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Measuring intra- and international linguistic competence: Appropriation of WEs and ELF discourse in the commercials for two standardized English tests
Abstract
The author examines discourses of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and World Englishes (WEs) in the commercials for 2 standardized English tests: the International English Language Testing System for study abroad in English-dominant countries and the Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program for Canadian permanent residency and citizenship. It illustrates how ELF and WEs, perceived as antithetical to Standard U.S. or U.K. English, have been used in these advertisements to represent diverse groups’ alignment with monolithic ideologies of globalization and nationalism—that is, unity in diversity. As such, these constructs concerning alternative varieties of English have not necessarily done anything to change the ideological underpinnings of standardized English tests, even if some of the tests are now advertised according to ELF or WEs discourses. Therefore, critical researchers and educators need to be cautious against the assumption that discourses of ELF and WEs are inherently more socially just than discourses of Standard English, as any of these discourses can serve the same ends regardless of their underlying theoretical positions.
... These videos provide children with an engaging and interactive learning experience, which can help to develop their language skills (Chen et al., 2021). They can also expose children to different accents and dialects, which can help to develop their listening and speaking skills (Mendoza, 2018). ...
This study explored the use of YouTube children's educational videos to enhance early childhood English language proficiency. The study utilized a qualitative research design, and data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 10 parents of preschool-aged children. The findings of the study revealed that parents used a variety of YouTube children's educational videos to enhance their children's English language proficiency, including videos that taught basic English vocabulary, songs, nursery rhymes, grammar, and sentence structures. Participants also identified perceived benefits and drawbacks of using YouTube children's educational videos, such as improvements in vocabulary and grammar skills, exposure to the English language, and concerns about addiction to watching videos, exposure to inappropriate content, and quality and accuracy issues. Moreover, parents perceived YouTube children's educational videos to be effective in enhancing their children's English language skills, and various factors influenced their decision to use such videos, such as convenience, affordability, variety of content, and fun and engaging learning. The study suggests that YouTube children's educational videos can be a useful tool to enhance early childhood English language proficiency. However, parents need to be mindful of the potential drawbacks associated with their use, such as inappropriate content and addiction. The study also contributes to the existing literature on the use of technology in early childhood education and provides insights into parents' perspectives on YouTube children's educational videos.
Over the past 15 years or so there has developed a school of thought within English language education and applied linguistics
globally which refers to the phenomenon and use of English as a lingua franca (ELF). The thinking of ELF movement researchers
has placed their work at the centre of current debates about the form, function and legitimacy of the English that is used
by speakers from diverse linguacultural backgrounds when they are in interaction with one another. In this article, I intervene
in the arguments of the ELF movement from the perspectives of Marxism, globalization theory and poststructuralism by means
of an immanent critique. This shows that in the articulation of its discourse the ELF movement reifies and hypostatizes ‘ELF’
as a seemingly stable form, that in its ideology it exhibits an idealist rationalism which blinkers it to the political economy
and class stratification of English in a globalized world, and that in its theory it combines a rationalist, positivist and
objectivist epistemology with a transformationalist, postmodern and poststructuralist sensibility which is both incommensurable
and undertheorized.
This article reports on part of a larger research project (Jenkins, 2005) that examines the feasibility of an ELF (English as a lingua franca) approach in general and the lingua franca core (LFC) in particular. The LFC (Jenkins, 2000, 2002) resulted from empirical research into mutual intelligibility among nonnative speakers (NNSs), in which the participants' desire to identify themselves through their accents as members of an international English-speaking community was taken for granted. NNS teachers' responses indicated an ambivalence vis-à-vis the desire to identify themselves thus, which this study investigates.
As interest grows on the value of skilled migration for development, scholars and policy makers are addressing the portable resources migrants need for professional success and development contributions in home and host communities. Neoliberal orientations to human capital emphasize scripted communication in a uniform language for efficiency. Lingua franca English thus gains importance in immigration policies in host communities and educational policies in home countries. The interview-based study with African skilled migrants reported in this article points to a different answer. The narratives reveal the value of negotiating different varieties of English and diverse languages in professional and development contexts. The interviewees are able to adopt such an orientation because they have developed certain dispositions to engage with language diversity in their multilingual social backgrounds. This paper argues for treating such dispositions as a more beneficial portable resource as it enables migrants to negotiate diversity and expand their repertoires for transnational work and development.
This study examines imagined professional and linguistic communities available to preservice and in-service English as a second language and English as a foreign language teachers enrolled in one TESOL program. A discursive analysis of the students' positioning in their linguistic autobiographies suggests that the traditional discourse of linguistic competence positions students as members of one of two communities, native speakers or non-native speakers/L2 learners. The analysis also suggests that contemporary theories of bilingualism and second language acquisition, in particular Cook's (1992, 1999) notion of multicompetence, open up an alternative imagined community, that of multicompetent, bilingual, and multilingual speakers. This option allows some teachers to construe themselves and their future students as legitimate L2 users rather than as failed native speakers of the target language.
The article proposes a framework for the analysis of identity as produced in linguistic interaction, based on the following principles: (1) identity is the product rather than the source of linguistic and other semiotic practices and therefore is a social and cultural rather than primarily internal psychological phenomenon; (2) identities encompass macro-level demographic categories, temporary and interactionally specific stances and participant roles, and local, ethnographically emergent cultural positions; (3) identities may be linguistically indexed through labels, implicatures, stances, styles, or linguistic structures and systems; (4) identities are relationally constructed through several, often overlapping, aspects of the relationship between self and other, including similarity/difference, genuineness/artifice and authority/ delegitimacy; and (5) identity may be in part intentional, in part habitual and less than fully conscious, in part an outcome of interactional negotiation, in part a construct of others’ perceptions and representations, and in part an outcome of larger ideological processes and structures. The principles are illustrated through examination of a variety of linguistic interactions.
Drawing on a qualitative case study, this article questions two prevailing assumptions: that English is a universal lingua franca and that English proficiency is indispensable for transcultural work. The study involved Japanese manufacturing companies with subsidiaries in China and investigated the language use of Japanese expatriates and Chinese office workers as well as the views of participants (including managers in Japan) about competencies deemed important for overseas work. Interview data revealed that the major languages used were Japanese and to a lesser extent Mandarin. Although English proficiency was deemed useful, the primary importance was placed on the “ability to communicate’’ supported by communicative and foundational dispositions along with cultural knowledge. These findings pose a challenge for critiquing neoliberal underpinnings.
The paper reports on research into the claim that widely used English language proficiency tests are unfair (unfair in the sense that a test favouring boys could be said to be unfair to girls). The global spread of English opens a major debate on the acceptability of competing norms, whether they should be exonormative or endonormative (Davies, 1999; Gill, 1999). An International English (IE) view insists that the only acceptable norms are those of native English speakers (NES). A strong World Englishes (WES) view maintains that to impose IE on users of WEs may be discriminatory against non-native English speakers (NNES). The theoretical and practical aspects of the issue come together in institutionalized English language proficiency testing. The paper reports on comparative definitions by expert local judges of the norms used in international (IELTS and TOEFL) and national (Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, India, China) English language proficiency tests and considers in what ways the differing definitions have in practice influenced language test construction. It further reports on the findings so far with regard to three basic questions:
1. How possible is it to distinguish between an error and a token of a new type?
2. If we could establish bias, how much would it really matter?
3. Does an international English test privilege those with a metropolitan anglophone education?
Postmodern globalization requires that students strive for competence in a repertoire of English varieties as they shuttle between multilingual communities. From this per-spective, the current debate becomes irrelevant regarding whether local varieties or dominant varieties (British/American) be used in international proficiency tests. Be-cause it is unwise to define proficiency based on a single variety and because it is impos-sible to teach or measure proficiency in many varieties simultaneously, we have to con-sider revising the dominant paradigms of assessment. The changing pedagogical priorities suggest that we have to move away from a reliance on discrete-item tests on formal grammatical competence and develop instruments that are sensitive to perfor-mance and pragmatics. In effect, assessment would focus on strategies of negotiation, situated performance, communicative repertoire, and language awareness. Recent debates about assessment of English as an international language have re-volved around two important questions: Whose norms should we apply? How do we define proficiency in the English language? The answers have been dominated by positions belonging to two well-entrenched scholarly camps: that of the Stan-dard English perspective (Davies, 2002) and that of the World Englishes perspec-LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT QUARTERLY, 3(3), 229–242 Copyright © 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
When analyzed in multilingual contexts, English is often treated as an entity that is separable from its linguistic environment. It is often the case, however, that multilinguals use English in hybrid and transcultural ways. This book explores how multilingual East Africans make use of English as a local resource in their everyday practices by examining a range of domains, including workplace conversation, beauty pageants, hip hop and advertising. Drawing on the Bakhtinian concept of multivocality, the author uses discourse analysis and ethnographic approaches to demonstrate the range of linguistic and cultural hybridity found across these domains, and to consider the constraints on hybridity in each context. By focusing on the cultural and linguistic bricolage in which English is often found, the book illustrates how multilinguals respond to the tension between local identification and dominant conceptualizations of English as a language for global communication.
Human language has changed in the age of globalization: no longer tied to stable and resident communities, it moves across the globe, and it changes in the process. The world has become a complex 'web' of villages, towns, neighbourhoods and settlements connected by material and symbolic ties in often unpredictable ways. This phenomenon requires us to revise our understanding of linguistic communication. In The Sociolinguistics of Globalization Jan Blommaert constructs a theory of changing language in a changing society, reconsidering locality, repertoires, competence, history and sociolinguistic inequality. • There is great interest in the issue of globalization and this book will appeal to scholars and students in linguistics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and anthropology • Richly illustrated with examples from around the globe • Presents a profound revision of sociolinguistic work in the area of linguistic communication
Presenting a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of theoretical and descriptive research in the field, The Handbook of Conversation Analysis brings together contributions by leading international experts to provide an invaluable information resource and reference for scholars of social interaction across the areas of conversation analysis, discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology, interpersonal communication, discursive psychology and sociolinguistics. Ideal as an introduction to the field for upper level undergraduates and as an in-depth review of the latest developments for graduate level students and established scholars. Five sections outline the history and theory, methods, fundamental concepts, and core contexts in the study of conversation, as well as topics central to conversation analysis. Written by international conversation analysis experts, the book covers a wide range of topics and disciplines, from reviewing underlying structures of conversation, to describing conversation analysis' relationship to anthropology, communication, linguistics, psychology, and sociology.
This book is about language and the city. Pennycook and Otsuji introduce the notion of 'metrolingualism', showing how language and the city are deeply involved in a perpetual exchange between people, history, migration, architecture, urban landscapes and linguistic resources. Cities and languages are in constant change, as new speakers with new repertoires come into contact as a result of globalization and the increased mobility of people and languages. Metrolingualism sheds light on the ordinariness of linguistic diversity as people go about their daily lives, getting things done, eating and drinking, buying and selling, talking and joking, drawing on whatever linguistic resources are available. Engaging with current debates about multilingualism, and developing a new way of thinking about language, the authors explore language within a number of contemporary urban situations, including cafés, restaurants, shops, streets, construction sites and other places of work, in two diverse cities, Sydney and Tokyo. This is an invaluable look at how people of different backgrounds get by linguistically. Metrolingualism: Language in the city will be of special interest to advanced undergraduate/postgraduate students and researchers of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics.
The development of non-native varieties of English in Third World countries (e.g. West Africa, the Philippines, South Asia) is of linguistic, cultural, pedagogical and sociolinguistic interest. The attitude of TESL specialists, among others, toward such varieties of English on the two sides of the Atlantic is evaluated in Prator (1968). One such attitude, endorsed by Prator, and represented by him as typically American, may be termed linguistic purism and linguistic intolerance-a pragmatically unrealistic attitude. If one follows Prator's language, this attitude may be categorized as one of "seven attitudinal sins." These "sins" seem to be the result of a formally and functionally unjustifiable position which some scholars in TESL, following Prator, have adopted. Such views have naturally resulted in various types of "heresies," which are theoretically suspect and without empirical evidence. In linguistically and culturally pluralistic Third World countries, the motivations for the study of English-its social educational and other roles-have to be view in terms of the typical native sociolinguistic parameters. An interrelationship has to be established between the formal and functional aspects of language to understand the pragmatics of the Third World Englishes and their linguistic innovations and "deviations." Data from Indian English is discussed to provide arguments against the attitudinal "sins" and "heresies," and to present the pragmatics of Indian English-one of the Third World Englishes.
The study of linguistic imperialism focuses on how and why certain languages dominate internationally, and attempts to account for such dominance in a theoretically informed way.
This article first looks at the complex conceptualization of Chinese learners’ social-class identities with respect to a shifting Chinese class stratification. It then examines the link between social class and second-language learning in the Chinese context by reviewing several studies on Chinese learners’ social-class backgrounds and their English language learning experiences, discussing the strengths and limitations of these studies and suggesting some directions for future research.
Drawing on data from two restaurants in Sydney and Tokyo, this paper describes the ways in which linguistic resources, everyday tasks and social space are intertwined in terms of metrolingual multitasking. Rather than the demolinguistic enumeration of mappable multilingualism or the language-to-language or language-to-person focus of translingualism, metrolingualism focuses on everyday language practices and their relations to urban space. In order to capture the dynamism of the urban linguistic landscape, this paper explores this relationship between metrolingual multitasking – the ways in which linguistic resources, activities and urban space are bound together – and spatial repertoires – the linguistic resources available in a particular place – arguing that a focus on resources, repertoires, space, place and activity helps us understand how multilingualism from below operates in complex urban places.本稿は、言語資源、日常生活にまつわるタスク及び社会的空間が複雑に交錯する様子を、シドニーと東京のレストランで収集したデータを参照しながら、メトロリンガル・マルチタスキングの見地から論述する。メトロリンガリズムは、言語分布を地図に表示し言語を数量化するような多言語主義や、言葉同士もしくは言葉と人の関係のみに焦点をあてて言語使用を理解するトランスリンガリズムとは一線を画し、日常言語活動とその活動の都市との関係に注目する。本稿では、都市のダイナミックな言語景観をとらえるため、メトロリンガル・マルチタスキング(言語資源と活動と都市の結びつきの関わり方)と場のレパートリー(ある特定の場にある利用可能な言語資源)の関係を探る。このように、言語的資源、言語レパートリー、空間、場、そして活動に焦点を置くことにより、複合的な都市という場において、多言語使用が日常レベルでいかに機能しているかについて理解を深めることができると提唱する。[Japanese]
Global migration has had significant impact on the traditional configuration of the classroom role set. The language teacher may be teaching a group of learners with highly mixed interests, abilities, learning histories and exposures to the target language, while the language learner may be confronted with so many different models of the target language that notions of native, first, second and foreign languages become blurred. This article deals with a specific language classroom context, where the traditional role set of the teacher and the learner, and the power relations implied in such a role set, is being challenged by the socio-cultural changes that are going on simultaneously in the community and society at large. Using the theoretical concepts of funds of knowledge, symbolic competence and translanguaging, this article investigates how teachers and pupils in the complementary schools for Chinese children in Britain utilise and negotiate the discrepancies in their linguistic knowledge and socio-cultural experience in the learning and construction of language, cultural values and practices, and identity through co-learning.
The global demand for English has broad implications for teacher preparation in lingua franca settings. Given that up to 80 percent of all English teachers globally are nonnative speakers of English, the quality of their professional preparation and their degree of language proficiency are key issues. This review surveys research on nonnative English-speaking teachers related to teacher preparation, including issues of pedagogy and language varieties. To illustrate actual training issues, two cases of teacher preparation experiences in Egypt and Uzbekistan are presented. The Egypt case describes the development of standards for English teachers and how they may provide a road map for professional preparation and improved English language skills. The Uzbek case provides examples of ways in which the teacher preparation program targeted needs perceived by both the trainers and the local teachers. This review also sets out goals for teacher preparation in lingua franca settings such as assisting participants to view themselves as intercultural speakers and integrating methodologies that are valued in the local context. Suggestions for future research include consideration of how teacher educators might address the issue of Inner Circle and Outer Circle varieties of English and how teachers' cultural knowledge can be addressed within teacher preparation curricula.
Linguistic instrumentalism, which underscores the importance of English skills for work and for achieving individual economic success, has influenced language education policies and proliferated the language teaching and testing industry in Japan. Linguistic instrumentalism is linked to the notion of human capital (i.e., skills deemed necessary for the knowledge economy) and the unstable employment conditions of neoliberal society. Focusing on the role of learning and using English for work in Japan, this qualitative study investigates the aspirations and experiences of adult workers learning English and the views of managers of manufacturing companies about the role of English and English tests. In-depth interviews revealed that the learners’ aspirations and work experiences, and the managers’ views do not always confirm linguistic instrumentalism. Rather, career successes are influenced by gender, geography, and other factors. The findings indicate that language tests actually create the demand for learning English through measuring efforts to learn in the knowledge economy.
This paper draws on complexity theory and post-modern sociolinguistics to explore how an ecological approach to language data can illuminate aspects of language use in multilingual environments. We first examine transcripts of exchanges taking place among multilingual individuals in multicultural settings. We briefly review what conversation and discourse analysis can explain about these exchanges. We then build on these analyses, using insights from complexity theory and interactional sociolinguistics. We finally outline the components of a competence in multilingual encounters that has not been sufficiently taken into consideration by applied linguists and that we call 'symbolic competence'.
In September 1997, shortly after China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong, the Education Department announced a policy which was widely seen as a restoration of 'mother‐tongue education', but which, in reality, was an elitist language selection policy. This policy, which provided for the selection of the best primary school graduates for monolingual education in English, was designed to be a cost‐effective way of training in English skills for those who had the economic and cultural capital to benefit from it. Meanwhile, the majority of students were barred from sufficient exposure to English, the language of power and wealth. In this paper, I shall show that this policy draws on a strong utilitarian discourse about the centrality of English for the economic survival of Hong Kong, which was engineered by business interests on the eve of the changeover in 1997, and which helped perpetuate a form of linguistic imperialism. Meanwhile, academics whose research was used to legitimize the policy, failed to problematize dominant language ideologies that have been used to justify pedagogically unsound practices and an inequitable language streaming policy. Through documenting the voices of individual educators, I am able to delineate counter‐discourses which, albeit weak and isolated, nevertheless manifested much broader educational concerns than the narrow utilitarianism and the unquestioned privileging of the learning of English skills that underlay the current policy.
English is often assumed to be a key to material success and social inclusion, and this belief commonly works to justify the global dominance of English, glossing over and rationalizing broader social inequalities. This paper extends the discussion of this fallacy of ‘the promise of English’ to the domain of the South Korean job market, where skills in the English language play a major role in determining one's access to white-collar jobs. Since the 1990s, different modes of English language testing have emerged as popular means for evaluating job applicants for Korean corporations, constantly upgrading the criteria for ‘good English’. Through a discussion of how such changes are linked with the conception of self in the neoliberal workplace and how evaluation of linguistic competence is always a matter of social and ideological interpretation, this paper demonstrates why, in the Korean job market, the fulfillment of the promise of English is constantly deferred.
This chapter shows just how deeply affected English has already been through its unprecedented spread, and the unique function it has as the world language. It argues, however, that it would be premature to launch into a discussion of the teaching of this lingua franca before certain prerequisites have been met. The most important of these are a conceptualization of speakers of lingua franca English as language users in their own right, and the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of, and indeed the need for, a description of salient features of English as a lingua franca (ELF), alongside English as a native language (ENL). The presentation summarizes the empirical research into the lingua franca use of English, which has recently gathered considerable momentum. It sets this research in relation to other relevant work in descriptive linguistics, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics for language pedagogy. Finally, it discusses the implications of this historically unique situation for potential developments in the pedagogy of English teaching and outlines some research questions that must be addressed if advances in the teaching of English as a lingua franca are to have a secure theoretical and descriptive base.
Sociolinguistic studies of English in various parts of the world suggest the increasing role of so-called nonnative speakers in defining the forms and functions of the English language. Their role is crucial especially in English as an international language (EIL) contexts, where the interactions do not necessarily involve native speakers of English. This view, however, does not seem to be as widespread among the users of EIL in the expanding circle as it is among scholars. A qualitative case study of Japanese secondary school students suggests that, although they perceive English as an international language in a sense that it is being used internationally, they do not believe it belongs internationally. The author questions the appropriateness of this view vis-à-vis the current status and function of EIL and suggests ways to raise awareness of English varieties and better prepare students for the use of English as an international language.
Firth and Wagner (1997) questioned the dichotomies nonnative versus native speaker, learner versus user, and interlanguage versus target language, which reflect a bias toward innateness, cognition, and form in language acquisition. Research on lingua franca English (LFE) not only affirms this questioning, but reveals what multilingual communities have known all along: Language learning and use succeed through performance strategies, situational resources, and social negotiations in fluid communicative contexts. Proficiency is therefore practice-based, adaptive, and emergent. These findings compel us to theorize language acquisition as multimodal, multisensory, multilateral, and, therefore, multidimensional. The previously dominant constructs such as form, cognition, and the individual are not ignored; they get redefined as hybrid, fluid, and situated in a more socially embedded, ecologically sensitive, and interactionally open model.
In response to growing criticism that Japanese do not have sufficient communicative skills in English, the Japanese government proposed a five-year Action Plan to Cultivate Japanese with English Abilities in 2003. This paper examines the context and content of this plan as well as the initial reactions to it in various educational settings. The Action Plan itself reflects a number of conflicting ideological orientations, including: (1) whether Japan should pursue a policy of multilingualism or one favoring the spread of English; (2) whether Japan should emphasize international understanding or simply English education; and (3) promoting egalitarianism versus allowing for individualized education. Despite the challenges that these conflicting goals present, the Action Plan gives greater autonomy to teachers and local governments and thus may improve English education by enabling them to become active participants in the development of language education policies rather than simply being passive consumers of such policies.
This article reports on year-long critical ethnographic study conducted in a Singapore school and examines how the standard
English language educational policy is interpreted by a Secondary 3 (Grade 9) female student from China. She is a member of
an exclusive group of academically able students who has been carefully recruited by the local authorities and awarded scholarships
in order to pursue their education in Singapore. This study sheds light on the language learning experience of a so-called
designer immigrant, that is, an immigrant who possesses high-level skills and global goals and interests (Simmons 1999). By focusing specifically on how this student managed the ideologies embedded in the standard English language educational
policy, the present study also explicates how operations of power at a local level are realized. The data of the study, including
interviews, classroom interaction data, and written artifacts, revealed that even in the face of overwhelming forces, the
student was able to exercise her agency and to do so in ways complementary to prevailing ideologies which subsequently bolstered
her learning. This study contributes to a better understanding of designer immigrant students in contemporary language policy
research and more broadly to advance the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert 2003).
KeywordsLanguage ideology-Designer immigration-Standard English-Global flows-Governmentality-Singapore-Model minorities-Singlish
British Council looks past accents
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Oui Marketing creates its first international campaign for the British Council
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