30.1212, Review: English; Germanic; Sociolinguistics: Tatsioka, Seidlhofer, Sifakis, Ferguson (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-1212. Fri Mar 15 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.1212, Review: English; Germanic; Sociolinguistics: Tatsioka, Seidlhofer, Sifakis, Ferguson (2018)

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Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2019 19:00:27
From: Guyanne Wilson [Guyanne.Wilson at rub.de]
Subject: Using English as a Lingua Franca in Education in Europe

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-2843.html

EDITOR: Zoi  Tatsioka
EDITOR: Barbara  Seidlhofer
EDITOR: Nicos  Sifakis
EDITOR: Gibson  Ferguson
TITLE: Using English as a Lingua Franca in Education in Europe
SUBTITLE: English in Europe: Volume 4
SERIES TITLE: Language and Social Life
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Guyanne Wilson, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Tatsioka, Seidlhofer, Sifakis and Ferguson’s new edited volume, Using English
as a Lingua Franca in Education in Europe, is a very welcome addition to the
literature on ELF. While earlier works such as those by Edwards on the
Netherlands (2016) and Kautzsch on Germany (2014) have addressed the changing
role of English in Western Europe, this comprehensive volume has a number of
papers which focus on ELF in Eastern Europe, and the role of ELF in education
at all levels.

SUMMARY

The book is divided into three sections: Section One is largely theoretical,
while the later sections have a more empirical focus. Section Two looks at
language attitudes, particularly in Eastern Europe, and Section Three at ELF
in specific higher education contexts across Europe.

In the introduction by the editors, the place of both EFL and ELF in Europe is
interrogated. Sikafis' article (ELF as an opportunity for foreign language
use, learning and instruction in Greece and beyond) looks at the potential for
ELF in Greece, and delves not only into the superficial differences between
ELF and EFL/ ESOL approaches, but especially highlights the fact that learners
of English are also users of English, and that, while learners' proficiencies
are below the levels expected in standardised testing instruments, adolescent
learners engage in English use in many non-academic, often digital and
virtual, contexts (19). This can have pedagogical implications, and Sifakis
argues that English Language teaching should marry more traditional approaches
with the “radical realities” (23) of English language use. In the second
theoretical article (European language policy and English as a lingua franca:
a critique of Van Parijs’s ‘linguistic justice’), Ferguson assesses Van
Parijs’s  ‘linguistic justice’, focussing largely on the impracticality of
applying Van Parijs’s suggestions for reparation.

The attitudes section comprises three papers looking at attitudes to ELF in
educational settings in Croatia (Margić  and Vodopija-Krstanović ), Bulgaria
(Slavova) and the Czech Republic (Dontcheva-Navratilova). The studies here
employ mixed methods approaches to look at language attitudes, and this is
particularly commendable. Margić and Vodopija-Krstanović (English language
education in Croatia: Elitist purism or paradigmatic shift?) use both
questionnaires and supplementary interviews in the study on English language
education in Croatia, and Slavova (Attitudes to English as a lingua franca and
language teaching in a Bulgarian academic context) mixes direct and indirect
methods skilfully, using an adapted verbal guise study and a reflective essay.
In the latter case, however, there are some slight problems in the selection
of materials used for the verbal guise. Some of the speakers are well-known
popular culture figures, e.g. Jamie Oliver, while others are less well-known.
The stimuli are also not well controlled for topic, which may affect language
attitudes, or for gender, and so there are a number of variables which may
well affect language attitudes which have not been considered. Nevertheless,
the use of a questionnaire and essay is quite innovative as it allows not just
generalisations on language attitudes but also insights into these attitudes. 

Dontcheva-Navratilova (English language teacher education in the Czech
Republic: attitudes to ELF) uses a questionnaire with open and closed
questions and, most interestingly, compares the views of language learners and
language teachers. This comparison, too, is rather useful, since it takes the
largest groups of stakeholders in the ELF enterprise and it allows us to see
their divergent views.  She further uses a corpus approach to look at the
degree of formulaicity in Croatian students’ writing, using this as a marker
of students’ attainment of the target variety.

Overall, the attitudinal studies show that there is a high awareness of ELF in
Eastern Europe, but awareness should not be taken for understanding. Margić
and Vodopija-Krstanović’s study shows that while some are aware of ELF as a
concept, understanding of what it actually is is quite  poor (60). Moreover,
awareness need not be synonymous with acceptance. The studies yield a crucial
finding that language attitudes in Eastern Europe still overwhelmingly favour
inner circle varieties.  Croatian teachers wish for their students to acquire
native-like pronunciation and, despite thinking it important that their
students be exposed to ELF, they retain mixed to negative attitudes towards
ELF usage. In Bulgaria, students exhibit similarly positive attitudes to
native speaker varieties of English, although they have little contact with
such varieties. Similarly, in the Czech Republic, learners are interested in
acquiring native-like Englishes, even though they expect tolerance towards
non-native Englishes. In this way, these findings mirror many of the
attitudinal findings for English in postcolonial settings, and it would be
interesting to see how Buschfeld and Kautszch's  (2016) adaptation of
Schneider's Dynamic Model could be applied to these settings.

In Part Three, the application of ELF in various higher education contexts is
examined. Luzón (English as a lingua franca in academic blogs: its
co-existence and interaction with other languages) looks at language use in
blogs, and finds that there is a diversity of ways in which ELF is used in
academic blogs, particularly alongside other languages, depending on factors
such as audience and topic. Further work in this vein should consider
examining how code switching  in blogs compares with more traditional studies
of codeswitching (e.g. Blom and Gumperz 1972), since  the situational and
relational constraints that are active in traditional codeswitching settings
are also relevant in the creation of blogs, even if they are operating
differently.

Komori-Glatz’ paper (Multilingual ELF interaction in multicultural student
teamwork at Europe’s largest business university) on ELF usage among business
school students in Austria was particularly insightful. The discourse analytic
approach to group work interactions among multilingual students highlights the
importance of considering ELF in the context of the other languages with which
it comes into contact; the paper considers the linguistic repertoires of ELF
users, how they expand in interaction with other speakers, and how, even in
the European context, they may not be limited to European languages. In “Is
everything clear so far?” Lecturing in English as a lingua franca,
Tzoannopoulou addresses the use of questions in lectures held in ELF in Greece
and looks at actual ELF use within the classroom itself.  While the findings,
particularly with regard to students’ perception of lectures with a greater
quantity of questions as more understandable than those with fewer questions,
a good control of this would have been to check the students’ comprehension
by, perhaps, administering a short quiz on the content. Nevertheless, the
study has important pedagogical implications, as the author notes (195).

 Given the hegemony of English in academic communication, Pérez-Llantada’s
analysis (ELF and linguistic diversity in EAP writing pedagogy: academic
biliteracy in doctoral education) of a course in comparative ENL, EFL, and SNL
(Spanish national language) for doctoral students in Spain is timely and
important. It shows how making users explicitly aware of features of the forms
and functions of English, and particularly EFL, can foster confidence in the
use of EFL. The study also illustrates how early concepts central to applied
linguistics, such as task based instruction (Skehan 1998), can be revamped and
applied to contemporary needs. 

The final paper in this particularly strong section of the book is
Orna-Montesinos’ research on attitudes to ELF in military training
(Perceptions towards intercultural communication: military students in a
higher education context). It highlights the often taken-for-granted fact that
ELF use is necessarily an intercultural communicative context by focussing on
ELF use in a context where miscommunication can have quite deadly effects.
Thus, the author’s findings are somewhat disappointing--most of the cadets
adhere to prescriptive norms in the name of intelligibility, with ELF and
non-native norms being judged inferior. 

EVALUATION

 Though several of the studies, particularly in Section 2, contain slight
methodological hiccoughs, as a whole the publication lends enormous insight
into the range of methods that could be applied in ELF studies, and the rich
findings that emerge as a result. The strength of this publication lies in the
breadth of the studies undertaken, not only geographically, but also in terms
of the settings examined, particularly in Part Three.  It thus provides a
holistic view of ELF use in Eastern Europe, and thus is especially useful for
language policy makers, particularly in education, as well as those interested
in the changing role of English in expanding circle contexts.

REFERENCES

Blom, J. P., & Gumperz J. (1972). Social meaing in linguistic structure:
Code-switching in Norway. In J. Gumperz, & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in
sociolinguistics. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Buschfeld, S. and Kautzsch, A. (2017), Towards an integrated approach to
postcolonial and non‐postcolonial Englishes. World Englishes, 36: 104-126.
doi:10.1111/weng.12203

Edwards, A. (2016).English in the Netherlands: Functions, forms and attitudes.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Kautzsch, Alexander. 2014. ''English in Germany. Spreading bilingualism,
retreating exonormative orientation and incipient nativization?'' In
Buschfeld, Hoffmann, Huber and Kautzsch (eds.) The Evolution of Englishes.
Amsterdam: Benjamins. 2014: 203-227.

Skehan, P. (1998). Task-Based Instruction. Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics, 18, 268-286. doi:10.1017/S0267190500003585


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Guyanne Wilson is a post-doctoral research associate at the Ruhr University.
Her main research interests are language variation, particularly in English,
language use in performance, language attitudes, language use among refugees,
and research methods. She is the principal investigator in the DFG-funded New
Englishes, New Methods research Network (with Michael Westphal). Guyanne
Wilson is currently working on a monograph comparing agreement in six
varieties of English in Africa and the Caribbean.





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