Transcript Spoken lingua franca English in tertiary education at a

Beyza Björkman, Department of English
Spoken lingua franca English in tertiary
education at a Swedish technical university: an
investigation of form and communicativepedagogical effectiveness
Outline
• Background information:
English in Sweden
This setting
• This project: A study on spoken lingua franca English
in tertiary education at a Swedish technical university
Aim
Speech events and subjects
Points of investigation and methods
Findings
• Beyond the findings
• What is next?
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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English in Sweden
• History
• 1900s
Expected proficiency: French, German, English
Instruction: Swedish
• 1980s-to present
Expected proficiency: English
Instruction: Swedish, increasingly English
• Standards are relatively high
• Swedish English generally ranked high
”almost mother-tongue like, ..., clear, well-mastered”
(Jenkins, 2008)
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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The setting
• A technical university in a large city in Sweden
• Responsible for 1/3 of Sweden’s technical research and
engineering education
• ca 20,000 students
• ca 3,000 employees
predominantly Swedish
also Russian, Chinese, German etc.
• ca 1,500 exchange students in 2006
• English used extensively
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Master's programs in English at the site
40
35
30
25
20
Number of
programs
15
10
5
0
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
2004
2005
2006
(10) (10) (12)
(23)
(27)
(34) 13 in Swe.
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
(13)
(16)
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Context: Technical communication
• Data
• Real high-stakes technical dialogues from
content courses
• Different from speech events in language
courses (comparative corpus)
• Interviews and questionnaires
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Speech events
ELF
Dialogic
Monologic
Group work
Presentations
Lectures
28 hours
17 hours
48 hours
Students
Teachers
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
Students
Lecturers
2015-07-16
7
L1s and speakers
Spanish
Italian
German
Chinese
Swedish
Lang.s from India
Arabic
Persian/Farsi
Icelandic
French
Turkish
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
(in all types of speech events,
excluding audiences in lectures)
Somali
Number of L1s: 20
Greek
Monologic (lectures):
Uzbek
Russian
Number of speakers: 107
Finnish
54% Swedish, 46% Foreign
speakers
Catalan
Dialogic:
English
51%
Polish
24.4% Ethnically non-Swedish
Serbian
24.4% Swedish
Exchange students
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Points of investigation
• Morpho-syntactic non-standard usage (Disturbing? Non-disturbing?
Irritating? )
• Criteria: What is a commonality?
The feature:
• occurs in different types of speech events
• by different speakers with different L1s
• 10 times
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Overtly disturbing?
Y
Unsuitable for LF situations
N
Suitable for LF situations
N
Potentially
problematic
?
Y
Covertly
disturbing?
Y
N
Irritating?
Y
Suitable for
LF
situations?
N
Suitable for LF situations
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Categorization of findings
1. Morphological (41)
Variations in word form:
e.g. boringdom, discriminization, forsify, levelize, more big, more
easy, more clear,…
2. Syntactic (178)
Correctly formed words used appropriately but in syntactically
deviant constructions
2.1 Phrase level
NP
VP
2.2 Clause level
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Phrase level: NP (1)
Not marking the plural
..200 degree..
We need all the detail…
..two type of …
…just to get result..
We have four parameter..
There are some difference….
…two more condition..
..two way..
There are some different type of
reference…
Over 10 meter..
..several conclusion…
..6000 hour per year…
you have several unknown…
It is always ten digit.
..same advantage compared with other
technology.
..ten glass vessel..
There are other reason.
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
12
Phrase level: NP (2)
Article usage
Superfluous/Incorrect articles
The poor people use…
I have a exam.
No article when needed
…solve the problem as ? whole
This is ? more tricky one.
But they have ? very good subway system.
It’s not ? effective solution.
Zero article
normally means
indefinite.
Some
We need to give some proposal.
In high school, you do some examination report.
..some conclusion…,.. some commas.., ..some line
here..,..some different type of reference…,
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Phrase level:VP
•
SVA
• 3P e.g. …these functions describes.., people doesn’t.., Engineers
works like this,…
• 3S e.g. It come from this equation, The volume increase…, The traffic
have gone beyond….
•
Tense and aspect
e.g. ...A power system is called a power system, because it is using
different generator systems.
You can remember what a turbine is doing, it is taking care of...
•
Passive and Active voice
e.g. But we affect by the flow../Some of these graphics devices can
attach to your pc... / It can be happened that…
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Clause level (1):
Non-standard question formulation
•
Two different types:
• Wh questions
How many pages they have?
So where we are?
Why it is black?
What other equation I would
use?
<S1> •SVO
er... in the outlet , what we
have inWe
theshould
outlet?
go</S1>
through every
topic?
<S2> . what?</S2>
We have to choose one of
<S1> in the
outlet what we have?
them?
<S1/> You’re sure it is solar?
is to fitfor
in the
equation?
<S2> (xx) This
reflection
vapor
</S2>
Why the function looks like
that?
What we have in the outlet?
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Clause level (2): Left dislocations
This rate you have it.
Diffusivity you need it.
This report we’ll do it later.
The composition of the liquid it’s the same,..
The supercapacitors I don’t know much about them.
All these chemical reactions they are reversible.
Increased explicitness (Mauranen, 2007)
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Clause level (3): Unraised negative
I think he won’t be here.
I think my X is not OK here.
It looks not good.
I think it’s not a proper way to describe it.
I think the teacher can’t read (the report) carefully. She has no time.
Do you have any ’non’s on T4 that lead not to 0 here?
Transfer or cognitive?
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Disturbance?
Morphosyntactic features
Overt disturbance
Non-standard word formations
ND
Not marking the plural
ND
Double
comparatives/superlatives
ND
Incorrect plural forms/countability
ND
Subject-verb disagreement
ND
Tense and aspect issues
ND
Passive/Active voice problems
ND
Non-standard question
formulation
D!
Negation
ND
Left dislocations
ND
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Questionnaires and interviews
• Intolerance: Students
Teachers
Challenging?
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Success of communication in ELF
settings seems to depend on two factors:
1. Situation
Orientation: content (not form)
2. Nature of lingua franca features
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Nature of lingua franca features
1. Non-standard usage that leads to disturbance in
communication
e.g. Non-standard question formulation
2. Successful reductions of redundancy
e.g. Not marking the plural
3. Devices that increase comprehensibility & economy
e.g. Left dislocation and unraised negative
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Conclusions
• Settings in which English is a lingua franca are too dynamic for
ELF to be a stable variety.
• There are commonalities and common procedures.
• ELF features reported so far might be reassertions (Crystal,
2008)
• Purist grammarians introducing artificial rules
e.g. informations (1800s)
information
informations
• More research needed.
• Emphasis in teaching?
Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected]
2015-07-16
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Department of English
www.english.su.se