First and Second Language Use in Asian EFL (New Perspectives on Language and Education, 49) - Hardcover

Forman, Ross

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 178309558X ISBN 13: 9781783095582

Verlag: Multilingual Matters, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Many Asian education systems discourage or even ban the use of L1 in L2 classrooms – although in fact L1 remains widely used by teachers. Why is L1 use still devalued in this context? By observing classes and interviewing teachers, this book explores three dimensions of L1 use in L2 teaching:

• pedagogy: what teachers actually do, and what they say about it

• the personal: what happens to identity when we ‘perform’ a foreign tongue

• the professional: how textbooks are used, and what is distinctive about the EFL domain.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Ross Forman is a Senior Lecturer in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. He has worked in the field for over 30 years and his research interests include bilingual pedagogy, EFL practices and second language development. He has recently published in Language, Culture and Curriculum; Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching and Language Teaching Research.

Ross Forman is a Senior Lecturer in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. He has worked in the field for over 30 years and his research interests include bilingual pedagogy, EFL practices and second language development. He has recently published in Language, Culture and Curriculum; Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching and Language Teaching Research.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

First and Second Language Use in Asian EFL

By Ross Forman

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2016 Ross Forman
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78309-558-2

Contents

Acknowledgements, 
Preface, 
Part 1: Overview, 
1 The Author's Story, 
2 Language, Learning and Teaching, 
3 A Case Study in Thailand, 
Part 2: Pedagogic, 
4 Bilingual Teacher Talk, 
5 Intercultural and Intertextual Dimensions, 
6 Ten Principles of L1 Use, 
Part 3: Personal, 
7 Identity and Alterity, 
8 Language Play, 
9 Teachers' Views of L1 and L2 Performance, 
Part 4: Professional, 
10 Global EFL Textbooks, 
11 EFL and ESL Domains, 
12 Conclusion: Productivity at the Boundaries, 
Appendix A, 
Appendix B, 
References, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

The Author's Story

Everyone has their own story – their experience of the world, and ways of communicating it. I start this book by telling of four 'waves' in my own story of teaching English and working with English teachers.

ESL in Australia: The First Wave

This lasted a good five years, and started in the 1980s when I taught English as a Second Language (ESL) to immigrants and refugees in Sydney, Australia. As well as the rich impact of this work upon on my heart, there are two aspects of the teaching which stand out in my mind. First, our students had left their homelands, perhaps forever, in search of a better life. We saw often sadness at this loss, as well as hope for the future and a deep investment in learning English. Second, each class was composed of students from many countries who spoke a range of languages – at that time, these students were principally from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, but also from China, Korea and the Middle East.

It was my first teaching job, and I was assigned to teach the 'most beginner' classes. (Are beginner classes 'easier' for a novice, as is often assumed? Beginners, for me, have always been the most difficult to teach well; and, by the same token, the most rewarding.) Friends were often curious about this kind of work, and I would be asked questions such as: 'How can you be teaching in English when your students cannot yet speak English?' My answer, as you might expect, was that teachers made use of classroom actions, real objects, pictures, drawing and so on; that is, we drew upon semiotic systems other than language. But at the earliest opportunity, in the summer vacation, I did undertake a crash course in Vietnamese.

Looking back, it is hard to believe that at that time I had never set foot on the continent of Asia. Consequently, it was in the classrooms of a Sydney school that I first heard communication in languages such as Vietnamese, Khmer, Chinese and Korean. It was exciting to listen to Vietnamese in particular, whose sounds and words were so distant from English or any European language I had studied. Culturally, too, I was fascinated by differences among student groups, some of which were immediately obvious, and others which it took time to see.

EFL in Thailand: The Second Wave

Naturally, then, the second wave fell on an Asian shore – and in 1988, the most accessible country from Australia was Thailand. I arrived in Bangkok prepared only by my Linguaphone tapes of Thai, and naively booked into a 'short-time' hotel. 'Why were the windows painted black?' I wondered. Through a process of phoning universities around Thailand, I was lucky to be appointed as an EFL teacher in a tranquil, rural university, located about two hours by coach from Bangkok. There was one other Westerner (or 'farang', in Thai) on campus at that time.

Professionally, I soon discovered that although I was of course still an English teacher, the two dominant features of my experience to date – immigrant students and monolingual teaching – no longer applied in this Asian context. And by talking to my new colleagues and students, I began to better understand the distinctive nature of teaching/learning English as a foreign language (EFL) rather than a second language (ESL). In this Thai EFL context, students nearly always shared a common tongue with their teachers; and my later experiences confirmed that this is usually the case with English classes across Asia. So, this second wave of teaching began to open my eyes to the nature of local EFL practices and while I initially worked in Asia for the relatively short period of a year, the experience did give me some understanding of culture and movement across borders – of how it feels to be 'other' in a new land.

EFL in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos: The Third Wave

A third wave took me to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the 1990s, where I worked with teams of local and Australian colleagues to design and deliver nationally-funded EFL teacher training projects. Although I was now lecturing at an Australian university, I travelled to these countries for several months of each year during that period. Readers less familiar with South East Asia may be reminded that following the 'liberation' or 'fall' of Saigon in 1975 (according to either the Vietnamese or American view), the former Indo-Chinese countries of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos became allied to the USSR. Consequently, Russian became the favoured foreign language. At the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, while the political systems of former Indo-China remained communist, their need for international communication prompted a rapid switch from Russian to English as the most favoured foreign tongue. In fact, many of the workshops that we held in the early 1990s in all three countries were designed for teachers of Russian who were retraining as teachers of English. Some of the older teachers had previously taught French in colonial and post-colonial eras: English was now their third foreign language. We were also impressed by one Lao teacher who mentioned that she was additionally self-studying a fourth language – Japanese – 'just in case'.

At that time, all these countries were economically poor, with low technology and disrupted education systems (almost obliterated in the case of Cambodia of course). The English language proficiency of most teachers was not high. Therefore, we had to consider what was appropriate in terms of the methodology that we were presenting in our workshops.

I would like to say a little more about our largest EFL project, funded by the Lao and Australian governments. It was located in the capital and provinces of Laos; and the team itself comprised eight Australian and 12 Lao trainers. On an annual basis over five years, we delivered in-country programmes both as professional development and at Graduate Certificate level. Central to our programmes were lesson observations conducted by Australian and Lao trainers, which involved some 40 Lao teachers per year. Through these observations I spent considerable time in schools and colleges, some of which were located in very remote areas.

Projects such as this provided some amazing experiences for the Australian component of the team, but I frankly say that at first, we were not equipped with a good understanding of local needs. In fact, we started with the classic mistake of thinking that what worked in our own Western context would be transferable to this Eastern context. Standard Western ESL at that time – as now – followed principles of Communicative Language Teaching, which stresses maximum/exclusive use of L2, both by the teacher, and by students who are...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Multilingual Matters
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 178309558X
• ISBN 13: 9781783095582
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 212
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar