25.4568, Review: Applied Linguistics: Jenkins (2013)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-4568. Fri Nov 14 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.4568, Review: Applied Linguistics: Jenkins (2013)

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Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 16:19:26
From: Sofia Rüdiger [sofia.ruediger at uni-bayreuth.de]
Subject: English as a Lingua Franca in the International University

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-4322.html

AUTHOR: Jennifer  Jenkins
TITLE: English as a Lingua Franca in the International University
SUBTITLE: The Politics of Academic English Language Policy
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Sofia Rüdiger, Universität Bayreuth

Review's Editors: Malgorzata Cavar and Sara Couture

SUMMARY

This monograph explores the issue of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in
international universities around the world. To this end Jenkins employed a
multi-method approach (i.e. website study of university homepages,
questionnaire study with academic staff and interviews with international
students). The book contains seven chapters, an afterword and four appendices
and is as such aimed at postgraduate students and researchers.

The first chapter of the book, “English, the Lingua Franca of the Global
Academy”, sets the author’s agenda and provides an overview of the following
chapters. Jenkins presents the overarching goal and motivation for conducting
her research and writing the present book as finding out “what globalization
means for English language use and users in Higher Education settings around
the world” (p. 1). The focus thereby lies mainly on international students who
are non-native speakers of English, but the perspective of English native and
non-native speaker staff at academic institutions is also included in the
research. Research sites (accessed virtually as well as through questionnaires
and face-to-face interviews) are Anglophone universities, branch universities
of Anglophone institutions (e.g. Nottingham-Ningbo University in China) and
universities offering at least some English medium instruction. As Jenkins
points out, a lot has changed in the politics of higher education;
‘internationalization’ as well as ‘globalization’ have become buzzwords that
few universities can do without. As an introduction to the topic, Jenkins
succinctly presents facts about the growing international student population,
universities’ different orientation towards internationalization (e.g.
Foskett’s (2010) fivefold categorization) and the diverse cultural and
linguistic makeup of campuses around the world. The main point of her
introduction is to highlight the fact that even though non-native English
speakers (NNES) outnumber native English speakers (NES) in most academic
institutions and although universities  emphasize their global and
international status, NNES students are still expected to conform to NES norms
in English proficiency tests, student assessments and English for Academic
Purposes courses. Her literature review further explicates that previous
research on internationalization and globalization has neglected linguistic
issues and that many people still insist on traditional thinking about English
which disregards the changes which have occurred regarding the users and uses
of the language as well as the implications this has for higher education.

Chapter 2 (“The Spread of English as a Lingua Franca”) provides a concise
introduction to the field of ELF, including historical perspectives, problems
in defining ELF, demarcation of ELF versus English as a foreign language (EFL)
and English in the World Englishes paradigm. Jenkins furthermore gives a short
overview of previously identified features of ELF on the levels of phonology,
lexicogrammar, morphology, pragmatics and idiomaticity (p. 31-35). Special
attention is paid to a dichotomy which is also central to the theme of the
book and a controversial issue in the ELF and World Englishes paradigm,
especially when it comes to issues of language teaching: native and non-native
speakers of English. Regarding an ELF perspective, Jenkins argues that,
“nativeness loses both its relevance and its traditional positive
connotations” (p. 38), since there are no native speakers of ELF and the
ultimate goal of ELF is not close adherence to native speaker norms but rather
successful intercultural communication.

The next chapter delves one step further into the ELF paradigm and introduces
the topic of English as an academic lingua franca (ELFA). Due to the
prevalence of more traditional views and a certain uneasiness “about the
relatively more open, flexible, variable, hybrid, accommodative, diverse, and
thus less constrained, or ‘standard’, kinds of English that typify ELFA use”,
NNES have often been ignored in literature on academic English except as
problems  (p. 43). Furthermore, the literature review reveals that, even
though a variety of approaches towards the subject exist, the focus has so far
been on written rather than spoken language (except some corpus studies which
mainly used spoken data). Jenkins introduces a wide range of approaches to
English for Academic Purposes (EAP), including Tribble (2009), Hyland (2009),
Benesch (2001), Lea & Street (1998, 2006), Street (2004) and Lillis (2001) and
subsequently classifies them into conforming, challenging and
paradigm-shifting approaches. In addition, she includes a description of two
EAP course books as examples for EAP material which are commonly used in
university courses for NNES (p. 55-57). Concluding the chapter is a short
introduction to the Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings
(compiled at the University of Helsinki) and three studies based on the corpus
are introduced in more detail (Ranta 2006 on the extended use of the
progressive aspect, Metsä-Ketelä 2006 on the innovative use of ‘more or less’
and Mauranen 2009 on discourse management via chunking).

Chapter 4, “Researching English Language Policies and Practices in
International Universities,” serves as introduction to the research-based
chapters 5, 6 and 7 and as such is relatively short. Before explicating the
research questions, Jenkins states that the aims of her research are to
examine the English language policies of academic institutions worldwide, 
find out what staff and students (independent of mother tongue) think about
the English language practice and policy of their institution, and  make
recommendations for universities regarding English language practice and
policy. In order to reach her goals and illuminate the research questions,
Jenkins chose a multimethod approach using three different qualitative methods
(i.e. website study, questionnaires and interviews).

The website survey is based on 60 university homepages around the world and
the results are presented in Chapter 5. Using a discourse analysis approach,
Jenkins was particularly interested in institutions’ explicit and implicit
orientation towards internationalization and globalization, English-medium
instruction and information on EAP courses. The presentation of results is
split into different geographical regions: East Asia (with a special focus on
Chinese universities), Mainland Europe, Latin America, and Anglophone as well
as Anglophone branch universities. The overall result of the website study is
that Englishization in higher education is mainly equated with native
Englishization, with a heavy reliance on English native speaker norms and only
little “shift towards acceptance of the current sociolinguistic reality of
English use” (p.119). As one of the consequences of these results, Jenkins
formulates the need to develop more appropriate tests of linguistic
suitability for academic study for both native and non-native speakers of
English. 

Having examined how universities represent themselves as internationalized to
the outside via their websites, Jenkins continues in Chapter 6 with the
perspective of staff members on English language and policy issues in higher
education. To this end, she used an open-ended questionnaire and, despite
problems with the return rate, the analysis in the chapter is based on 166
completed questionnaires. Using qualitative content analysis, Jenkins depicts
university staff attitudes towards written and spoken academic English (p.
133-141), the perceived effects of the university’s language policy on both
NES and NNES (p. 141 -146), opinions on responsibility for successful
intercultural communication (p. 146-153) and perceived implications of
universities drive for internationalization (p. 153-156). Jenkins also
provides a short albeit insightful analysis of answers to the final question
(common to many questionnaires) prompting respondents to comment on the
questionnaire and the topic of the questionnaire itself. The results of the
questionnaire study are synthesized into a model of ‘University-English
Ideology Continuum’ (p. 162).

The final research-based chapter, “Conversations with International Students,”
presents the views of 34 international postgraduate students pursuing either
an MA (14 participants) or PhD degree (20 participants) in the UK. The 60-90
minute long interviews were completely unstructured, which is the reason for
Jenkins to refer to this part of research  as a  ‘conversation study’ rather
than an interview study. Jenkins offers her own opinions profusely in the
conversations which often led students to reposition (see e.g. p. 189).
Drawing on the speech functions analysis framework by Eggins and Slade (2006)
and positioning theory by Harré and Van Langenhove (1991), Jenkins analyzes
the participants’ contributions and identifies areas which need change in
higher education language policy.

The book is concluded by a short afterword which presents two possible
scenarios regarding ELFA. One of them is a negative anecdote whereas the other
one presents a more positive outlook on English language issues in higher
education and Jenkins leaves the reader with the decision about choosing the
right path for the future of ELF issues in universities around the world. 

EVALUATION

This monograph is not only relevant for linguists working in the fields of ELF
and EAP, but will also be interesting for everybody employed at a university
using English-medium instruction, lecturers as well as higher education policy
makers. Due to the multimethod approach employed by Jenkins, the insights
provided are manifold and not only limited to one particular perspective. Even
though one side of the picture is, as Jenkins also admits , missing, home
students and staff of the respective universities might have offered
additional valuable insights (p. 205). The reason for this omission is quite
obvious though, since it would not have been practical to include even more
data in the present monograph, which is already extraordinarily rich in the
use and presentation of various kinds of data. Therefore, further research on
the views of home students and staff regarding language issues and ELF use is
called for.

One other omission with regard to contents has to be mentioned as well.
Jenkins stresses the global character of her study multiple times and states
that she wants to “examine English language policies in HE [higher education]
around the world” (p. 70) and discover “whether particular discourses are
dominant across the (global) board” (p. 82). Looking at the included regions
though (i.e. East Asia, Mainland Europe, Latin America, Anglophone and
Anglophone branch universities in China, South Korea and Japan), it is quite
surprising and a bit disappointing that no African universities were included
in the study. Even though Jenkins might have well had reasons for excluding
African universities, providing a short explanation of this decision might
have been helpful for the readers.

Even though some small editorial problems also showed up during reading ,
reading flow is generally not impaired by them. No list of abbreviations was
included in the monograph, which does not present a problem per se, since most
of the abbreviations are listed in the index. Unfortunately, some
abbreviations introduced in the text cannot be found there, for example WE
(standing for World Englishes, first occurrence p. 27) and HP (standing for
homepage, first occurrence p. 87).

What is outstanding in this monograph is its comprehensive and absolutely
enriching use of examples from Jenkins’ diverse data sources. Instead of
simply attaching them loosely to one another, each example serves a specific
illustrative purpose, enabling the reader to better understand staff and
students’ perspectives on issues of the English language in higher education
policies. Furthermore, instead of just theorizing about the issues she
discovered in her data, Jenkins develops concrete suggestions for future
implementation in higher education. Moreover, she also describes how she deals
with some of the language issues in her own work as lecturer and student
supervisor. For example, she explains how she deals with variation in written
academic English of her own supervisees (p. 70). This adds an even further
dimension of practical usability to this monograph.

It can be concluded that Jenkins’ investigation presents a valuable addition
to previous research on ELFA (e.g. Björkman 2013 on form and communicative
effectiveness of spoken ELFA in a Swedish context) and offers valuable
insights into NNES student and staff perspectives on ELFA issues, as well as
universities conceptualization of ‘internationality’ and ‘globalization’. 

REFERENCES

Benesch, S. 2001. Critical English for Academic Purposes. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.

Björkman, B. 2013. English as an Academic Lingua Franca: An investigation of
form and communicative effectiveness. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.

Eggins, S. and D. Slade. 2006. Analysing Casual Conversation. London: Equinox.

Foskett, N. 2010. “Global markets, national challenges, local strategies: the
strategic challenge of internationalization.” Maringe, F. and N. Foskett, eds.
Globalization and Internationalization in Higher Education. London: Continuum.

Harré, R. and L. Van Langenhove. 1991. Positioning Theory: Moral Contexts of
Intentional Action. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hyland, K. 2009. Academic Discourse: English in a Global Context. London:
Continuum.

Lea, M. and B. Street. 1998. “Student writing in higher education: an academic
literacies approach.” Studies in Higher Education 23 (2): 157-172.

-----. 2006. “The ‘Academic Literacies’ model: theory and applications.”
Theory into Practice 45 (4): 368-377.

Lillis, T. 2001. Student Writing: Access, regulation, desire. London:
Routledge.

Mauranen, A. 2009. “Chunking in ELF: Expressions for managing interaction.”
Intercultural Pragmatics 6 (2): 217-233.

Metsä-Ketelä, M. 2006. “Words are more or less superfluous.” Nordic Journal of
English Studies 5 (2): 117-143.

Ranta, E. 2006. “The ‘attractive’ progressive -- why use the --ing form in
English as a Lingua Franca?” Nordic Journal of English Studies 5 (2): 95-116.

Street, B. 2004. “Academic literacies and the new orders: implication for
research and practice in student writing in higher education.” Learning and
Teaching in the Social Sciences 1 (1): 9-20.
Tribble, C. 2009. “Writing academic English – a survey review of current
published resources.” ELT Journal 63 (4): 400-417.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sofia Rüdiger obtained her M.A. in Intercultural Anglophone Studies from the
University of Bayreuth in Germany, where she is also currently employed as a
research assistant at the English Linguistics department. At the moment she is
working on a PhD project on ELF use by Korean speakers. Her research interests
include varieties of English, ELF, corpus linguistics and computer-mediated
communication.








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