Language in Focus
Asynchronous Session
Intercultural Language Teaching in a Foreign Language Teacher Education Program: Redesigning Curriculum in a Colombian University View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alexander Ramirez Espinosa
This paper shares some preliminary results of a doctoral dissertation aimed at infusing an intercultural perspective in the curriculum of a Foreign Languages Teacher Education Program in Colombia. Current discourse about internationalization in higher education often use intercultural communication as a market-driven objective that can be solely met in establishing academic interchanges abroad, and through a foreign language. The research (a single-case study) started with establishing the faculty’s perceptions about curricular strengths, weakness and opportunities to develop an intercultural orientation in language teaching. Similarly, official documents and policies were analysed to ponder the same aspects. Finally, a Professional Learning Program was designed and conducted with faculty to jointly work on the renovation of the program curriculum. The study shows that interculturality is usually seen as a result of contact between foreign countries and languages, a vision often caused by market-driven discourses in higher education. However, the multilingualism, multiculturality, and the development of multiple identities that take place on campus constitute a rich and complex landscape of assets that can be utilized to foster intercultural competencies as well. Similarly, the study suggests that while intercultural aspects are deemed as paramount in language teaching, the faculty might lack conceptual understanding around interculturality, which hinders their good intentions to promote intercultural language teaching.
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed . . . We Must Preserve It, Too!: Second Language Pedagogy and Preservation in an Age of Endangered Historical Record View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nancy Wright
The image evoked by the title suggests a comparison with a wedding, and indeed, like family and friends gathered for a wedding ceremony, a number of converging trends signal new chapters whose antecedents and ancestors provide the foundation for the present, and thus must not be lost from historical record. Among those signaled is a need both to reappraise language pedagogy, also identified as applied linguistics, and to focus on more effective ways to preserve endangered languages. This paper examines the original Grammar-Translation Method (GTM), long criticized for an alleged lack of relevance to authentic language use, with the argument that this ostensible irrelevance is not substantiated, but rather is the result of a neglect to include the history of language in applied linguistic curricula. The paper further examines two other phenomena that underscore the importance of a detailed awareness of linguistic history. One is a paradoxical comparison of ancient languages that relied on symbols more than words, with the symbols, such as emoji, used in much communication today. The other is the preservation of endangered languages. Regarding the latter, the paper presents not only the problem of endangered languages, but the various ways in which they are and can be preserved, such as the tradeoffs between an archival preservation of the written language, including its grammar and history, even if no one remains to speak the language, and a more diffused preservation effort that sustains the spoken language, but may not sustain the language's structure and history.
Analysing Frame Markers in Undergraduate Students’ Argumentative Essays: ESL and Native Speaker Corpus View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Naomi Boakye, Jessie Bannerman Wood
Writing an effective argumentative essay involves the appropriate and effective use of metadiscourse (MD) markers. Metadiscourse refers to linguistic resources that are used to organise a text and connect with readers. Metadiscourse markers comprise hedges, engagement markers, attitude markers, boosters, self-mentions, code glosses, endophoric markers, evidentials, transitions, and frame markers. This study focuses on the identification of frame markers in terms of types, frequency, and appropriate use in argumentative essays written by English as a Second Language (ESL) undergraduate students, as well as native speakers of English at the same level. To analyse the use of frame markers in the essays, 207 argumentative essays were selected from the Louvain Corpus of Native English Student Essays (LOCNESS), and 197 essays from undergraduate students at the University of Ghana were compiled in a corpus. The data were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively using LancsBox, based on Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy of functions (sequencing, labelling stages, and announcing goals). Findings indicated that the ESL learners’ argumentative essays were characterised by an overuse of frame markers for sequencing and labelling stages. It was also observed that the two groups of students underused frame markers for announcing goals. The findings of this study may be helpful in the teaching and learning of academic writing.
