s), affiliation, e-mail address, contact phone numbers and fax number should be put on a separate page. Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2010. For details please see the website: http://home.ied.edu.hk/~tleey/