1,721,049 research outputs found
L'Inglese B1 all'università: il perchè di un test d'ingresso
Full text linkThis article examines the rationale behind the introduction of a certified level in English for students enrolling for all degree courses in Italian universities. It traces the phenomenon to a desire for internationalistion which is a result of the Bologna Process, and it considers the kind of competences in using English as a lingua franca which are likely to be needed by today's students
What's in a name? Language attitudes and linguistic features in NoViolet Bulawayo's "We Need New Names"
Full text linkThis paper takes a close look at the language used by Zimbabwe writer NoViolet Bulawayo
in her first novel, We need new names. The novel charts the emotional, cultural, and linguistic
growth of its teenage protagonist Darling in the move from Paradise, a shanty town somewhere in
Zimbabwe to Destroyedmichygen (= ‘Detroit Michigan’) in the US. An underlying but central theme of
the novel seems to be the tension between the global language English, and Darling’s never- named
vernacular; a tension which emerges both in the non standard forms of the extended monologue
(which oscillates between controlling pronouns I, and we), the numerous reflections on language
use made by the characters, the freshness and vibrancy of the imagery, and, not least, as the title
suggests, in the novelist’s never-ending quest for new ways of representing reality through language
Assessing Oral Production of English as Lingua Franca in European Universities: Can corpora inform the test construct?
Full text linkThis article examines the rapidly growing phenomenon of the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in European universities and the need to develop tests which reflect this use. After reporting on a research project which introduced a lingua franca element into a receptive skills test set at Levels B1-B2 of the CEFR (reflecting current entrance requirements to first and second level degree programmes), it goes on to consider the challenges posed by assessment of the productive skills, and the possible role of corpora (learner corpora and ELF corpora) in contributing to the identification of a test construct for oral production
Whose English? Attitudes to the world's lingua franca in recent non-native writing
No full textThis article examines the phenomenon of writing in English from the outer, and increasingly also the expanding, circles made familiar by Kachru's model of distribution and use of English in the world. In particular it looks at the way in which a number of post-millennium novelists use the language, and the attitudes towards the use of English that they reveal, both explicitly and implicitly, through the words, oipinions, and behaviours of their protagonists
Rethinking certification
No full textInternational language certification has become a highly prized part of the internationally mobile student’s CV. It replaces home produced tests (such as university entrance tests) in numerous contexts, and it has high face value. But it is often not particularly relevant to local needs, since the global dimension it operates in requires it to be politically correct, and to make use of universally acceptable topics and texts. It is also costly, and may come with a short expiry date. In addition, the wide range of English language products on the market, all ostensibly testing at the same level, and all validated against the CEFR, but extraordinarily different in their structure and assessment procedures, can make it difficult for test takers and even schools and language centres to make choices about which certification is most appropriate in a given context.
This article reports on an ongoing project in rethinking certification to make it more answerable to local needs. It describes a co-certification, introduced in Ca’ Foscari in 2005, in which a local institution, the University of Venice, joined forces with an international testing board, Trinity College London, to produce a version of the latter’s test of Integrated Skills in English. This test has been consistently perceived by students to be more relevant to their needs than the international version of the test, or other certifications.
The decision by Trinity in 2014 to revise the structure of the international test brings with it the opportunity to revise the co-certified version, and the chance to engage with a construct informed by English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), reflecting the reality of non native speaker academic interaction in Europe –
a challenge which McNamara (2011) describes as ‘urgent’
Assessing ELF in European Universities: the Challenges ahead
No full textAssessing ELF in European universities: the challenges ahead
The past decade has seen a number of calls to attempt to test English as a Lingua France, but there has been a dearth of research in response, in higher education as elsewhere.
This chapter looks at an attempt to redress the balance, in ongoing research at the University of Ca’ Foscari Venice. It reports on the development of an on-line receptive skills test with an ELF element, created in response to a needs analysis carried out among students from a range of academic disciplines, and suggests that such a test is unproblematic conceptually, and realistic in terms of students’ perceptions of needs.
More problematic is the assessment of the productive skills. In the second part of the chapter tentative proposals are made about the form a productive skills test in ELF in an academic context might take – in particular, a test of speaking skills which would be appropriate for English Taught Programmes (ETPs).
The CEFR conveniently distinguishes between spoken production and spoken interaction, both of which have a role to play in academic contexts (and therefore assessment). For the former, proposals are made about the use of student presentations, which have become a standard feature of continuous assessment in ETPs at MA level. The tentative proposals then put forward to incorporate spoken interaction into a putative test of ELF speaking skills are informed by a classification of speaking strategies, such as accommodation and code-switching, drawn up as part of a year-long study at the Venice International University, an English language humanities faculty in Venice. These clearly show that in the co-construction of meaning which is at the heart of the communicative event the role of the interlocutor is vital; but in a test of ELF interaction so too is the role of the examiner, who is called to be part of this co-construction. In an ELF exam, the examiner thus needs to be part of the ELF context, and not simply a detached observer ticking a checklist of formal features
Shifting perspectives on native speaker teachers: and new roles for collaboratori linguistici?
Full text linkIn this paper I examine the profile of the collaboratori ed esperti linguistici (formerly lettori) in the light of a thirty year old and ongoing debate contrasting the role of native English speaking teachers (NESTs) with that of non-native colleagues (NNESTs), and against a background of rapid change in English language requirements in Italian and European universities. The picture which emerges from the PRIN survey of 75 CEL is of a professional category which is largely a product of the ‘communicative revolution’ in language teaching, and which is less wedded to native speaker norms than its NNEST colleagues. I conclude that the traditional distinction between native and non-native teacher is increasingly problematic, and potentially misleading, while there are many possible future roles for collaboratori linguistici which transcend the basic requirement of ‘nativespeakerism’
Towards a (Painful?) Paradigm Shift: Language Teachers and the Notion of 'Error'
Full text linkThis paper examines the relationship between language teachers and the errors made by their students. Traditionally, errors reflect a deviation from a norm, which is a described or imagined standard form of linguistic behavior, and teachers are the repositories of that standard. Errors provide insights into processes of language acquisition, and offer teachers convenient strategies for classroom intervention. More than this, student errors – grammatical, phonological, lexical, pragmatic – continue to offer teachers a source of reflection, amusement, and even endearment, as professional teaching publications and Internet forums show.
The appearance of contrastive analysis in the 1960s, the brief ascendancy of error analysis, and the ensuing development of inter-language studies, kept the focus firmly on the learner’s distance (ultimately unbridgeable) from native speaker competences, with the underlying message for the language teaching profession that the teacher’s role was to bring students as far as possible towards a native-speaker like competence – a default model of competence which was built into the rating scales of major testing organisations.
This comfortable status quo was called into question by the can do approach adopted in the Common European Framework of Reference (2000), in which the focus shifted from learner error to learner competence, posing new challenges for curriculum designers and language testers. Nonetheless, a standard form of the language (usually ‘British English’ in Europe) continued to provide the target in coursebooks produced by the major publishers, and an ostensibly communicative approach continued to be the vehicle for a grammatical syllabus written in stone.
But over the last decade further challenges have been posed by the explosion on the scene of English Lingua Franca (ELF) and the awareness that most interactions in English today are between non native speakers. ELF research increasingly shows that success in NNS interaction does not come from approximating native speaker norms, but rather from a range of collaborative strategies, linguistic, paralinguistic, and pragmatic. In this context, teachers and testers will increasingly have to redefine the notion of ‘error’ in the language classroom, an operation which for many teachers rooted in native speaker norms (most of them, according to recent surveys in both secondary and higher education) is likely to signify a painful paradigm shift
Forefronting Welsh through English: translating and translanguaging in Alys Conran's 'Pigeon'
Full text linkAlys Conran’s first novel, Pigeon, (2016), relates the misadventure of a disaffected young Welsh boy, partly through the eyes of his friend and accomplice Iola, who, like Pigeon, comes from a broken family. Both are growing up in a bleak post industrial village in North Wales, never named, possibly Bethesda, the setting for one of the finest novels ever written in Welsh, Caradog Prichard’s Un nos ola leuad, which also charts the psychological undercurrents of a pre-adolescent boy trying to make sense of the world in which he finds himself, as he wanders innocently along a path of self-destruction.\ud
Prichard’s novel, written half a century ago, is in Welsh. Conran, a native speaker of Welsh, writes in English. In choosing to do so she offers insights into the way in which the two languages of Wales have been brought together through the media, through a bilingual educational system, and through changed attitudes towards both English and Welsh in the wake of devolution, more functional and less emotively charged. Pigeon and Iola are Welsh speakers, but they resort to English not just to interact with Pigeon’s monolingual step-sister, brought to the village by a violent Englishman who moves in with Pigeon’s mother, but also to play out their own fantasies, fuelled by the language of films and social media. In short, Pigeon, with its continual reference to the language use of its protagonists, can be seen as an exploration of ‘translanguaging’, a term which first appeared in Welsh as trawsieithu (Williams 1994) and has been defined by Canagarajah (2011) as ‘the ability of multilingual speakers to shuttle between languages, treating the diverse languages that form their repertoire as an integrated system’
An integrated approach to providing feedback in a blended course of academic writing
No full textThis paper reports on an exploration of ways of providing feedback in a blended course of academic writing for postgraduate (PhD) students in history, geography and anthropology. The online resources of the Moodle Platform were used to provide initial, colour-coded feedback, which proved simple to use (for the teacher) and easy to interpret (for the students). The redrafted versions made as a result of this feedback were then subjected to peer revision and a final teacher overview in a follow-up workshop. The study concludes by suggesting that an integrated approach to feedback, using online and traditional resources, can enhance a process-oriented approach to teaching writing, while addressing the issue of time management of feedback which has been identified as a major concern of teachers of writing
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