Cindy is passionate about inclusion, helping other educators develop leadership in EAL/D and cater for the academic and wellbeing needs of multilingual learners, including students from refugee backgrounds. She is an author of professional publications, served as President of the Association for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ATESOL) NSW and is Member of the Board of Directors of Primary English Teaching Association of Australia known as PETAA.

Cindy Valdez teaching in Cambodia (Image credit: Cindy Valdez via SBS)

Additional materials

• “They changed me”: Filipina educator on helping refugee students survive peace, SBS Filipino (2023)
• Valdez Adams, C. (2022) “Including” English as and Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) Learners in Your Classroom. Journal of Professional Learning 2

If you liked this episode, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Transcript (to follow soon)

In his long career Dr Rapatahana has taught English as a foreign language (EFL) in countries in the Pacific, Southeast, East and West Asia, where he noticed that sexual exploitation was common practice by former colleagues. This prompted him in his retirement to write a book about this difficult and important topic, where he draws on a wide range of sources, from academic papers to media reports, and from blogs to organisations which report on sexual violence against children, to assemble a compelling case for the widespread occurrence of sexual predation in the EFL sector.

The conversation addresses his new book, Sexual Predation and TEFL: The teaching of English as a Foreign Language Enables Sexual Predation (Brill, 2024) which explores how teaching English overseas intersects with and enables widespread sexual exploitation.

Trigger warning: this interview discusses sexual exploitation and related content that listeners/readers may find distressing.

If you liked this episode, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

For more Language on the Move resources related to this topic, see The dark side of intercultural communication, Orientalism and tourism, The dark side of TESOL and Child pornography and English language learning.

Transcript

Hanna: Welcome to the Language on the Move podcast, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Hanna Torsh, and I ‘m a lecturer in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University. My guest today is Dr. Vaughn Rapatahana, Te Ātiawa. Dr. Rapatahana is an author, poet, and editor who commutes between homes in Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Aotearoa, New Zealand. He is widely published across several genres in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English, and his work has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin, Romanian, and Spanish. He earned a PhD from the University of Auckland, and is a co-editor of two books, one called English Language as Hydra, and the other called Why English? Confronting the Hydra, published by Multilingual Matters in 2012 and 2016.

Today, we are going to talk about his new monograph, which was published in December 2024, entitled, Sexual Predation and TEFL: The teaching of English as a Foreign Language Enables Sexual Predation, published by Brill.

Welcome to the show, Vaughan!

Vaughan Rapatahana: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Hanna: I’d like to start by asking you to tell our audience a little bit about yourself, and how you got interested in the topic of your book.

Vaughan: I first started teaching English overseas, I put teaching in quotation marks, because I’m not sure if it’s actually teaching which we’ll talk about later, in the Republic of Nauru in 1979, so I’ve been doing that on and off over the years, ever since, until I retired completely from working in 2019 because I ‘m an old man now. But I’ve taught English overseas which I would equate to teaching English as a foreign language in many overseas locales, including the Middle East, Brunei, Jerusalem, Xi’an in China, Hong Kong, Philippines, where have I missed? Probably other places. And of course, in Aotearoa itself, because as you pointed out my first language is te reo Māori, so I’ve taught English as a second language in schools, Kaupapa, where Māori is the first language, so that’s here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. I’ve always been interested in this topic.

Because I have met up with people who are sexual predators during my sojourn overseas. I’ve read lots of news reports, and I guess, like the proverbial rolling stone, the more I read and experience, the more I became interested, and wrote about it, and researched about it, and collated notes, and added to them all the time. It got to the stage I wanted to write a book about it, which I managed to do successfully.

Hanna Torsh: For those who haven’t read the book, one of the things you do at the beginning is you define some of these key terms. So, how do we define sexual predation, and then how do we define TEFL?

Vaughan: I’ve defined them in the book more widely than people probably accept them. Sexual predation, as I’ve noted here, is a control or power-based, exploitative, predatory, abusive form of behaviour, deliberate, often pre-planned. It’s all too often, sadly, by males. whether they be teachers or members of the public in countries where students have gone to learn the subject, or to learn English. It includes all forms of sexual harassment, so I’ve equated harassment and predation together. Doesn’t necessarily have to be physical, can be verbal, can be just the gaze. the sexualized gaze. So that’s sexual predation. And it’s generally male preying on female, whether they’re students, fellow teachers. socio-economically deprived women in countries where male teachers have gone to teach the language. And LGBTQ teachers and students as well are often other victims. So that’s predation. TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language.

But it’s not merely teachers, male or female, going overseas, to teach English. or students from countries where English is not a first language going to countries where it is, it’s also not just in schools, it’s in tuition centres, it’s, in aid programs, like Peace Corps, and volunteerism, the whole industry of volunteerism, which are advertised, especially online, where young people especially go overseas. sort of like a white saviour complex to go over and help the poor local indigenous person learn English. They think they need it, they think they need to do it, they think they are the white saviour. It’s in orphanages, orphanages, so there’s a big, huge orphanage tourism aspect. to things like the Peace Corps. Also, what Haley Stanton so cogently has written about recently, TEFL tourism, where people go overseas to teach English, but at the same time have a fun time in places like Thailand, going to the beach partying. dropping drugs, having indiscriminate sex. So, TEFL is much wider than just one person going to another country in a school. It’s huge, in volunteerism, TEFL tourism, orphanage tourism, Peace Corps, teaching English, or trying to teach English, or pretending to teach English, often by totally unqualified people. who only are there because they can speak English, is also TEFL.

Hanna: I think that’s really valuable, that definition, because it reminds us that we’re not just talking about classrooms and teachers and students, we’re talking about a whole industry and all the associated practices, many of which, as you say, take place in spaces that are less formal, that are less regulated, and often are associated with cultural practices that are nothing to do with teaching and learning. And how do you think that the way you’ve examined it is different from the kinds of stereotypes and common beliefs that people might have about this issue?

Vaughan: Because I think, as I’m trying to point out, it’s a much wider issue than dirty old men going overseas, traveling child sex offenders deliberately saying they’re going to teach English so they can go and pray on children. That is many people ‘s perception of sexual predation and TEFL. And it’s a key one, and it’s a very sad, unfortunate one, and it’s statistically not stopping, and there’s so many news reports about such people. The preferential sex offender, but it’s also all the other areas I ‘m talking about, it’s the TEFL tourists going overseas and smoking dope, and going to a brothel, and engaging in underage sex with the local prostitutes. That’s just one example of sexual predation in TEFL.

So, it’s much wider than the dirty old men. It includes, as I said before, often Asian girls, teenagers, young women, going overseas, thinking they need to learn English, and being molested or raped or in severe cases, murdered by males in the local population. It also includes what I call Charisma Man, that’s NET ‘s (native-speaking English teachers) who’ve got this  wonderful aura about them because they’re  in another country, and they ‘ve suddenly become charisma men, getting accolades from the local populace women and girls they wouldn’t get in their own countries, and taking advantage of it, and sort of boasting about their accolades and their sexual prowess in those new countries. So, these are just some of the things sexual predation and TEFL involve. It’s a much wider, much more complicated, with many aspects to it, and that’s why the book is so thick, well over 400 pages, because there’s so much in it.

Hanna: And unfortunately, we’re only able to talk about a few of those issues today, but I hope that readers do go and engage with the much wider scope that you’ve explored in your very thorough book. One of the things that struck me while reading your book is that this is an important conversation to be having, but this is one of the few publications that I’ve certainly, in my career in applied linguistics and TESOL, ever come across, so it’s a very under-researched context. And the second point is it draws an important connection between the kinds of, exploitation that you’re talking about. and this phenomenon that many of our audience might know, called linguistic imperialism. Could you expand on those two aspects for the audience? So, the first one is, you know, why is this one of the few books I ‘m seeing on this topic? And the second one is, what is this connection between sexual predation and linguistic imperialism?

Vaughan: There’s a blind spot, especially amongst practitioners of the tongue. That’s English as first language speakers and writers and authors and teachers. They don’t want to hear about this sort of aspect, sexual predation, in their industry. They want to go overseas and earn big money and have a good time, or have a stable career, because they’re not all TEFL tourists, of course. Many are stable, middle-class individuals who are having lucrative overseas careers. The last thing they want to hear about is, bad guys in their profession. And the legal aspects, publishers are wary as well, they don’t want to get too involved, especially if names are concerned, or news reports. There’s a certain amount of embarrassment, but mainly I think it’s just pushing it under the table, ignorance, and denial.

As NET myself in some of those countries, or all those countries I mentioned, I often used to write to the South China Morning Post when I lived in Hong Kong, and still return there all the time, saying, why have you got these NET teachers in your country earning such huge money with huge, gratuities and airfares every two years. What are they actually doing? Do the local population really need English? Of course, my answer was always no. Those letters were published in the South China Morning Post, and of course a huge barrage of letters coming in from other native English-speaking teachers who are then saying, of course we’re needed here, and of course the Hong Kong Chinese need to learn English. So, there’s that denial and defiance and sweeping under the table. But I know what I was talking about, because my family is Hong Kong Chinese. They can speak English; their first language is Cantonese. They had no need for native-speaking English teachers in their schools, absolutely no need at such huge expense. So, there’s the first part of the question. That’s why there’s very little written about it. It’s about time there was, and this is the book which I ‘m very proud of, because I think it’s my most important work, and I’ve written well over 50 books. This is my key one.

Hanna: Over 50 books, and this is the most important one. So, there’s a real vested interest there in people not exploring and uncovering these practices?

Vaughan: And the employing countries who think they need to have English to become wonderful countries turn a blind eye as well, because they think they need to have English, so they don’t have good hiring practices. This is a huge generalization. There are so many loopholes. People can get rehired, a traveling child sex offender who ‘s teaching English can go from one country to another, and there’s no overall global mechanism to even know that they’re moving from one country to another. So, the actual employing countries are just as bad as the employer countries. There’re so many loopholes involved. One example about such sinister predators, the preferential sex offenders, they can change their names, get new passports, and travel overseas again and escape the sexual offender registers in their own countries, like the UK, which is still ineffective in that area.

It’s an exploitative industry, summarized by my other two books published by Multilingual Matters, The [English] Hydra, this huge mechanism, earning huge amounts of money for certain vested interests, basically white, middle-class, Western, concerns, the Hydra is spreading linguistic imperialism, native-speaking English teachers, huge testing industry, textbooks, and they’re  going to turn a blind eye because of the money. Yes? And then, at the same time, the local people, the local countries, the cultures were not gifted English as a first language and never historically have been them, are being lulled into the sense that they need to have English. It’s pushed onto them. And a white face will always get a job, even if they have no qualifications. So, it’s exploitation, imperialism continuing. Robert Phillipson must take a lot of accolades there, and he was one of my co-authors in the first book, English Language Hydra. I’ve worked together with Robert and the late and lamented Tove Skutnubb-Kangas, his wife, we all worked together on those two early hydra books.

So going back to your second part of your question. I mentioned a term English language sexual imperialism, which, to me, is part and parcel of the hydra, part and parcel of linguistic imperialism. They go together. So, when English language is spread and forced and sold to places that think they need to have English. Sexual imperialism happens at the same time. through some of the channels I’ve already mentioned before, they go hand in hand in hand. I ‘ll read you a quote, if you don’t mind, from Joanne Nagel in 2003, “the history of European colonialism is not only a history of language dominance, it is also a history of sexual dominance.” I agree completely. So, they’re hand in glove via all the different ways I’ve mentioned in this book. So, in my own quote: “When the language is presented in English as a foreign language situation, at least potentially, so are patriarchal, sexist, chauvinist tropes and the correlated behaviours.”

Linguistic imperialism and sexual imperialism go together. And it’s been going on for hundreds of years, from the white man going to Africa and bringing his own sexual tropes there. That’s still going on. The male preoccupation with the exotic Asian female, for example. This is 2025, but nothing ‘s changed.

Hanna Torsh: In your book, you give us concrete examples of the kind of link that you’re talking about between English language teaching and sexual imperialism. In your book, you talk about the ways in which, the career of teaching English overseas is sexualized, even before potential teachers begin teaching. Can you tell our audience what you found that out about that?

Vaughan: It comes from just lots of experience, lots of reading, lots of research, and just the sheer obvious facts. For example, English itself is a sexualized language, just given the components, structures of the tongue itself are sexualized. If you want to read Lewis and Lupyan in 2020, a very good article about that, just how pronouncedly sexist English language as a language is, in terms of its words and the word use. Many TEFL textbooks, even in 2025, are still predominantly sexed or gender biased. That’s even if some of those countries receiving English as a supposed gift, even have textbooks. And if they do, they’re usually old ones, and there might be one shared between 50 students.

The gender bias is apparent and still obvious. Males still continue to dominate in management, and TEFL conferences. Varinder Unlu, came up with the website ELTToo, and about the sexist basis of the English language teaching industry, the EFL, TEFL conferences and management structures. And she got repudiated and reprimanded by too many males for doing so, which goes back to that vested interest, not wanting to know and hiding it away.

English is taught in a sexualized fashion. For example, as in Spanish TV, a woman strips as she’s teaching English. Bizarre, but true. And it’s advertised, especially tuition centres, for example, in Japan, some of the advertisements are so blatantly sexualized and sexist. Dozens of examples are shown in the book. Another key point is the sex tourism. There’s a huge global trend, and it’s not just English teachers going overseas to partake in sex tourism, but the fact that so many people from Western countries and local countries might go to Southeast Asia for sex tourism encourages the teaching of English to cater for those tourists. The “sex pats”, another term, who just goes overseas to partake in sexualized adventures with the young, people who have no money, who are in the sex trade, because they have to be to survive, people like that. And the statistics shown by concerns that are trying to combat sexual predation in TEFL, like ECPAT and APLE Cambodia. There’re so many examples that they publish on their website and in their reports, shows the problem isn’t going away, it’s probably escalating. Despite the best efforts of places like EPAC and Apple to do something about it, and the poor efforts by local governments and countries sending the offenders overseas.

Hanna Torsh: And can you just, for the audience, explain what those acronyms are?

Vaughan: Good question. ECPAT is not just one organization, it’s an overall name for organizations that fight child exploitation, and protecting children being exploited. And APLE Cambodia is a specific example that works under EPAC, but it’s its own separate body in Cambodia, fighting child exploitation and protecting children over there. Many cases are of English-speaking teachers, tutors, or people going over and opening orphanages, or pretending to do aid out in rural communities, but actually are there as sexual predators, preying on youth. Often some of them are so cheeky as to marry a local say, Cambodian woman, and then exploit the woman ‘s children. So that’s APLE, Preda in the Philippines is another organization doing the same thing, preventing child exploitation, including by white men going there and running sex rings, paedophile rings, which is all in the book.

Hanna Torsh: Yeah, great, thank you. We are running out of time, Vaughan, and it’s such a big topic, but I ‘d like to end by asking, you’ve talked about the issue being bigger than the kinds of extreme, horrific crimes you’ve just talked about, that it’s actually permeating the whole industry, and that there’s this close relationship between English language teaching and sexual predation. What would you like our audience to go away with, in terms of the key message of your book, bearing in mind that a lot of our audience are emerging and established researchers in Applied Linguistics and TESOL.

Vaughan: Be aware of the problem, be far more aware. Report any incidents of sexual predation, even if they seem minor. If you think a student’s being harassed by a male teacher, or you think of fellow female teachers being harassed by a male teacher, or by local members of the community, report it. Get your own professional bodies to be far more proactive. They’re not proactive in fighting this massive problem across the board, all the different types of behaviours of sexual predation and TEFL, and it’s all its various guises.  Close loopholes globally, not so easy, but let ‘s get, say, UK government to say, how come sex offenders who are on the sexual offenders list can still go overseas and teach by changing their names through a passport? And be caught years later in another country altogether. And these are all documented cases.

And my final key point has always been, do we really need to teach English in other countries beyond first language countries? And my point is, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don’t need English even to be taught. There’s no clear requirement for EFL in many places anyway. You can circumvent the hydra by just doing away with it. People can develop their own languages, because as Tove Skutnabb-Kangas said many, many years ago, linguicism comes in when linguistic imperialism comes in, and linguicism is the loss of your own Indigenous tongue, because English is taking over. We don’t need the hydra.

Hanna: You also make the point in your book that local teachers are often underpaid and undervalued relative to, imported teachers. And I thought that was a powerful message too, and linked to the idea of decolonizing, English language.

Vaughan: And it rankles with them. I was earning much more money than most of my fellow teachers in Hong Kong, and I wasn’t working the hours that they were putting into, or were expected to put in, and they weren’t getting the big, huge gratuities. Total exploitation. Totally unnecessary, but as I keep on saying, there’s a vested interest going on there, and they aren’t going to shut up. They want the money. Although in the last two years, finally, maybe they went back and read my letters to the South China Morning Post. the Hong Kong government now has now de-escalated the financial benefits for the NET scheme there and has now thrown open the budget that was formerly there for nets to be hired by schools, to the schools themselves to hire NETs, but at a lower rate. Why? Because fiscally, Hong Kong can ‘t afford what they were spending before, billions and billions of Hong Kong dollars on net teachers. So, ironically, socioeconomically, the net scheme is becoming disempowered because Hong Kong can ‘t afford to pay anymore.

Hanna Torsh: Wow. A good outcome for local teachers, potentially, and for schools, if they’re getting more of that funding. So that’s perhaps a nice place to finish up. Look, thank you so much, Vaughan, for this important work. It certainly got me thinking about my own teaching career as an English language teacher, and the various associations that I ‘m part of, and how particularly how this issue of sexual predation intersects with a lot of the work we talk about on LOM on native speakerism and now this new emerging, body of work on decolonizing English. So, lots of important food for thought. Thanks again. Do you have any final comments you would like to make before we say goodbye?

Vaughan: Tēnā koe. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I guess I ‘m going to have to say, find the book and read it, because it’s new, and it’s important. And it’s not been expressed sufficiently, or powerfully before. It’s telling things that people don’t want to hear, quite frankly.

Hanna Torsh: I couldn’t agree more. And if you’re like me working at a university, request that your library order Vaughan ‘s important book.

So, thanks again, Vaughan, and thanks everyone for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe to our channel, leave a 5-star review on your podcast app of choice, and recommend the Language on the Move podcast and our partner, The New Books Network, to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Till next time.

Imagine stepping into a classroom where students expect you to embody English in its “native” form, fluency, and culture. For many non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) in Australia, this expectation is a daily challenge. Yet, these teachers refuse to let such pressures define them. Instead, they embrace a “hybrid professional becoming”—an ongoing process of identity formation—seeing themselves, in many ways, as “cyborgs” in the classroom.

Inspired by Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, NNESTs use the cyborg metaphor to navigate and redefine their professional lives. They mix their multilingual and multicultural lived experiences with digital tools and fluid teaching methods, transcending rigid binaries of “native” versus “non-native” speakers. In this role, they create richer, more inclusive learning environments that challenge hegemonies.

Breaking Down the Native-Speaker “Myth”

Australian classrooms are highly diverse, yet the teaching workforce remains predominantly English monolingual and native-speaking. Many students here learn English as an additional language, making teachers’ lived experiences crucial for bridging linguistic and cultural gaps. However, native-speakerism—an age-old ideology favouring native English speakers—still shapes perceptions. NNESTs are often viewed through a deficit lens, yet they challenge this by showing that effective English teaching goes beyond birthplace or accent.

Phở bò (Image credit: Vinnie Cartabiano, Wikipedia)

Consider Natalie, a teacher from Bangladesh. Despite her experience, she often felt misjudged: “I didn’t just sense that students valued native English-speaking teachers more—I was even asked to be replaced by native speakers before I had a chance to start speaking”. Though these intersectional judgments were hard to ignore, Natalie turned them into a source of multiplicity. “It made me work harder to show that my teaching had depth and cultural awareness,” she explains.

To engage her students, Natalie wove stories, humour, and cultural anecdotes into her lessons, using language-bridging strategies to foster inclusivity. For her Vietnamese students, she joked about the pronunciation differences between “phở” (a noodle soup) and the English word “fur”, drawing laughter as they discussed similar linguistic misunderstandings. For her Lebanese students, she shared stories about common culinary traditions, sparking discussions about cultural similarities and differences. By weaving in phrases like “cảm ơn” (thank you) with her Vietnamese students and “Malual noor” (family is wealth) with her Sudanese students, she created a space where language and cultural understanding flourished, bridging worlds in a shared learning journey.

Embracing the Cyborg Identity in Teaching

Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto frames the cyborg identity as one of assembling diverse parts into a constantly evolving whole. For NNESTs, this hybrid identity defies narrow definitions of an English teacher. Their methods connect students with English while honouring their own cultural heritage, engaging students in ways that promote inclusivity.

Mahati, an Australian qualified teacher from India, exemplifies this hybridity. Though passionate about teaching, adjusting to Australian classrooms wasn’t easy. After working various odd jobs, she found her place in adult migrant education. “Teaching for me is not just a job—it’s my second home” (मेरे लिए पढ़ाना सिर्फ एक नौकरी नहीं है—यह मेरा दूसरा घर है।), she shares. Entwining her cultural heritage in literature and music with modern teaching tools, Mahati creates meaningful connections with her students. “We end sessions with fun songs from Sing with Me Book 1, and I incorporate technology to keep students engaged”, she explains. This approach enriches her classroom with a dynamic, inclusive atmosphere.

Reflective Practice: A Tool for Hybrid Becoming

Reflection is essential to this cyborg-like emergence. For NNESTs, critical reflection goes beyond simple self-assessment; it’s a transformative process to reshape and redefine their roles, tailoring their approaches to the diverse needs of multilingual classrooms and imagining themselves as cosmopolitan teachers of English.

Natalie’s experience with reflective practice exemplifies this plasticity. Despite her extensive teaching background, she continually revisits her lessons to meet her students’ evolving needs. “One of my students once laughed at me for mispronouncing a Vietnamese dish,” she recalls with a smile. “It was a learning moment for both of us—I embraced it and encouraged my students to teach me more about their culture”. Through such exchanges, Natalie moves beyond rigid teaching roles, fostering an environment of mutual learning and responsiveness.

Janaki’s story further illustrates this process. Initially, she felt out of place teaching refugees and migrants in the AMEP (Adult Migrant English Program), many of whom had experienced significant hardship. “It’s been humbling—I had to understand their backgrounds and be patient”, she shares. Reflecting on her experiences, Janaki adapted her methods, drawing on colleagues’ advice and exploring new strategies to better serve her students.

Technology: Expanding the Cyborg Identity

Technology plays a crucial role in helping these teachers develop their cyborg identities. Digital tools enable them to adapt and extend their teaching practices, creating a more inclusive classroom environment.

Namani, a young teacher who initially felt intimidated by her non-native status, illustrates this shift. She struggled with technology, worried about being seen as less competent. “I was so concerned if something went wrong with a digital tool”, she recalls. But instead of avoiding it, she mastered tools like MS Teams and Zoom, transforming her classroom. “Once I felt confident, I realized technology was actually empowering me to be a better teacher”, she reflects.

Frida took this approach even further during the pandemic, recording demo classes to improve timing and engagement. Her experience with technology underscores the cyborg concept, intermingling cultural knowledge with technical proficiency to support students. Using online platforms, she stayed connected despite the distance, teaching her students not just English but also essential digital literacy skills.

Moving from Marginalization to Empowerment

The cyborg identity empowers NNESTs to transcend limitations imposed by native-speakerism. By embracing hybridity, they resist marginalization and actively redefine their roles, affirming their experiences as cosmopolitan educators of English. The cyborg metaphor captures a journey from marginalization to empowerment, where NNESTs reclaim the narrative and leverage their unique identities as strengths.

Laura’s journey illustrates this shift. Coming from a small town in the Philippines, she initially faced students who doubted her due to her accent. “I noticed some of my students were unsure of me, maybe because of my accent”, she recalls. Though it initially unsettled her, Laura decided to use it as a teaching tool. “I always wanted to be a teacher—even as a kid, I’d teach my dolls and pretend to mark papers”, she says with a smile. By sharing her story, Laura highlighted the richness of multilingualism, encouraging students to explore their identities and celebrating diversity in her classroom.

One of Jasha’s most powerful stories involves a Lebanese student whose linguistic journey reflected the beauty of multilingualism. “She spoke French and Arabic at home, then moved to Israel, where her three boys started school”, Jasha recalls. By the time they relocated to Australia, the boys had developed a unique assemblage, mixing French, Arabic, Hebrew, and English in daily conversations. “Listening to them was an absolute joy—I’d try to catch familiar English words,” she shares. This experience reinforced Jasha’s philosophy: learning English best occurs immersively, by discussing texts without a dictionary and encouraging students to “think” in English through activities like jumbled sentences and interactive games. Her approach to grammar focuses on context rather than correctness. “Grammar is just a means to an end”, she says, embedding it within the meaning her students wish to convey.

Toward a New Paradigm in English Language Teaching

The lived experiences of these NNESTs underscore the need for a shift in English language teaching paradigms. Embracing cyborg identities, these teachers demonstrate that an educator’s value lies not in their accent or birthplace but in their hybridity, engagement, and inspiration. Recognizing NNESTs’ hybrid professionalism can help educational institutions move beyond outdated binaries and create spaces where diverse voices are celebrated.

Through their stories, NNESTs like Natalie, Mahati, Janaki, Namani, Laura, and Jasha embody Haraway’s cyborg vision: educators who transcend boundaries, integrate facets of their identities, and reshape the future of education. By embracing cyborg identities, they enrich the classroom and create a new model for English teaching in today’s interconnected world. In their journey from marginalization to empowerment, these teachers remind us that education is a space for hybridity, inclusivity and horizons of possibility—qualities that benefit students, educators, and society alike.

Reference

The blog is based on:
Nigar, N., Kostogriz, A., & Hossain, I. (2024, aop). Hybrid professional identities: Exploring non-native English-speaking teachers’ lived experiences through the Cyborg Manifesto. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 1–23.

Author Bios

Dr Nashid Nigar teaches at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, and has diverse experience in English language and literacy teaching, academic writing, and teacher education. Her recently completed PhD thesis, focusing on language teacher professional identity at Monash University, was graded as Exceptional—Of the highest merit, placing within the top 0.1% to fewer than 5% of international doctorates. Her ongoing research interests include language teacher professional identity and language/literacy learning and teaching.

Alex Kostogriz is a Professor in Languages and TESOL Education at the Faculty of Education, Monash University. Alex’s current research projects focus on the professional practice and ethics of language teachers, teacher education and experiences of beginning teachers.

Handed my MA dissertation in four years ago on this day. This article by Piller and Takahashi, "A Passion for English: Desire and the Language Market" from @Lg_on_the_Move, directly inspired my dissertation and my subsequent PhD research. https://t.co/4i3gjY3UqJ

— Dr Owen Minns (@OTMinns) September 24, 2019

Teaching English in Japan

Even before I set foot in Japan, being a white, university-educated male from England gave me access to jobs at commercial language schools and teaching programs like the JET Program. The first school I taught at, a commercial language school (Eikaiwa in Japanese), advertised itself as a British English school. The company’s adverts featured pictures of young, white, smartly dressed teachers reflecting the trends identified by Piller and Takahashi. I later taught at a private high school where being a British passport holder was one of the requirements for employment. In this school, the foreign teachers were collectively addressed as “natives” by the Japanese teachers, and we had an ambivalent position in the school despite prominently featuring on the school’s website and at open days.

While being white, British, and male gave me privileged mobility to gain stable employment in Japan, both my employers offered little or no encouragement for Japanese learning. This meant that after 6 years of teaching in Japan, I developed a bittersweet relationship with Japanese, characterised by periods of both engagement and non-engagement with learning Japanese.

After returning to the UK to study for a master’s, reading Piller and Takahashi’s work connected many of the dots I had felt while in Japan. Throughout my time in Japan, I met teachers with varying Japanese proficiency levels. There were constant discussions about the need to speak Japanese and even some tension between teachers about their Japanese levels, but there was little institutional support for Japanese learning. Reading about the ideologies identified by Piller and Takahashi on learners led me to wonder how these forces influenced teachers in Japan when they were learning Japanese, so I made this goal of my Ph.D. research.

My research

Poster for an English language school in Japan (Image credit: Shinshin50)

I researched how two groups, newly arrived and long-term teachers learned Japanese. For the newly arrived teachers, 9 took part in a 6-month diary study in which they wrote weekly diaries about their Japanese language learning and participated in monthly interviews. For the long-term teachers, I interviewed 13 teachers who had made lives in Japan about their Japanese language learning histories.

The newly arrived teachers had to self-direct their learning while trying to find their position in the classroom, the school, and Japan. The newly arrived teachers found it challenging to develop consistent learning routines. While they had access to countless online self-study learning resources and approaches, they struggled to consistently use these resources and find appropriate face-to-face Japanese classes. One teacher felt she had to choose between her own mental well-being and Japanese learning, while other newly arrived teachers found managing Japanese learning alongside working and living in Japan caused them stress and mental health issues.

The long-term teachers also experienced trouble regulating Japanese language learning on a long-term basis. Some teachers were able to build long-term learning approaches that combined Japanese study with involvement with local communities, while others experienced more fluctuating Japanese learning, interspersing periods of engaged learning with periods of disengagement. Finding opportunities to use Japanese was a struggle for both groups of teachers as building connections with Japanese people depended on introductions from employers, connections teachers had before they arrived in Japan, or the areas they were placed in.

The deep impact of the desire for English in Japan on the lives of these foreign teachers could be seen in the lives of long-term foreign teachers in Japan. Often these teachers used English in romantic relationships, with one male teacher describing how marrying an English-speaking foreigner was seen as a way out of Japanese society by Japanese women. Due to the enduring desire for English in Japan, many long-term teachers with children in my study used English with their children to transfer their linguistic capital of being a native English speaker to their children. As they became long-term residents of Japan, the value of studying for academic and teaching qualifications that would help advance in their English teaching careers often trumped the symbolic capital Japanese learning gave them.

The key for both groups of teachers to sustaining Japanese learning and use was facilitative communities and individuals to use Japanese with. These individuals and communities often modified their Japanese and encouraged English teachers to learn and use Japanese. They were found within local areas, workplaces, and community groups. They invested in these teachers as Japanese speakers despite ideologies that saw foreign English teachers as short-term visitors to Japan and foreigners as deficient Japanese speakers. The depth and sustainability of each teacher’s Japanese engagement was strongly impacted by whether a learner had access to individuals and groups willing to invest in them as Japanese speakers.

The Future

Given the recent increases in migration to Japan, the importance of providing opportunities for migrants to learn Japanese will only increase in the coming years. Despite this, 70% of Japanese learning programs in Japan outside of the higher education sector are taught by community volunteers, many of whom do not have formal teaching qualifications. One recent study of Japanese foreign language programs in Tokyo found that in one large central ward of Tokyo, the lack of community-based classes meant that: “In 2020, Shibuya reported 10,597 foreign residents; if all of these residents want to complete the ward-sponsored courses, it would take more than 100 years”. Due to the “desire” of Japanese people to learn English, foreign English teachers will no doubt continue to live and work in Japan. Some teachers like me and the participants in my research in Japan will build lives in Japan. It remains to be seen whether there are the learning resources to meet the needs of migrants in Japan.

Being “the desired”

While being “the desired” in Japan gives English teachers “privileged mobility” to access jobs in Japan, the Japanese learning of the teachers in my study was dependent on each teacher’s own agency, their access to facilitative individuals and communities in Japan, and their ability to deal with the stress of learning Japanese while living and working in Japan. Being the “desired” for their English within Japan influenced the teachers in three significant ways: it mediated their access to communities of practice in which to use Japanese, it dictated the support English teachers had for their Japanese learning, and how English teachers and broader Japanese society valued Japanese learning.

One unintended consequence of my research was that it forced me to examine my relationship with Japanese learning and using Japanese. Examining how these teachers learned and used Japanese made me re-evaluate and change my approach to learning Japanese. These changes have allowed me to engage more with learning and using Japanese.

While I outlined some of the broader conclusions of my PhD here, because of the large amount of data I collected, there are even more insights to come from my research in the future.

References

Hatasa, Y. and Watanabe, T. (2017). Japanese as a Second Language Assessment in Japan: Current Issues and Future Directions. Language Assessment Quarterly, 14(3), pp.192-212. https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2017.1351565
Lee, S. J., & Niiya, M. (2021). Migrant oriented Japanese language programs in Tokyo: A qualitative study about language policy and language learners. Migration and Language Education, 2(1), 17–33. https://doi.org/10.29140/mle.v2n1.489
Minns, O. T. (2021). The teacher as a learner: English teachers learning Japanese in Japan [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Anglia Ruskin University. Available at: https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/id/eprint/707748
Piller, I., & Takahashi, K., 2006. A passion for English: Desire and the language market. In A. Pavlenko (ed.), Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience, Expression and Representation. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, pp. 59 – 83.
Takahashi, K., 2013. Language Learning, Gender and Desire: Japanese Women on the Move. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

尽管有诸如此类的国际保护措施， 原住民在教育领域仍然处于劣势地位。 本文着眼于以超语实践理论， 探求解答这一问题的途径。

English version of this article available here.

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作者： 余星星, Nashid Nigar, 钱祺

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Tibetan Buddhist stupa and houses outside the town of Ngawa, on the Tibetan Plateau (Image credit: Wikipedia)

自体认到语言少数群体的教育困境后， 我们三人作为国际间的非土著教育工作者携手合作， 尝试提出一些新颖的教学模式。 以西藏英语课程为例， 我们将藏语和藏族文化融入藏族学生的英语课程， 旨在解决“资源不足”以及“原住民教育优先级低”的问题。 我们的重点在于反思与改革一种倾向于强调主流语言而忽视或贬低原住民语言、 文化和知识体系的教学法。

2021年， 钱祺在四川省甘孜县进行了一个月的英语教学工作。 在此地，藏族人口超过 80% （甘孜藏族自治州人民政府， 2021年)， 钱老师任教的班级， 所有的学生都是藏族人。

三语教育的现况及问题 

在具有高度多元语言背景的环境中， 钱祺发现， 以藏语进行教学时， 学生们的注意力更易凝聚。

这些学生通常接受三语教育。 他们在刚入小学时， 除了学习藏语之外， 也需学习汉语。 而当他们进入中学后， 英语课程则成为必修科目。 在此情形下， 藏族学生非但需要掌握藏语， 还需要学习另外两种语言。

近来， 研究者发现藏族学生在三语教育中有两大主要问题。 首先， 相较于汉族学生， 由于藏区教育资源的匮乏 （例如教师数量不足）， 藏族学生常被误认为是“赤字”语言学习者。 藏族文化和语言， 以及学生的民族身份， 常常被汉族主导的意识形态所轻视， 这在以普通话进行教学的英语课堂及汉族文化占主导地位的英语教科书中均有所体现。

在此背景下， 我们并没有提出一种理想化且以人权为导向的宏大改革计划 （在中国的现实情况下， 这可能并不切实际）， 而是提出了一种更务实的解决方案。 这个方案一方面在现行的教育政策框架下为可行之策， 另一方面， 它可以帮助藏族学生更快地掌握英语， 并为他们的多语言身份做出贡献。 同时， 该方案也为教师在将多语言视角纳入英语教学时行使他们的权力铺平道路。

超语实践理论的引入及课程设置 

余星星和钱祺在墨尔本大学深造期间， 在 Nashid Nigar 的指导下， 对超语实践理论有了更深入的了解。 我们讨论了如何将该理论引入到钱祺的藏族学生英语课程中。

超语实践理论对所谓的“命名语言”持批判性立场。其实践，尤其是创造性和批判性部分具有变革潜力，因为它们能超越命名语言的社会构造边界。超语实践视为一种世界观，认为说话者可通过利用他们语言工具箱中的所有资源，积极地拥抱并培养自己的多语言身份。

因此，藏区英语老师应充分利用学生的语言资源，不仅要激活学生的语言创造性（以便他们能更有效地学习英语），还要让学生有能力设疑汉族主导的语言和文化的主导地位。

以此为基础，我们为藏族学生学习英语制定了一个新的课程，主题为“发现西藏之美”，包含四堂课和一个评估任务。

首先，为了让现有的官方英语教科书对藏族学生更有价值，我们对其进行了改编，增添了有关西藏宗教、历史和地理的信息。变更后的教材主题涵盖了西藏历史上的重要人物、古代节日的描绘，以及对西藏文化的洞察。如果学生的学习材料的背景来自他们自己的文化经验，他们对英语学习将更加投入和积极。教学资源将鼓励学生透过促进藏语和英语的非等级化使用，从他们的全部语料库中取得滋养。

我们的课程中融入了许多活动。这些活动旨在向学生介绍西藏丰富的文化遗产和壮美的风光。这些活动包括学习该地区独特的动植物种类，探讨著名寺庙的历史意义，研究西藏的艺术和建筑。这些活动有助于提高学生对英语学习的投入，并在英语和他们的母语–藏语之间建立联系。

学生们将共同完成一些项目，例如制作一本小册子或一部简短的纪录片，介绍他们家乡、社区或整个青藏高原的历史、文化或自然风光。学生将被鼓励利用他们的语言能力（藏语、普通话、英语）来制作高质量的作品。这种集体努力旨在鼓励学生为自己的文化遗产和英语水平感到自豪，并在此过程中相互学习和教导。

“我眼中的西藏”是一项评估任务，根据学生制作多媒体演示文稿的能力来评分。这些演示文稿将展示西藏的某些方面的辉煌（如其文化、历史或自然风光），作为最终项目的一部分。我们鼓励学生充分利用他们的语言资源（藏语、普通话、英语），以提供一个有趣的、信息丰富的演讲。学生可以通过在抖音等社交媒体网站上发布他们的演讲，接受来自同伴和网络社区的反馈和建议。

我们期望通过这个计划，能帮助藏族学生提升他们的英语水平，同时增强他们对自己文化遗产的自豪感和对西藏壮丽风景的热爱。我们相信，当学习材料引人入胜且强调团队合作时，积极的学习环境和对提高英语技能的真诚愿望自然就会萌发出来。

成功经验

钱祺的实践成果显示，通过持续练习和表达，学生对自己的英语交流能力有了更大的信心和自豪感。他们的口语流利程度显著提高，这进一步证实了自信心与语言技能之间的正相关。

在超语实践理论的指导下，钱祺对西藏英语教育的改良，帮助藏族学生接受并认同了自己的多语言性。我们认识到，在当前中国的政治体制下，建立一个完全包容和民主的课程，尊重且赞美西藏文化和语言，可能面临很大的挑战。然而，尽管政府有严格的审查和监督，但我们依然可以通过一些实际的方法，帮助使用少数民族语言的学生不仅克服语言学习的障碍，还可以肯定和提升他们的文化和语言身份。这个过程在很大程度上依赖于教师的专业能力，以及他们对回应性教学法的热诚和代理权。

我们相信，在各种各样的教学环境中，语言和写作教师都可以根据他们的需要，调整并实施这种课程改革的方法。

关于作者

余星星是墨尔本大学墨尔本教育研究生院TESOL专业的硕士。她在中国国有企业的工作经历和她在中国西部偏远地区的家庭历史，激发了她对中国教育不平等问题的研究兴趣，包括性别和民族差异，以及城乡差距。

Nashid Nigar是墨尔本大学教育研究生院的讲师，教授TESOL硕士和教育硕士课程。她正处于完成莫纳什大学教育学院博士学位的最后阶段。她的研究兴趣包括使用跨学科的理论视角和解释学现象学的叙事方式，研究澳大利亚移民教师的专业身份。

钱祺在墨尔本教育研究生院完成了他的教育硕士学位。他曾在四川省甘孜藏族自治州的甘孜民族中学担任志愿教师。他现在在另一所初中教英语。

Tibetan Buddhist stupa and houses outside the town of Ngawa, on the Tibetan Plateau (Image credit: Wikipedia)

Editor’s note: “Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.” (Article 14, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples).

Despite international rights and protections such as these, indigenous people continue to experience educational disadvantage. This article examines how this disadvantage can be mitigated through translanguaging.

点击此处获取中文版本。

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Xingxing Yu, Nashid Nigar, Qi Qian

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Cognizant of the educational disadvantage of linguistic minorities, we, three non-indigenous educators, worked together internationally to experiment with and propose some novel ways to incorporate Tibetan language and culture into the English language curriculum for Tibetan students in order to overcome the obstacle of “inadequate resources and low prioritization of education for indigenous peoples.” This is important for textbooks, materials, and pedagogy that focus on the dominant language but leave out or downplay indigenous languages, cultures, and knowledge systems.

Qian, a master’s student at the University of Melbourne in 2021, spent the summer of that year teaching English in Garzê County, Sichuan Province. According to the People’s Government of Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (2021), although not physically located in Tibet, the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Region has a Tibetan population of over 80%. All of the students at the school where Qian taught were Tibetan.

Trilingual education

Qian noticed that students pay more attention in class when they are taught in Tibetan.

These students commonly experience trilingual education. As soon as they enter primary school, they are taught Mandarin Chinese in addition to Tibetan; by the time they reach secondary school, English becomes a further compulsory subject. In this context, Tibetan students are expected to learn not just Tibetan but also two additional languages.

Two major drawbacks of trilingual education for Tibetan students have recently been uncovered by researchers. First, compared to their Han counterparts, Tibetan students tend to be stigmatized as “deficit” language learners due to a lack of educational resources (teachers, for example) in Tibetan areas. Tibetan culture and language, as well as students’ ethnic identities, are devalued by the Han-dominant ideology, which is reflected in both Mandarin-taught English classrooms and English textbooks where Han-culture predominates.

Instead of envisioning a more idealistic and human rights oriented big picture in terms of policy change, which seems impractical in China, we propose coming up with a more pragmatic approach that, on the one hand, is permissible within the realm of current educational policy. On the other hand, it can help Tibetan students learn English more quickly and contribute to their multilingual identities. It also paves the way for teachers to exercise their own agency when it comes to incorporating a multilingual lens into their instruction of English.

A new approach to curriculum

Qian and Xingxing learned about translanguaging while we were both master’s students at the University of Melbourne under Nashid Nigar. We discussed how to incorporate it into the English Language (EL) curriculum for Qian’s Tibetan students.

Translanguaging approaches take a critical stance towards named languages. Translanguaging practices, particularly the creative and critical aspect of them, have transformative potential because they are able to go beyond the socially constructed boundaries of named languages. Translanguaging is a worldview in which the speaker actively embraces and cultivates their plurilingual identity by drawing on all the resources available to them in their linguistic toolkit.

Educators in Tibetan classrooms should, then, make the most of their students’ linguistic resources in order to not only activate students’ language creation (so that they can more effectively learn English) but also to give their students the agency to question the dominance of Han-dominated language and culture.

We have developed a new curriculum for Tibetan students to learn English based on translanguaging theory. The topic is “Discovering the Beauty of Tibet,” and it consists of four classes and an assessment task.

First, in order to make the existing official English textbook more useful for Tibetan students, we adapted it by adding information about Tibetan religion, history, and geography. Stories about important figures in Tibetan history, accounts of ancient festivals, and insights into Tibetan culture have all been incorporated into the adapted materials. Students will be more invested in and motivated by their English studies if the materials they use to study are contextualized in terms of their own cultural experiences. The instructional resources will encourage students to draw from their full linguistic toolkit by facilitating a non-hierarchical use of both Tibetan and English.

Activities designed to introduce students to Tibet’s illustrious cultural heritage and breathtaking landscapes are woven into the course structure. Learning about the unique flora and fauna of the region, discussing the historical significance of famous monasteries, and researching Tibetan art and architecture are all examples of what might fall under this category. Activities like these help students become more engaged in their studies of English and make connections between that language and Tibetan, their first language.

Students will work together on projects such as making a brochure or a short documentary about the history, culture, or natural beauty of their hometowns, neighborhoods, or the Tibetan plateau as a whole. They will be prompted to draw on their abilities as Tibetan and English speakers to produce quality work. This group effort encourages students to take pride in their heritage and their English proficiency, and to teach and learn from one another.

“Tibet through My Eyes” is an assessment task. Students will be graded on their ability to produce a multimedia presentation highlighting some aspect of Tibet’s splendor (its culture, history, or nature, for example) for the final project. Students are urged to make full use of their linguistic resources (Tibetan and English) in order to deliver an interesting and informative presentation. Students can gain exposure for their talks by posting them on social media sites like Douyin (TikTok in China) and thereby receiving comments and suggestions from their peers and the online community.

This program will help Tibetan students improve their English while also fostering a sense of pride in their heritage and a desire to learn more about the stunning landscapes of Tibet. A positive learning environment and an earnest desire to improve one’s English skills will flourish when the emphasis is placed on interesting material and group work.

Successes

Student confidence and pride in their English communication skills increased noticeably after repeated practice in front of the camera. Their oral fluency dramatically increased, supporting the contention that self-confidence is correlated with foreign language profciency.

Qian’s reform of the English language education system in Tibet, which was informed by translanguaging theory, has helped Tibetan English language learners embrace their multilingualism. We believe that under China’s current political system, it is extremely unlikely that a fully inclusive and democratic curriculum that recognizes and celebrates Tibetan culture and language will ever be established. Even so, there is a lot that can be done to help minority speakers, despite the government’s strict censorship and surveillance, not only overcome language learning barriers but also affirm and promote their cultural and linguistic identities. This process relies heavily on teachers’ ability to grow professionally, as well as their own agency and ethical dedication to responsive pedagogy.

Literacy and language educators in a wide variety of settings can adapt this method of curriculum reform to meet their needs.

About the authors

Xingxing Yu holds a Master of TESOL from the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Experience in working in Chinese state-owned enterprises and her family history in remote areas of western China have prompted her to study educational inequities in China, including gender and ethnic disparities, as well as urban-rural imbalances.

Nashid Nigar has taught Master of TESOL and Master of Education programs at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. She is at the final stage of completing her PhD at Monash Education. Adopting a transdisciplinary theoretical lens and hermeneutic phenomenological narrative enquiry, Nashid has investigated immigrant teachers’ professional identity in Australia.

Qi Qian completed his Master of Education at Melbourne Graduate School of Education. He has taught at Garzê Ethnic Middle School in Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. He is now teaching English in another junior high school.

During the NSW school closures in 2020, Amelia Baggerman and Bonnie James undertook a TESOL practicum as part of their Applied Linguistics and TESOL degree at Macquarie University. The practicum is convened by Agnes Bodis. During the practicum, the majority of time is spent in a placement at a language teaching institution. Trainee teachers conduct observations, materials preparation, and supervised teaching practice. The unit design is underpinned by reflective teaching practice and aims to enhance the capacity of taking informed actions in teaching and engaging in the process of continuous learning.

Learn more about the Graduate Certificate of TESOL and the Master of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at Macquarie University by clicking on the links.

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Amelia Baggerman and Bonnie James

The pandemic turned out to be a learning opportunity (Image credit: Tonik, at Unsplash)

COVID lockdowns all over the world have undeniably affected the way we learn and teach. Teacher training courses have adapted various methods to continue their practices and also prepare student teachers for the changed teaching conditions (Bodis, Reed & Kharchenko, 2020; Pinar, Derin & Enisa, 2020).

The two of us had enrolled in the online stream of the Graduate Certificate of TESOL through Macquarie University the year before the COVID pandemic hit and were committed to finishing it in June 2020. However, due to COVID, our practicum at the Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institute was delayed until the second half of the year.

“How else would our practicum be affected?”, we wondered. Could we still use classroom techniques like pair work, and would we learn everything we needed to?

We need not have worried because completing the Graduate Certificate of TESOL during a pandemic turned out to be quite an enriching experience; perhaps even more valuable than what we were expecting.

Virtual classrooms enhanced our learning experience

Prior to COVID, there was something undeniably isolating about catching up on recorded lectures alone at home. For us, it came as a great relief to hear that our remaining classes would be on Zoom during the pandemic.

Zoom transformed the traditional lectures into small interactive sessions with our professors and fellow students which led to more memorable and in-depth learning. The rapport in the classroom was alive and dynamic, unlike in traditional lectures where professors are physically removed from the audience and mostly provide a unilateral dialogue. On Zoom, we could see our professors and fellow students face to face and interact with them in what seemed to be a more natural medium of communication.

The virtual classroom had an impact on how memorable the sessions were. Our lecturers also encouraged us to form study groups on Zoom. From these study groups and the active interactions with our professors grew colleagueship and an ongoing professional network across different cities in Australia. This ongoing support gave us the confidence that we would not continue our professional development alone upon graduation because we would have a whole community behind us for support.

An unusual practicum experience

Our practicum experience was anything but usual. We commenced our practicum near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, during a time of uncertainty and fear in the community, so much so that a single clearing of the throat would turn heads. One of us remembers swallowing water down the wrong hole whilst watching the mentor teacher. I hadn’t known my mentor teacher for very long and I didn’t feel we had built much of a relationship yet, so I simply tightened my muscles to force the cough down and as tears built up in my eyes, I hoped no one would notice but I thought, if they did, at least I wasn’t coughing! Tears were less of a concern than a clearing of the throat!

During the pandemic, we not only learned to practice teaching, we learned how to handle a pandemic in a learning environment for adults. Upon entry and exit of the classroom, everyone had to sanitise their hands. We had to ask everyone if they were well and if anyone showed any possible cold and flu symptom and at times advise them to get a COVID-19 test.

How do you square pair work and social distancing?

While we were both eager to try out different pair/group work activities that we had learnt about, facilitating said pair/group work turned out to be quite the challenge as social distancing had to be strictly enforced. This meant that the desks were arranged in rows with a minimum of 1.5 square metres between them. Students were allowed to swivel their chairs around to face their partner/s but were supposed to keep to their own desks. This forced us to think creatively, and I (Amelia) was relieved to discover that board games were still an option, even if it meant printing out several A3 copies so that everyone could see. Quizlet and Kahoot games were also an excellent option, as they allowed the students to engage with the material, and each other, without moving at all.

Experiencing the holistic role of teachers

During a time of political ambiguity many decisions had to be made including whether to keep adult institutions such as TAFE open or closed and for how long. It was our head teachers who stepped in to make these important, swift and unprecedented decisions in the best interests of their staff and students; something from which we have learned and will forever admire.

We were reminded of our holistic role as teachers and the significance of this. We were not there to simply teach English. We were there to assist our students in various ways to cope in English-speaking communities, jobs and then, a pandemic. We had a responsibility to ensure that our students understand their responsibilities in response to COVID-19 and the daily updates regarding the pandemic. Some students thought the situation was worse than it was, whereas others were convinced it was less serious than it was. The challenges lay in assessing the readability of the information at hand and then adapting it so that it could be understood by our students without missing important details.

Teaching is a calling

Face-to-Face teaching has returned to many universities and colleges now in Australia. The technical and pedagogical skills we and our lecturers have acquired are staying with us.

Studying and completing our teaching practicum during the pandemic certainly brought about many challenges, but it also made for a particularly enriching and memorable learning experience. Had it not been for Zoom classes, the two of us would not even have met, much less formed the friendship we have today. We discovered that, despite widespread fear in the community and amidst hand sanitisers and socially distanced desks, meaningful learning can very much still take place.

Most importantly, however, we discovered firsthand that the influence of a teacher extends far beyond the four walls of the classroom and into the community at large. This brings with it great responsibility, and great privilege.

References

Bodis, A., Reed, M., & Kharchenko, Y. (2020). Microteaching in isolation: fostering autonomy and learner engagement through VoiceThread. International Journal of TESOL Studies, 2(3), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.46451/ijts.2020.09.14
Ersin, P., Derin, A., & Enisa M. (2020). Boosting preservice teachers’ competence and online teaching readiness through e-practicum during the COVID-19 outbreak. International Journal of TESOL Studies, 2(2), 112-124. https://doi.org/10.46451/ijts.2020.09.09
Piller, I. (2020). Does every Australian have an equal chance to know about COVID-19 restrictions? Language on the move (01 September 2020): https://languageonthemove.com/does-every-australian-have-an-equal-chance-to-know-about-covid-19-restrictions/
Zhou, N. (2020). Australian Universities Plan to ramp up in-person learning in early 2021, The Guardian Australia (20 January 2021) https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jan/20/australian-universities-plan-to-ramp-up-in-person-learning-in-early-2021

Bioblurbs

Amelia Baggerman has always been passionate about travelling, foreign languages and cultures; interests which dovetailed nicely into an ESOL teaching career. After some volunteer teaching in Indonesia and some private tutoring in both Germany and Colombia, she was convinced that teaching foreigners to speak English was the perfect career for her. She completed her CELTA in 2016 and then spent the next few years teaching in private ELICOS centres, before deciding that it was really something she wanted to pursue. This led her to completing a Graduate Certificate of TESOL through Macquarie University in 2020 and now she has very happily settled into her new role teaching at TAFE in Sydney. She looks forward to seeing her students every day and considers it an honour to be entrusted with their education.

Bonnie James commenced her journey in teaching by being a volunteer language tutor whilst studying law at the University of Newcastle. After graduating and working in the legal field with a combined degree in Laws (Honours) / Diploma of Legal Practice and a Bachelor of Arts, she realised that law probably wasn’t the career for her. Once again, she set out to volunteer but this time she volunteered at her local TAFE in the English language department where she found inspirational mentors. This led to Bonnie achieving a 120 hour TESOL Certificate which allowed her to become an online English Foreign Language teacher for primary school students predominantly based in China. To expand her professional opportunities, she completed the Graduate Certificate of TESOL through Macquarie University this year and commenced teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). Bonnie is thankful for all of the wonderful mentors she had including the teachers at TAFE and professors at Macquarie University who made her dream to become an ESOL teacher possible.  linkedin.com/in/bonnie-james-3a31a41a5

We prepared and distributed numerous learning packs

Editor’s note: The language challenges of the COVID-19 crisis have held much of our attention this year. Here on Language on the Move, we have been running a series devoted to language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis since February, and readers will also have seen the special issue of Multilingua devoted to “Linguistic Diversity in a Time of Crisis”.

Additionally, multilingual crisis communication has been the focus of the research projects conducted by Master of Applied Linguistics students at Macquarie University as part of their “Literacies” unit. We close the year by sharing some of their findings.

Here, Nusrat Parveen reflects on the challenges of home learning from her experience as a teacher in a highly linguistically diverse primary school in a Sydney suburb with relatively low socio-economic status.

***

We set up remote learning stations

When COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency in Australia in March 2020, schools shifted to implementing home-based learning. For a period of 10 weeks, students in NSW were “home-schooled.” This post explores the language and communication challenges remote teaching posed in my school, where 98% of students come from a language background other than English and where over half of students come from homes that find themselves in the lowest socio-economic status bracket, according to government data.

Scrambling to shift to remote learning

Shifting to remote learning constituted a huge challenge for schools.

On March 23, 2020, the NSW Department of Education declared remote learning for all students, except for the children of essential workers who could continue to attend school physically. The Department outlined the action plan for learning from home: schooling was to go digital with a combination of online and offline tasks.

Teachers went into overdrive to create learning from home activities, collate resources, and deliver home learning resource packs to students.

The challenges of communicating with all stakeholders

But creating activities and resource packs turned out to be the least of it. Communicating what was going on to all stakeholders turned out to be an even greater challenge.

We created remote learning grids

Department guidelines needed to be communicated to staff, parents, and students. This was not a one-off task as there were frequent changes, and everyone needed to be kept in the loop. Some of these communications needed to occur not only in English but also needed to be translated or interpreted for parents from non-English-speaking backgrounds.

School strategies to support remote learning

The following are some of the strategies that our school adopted to support remote learning:

• Loaning devices and providing internet access to households
• Providing IT support for students and parents
• Translating documents and interpreting communications as needed. This was done through community language teachers and community liaison officers.
• Setting up ‘Learning Stations’ in the school hall to deliver home learning resources and supporting parents to understand the resources and what was required of them in person but while adhering to social distancing safety protocols.
• Making regular phone calls to students and parents to follow up on learning and well-being
• Up-skilling teachers in the use of various online resources and platforms
• Using automated translation software to translate tasks for newly-arrived students with limited English
• Offering alternative offline resources for students with no internet options

We created special materials for new arrival students

As these examples show, remote learning created a large variety of communication challenges that needed to be met in a short time frame and with little preparation.

Maintaining regular communication with new arrival families

Generally, newly-arrived students receive extensive support with their English language learning and to ensure their well-being (see also Tazin Abdullah’s exploration of the language learning and support needs of ELICOS students during the pandemic).

Maintaining that level of support over the internet and through phone calls while also attending to all the communications mentioned above was almost impossible.

We created bilingual notices for parents

In this situation, where everyone was stretched to their limits, the tiered intervention support for new-arrival students took a backseat and more or less fell apart during the period of remote learning.

Eventually, the communication and support gap with new-arrival students that had emerged during the lockdown period had to be restored when NSW schools resumed face-to-face learning in May.

Lessons from the remote learning period

Parent feedback showed a lot of appreciation for the school’s efforts. However, it also showed that many tasks were considered too difficult for students and parents to understand. As 98% of our students come from a language-other-than-English background this may not be surprising.

Beyond the linguistic difficulties, the digital divide was very real in our community, which is at the lower end of socio-economic status in Sydney. Not having access to the required devices or to an internet connection was a problem for many families.

Now that the NSW school closure is in the past, heeding the lessons from this effort is vital for future disaster preparedness:

• We need a multilingual communication strategy that does not leave out anyone irrespective of whether they speak English (well) or not.
• We need to urgently bridge the digital divide so that everyone can access online communication if need be.

In short, policies and strategies need to pay attention to vulnerable students and families, including those who have limited English and/or are affected by poverty. This is not only vital during times of crisis but should be standard practice to ensure social cohesion and equitable access for all.

First up is Tazin Abdullah’s inquiry into COVID-19 information aimed at international students in intensive English courses in Australia. Access to timely high-quality information is key during any crisis and it is widely acknowledged that English language learners in Australia have often been left out of timely high-quality information. But is there such a thing as too much information and does quantity compromise quality?

***

(Image credit: Kristina Tripkovic via Unsplash)

“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant,” says Mitchell Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corporation. He may have, originally, addressed this to fellow IT professionals but that image of information gushing out strikes a chord with many. It rings especially true in the context of COVID-19, where the transmission of information has been the modus operandi for almost every institution. Today, none of us can envisage functioning without a steady flow of information but in some situations, does it drown in itself?

ELICOS students in Australia

Take, for example, the case of ELICOS (English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students) students. ELICOS courses are offered by Australian universities to enable international students to fulfill English language requirements for university entry. The students have stringent visa conditions regarding attendance and academic progress. They must pass their courses, as failure to pass means they have to repeat that same ELICOS course, while their university entry is delayed.

Formal requirements are only part of the story

While all these formal requirements are outlined in black and white, the everyday challenges facing ELICOS students may not be so apparent. These students face the same challenges that have been identified for international students and language learners in other contexts (Piller, 2016; Barakos & Plöger, 2020; Li, Xie, Ai, & Li, 2020).

During their time in Australia, they are engaged in the process of getting their head around a new language. At the same time, they must read and write academically in that new language and sit examinations that test their language skills in relation to specific subject matters, e.g., accounting or current affairs.

The challenges of being a newcomer

Now, add one more layer to this complexity. They are in a new country, interacting with previously unknown systems, and in unfamiliar socio-cultural contexts. Consequently, ELICOS students must decipher all sorts of important and relevant non-academic information. In a new country, they must find out who to call in an emergency or how to go to a doctor. To do these things effectively, they must not only be able to read information but also to locate it.

Teaching institutes are legally required to provide information

This necessitates legislative frameworks such as the Australian ESOS (Education Services for Overseas Students) Act, under which ELICOS institutions carry the responsibility of making adequate support and welfare information available to students. Students must know where to find emergency, medical, mental health, accommodation, health insurance services, and more. The aim is to ensure that they have access to all kinds of information relating to living and operating in a new country. Given the linguistic difficulties that ELICOS students face, the effective communication of all of this requires great effort, even without COVID-19.

With the onset of the pandemic, this communication challenge took on a whole new dimension.

Providing orientation information online

As institutions moved online, the provision of support information also relied entirely on online mechanisms (Behan, 2020). One of the changes that has taken place is that orientation programmes have become virtual. They take place via the Zoom format of presenters speaking and sharing slides with links, contact details and videos. Students are being sent emails, also full of links and contact details for support services. At the same time, students are receiving voluminous emails regarding academic matters.

To observe the impact of these changes, it is useful to examine online orientations in contrast to pre-COVID-19 face-to-face orientations. Orientations always involve the provision of multiple links and contact details but the face-to-face format allows presenters to address the specific linguistic needs of ELICOS students.

For example, prior to providing contact details for mental health support, there would be an explanation of what mental health is. This will usually involve interactive games or activities that arouse the interest and hold the attention of students. Once an ELICOS student understands what mental health is and can contextualise the language around the subject, contact details for mental health support will mean more than just letters and numbers on a slide.

Face-to-face orientations are also structured to provide a large amount of information at a pace suitable to ELICOS students. In contrast, online orientations are compressed into shorter time frames. This includes all the usual support information plus specific direction regarding COVID-19, but minus the interactive activities that help a student contextualise and understand that information.

Drowning in emails

Then, there are emails. The volume of pandemic-time emails has inundated inboxes, with students feeling like they are drowning in a sea of information. In a survey I conducted at the Macquarie University English Language Centre (see also Abdullah, 2020), students lamented that they find it difficult to look at inboxes and distinguish where each email has come from.

When they open emails, they are confused by the number of email addresses and the variety of links to go to for information. Consequently, students skim to find what they regard as essential, e.g., the how to enrol or pay fees and they overlook information about support services.

Drawing attention to support services

So, how can support and welfare information attract the attention of ELICOS students? Student attention is already scattered over several online platforms and digital multi-tasking can reduce effective reception of information (May & Elder, 2018). As students are digitally multi-tasking at unprecedented levels, students themselves suggested being innovative with online communication tools.

For instance, GIFs and memes can be used to promote support services or provide contact details. Another idea is to use short animated videos that demand less time from viewers and also deal with each aspect of welfare at a time. These videos can be played at different times throughout the length of ELICOS courses, so students can be reminded gently of the support available.

Listen to the target community

This input from students that was provided in the survey is a meaningful reminder of the valuable contribution the target community itself can make (Carlo, 2020). Not only can they assist by highlighting their specific literacy needs but the ‘grassroots’ knowledge they possess will inform the design of communication that is most effective for them (Piller, Jia & Zhang, 2020).

Developing a base of community volunteers (Piller, 2020) who can assist in producing context-appropriate and relevant GIFs, memes or videos will help to develop communication tools and methods that are community-centred and thus, more inclusive.

Centering ELICOS students

It is important for ELICOS students to be seen as a community of their own within the larger international student cohort. They have unique needs when it comes to assistance with navigating any kind of information. Now, more than ever, support and welfare information is pertinent, as they endeavour for success in their university education during the international crisis we are facing.

It is imperative that institutions ensure that the message of support reaches, not overwhelms, ELICOS students.

References

Abdullah, T. (2020, September 18). How can we support you better? Looking after ELICOS students in uncertain times [Presentation Slides]. 2020 English Australia Conference. Australia. https://www.englishaustralia.com.au/documents/item/1072
Barakos, Elisabeth, & Plöger, Simone. (2020, May 25). Recent-arrival migrant students during the Covid-19 school closures. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/recent-arrival-migrant-students-during-the-covid-19-school-closures/
Behan, T. (2020, September 8). Bringing Back Our International Students: The Future of International Education across Australia and New Zealand [Zoom Webinar]. Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre. https://monash.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wvxIR2YFTB-no6I9b7Wf5A?fbclid=IwAR3wHidfa7D9zCSOit3HF2XPzoiCTc95G7ju3fZ-SoagFdcPxsB8J5H_NZM
Carlo, P. D. (2020, August 6). Message- vs. community-centered models in risk communication. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/message-vs-community-centered-models-in-risk-communication/
Li, J., Xie, P., Ai, B., & Li, L. (2020, August 17). Multilingual communication experiences of international students during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Multilingua, 39(5), 529-539, doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2020-0116
May, K. E. & Elder, A. D. (2018). Efficient, helpful, or distracting? A literature review of media multitasking in relation to academic performance. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. 15 (1) 1-17.doi: 10.1186/s41239-018-0096-z
Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic diversity and social justice. Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937240.001.0001
Piller, I. (2020, October 12). Crisis communication in multilingual Australia. https://languageonthemove.com/crisis-communication-in-multilingual-australia/
Piller, I. Jia, L. & Zhang, J. (2020, August 28) Linguistic diversity in a time of crisis: Language challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Multilingua 39(5): 503–515. DOI: https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/mult/39/5/article-p503.xml

Carla Chamberlin, Ingrid Piller, and Mak Khan in conversation

TESOL and social justice

One of the thrusts of my research has been a critical examination of the social consequences of the global spread of English.

In my book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice, for example, I argue that “Englishization” engenders an external orientation to development. Knowledge produced and disseminated through the medium of English comes to be regarded more highly than knowledge produced and disseminated through the medium of other languages. On the individual level, the hegemony of global English carries psychological costs and may contribute to linguistic marginalization and feelings of inferiority.

This argument is based on a number of empirical studies conducted by our team mostly in Asia and the Middle East. The focus has been on the consequences of the spread of English on societal structures, institutions, and individuals in those context.

One aspect of our critique has been to highlight the detrimental effects of an ideology that privileges native speakers of English as preferred knowers and teachers of the language. What I have not considered much is how native speaker TESOL teachers from Anglophone center countries position themselves vis-à-vis this kind of critique. But my work is often read in TESOL teacher training programs: how does the kind of critique outlined above affect aspiring TESOL teachers who identify as native speakers from Anglophone center countries?

Or, to put it bit pointedly: Can US native speakers of English teach English ethically?

Conversation with colleagues from the Pennsylvania TESOL organization

This question was put to me in a conversation I recently had with Professors Dr Carla Chamberlin, PennState Abington, and Dr Mak Khan, Community College of Philadelphia. Carla and Mak had asked to chat with me about questions related to linguistic diversity and social justice in preparation for the Pennsylvania TESOL convention on Nov 21, 2020. We’ve recorded our conversation and you can listen to it here:

Other issues we discuss in our hour-long conversation include the following: How can migrant parents foster their children’s biliteracy? What are the language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic? Do multilingualism researchers have a monolingual English-centric blind spot? How do the research paradigms of World Englishes and multilingualism connect?

The conversation was also a lovely opportunity to reconnect with Mak, who used to be a regular contributor to Language on the Move writing about English and multilingual literacies in Pakistan.

So, can native speakers teach English ethically?

There is obviously no easy answer to that question. It’s the same dilemma that confronts every teacher with a privileged identity: how can male teachers teach ethically within institutional frameworks that maintain sexism? How can white teachers teach ethically within institutional frameworks that maintain racism?

My preliminary response is this: There can be no doubt that students need role models who share their backgrounds: English language learners need teachers who themselves learned English “the hard way”; girls need female teachers to look up to; and students of color need successful teachers, principals and leaders who look like them. But to inspire students you do not have to have the same identity as your students – in our diverse world that is not only impossible but counterproductive.

To teach ethically from a privileged identity you need to see yourself in your students: you need to believe in the potential of your students to replace you.

Chats in Linguistic Diversity

Did you enjoy this conversation? It is the second in a series of Chats in Linguistic Diversity. In the past some of you may have enjoyed our Lectures in Linguistic Diversity at Macquarie University. Due to Covid-19, we’ve obviously had to put this lecture series on hold. We hope that our occasional podcast Chats in Linguistic Diversity will make up for these for the time being. Feel free to contact us with topic suggestions.

Previous chat in Linguistic Diversity:

• Ingrid Piller in conversation with Dr Piers Kelly about Australian Aboriginal message sticks.

Transcript (created by Brynn Quick; added on 15/03/2024)

Dr Chamberlin: Hello, I’m Carla Chamberlin, Professor of Applied Linguistics in Communication Arts and Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University Abington College near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I’m joined by Mak Khan, Director of the Center for International Understanding and Assistant Professor of ESL at the community college of Philadelphia.

Mak and I are here today to talk to Ingrid Piller, Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney. Dr Piller is the author of the award-winning and best-selling books Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice and Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction. She is the editor-in-chief of the international journal Multilingua, editor off the blog Language on the Move, and author of numerous publications about multilingualism and social justice.

Mak and I each came to know Ingrid’s work in different ways. In my own work in intercultural communication and TESOL and social linguistics, I was drawn to Ingrid’s voice that forces us to question how language and culture have been defined historically to reinforce linguistic hierarchies and social structures that benefit the privileged few. We have watched such inequalities play out with destructive results in the US. In Philadelphia, where Black Lives Matter protests and voting procedures are being challenged, and where the current pandemic disproportionately affects minorities, the job of language educators goes beyond teaching about grammar. Ingrid’s work reminds us how language and culture and attitudes toward language and culture create and maintain inequalities that profoundly shape our lives.

Dr Khan: It was December 2009 when I went to the American University of Sharjah and Zayed University. They were hosting a conference on fostering multiliteracies through education. I was a naïve doctoral student, presenting my work. After the conference was over, I saw an email. Somebody was seeking my permission to publish my work on Language on the Move. I saw that it was Professor Ingrid Piller. My doctoral supervisor had talked to me about Dr Piller’s work, so first I did not believe that it was from Professor Piller, asking me to publish my work. So, I asked my colleague. I said, “Hey, can you see that this is from Professor Ingrid Piller?”. He said yes. So, this is how we became friends.

Since then, I saw Dr Piller as a mentor throughout my PhD and after my Phd. Visiting Language on the Move regularly gave me a very different view of linguistics, which is not very traditional, I would say. My doctoral work on signage and linguistic ethnography heavily drew on her. Throughout my PhD and after my PhD, she has been the shaping person on my scholarship, on my personality. And I’m so thrilled and honoured that I’m here in her presence today and interviewing her. I’m super, super excited and would like to thank Carla for including me in this one. Thank you.

Dist Prof Piller: Thank you very much, Mak, for having me, and I just have to say I remember that conference in Sharjah very fondly. It was a really international conference in an Arabic-speaking context, and at the same time in an English-speaking context. So very diverse. We were actually handing out awards for the best paper of the day, and Khan had actually disappeared by the time we had gotten around to announcing that his was the best paper of the day.

Dr Chamberlin: Well, we have a lot of questions for you, but obviously we won’t be able to get to everything. I use both of your books in my classes, and as soon as I found them, I just thought, “Yes, yes, this is it. This is what I want my students to be reading.” Before that, I was just cobbling together all these different chapters and articles from Applied Linguistics and other sources that take a critical look at language and teaching and culture. But here, I feel like, “Yes, you’ve brought all of this together.” So I’m really, really grateful for that. And I also think that what you do – obviously your scholarly work is amazing – but I also feel that there is passion there. There’s a mission there. And I wonder what defining moments in your life led you to that. I mean, you’re multilingual. I read about your experiences, but was there anything in particular that really motivated you to pursue social justice?

Dist Prof Piller: I think we all make our lives and careers and paths and journeys. I was educated in a rural area of southern Bavaria, an area where grammar schools didn’t exist. High schools didn’t exist until about my generation. I’m the first from my village to graduate from high school. So, of course, my upbringing has shaped me. I received my higher education in Germany. I studied to become a teacher, specifically a language teacher. The languages that I focused on were English, German and Spanish. From there, I went on various exchanges to the UK. My first postdoc position was actually in the US at Becker College as a visiting professor in the English department there. From then, my career has taken me to various other places including the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland and now Australia.

Dr Chamberlin: I have students who are getting a minor in TESOL with the hopes to go abroad, having the chance to teach. For many, this is a kind of once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to do this. But they are also, and I’m glad they’re questioning this, they’re questioning the moral aspects of it. Some of them feel conflicted about wanting to go abroad and teach English and get experience, and I mean that’s what I did many years ago. It changed my life. It changed my world, but at the same time I think back and think, “Oh my gosh, I was part of this whole system of Englishization of Korea”, where I was working. My students are now asking me how they do this, how they reconcile this. And I told them I would ask you (laughs).

Dist Prof Piller: Look, I mean, it’s a difficult question really. I’ve been thinking about this question. I think it’s the same answer, actually, that we give to anyone who works in an unjust system. We live in an imperfect world, and “imperfect” is probably a euphemism, and we live in very difficult structures. But that doesn’t mean that we should not act at all. I mean, it’s the same question we could ask any white person. Should we go and teach or should we just shut up? Of course we should, but at the same time I think you can’t give up being a teacher because you have a particular identity, and the same goes for if men should teach women. That’s all positions of privilege. I carry these moral questions, I think.

Coming back to the specific question of should Americans or native speakers of English, should they become teachers of English? Look, I still don’t see why not as long, and I think that’s the caveat, as long as they also pay attention to the kinds of structures we’ve been talking about, and as long as they teach under the assumption that they are teaching the next generation of teachers. Because I think one problem that can make the privileged teaching the disadvantaged so difficult is that it’s very often under the assumption that the privileged identity is forever the teacher identity. And non-native speakers or people of colour or women will never be as good, and that kind of assumption is pernicious.

So, I think we need to teach so that our students will replace ourselves. That they will be the next generation. And that, to me, is not only an ethical linguistic question, but that it’s a question that any teacher needs to ask themselves all the time really. How is my teaching beneficial to my students, and how does it contribute to questions of social justice? How does is reinforce existing structures, and how can I help to be part of the solution as opposed to being part of the problem?

Dr Chamberlin: Yeah, exactly.

Dr Khan: So, Ingrid, I have a question about the loss of multiliteracy in my family. We moved to the United States in 2013. My wife, I and four kids. When we moved, 3 of our 4 kids were bilingual and biliterate with English and Urdu. The youngest one was 3 years old, so he wasn’t bilingual. He was only monolingual. Ingrid, in these 7 years, I have seen in my family my monolingual ones, although they can speak Urdu and do speak Urdu, they have totally forgotten Urdu script. They cannot read, nor they can write. So, my wife and I, we make a conscious effort. My little boy, he says, “When you love your Urdu language so much, why have you brought us to United States?”. He asks this question to us because, for him, United States means English only. And this question is not of that child. I come across this question from so many people around. From political debates and all these. So, my question is – in such a case as I am in, what agency do I have as a father, as a family member, to help my kids retain their language heritage?

Dist Prof Piller: Yeah, that’s a difficult question, and I think one that many, many migrant parents struggle with. I think there are two aspects I’d like to speak to. One is the literacy question, and that’s sort of the very difficult pattern, of course, in migrant families, that you actually have the second generation as bilingual. They can speak the language, but they don’t have literacy skills and don’t know how to read and write the other language. It’s great that they can speak in the family, but at the same time it really cuts them off from the cultural heritage of the language and the literature and also the academic and cognitive development that actually comes through literacy in any language. So, of course, literacy is extremely important but at the same time the hardest to maintain.

And of course, it’s not surprising that it’s hard to maintain because in any context it’s the school’s job. The parents’ job is oracy and oral skills, and that happens in the family and we have outsourced literacy teaching to schools pretty much universally. So, in order to be able to maintain literacy in the language that is not the school language, I think you have to invest a phenomenal amount of time and resources and that’s just usually not a feasible proposition for most people. It really only works if you actually have community schools or if you had the support of the school, and that’s why I actually think to have language learning and bilingualism in the school system is so important.

One thing that we all need to be lobbying for in these monolingual countries or these countries with monolingual ideologies as the United States but also Australia, is actually languages in the school system. I think that’s something that actually speaks to the non-migrant population because often bilingualism is a migrant problem and a community problem, “don’t speak it in public and leave us alone”. In order for languages to be valued, everyone needs to see something in them, and coming from a context where in continental Europe you can’t actually become an educated person if you don’t learn another language. At the bare minimum, you have to learn English. That’s part of education. The European ideal, for instance, is that every citizen will learn two foreign languages – so, the national language, English, and the language of a neighbouring country. In many parts of the world, bilingual education has always been a reality and is not unusual at all. To me, it’s like learning math or learning language arts. Learning opens your mind in ways that you just can’t understand if you haven’t had that experience of language learning. It’s not only a social justice issue, but it’s really for everyone. We should lobby for everyone that language learning does something to you, that gives you an insight into another culture and into another world. You can read more things. No one debates, “Should we really learn math? Should children learn math? It takes so much time”. They just consider it natural. Languages are the same, really. They should be a normal, expected part of becoming an educated person.

Dr Chamberlin: Yeah, interestingly I asked my students in an Introduction to Social Linguistics class, now on my campus we’re 57% minority, I don’t know the exact number of multilingual students because we can’t collect all of that information. But quite a few. Typically, in a class, I have 3 monolingual English students, and the rest are multilingual. So, I ask them, “Are we a monolingual or multilingual nation?”. And they, you know, these are young people, and they say, “We’re multilingual!”. I was taken aback the first time. But then I have them go out and look, make observations, and then kind of come back to me and say, “How are we monolingual?” or “How are we multilingual?”. And of course, you know, they realise then that we are multilingual in the private sphere. It’s ok to talk to your family, to use multiple languages with your friends, but then you get into the public sphere and it’s English. So, I did kind of look at that, but I was surprised the firs time when they all came back and said we’re multilingual. We are statistically, but it’s still a monolingual mindset.

Dist Prof Piller: Yeah, it’s really institutions that reinforce this idea. I mean, we have to operate institutionally in a monolingual world, and that’s what makes it so difficult, and really also creates this disconnect between the lived experience of many people. But I also agree, I mean it’s sort of beautiful to see actually that there is a younger generation who is much more attuned to different languages and now also parents who maintain languages. One thing that I see a lot is actually when there is this resistance in young children in particular. So, primary school is the time when they say things like, “So why did you bring us to this country? We’re in the US now, so let’s speak English.” It’s really also the mental stage where they want to fit in and they really buy in to wanting to fit in. As parents, I think, you have to work a bit to kind of get them through these couple of years, because by the time they are teenagers, having another language is actually a source of distinction. That’s when they enjoy their languages again. I think if you can support your child, they will thank you for it.

Dr Khan: Absolutely correct, Ingrid. My boys, who are in universities, one is in Swarthmore, the other is in Denison, both of them are now so much in love with Urdu. They are at that stage. You are 100% correct, but the little one, you know, he is still reacting, “If you love Urdu so much, why didn’t you stay back?”. You’re so right.

Dr Chamberlin: I’ve experienced that with my daughter. I didn’t think she was going to be speaking French, but I spoke French to her from the day she was born, just trying to, you know, see what would happen. And she just resisted it. She got to the point, we would read a lot of children’s books, and she could read them, but then at a certain point she didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Like you said, elementary school. And now she’s studying French.

Dr Khan: How nice.

Dr Chamberlin: Yeah, so it did come back. I’ll move on to another topic, and that is language and the pandemic. In your recent special issue in Multilingua, you had said that you received, I think, hundreds of proposals, and you decided to focus on China. And you also recently had, I think it was a symposium, this past weekend, and I just wondered – since even just the publication, things are changing so quickly with this pandemic. What have you seen change in terms of language issues and public health? If you could do another special issue part two, where do you think you would go with it?

Dist Prof Piller: Right, look, when we sent out the call for papers in March, we received, as you said, over 200 abstracts from around the globe. So, really a lot of interest. We decided on China then to make our selection path easier because we felt like Chine was 2-3 months ahead in the pandemic. They were, at that point, winning the fight against the pandemic. It sort of seemed like, to us, there maybe was a course through it, and other nations would go through a phase of outburst but then get it under control in the same way China had done. Of course, that has now been proven completely wrong.

At the same time, you know, I think it’s a really important study to just see what a very different country has done. It’s a very different setup. One that we all think of as a very highly linguistically diverse nation because China, in fact, is incredibly linguistically diverse. There was the standard language and the various varieties of Chinese that are often called dialects, but that in reality are not necessarily mutually intelligible. So, they really constitute different language when it comes to everyday interaction and communication. And then there are 55 counted minorities, so different languages in the country. We’ve heard a lot about Mongolian recently, which is one of the larger minority languages, but China is very linguistically diverse with many different languages. China is increasingly becoming a migrant destination for international students in particular, particularly from places like southeast Asia and Africa, the developing world in particular. So, an aspect of migration that, I think, in the West, is not being recognised at all. We have a very linguistically diverse situation and some interesting challenges when it comes to how they communicate timely, high-quality information as is necessary in a pandemic or in any crisis. How do you do that?

And how would I do it differently, or what would the sequel be? Two aspects that I would want to do, I mean I think there are a zillion others, but one thing is actually to look at situations in the global south where, again, we have highly linguistically diverse situations with indigenous minorities, in particular, being particularly disadvantaged and at exceedingly high risk of the pandemic. To help my students in the Master’s course I’m teaching into Literacies – they did research projects this semester. I just want to share some of their research findings.

For instance, one of my students, Kinza Abbasi, she actually did one that may be particularly of interest to you – a study of how information about Covid-19 was communicated in Khyber Pashtun province in Pakistan. It is a highly linguistically diverse province. I think there are 18 different languages spoken there. Most of the population actually is not literate in those languages, so they if they had an education, they will be literate in Urdu and maybe English. All the public information, all the campaigns that she looked at were published predominantly in English and a bit in Urdu but nothing in any of the other languages, and some of the information was really completely nonsensical. She showed us posters where there was a sheep and the sheep was crossed out, and it said something like “Don’t go near animals”. But actually, sheep herding is like, one of the key livelihoods, so it’s absurd information. And, of course, communicated through the wrong channels because posters are not actually something that works particularly well.

Another student, Alexandra Hermosa from Peru, also had similar findings. She looked at posters that were actually translated into the indigenous languages of the Andes, various languages. And she noted the Quechuan posters in particular. One thing that she found was that, again, it’s not the ideal communication channel to actually provide posters. Also, the communication strategy relied heavily on the internet in a context where there actually isn’t widespread mobile coverage, and again she found information like, “Wash your hands all the time” and “Don’t forget to turn the tap off after you’ve washed your hands”. That’s one of the things it said in Quechuan, except these villages don’t have running water. So, in the information that is – there is so much wrong. And it’s again, I think, a Western mass communication model that’s being applied there. You work through posters, you work through national languages. You have one set of communication, one set of information, whether that is culturally relevant or not.

Another of my students, Yudha Hidayat from Indonesia, he actually suggested one of the key information channels that people in Lombok Province trust is mosques, and there is an established communication channel, like how you share information across villages – through loudspeakers on the mosques. And that one wasn’t used. So, indigenous communication channels on the ground are neglected in favour of, you know, those kind of information channels that don’t actually get the information to the people.

Dr Chamberlin: Yeah.

Dr Khan: Very fascinating findings. It’s like getting a model from somewhere else and applying somewhere else without regard to anything. Wow.

Dr Chamberlin: Yeah, modalities are so important. They shape the communication, but as you were talking about it, I was just going to say – what is the best way to reach different populations? Certainly, the internet is not even going to reach me, I’m not even on social media, you know? It’s just fascinating that people try to apply the exact same model, what works here, I see a lot of signage here. Obviously, there’s you know, every newspaper has free Covid information, every newspaper online, so you don’t have to subscribe to the newspaper, but you still have to have the setup to go to that newspaper. To have the online resources and, I know New York Times translates into Spanish, but that’s it. I didn’t see other languages.

Dist Prof Piller: Well, that brings us to the question of trust. And I think one thing that we’ve seen in the pandemic, and particularly in countries like the US I think, but really many other parts of the world too, is of course a complete breakdown of trust. And that’s why the fake news and disinformation proliferate because there is a lot of communication going on, but people don’t actually know where it comes from, and part of the problem, to my mind, is actually the communication channels don’t match. The languages don’t match. The sources are anonymous. You don’t actually make news of the kind of communication channels that people trust and that people know. Ultimately, a crisis response, of course, needs to be led by the state, but it also needs to be local. The state needs to enable local action. Those kinds of countries that really have been able to respond at all kinds of levels – at the national level, at institutional levels, but really also at community level – and mobilise people who will actually door knock, people who translate, loudspeakers have been very successfully used in China, rural parts of Vietnam, for instance. So, the kind of communication channels that are known to work. One thing that was pointed out by the student that I mentioned was also just that for communication to be successful it needs to be filtered through, like, tribal leaders, and it needs to actually go through families in order to reach both men and women. If that doesn’t happen, you could just as well save the paper you are printing your flyers on.

Dr Chamberlin: Right, and the state here can’t even identify those pathways of trust. And it’s different for everyone. I also know that there’s such an abundance of information, and sometimes people just end up shutting it all off because they don’t even know where to turn to anymore. Like you said, they don’t really trust any sources, and that’s definitely been a big problem. I hope it gets a little bit better. We’ll see. We have some hope (laughs).

Dr Khan: Ingrid, can I ask a question on multilingual research, changing the topic a little bit? When I see research on multilingualism, rarely do I come across references of scholarship outside English. So, the proponents of multilingualism are often restricted to monolingual literature itself. When I was reading your book, surprisingly positively I came across the reference of Isfahan in the 17^th century. I was like, taken aback. I said, “Wow, this is new for me”. That started this thinking in me that, you know, our multilingual research, scholarship is mostly monolingual, and it’s a paradox. So, I was thinking that I would see your comment, and before you do that, I also wanted to show you the diploma, the degree, that my university, Karachi University, gave me. It’s a very bilingual, you see half Urdu and half English, so it’s like the space is divided between Urdu and English, right? Whereas my degree in Lancaster was absolutely monolingual. It’s almost impossible to imagine an American University giving a degree with English and Spanish side by side. So, the point I’m making is this one, that sometimes when we go out of the box to nations, we find lots of things which are so interesting and illuminating, like in the case of Isfahan that you talked about, or like in the case of Karachi University giving degrees in Urdu and English. Any comment?

Dist Prof Piller: Yes, look, I couldn’t agree more. You’re 100% correct. Our scholarship is exceedingly monolingual, exceedingly English-centric. It’s not just monolingual, it’s English, actually, and that is a problem precisely because of the examples we discussed earlier. Because, of course, if we do research in a multilingual context in only one linguistic side of things, we’re bound to miss so many other sides. So that’s obvious. It’s a fundamental problem, I think, of research across the board, actually.

I wrote a paper in 2016 in the Journal of Multicultural Discourses about monolingual ways of seeing multilingualism, and that was a response to research by Anthony Liddicoat who had looked at a sample of research in multilingualism and just looked at in what kind of context does that multilingualism occur, the research contexts. He found that about a third had no context at all, if was just like, you know, context-free theorising about multilingualism, and I think that is a consequence of the English-centrism of the field. Because if you’re actually only seeing English, then multilingualism is something that’s out there but is not really bound to a particular context. And then another 40%, I would say, I forget the exact number, you can look them up, a very large chunk was then about bilingualism in the English-speaking world – the UK, US, Australia. Migrant or indigenous populations, multi-migrant populations. Then a smaller chunk of research in other contexts, multilingualism in other contexts, but really most of it through the lens of English.

I guess a big problem, of course, here are publishing structure and how different research is valued and evaluated and assessed. Of course, there is this assumption built into all kinds of metrics that English publications are better, and so that puts many academics across the world really under pressure to publish through the medium of English, but in order to be able to publish through the medium of English, the ability to publish in international journals, you need to work with frameworks that appeal to the metropolis in the centre. Being part of the discussion, the conversation, the international global conversation if you actually speak to the concerns that are there in the journal. So, it’s not only about language choice.

They key problem, really, is that this English-centrism changes the content of our research because we consistently ignore local considerations, as I’ve just said, with regard to the way Covid is communicated in rural areas in the global south. This kind of ignorance is, in part, related to English western-centric ways of doing things. So, it’s really to the great detriment of everyone that these kinds of relationships pertain. Now, the question is always, “How can we change that?”. We are little people, and that one thing I think that, as university teachers, one thing we should be lobbying for in terms of policy, for instance, is that actually anyone who becomes a language teacher should actually also have learned a language. It seems to me, like, really strange that we continue to (give) graduate linguistics degrees or TESOL degrees and there is no study requirement to have studied another language. That, to me, is something we can do for instance.

One thing that I try to do, through Language on the Move for instance – because we also have a great opportunity with digital communication – so it’s no longer either or. The traditional paper journal, of course, it was more like, you know, you have one shot at it. So that no longer pertains in the digital world either. We can actually create more, kind of, academic and community spaces, and that’s the responsibility ultimately. Everyone has to come to the table and try and also disseminate their research. So, those of us who work in the west and who work through the medium of English, I think the bare minimum that we should be doing for our research is to also create translations and create other channels.

So that’s, for instance, what we’ve been getting with this special issue that we’ve just published on linguistic diversity in a time of crisis. The symposium that you mentioned that we just had this weekend – we actually ran two parallel sessions – one was an English language channel session and the other was a Chinese session, and it brought together key researchers in the Chinese spaces, really targeted at a Chinese audience. We tried to disseminate the research beyond those who speak English because, ultimately, if we look at it from a global perspective, it’s of course only a very slim number of privileged few who actually speak English too or have proficiency in English to the kind of level that allows them to absorb academic information. So, yeah, these are a couple of things that we do.

Dr Chamberlin: Yeah, changes in publishing. I’ve been on editorial boards, and I’m an editor now, and I know that the publishers only want to publish in English. It’s a journal about interculturalism, but yeah, they resist it. So, we find ourselves having to insist on English in the field of intercultural communication and intercultural education, and that’s cutting out so many people, but I don’t know how to fix it right away.

Dist Prof Piller: The problem with academic papers is also that it’s extremely rigid because it’s not always an either or question, like English or Chinese or something. Of course, in everyday communication, as we all know, bilingual people communicate through translanguaging and code switching in all kinds of ways. But academic journal articles, of course, are the most rigid and extreme end of the monolingual spectrum. So it’s not only that we publish in English but we publish in standard English that shouldn’t have any traces of (other languages). So that creates an additional barrier.

Dr Khan: Most regulated spaces, yeah.

Dist Prof Piller: Khan, as you’ve said, there’s really an interesting tension. Many of us kind of rage against the monolingual mindset, but at the same time, when it comes to our own practices, it’s quite highly regulated.

Dr Khan: Yeah, yeah.

Dr Chamberlin: Yeah, and in higher education, you know, I’m hopefully coming up with the proposals for something that we can do, not just to validate our students’ multilingualism but to use it. Let them use it. So, you know, we can recognise it, we can value it, but what are we asking them to do in languages other than English? Why can’t they, if they write a paper for some kind of capstone project before they graduate, why can’t they take that paper, that information, and disseminate it in another language through a blog or, you know, through a community organisation? So, I’m hoping to kind of put something together like that, but it’s going to be a lot of work, a lot of convincing people that it’s a worthwhile endeavour. I think it is, but I know it’s not going to be easy, but we have to start with something structurally, I think. Just talking about it, and talking about being inclusive, and I just feel like we’re talking and talking and talking and talking and not really doing. At your university or at other schools – how do you really let students use multiple languages?

Dist Prof Piller: Not really at our university. I mean, it’s very much Anglo and an English-speaking country, or a country that sees itself as English-speaking. But I guess one thing that I would like to add to your thoughts, kind of, is that all around the world we see an increasing valorisation of diversity, and that’s great. I mean, I think that really needs to happen.

But, at the same time, I think we also need to critically examine how discourses of diversity can actually coexist with very exclusionary practices. One issue that I see for people from minority backgrounds as they enter the academy in particular and as they grapple with these questions of standard English, monolingualism, multilingualism, translanguaging, using all of their languages is of course that this not entirely up to them. I mean, they enter ways of seeing, and minoritized populations are also seen as linguistically deficient. So, for anyone from a non-native – or people of colour migrants, disadvantaged backgrounds, or underprivileged backgrounds, to actually succeed they’ll always have to battle. On the one hand, they may want to use all their linguistic repertoire. On the other hand, if they do, they are still going to be seen as linguistically deficient. One person’s creativity is another person’s error, right?

And so, these kinds of tensions are something that – I think one thing we can do is actually help our students come to terms with these tensions and learn how to live with it or learn how to recognise them at least. I mean, that’s maybe the most emancipatory thing we can do as teachers – to talk to them about it and let them talk about their experiences and kind of acknowledge that it’s not only something we can do. I mean, we are actors but at the same time, everyone’s reach is limited, so it’s also about building new communities, so yeah.

Dr Chamberlin: Yeah.

Dist Prof Piller: Khan, you wanted to say something? I’ve been going on a bit.

Dr Khan: I really want to discuss with you the discourse of World Englishes if you have 5 minutes. (laughs)

Dr Chamberlin: Five minutes to discuss World Englishes? (laughs)

Dr Khan: Ingrid, when I was introduced (to) this whole field of World Englishes, I really admired it a lot because it gave me how the field of English was attached to a few countries and how this was liberating. The whole scholarship was liberating, and coming from Pakistan and South Asia, I became very confident. I was talking to Professor Carla before the interview. I found myself as a legitimate teacher of English because of this whole scholarship of World Englishes, so I was a great admirer initially when this was introduced to me.

But when I was introduced (to) the field of multilingualism, my professor taught me, then I started looking at the relationship between these two fields, and I was finding them so puzzling because when I used to read Kachru and other pioneers, I used to see the whole world through the lens of Englishes only. As if there was nothing in the world but English. And then, from the other seminar, I had this bombardment of multilingualism, that the world is entirely multilingual. In India, you drive 40 miles, you come across a new language. The relationship between these two, I’ve never been able to, you know, understand this. Could you say something (about) how these two scholarships relate to one another?

Dist Prof Piller: Look, I think that’s a rather high expectation of me. (laughs) I certainly wouldn’t presume to be able to resolve those. Just one thought or two. The World Englishes paradigm, of course, comes out of the original sin of the modern world. It’s a colonial paradigm. Ultimately it comes out of colonialism and slavery. Even if our academic discourses that we value all varieties of English, and so on and so forth, it only actually makes sense within a colonial world. So that’s that about World Englishes.

Now, of course, it has made immense contributions and we continue to live in this post-colonial world, in the world that was shaped by colonialism. So, of course, the way English works in that world is tied to our global order. So that’s a fact. That English predominates is a fact, and we try to find our way around it as we do as humans, and as we try to navigate the world in which we live and make it a better place to the degree that we can.

Now, how does this all relate to multilingualism? One interesting relationship to many is actually – I’m very interested in the history of the Mughal Empire and the Persian language. And so, the Mughal Empire, for those who don’t know, was kind of the trans-Asian empire that existed in what is today pretty much the subcontinent and other parts of Central Asia. It existed prior to British colonisation. Their imperial order was a highly multilingual imperial order, so Persian was the language. Every educated person would learn to write in Persian, and there was a whole class of scribes who got their livelihoods out of being able to read and write documents in Persian. But at the same time, Urdu and Hindi and a wide variety of also literate and non-literate languages played important roles in art, in poetry, in the familial structure. And then there was the holy language of Islam, Arabic, that was in the mix kind of. And in the transition from the Mughal Empire to the British Empire, Persian was actually used by the British in their administration of colonial English because the people they needed to run the country, of course, were all those scribes and bureaucrats and writers who spoke Persian. But gradually, Persian was being replaced by English, and not only was Persian being replaced, but the whole multilingual ecology was being changed over to a more English-centric ecology.

And so, I guess the way to maybe resolve the tension between the scholarship around multilingualism and the scholarship in World Englishes is actually to think about how these two linguistic orders are part of social orders.

Dr Khan: Yeah, thank you so much.

Dr Chamberlin: I know, I’m just thinking and thinking now. Ingrid, I don’t know how much time you have, actually, we didn’t talk about that. I don’t want to overstep.

Dist Prof Piller: Yeah, look, I’m really enjoying this conversation. At the same time, maybe we’ll – I mean, you want to show this at your conference, right? So there will be a limit to how much time there is.

Dr Khan: Yeah.

Dr Chamberlin: I do have one more question I want to sneak in. I wrote this to you last night. It’s pretty much just the question of – Will we ever get over Hofstede?

Dist Prof Piller: (laughs)

Dr Chamberlin: No, it’s just, everybody goes back to that! And I’m just thinking, I have some lines, like ways to respond, but it’s like I’m talking to a brick wall or something. Of course, I know why it’s popular. It’s easy knowledge. It’s like, “Oooh, yes, we can just classify people’s behaviours according to these world views.” And then I read the literature in our field and I’m like, “Oh yeah, we’re over that.” But then I go to a workshop or a webinar and it just comes back to me. I don’t know if – I wondered if you were experiencing some of that still. I’m waiting for that pithy kind of comeback I can have (laughs). But it still just hangs on, doesn’t it? This idea that we can just, first of all, define cultures in terms of national boundaries, and then just define those cultures, those national cultures by things like individualism, collectivism, masculinity, femininity. And I’m just –

Dist Prof Piller: Yeah, it does hang on, but you know what? So many things, so many discourses are hanging on. I’m kind of – you know there is this – I think it was Saint Francis who said, “God, grant me the wisdom to change the things I can change and accept the things I can’t change and always know the difference between the two.” And I think some of those, you know, forever essentialist discourses, I mean it’s not something that, at the moment, I want to really want to waste my time on.

Dr Chamberlin: Yes, I’ll just make sure people read your books (laughs). How’s that? (laughs)

Dist Prof Piller: Well, this was a lovely conversation. I really enjoyed talking to you guys.

Dr Khan: Yeah, it was wonderful. Oh my gosh. It was great. Yeah.

Dist Prof Piller: I said at the beginning, there are always ways to look at the bright side too. This is certainly one of the positive things that has come out of this pandemic. We wouldn’t have had this conversation if it hadn’t been for the pandemic. So, I think, you know, one opportunity that I see is actually for greater engagement across national borders and these kinds of barriers. As our lives have been sucked into Zoom, we really can also use those to have these conversations amongst different people from different backgrounds and across borders. And so, there is also this opportunity that we can also reach out more.

Dr Khan: True.

So, what has changed? For starters, the learners have changed, and so have we. Digital technologies have spread out vertically and horizontally in all fields of knowledge and fundamentally altered the nature of communication.

Thanks to the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) wave, gamification has been widely accepted and applied in schools and universities. The introduction of game-based elements into non-game scenarios, such as classrooms, has helped teachers to motivate learners and boost the engagement of students in real-time during classes (Skøien, 2018).

Figure 1

One popular game-based learning platform – or game-based student response system (GSRS) – is Kahoot!. Kahoot! went from being a research project back in 2006 to being used in classrooms in over 180 countries. According to its developer (Wang, 2015, p.218), like other games, it has the potential to increase the academic achievement, motivation and classroom dynamics among K-12 and tertiary students.

Nevertheless, Kahoot! has not been widely used in second language (L2) learning contexts. Where it is used, the main targets are still motivation and classroom dynamics. To gain a better understanding of the potential of Kahoot! in L2 teaching, I conducted a social semiotic, multimodal analysis, using tools from Systemics Functional Linguistics (Djonov, Knox and Zhao, 2015).

From the point of view of its design, Kahoot! provides L2 students with limited learning opportunities regarding reading and writing skills.

The analysis of the website structure (Figure 1) suggests that there is a dominance of vertical relations in the platform. This means that the website provides the first user (teacher) some freedom to choose among four options (quiz, survey, discussion and jumble), but this freedom in navigation is not transferred to the second users (students). Once a kahoot quiz starts (Kahoot!’s games are called ‘kahoots’), learners have to complete it and do not have the chance to go back and examine their answers before submitting them. It is a game; and you either make it to the first place or not.

In a more detailed examination of two webpages of a kahoot quiz, a question and its alternatives (see Figure 2), it can be seen that the overall layout of them shows a rather static design, which may reflect the institutional values of Kahoot!’s creator(s): the game is teacher-centred. In addition, there is interdependency among the webpages of a kahoot quiz (see green arrow), and even though it seems that their relations are horizontal, the above-mentioned lack of freedom of navigation signals its vertical design. Furthermore, the absence of a writing component when answering questions diminishes the possibilities smartphones can provide.

Figure 2

Kahoot! has proven to be an amazing motivation booster in many classrooms. However, its design favors the completion of the “game” over any reflection of the content and this, in an ESL/EFL context, plays against the opportunities L2 learners need, such as going at their own pace, reviewing their answers, and writing practice. In this context, as elsewhere, “it remains unclear whether Kahoot! leads to greater learning outcomes than traditional methods” (Licorish, Owen, Daniel, & George, 2018, p.5).

New teaching and learning technologies are exploding around us. It is our responsibility as teachers to choose the best among them, not based on their popularity but their effectiveness; modify the way we could possibly use them if needed; and keep in mind that technology is always subsidiary to learners and learning.

References

Djonov, E., Knox, J. S., & Zhao, S. (2015). Interpreting Websites in Educational Contexts: A Social-Semiotic, Multimodal Approach. In International Handbook of Interpretation in Educational Research (pp. 315-345). Springer, Dordrecht.
Licorish, S., Owen, A., Daniel, H., & George, E. (2018). Students’ perception of Kahoot!’s influence on teaching and learning. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 13(1), 1-23.
Skøien, J. (2018). User Engagement in Game-based Student Response Systems: A Case Study on Kahoot! Retrieved from https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/handle/11250/2562794
Wang, A. (2015). The wear out effect of a game-based student response system. Computers & Education, 82(C), 217-227.

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“Do you speak English?” is a frequently asked question, which Saudi people must be prepared to answer with a confident “Yes!” when applying for a job or to a university. In Saudi Arabia, as in many other places, knowledge of English has become a major prerequisite for many positions and in numerous disciplines. This demand for English has opened the way for an explosion of private institutes teaching the English language, where English is regarded as a commercial product that can earn good money for the purveyor. It is therefore reasonable to expect that the promotional discourses disseminated by these institutions conceal language ideologies that shape learners’ beliefs regarding English learning and its teaching.

My master’s thesis explored the approaches that English language teaching institutes use to persuade their audience that they should learn English in their institution. It examines language ideologies by looking at how English language learning is presented in the online advertisements produced by these institutes, and at the ways in which they represent themselves to their audience. To do this, I analyse visuals and texts to see how institutions make use of a range of language resources in promoting their services.

The analysis of the institutes’ ads shows that, in their attempt to persuade a potential audience to enroll, they conceptualize English as a global language. For example, English learning is described as totally advantageous as it supposedly opens the gates to job opportunities, education and travel. English learning is also represented as fun, confidence-building, and personally empowering.

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The findings also reveal concepts that simultaneously mystify and oversimplify English learning. For instance, native-English speaking teachers are described in idealistic terms; there are claims that the use of specific textbooks will guarantee successful language learning and that success in global English proficiency tests such as IELTS or TOFEL is assured.

To be presented with such ideologies must affect people’s beliefs about what English learning involves. The elevated position given to English in the ads must diminish the status of Arabic in the minds of the younger generation. Thus, the English language teaching industry in Saudi Arabia must consider an approach that avoids presenting English learning as a totally beneficial phenomenon. In addition, other misrepresentations, such as the value of a specific textbook or considering native-English speaking teachers as being the best, should be reconsidered by the industry as these representations may deceive English learners regarding the utility of other language textbooks or the characteristics of the ideal teacher.

My PhD research will expand on the study of the language ideologies underlying the promotional discourses of English language teaching institutes in Saudi Arabia. Videos, pictures and texts taken from the institutes’ websites and Twitter accounts will be included in the study. The thesis will also explore how audiences actually receive the promotional discourses of the institutions.

Reference

Alkhalil, S. F. A. (2018). Promoting English in Saudi Arabia: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Advertisements for Private English Language Teaching Institutes. (MRes), Macquarie University.

Cover page of the first textbook in the Lift Off series

Although the Saudi government does its best to provide effective English language teaching and learning, there are widespread concerns in the country about the low level of achievement in English among Saudi students. Many researchers have tried to identify the reasons for this situation. My research focusses on the representations of culture and cultural identities in English language textbooks used at different stages in Saudi schools. As textbooks are the main teaching resource in Saudi English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classrooms, my research investigates the imagined communities created in these textbooks.

My MRes thesis explored how the two imagined communities of the Saudi source culture and the foreign target culture are created for Saudi students In six textbooks of the Lift Off series that is compulsory in Saudi middle schools.

Findings show nuanced and diverse representations of Saudi characters. By contrast, the representation of foreign characters is overly simplistic and involves heavy gender imbalances. While equal numbers of Saudi men and women are represented, representations of foreign women are relatively rare.

In addition, the findings show a nuanced portrayal of Saudi and Islamic cultures (i.e. the religion of Saudi learners), while representations of Western culture(s) are uniform and reductionist.

Gender segregation is represented as the norm in this Saudi EFL textbook

The compulsory EFL textbooks examined in my MRes research could be described as embracing a Saudi-centric ideological perspective, which creates a strong connection between learning English, Islam and Saudi cultural practices. At the same time, these books only show aspects of Western culture that are acceptable from an Islamic perspective, whereas aspects that are incompatible with Saudi culture and Islam are largely ignored. For example, gender segregation is represented as the norm not only in Saudi culture but also in the target cultures of English language learning.

This misrepresentation and oversimplification may impact Saudi learners and their English learning negatively by depriving them of learning about the culture and communities of the target language. Therefore, my research suggests that the administrators of EFL programs and curricula in Saudi Arabia should pay closer attention to the importance of introducing language textbooks that include rich imagined communities and characters with complex identities from both the source and the target culture to help students understand these communities and attain a high level of linguistic and intercultural competence in English.

Reference

The full text of my MRes thesis entitled “Evaluating the Representations of Identity Options and Cultural Elements in English Language Textbooks used in Saudi Arabia” is available here.

Native and non-native teachers at Lord Harris’ School, Royapett, Madras, 1865 (Source: British Library)

For some time now, a debate has been raging in TESOL about the relative merits of native and non-native speakers as English language teachers. While many people in the field are critical of the continued dominance of native speakers as “ideal” teachers, proposals for change have largely been ineffectual.

True, job ads asking for “native speakers” are now widely considered discriminatory and the relative strengths of both groups are spruiked at conferences. However, none of this has much changed the fact that institutions, students and parents, by and large, continue to prefer TESOL teachers who they consider to be native speakers; that such teachers are oftentimes paid more and hired into more secure employment; and that teachers considered non-native are regularly subject to micro-aggressions such as having their expertise called into question.

Is there a more effective way to overcome native speaker hegemony other than to educate people about the native speaker fallacy?

Absolutely. It has been done before. The following object lesson of native speaker subordination comes from an unlikely source, namely the British Empire and specifically the East India Company.

Persian – India’s power code

To understand this case study, a bit of historical context is required: when the British brought the Indian subcontinent under colonial control, they displaced an existing state, the Mughal Empire. The Mughals’ state language was Persian. In the 18^th century, when the British rapidly expanded and consolidated their possessions on the subcontinent, Persian had been India’s written language, its power code and its lingua franca for over three centuries. In other words, Persian was the Moghuls’ “technology of governance” (Fisher, 2012, pp. 328f.).

Officer of the East India Company being coached in Persian by a private tutor (Source: Massey & Massey, 1968, p. 473)

In order to rule India, it was therefore essential to know Persian. And Indians knew Persian. Britons did not.

As the East India Company tightened its grip on India, it approached this problem gradually by first replacing Indian speakers of Persian with British speakers of Persian and, further down the track, replacing Persian with English as the language of the state. It is the first step in this process that concerns us here: how did the East India Company go about replacing Indians with Britons as privileged knowers of Persian?

Establishing a Persian language teaching industry

Initially, British colonial officials who wanted to learn Persian (or any other Indian language) were largely left to their own devices and such language study was a matter of private enterprise. Many hired Indian language teachers as private tutors.

Gradually, Persian language learning became more formalized and dedicated language training institutes were established. The most important of these were Fort William College in Calcutta, and, back home in Britain, Haileybury Imperial Service College and Addiscombe Military Seminary. These institutes all opened in the first decade of the 19^th century.

Since the 18^th century, Persian-speaking Indian elites had increasingly shifted from working for the Mughal Empire and its ever smaller and more fragmented successor states to accepting employment from the British. For many of them this meant becoming language teachers.

In India, teaching was a highly respected profession and Indian teachers of Persian initially assumed a high-status position vis-à-vis their British students. They were in a bull market, or so it must have seemed: Persian language teaching became ever more widespread and profitable, not only in the colony, but also in Britain, where middle-class families clamoured for an education that would ensure their sons’ future in lucrative colonial positions. Just how profitable the teaching of Indian languages was can be seen from the autobiography of one such language teacher, Lutfullah:

I regularly held the profession of a teacher of the Persian, Hindustani, Arabic, and Marathi languages to the new comers from England, from time to time, and place to place, as their duty obliged and caprice induced them to go. Upwards of one hundred pupils studied with me during the above period, and none of my scholars returned unlaureled from the Government examination committees. I have a book of most flattering certificates in my possession, and I may say that I was better off than many by following this profession. (Lutfullah, 1858, p. 139)

Haileybury College (Source: Wikipedia)

In the colonial logic of the assumed inferiority of the colonized, high-status Indian language teachers with a good income soon became the targets of envy and efforts to undermine them got underway. Returned colonial officials, in particular, wanted teaching positions for themselves rather than see them occupied by Indians. Given their clout and connections, many of them managed to be recruited into Persian language teaching positions in the new imperial training institutes. That their language competence was sometimes almost non-existent did not matter.

The Professor of Oriental Literature at Addiscombe, for instance, was one John Shakespear, who not only drew a professorial salary but supplemented his income by publishing numerous textbooks and teaching aids. His most successful textbook was one of the earliest grammars of Urdu, A Grammar of the Hindustani Language. First published in 1813, it was reprinted and re-issued in new editions for almost half a century. The above-mentioned Lutfullah met Shakespear during his visit to England in 1844 and describes his encounter as follows:

[I] had the honour of being introduced to three men of learning, viz., John Shakespear, the author of the Hindustani Dictionary […]. Knowing the first-named gentleman to be the author of a book in our language, I addressed to him a very complimentary long sentence in my own language. But, alas! I found that he could not understand me, nor could he utter a word in that language in which he had composed several very useful books. (Lutfullah, 1858, p. 389)

Subordinating native speakers

The above example can leave no doubt that the linguistic qualifications of Indians were superior to those of British language teachers. Even so, the former were excluded almost entirely from the enterprise of Persian language teaching, well before that enterprise was abandoned entirely in favour of making Indians learn English.

Addiscombe Military Seminary, c. 1859 (Source: Wikipedia)

The subordination of native speaker teachers was achieved in two ways, namely through arguments related to teacher identity and through a reorganization of language teaching.

The arguments related to teacher identity basically stated that Muslim men were unfit to teach Christian boys and young men. The board of Haileybury College, for instance, decided in 1816 that “the linguistic advantages of having a ‘native speaker’ teach British students was outweighed by the alleged disruption these Muslim Indian men had on the students’ moral education” (Fisher, 2012, p. 344). As in other language training institutions, Indian teachers were replaced with British teachers.

Reorganization of language teaching meant that Indian ways of language teaching (through the study of literature) were devalued in favour of British ways of language teaching (through the study of grammars and dictionaries). While the former approach requires a high level of language competence of the teacher, the latter does not.

Furthermore, Indian teachers were reframed as specialists in pronunciation, and pronunciation as a language skill was marginalized. Instead of hiring them into teacher roles, Indian teachers were offered positions as drill masters and teaching assistants of British teachers. The latter were fashioned as experts both in methods of language teaching and in the grammar skills that were now considered the essential test of language competence.

By the 1840s, all Indian language teachers had been removed from imperial language training institutes and the newly established university chairs in Persian, Arabic and other oriental languages all went to Britons. Any Indian language teachers who remained in Britain were relegated to the private tutoring market, which was shrinking, too, as a knowledge of Persian and other Indian languages became increasingly irrelevant to pursuing a career in the colonies.

Fort William College (Source: Navrang India)

Who is to be master?

As is obvious from this brief account, the battle between Indians and Britons over who was a better teacher of Indian languages was fought on linguistic terrain only on the surface. Some of the British 19^th century superstars of oriental language teaching such as John Shakespear obviously had serious linguistic deficits. That did not keep them from becoming privileged knowers of colonial languages. A holistic knowledge of the language, cultural competence and conversational fluency were all devalued in favour of a focus on methods and a narrow understanding of language proficiency as grammatical mastery.

Ironically, once Persian was out of the way as the power code of India and the global English language teaching enterprise got underway, the rules of the game were re-written yet again. What we consider desirable linguistic competence today is to a significant degree shaped by the strengths and weaknesses of the new privileged language knowers, native speakers of English.

References

Eastwick, E. B. (Ed.) (1858). Autobiography of Lutfullah, a Mohamedan Gentleman; and the transactions with his fellow-creatures; interspersed with remarks on the habits, customs, and character of the people with whom he had to deal. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Fisher, M. H. (2012). Teaching Persian as an Imperial Language in India and in England during the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries. In B. Spooner & W. L. Hanaway (Eds.), Literacy in the Persianate world : writing and the social order (pp. 328-358). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Massey, R., & Massey, J. (1968). Lutfullah in London, 1844. History Today, 18(7), 473-479.

Cover of 2008 movie “Mad about English” (Source: Zhang, Jie. Language policy and planning for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. )

We are repeatedly told that people around the world are choosing to learn and use English. The media and many academic scholars present the spread of English globally as the result of an agglomeration of a massive number of individual choices.[1] Yet we all know that deciding to learn and then use English takes place within specific contexts most often including what languages are available to study in schools. The expansion of English language learning as a mandatory or optional component of many education systems especially in non-Anglophone countries predictably runs parallel to the increase in the spread of English across the world.

Language and education scholars have provided many case studies and comparative analyses of the increase of English language teaching.[2] These include detailed research on the ways English is taught – as a foreign language, as an international language, as a language for specific purposes and especially as a language of instruction to be learned together with other educational subject matter, what is often called Content Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).

But with all these complexities, it is difficult to get a global perspective on these trends in the key role that national education systems play in the spread of English. This is perhaps one main reason why it is so easily overlooked or ignored by the media and some scholars.

This is why my co-investigators, Jeff Bale (University of Toronto) and Eve Haque (York University) and I have received an Insight Development Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to create a database of the role of English language teaching in state curricula policy. The project is entitled: How States Promote Global English: Shifting Priorities in Education. It includes a large team of specialists from an array of disciplines for us to consult as we construct this data base and create an open-access website for other researchers, policy makers, journalists and educators to use. Our hope is that this on-line database will help facilitate a wide range of academic research from across disciplines of language education, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, political science and sociology. We also want it to be useful for journalists, policy makers and other people interested in language education and the spread of English.

We are well aware that this database needs to be built with the knowledge of its limitations and blind spots. Due to the global nature of the debates and discussions concerning the rise in the dominance of English, we have decided that we need to begin with basic information at the most macro-level – as many of the 206 countries in the world that we can derive useful data about. Of course this breadth will, at least initially, come at the cost of depth in various important considerations. Although our hope is that such depth can be increased over time as the database is used and developed. For example, our focus is on public education systems and their nationally mandated curricula. In many countries private schools are prevalent and key places where English is learned. Because private schools tend to have much greater diversity in their curricular offerings, including them in this database (at least in this first phase) would be overly ambitious. But we will certainly make explicit the distinctions between public and private education so researchers, journalists and policy makers interested in private education can use this database as an initial starting point.

Perhaps even more importantly, English learning is taking place in many non-formal arenas outside formal schooling. These processes are incredibly important to understand the trends and implications of the increasing use of English especially among non-native speakers. The point of this database is not to obscure such venues of language learning, but provide contexts and contrasts to facilitate research in these areas as well.

There are clearly huge gaps between the official policies concerning amounts and formats for English teaching and what actually happens in schools. There are significant differences between education policies and their implementation and outcomes. As an initial project, we are limiting ourselves to the official policy goals. This will enable us and other future researchers to augment this work with greater focus on the implementations and outcomes of such policies. Despite such limitations of this initial database, it will hopefully be a useful place for researchers focused on questions of implementation of education policy and the proficiency outcomes of students. It may be overly ambitious to think that such complex issues as actual educational practices and outcomes could be meaningfully addressed at such a macro, global level. Indeed, such a goal may be even unwise.

Part of the rationale for such an on-line database is rooted in an historical analysis of the development of written, standardized languages in the process of nation-state building. From Italian and French to Bahasa Malaysia and Mandarin, governments have played an active role in defining, codifying and propagating national languages. It is perhaps understandable that debates on so-called globalization that emphasize a decrease in power and effectiveness of nation-states would down-play the role of those nation-states in the rise of global English. But even cursory evidence and the more in-depth but smaller scale case study research shows that national education systems have been increasingly active in promoting English. But without this type of global level snapshot, many assumptions are continually repeated.

For more information about this research project, please contact Peter Ives at p.ives@uwinnipeg.ca

[1] For an overview of U.S. media coverage of global English, see Demont-Heinrich, Christof, “Language, Globalization, and the Triumph of Popular Demand” The Communication Review 12 (June 2009), pp.20-49. For scholarly examples see David Northrup, How English Became the Global Language. London: Palgrave, 2013; Abram De Swaan, Abram, Words of the World: The Global Language System. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001; and Philippe Van Parijs, Philippe, Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

[2] For just a few examples see, Ericka Albaugh, State-Building and Multilingual Education in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014; Peter Sayer, Ambiguities and Tensions in English Language Teaching.  New York: Routledge, 2012; and Hu, G. (2005). English Language Education in China: Policies, Progress, and Problems Language Policy, 4 (1), 5-24 DOI: 10.1007/s10993-004-6561-7. You may also wish to browse the Language on the Move coverage of “English as a Global Language”.