(Image credit: Mana Akbarzadegan via Unsplash)

When Muhammad* applied for admission to a postgraduate degree at an Australian university, he was asked to show evidence of his English language proficiency. Acceptable evidence included achieving a specific score on a commercial language test such as IELTS or TOEFL. Muhammad was upset to discover that none of the following counted as acceptable evidence of his English language proficiency: that all his prior education had been through the medium of English, that he was employed as university lecturer in the English department of a university in Bangladesh, and that he had published fictional and non-fictional writing in English.

Marlene* from Germany also applied to a postgraduate degree at an Australian university. She hardly noticed that English language proficiency constituted an admission criterion. The fact that she had studied English as a Foreign Language at higher level for her high school certificate meant that proof of her English language requirement was waived. English had never been the medium of education in her prior education. Outside her English language classroom, she has no experience with public speaking in English, nor with academic writing in English.

By most counts, Muhammad would be considered a more proficient speaker of English than Marlene. Yet the English language proficiency requirements of the university they applied to constructed Muhammad’s English as problematic and Marlene’s English as above board.

How are such decisions made? Why do some applicants need to take a test while others do not?

How do universities decide whose English needs to be tested for admission?

In new research just published in Language in Society, Agnes Bodis and I examine the English language proficiency requirements of Australian universities to answer these questions.

Language testing is often assumed to be only relevant for language learners. But who is a learner and who is not? The stories of Muhammad and Marlene show that this is not a trivial question. What made Muhammad a learner and Marlene a speaker according to university regulations?

Everyone agrees that the old concepts of “native” and “non-native” speakers are no longer valid. Yet, implicitly, a distinction that is very similar to this binary is made every time someone is required to sit a language test.

(Image credit: Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu via Unsplash)

The language of those who are required to sit a test is subjected to scrutiny. Those who have the requirement waived get a free pass.

Inherent English versus tested English

English language requirements for university admission create a language binary between “inherent English” and “tested English.”

Inherent English is the language of those who are exempt from testing.

Australian universities grant exemptions based on a mélange of criteria related to citizenship, education, and heritage. For example, to be recognized as having an “English-speaking background” and hence not having to sit a test, one policy requires two pieces of evidence from two different sets: one needs to be a citizenship document (“birth certificate, passport, arrival documents to establish residency”) and the other a portfolio of documents providing evidence of schooling, work, and residency. Curiously, the latter may include utility bills, tax notices, and medical records, as well as a letter of reference from “a person with standing in the community.” Examples of such persons include “a school principal or teacher, doctor or pharmacist, a local manager, community leader, social worker or sporting coach who know the person’s family.” (quoted from Piller&Bodis, 2022)

How does any of this establish evidence of English language proficiency you might ask? Well, it doesn’t; but it shows that language proficiency assessments are never about language alone. Language assessments are always also about identity.

The deficient English of those who are required to have their English tested

Inherent English is about having the right citizenship, the right education, or the right heritage. Anyone who falls short on these criteria, is required to sit an English language test.

Whether English language proficiency will need to be evidenced by a score on a language test is determined through a process of elimination. Those who do not meet the specific citizenship, education, and heritage criteria are relegated to the left-over basket of those who need to be tested. This engulfs them in a deficit perspective, expressed in “not”-rules: “if you are not […], then “you will be required to demonstrate English language proficiency in the form of an English test.”

Tested English is completely different from inherent English: it is reduced to the pseudo-objectivity of a numerical score, and even comes with an expiry date.

My TOEFL test scores expired. I can no longer speak, write, or understand English.

— Hamza (@hamza_azhar) July 31, 2020

Binary Englishes map onto binary identities

These two types of English – inherent English and tested English – map onto two different speaker groups.

Inherent English is accorded to most domestic applicants, applicants with passports from some Anglophone countries, applicants with certain educational credentials (mostly IB graduates, but also some specific high school certificates, as in Marlene’s case), and a medley of heritage criteria.

Inherent English maps most closely on the identity of the white native-speaker citizen construct. But not quite: it becomes blurred by the inclusion of citizens from Black majority states in the Caribbean (who, in actual fact, rarely apply to study at Australian universities) or those with certain educational credentials from outside the Anglosphere.

While the identity of those who are deemed to inherently speak English becomes blurred, its Other is cast into clear relief: the Asian non-native speaker non-citizen.

Objective language proficiency without identity?

Language proficiency constructs are always both about language and identity. The field of language assessment has been striving for objectivity by rejecting the identity component and focusing solely on language.

Whose English should be tested before admission? (Image credit: Dom Fou via Unsplash)

University admission requirements share this pretense to objectivity. The objectification of tested language is achieved through a convoluted set of regulations that can be expected to stand up to any legal challenges as long as they are applied consistently. However, this objectification of language proficiency has not made the identity component disappear. On the contrary, identity remains baked into universities’ constructs of English language proficiency through citizenship, education, and heritage criteria.

Implications for inclusion

Universities regularly deplore individuals’ lived experiences of exclusion and divisions within their student body. A major division in Australian universities is between domestic and international students. Yet our research suggests that admission requirements contribute to maintaining the ways of seeing that undergird these exclusions. Universities could contribute to dismantling these binaries, first, by uncoupling citizenship and heritage criteria from the language proficiency construct, and, second, by conceptualizing academic language and communication as a gradient which requires ongoing development for all students.

To succeed after admission both Muhammad and Marlene, as all their peers, will need ongoing support to develop their academic literacies.

*These names are pseudonyms.

Reference

Piller, I., & Bodis, A. (2022). Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission. Language in Society, 1-23. doi:10.1017/S0047404522000689 [open access]

Also relevant

Bodis, A. (2017). International students and language: opportunity or threat? Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/international-students-and-language-opportunity-or-threat/
Bodis, A. (2021). The discursive (mis) representation of English language proficiency: International students in the Australian media. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 44(1), 37-64.
Bodis, A. (2021). ‘Double deficit’ and exclusion: Mediated language ideologies and international students’ multilingualism. Multilingua, 40(3), 367-392. doi:doi:10.1515/multi-2019-0106
Piller, I. (2001). Who, if anyone, is a native speaker? Anglistik: Mitteilungen des Verbandes Deutscher Anglisten, 12(2), 109-121.
Piller, I. (2002). Passing for a native speaker: identity and success in second language learning. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 6(2), 179-206. [full access] ]]> https://languageonthemove.com/how-do-universities-decide-whose-english-needs-to-be-tested-for-admission/feed/ 46 24633 https://languageonthemove.com/schooling-challenges-multilingual-children/ https://languageonthemove.com/schooling-challenges-multilingual-children/#comments Tue, 20 Feb 2018 22:36:52 +0000 http://www.languageonthemove.com/?p=20795

Colours of the alphabet

February 21 is International Mother Language Day and serves as an opportunity to discuss and promote the use of first-language medium education. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that up to 40% of the world’s population does not have access to education in their home language. This is the result of language policy, teacher training and resource issues and language beliefs. The minority language-speaking students behind this statistic face significant educational disadvantages that can have a lasting impact on their learning and participation into adulthood.

The 2016 documentary film, Colours of the Alphabet, presents this difficult situation from the perspectives of three young children in Lwimba, in rural Zambia. This film follows Steward, M’barak and Elizabeth as they commence grade one, cleverly depicting some of the challenges they face navigating their earliest learning experiences, in languages they do not know. The situation in this multilingual, post-colonial setting are anything but straightforward.

Directed by Alastair Cole, the film forms part of a larger research project led by four UK universities, which “aims to filmicly reveal the complexities of our multilingual world, specifically focusing on linguistic anthropological perspectives of minority languages use and education”. The film achieves this goal, presenting this Zambian case study, which subtly brings together opinions, policy and experiences around education in a multilingual environment where many of the students do not have the opportunity to learn in their home language. Avoiding the use of any explicit narration, the film follows the three young students, living in a predominately Soli-speaking area in rural Zambia, during their first two terms of grade one. It is a carefully combined collection of footage of the children travelling to and from school, in the classroom and playground, and interviews with the children’s teacher and another of the school’s teachers, and with the children’s parents and a local elder.

Cleverly reflecting its title, the film begins with an explanation that different coloured subtitles will be used to represent the different languages – orange for Soli – the local language, green for Nyanja – the main language of instruction, purple for Bemba – which is used during religious singing at one point in the film, and white for English. This provides a visual representation of the linguistic rollercoaster that Grade 1A faces during their introduction to schooling.

As explained in the interviews accompanying the in-class footage, national education policy requires classes to be taught in Nyanja. For many of the students, like Steward, who speak Soli at home, this causes major problems. Some face difficulty understanding even basic requests to sit down, or talk about what they did on the weekend. Their teacher, who comes from another region, speaks very little Soli and at various times we see her seeking assistance from her students to translate simple sentences for her students when they appear unresponsive to the questions or requests she makes in Nyanja.

As pointed out early in the film, Zambia’s dominant regional languages each represent a separate group of people, and their use is inherently political. In a bid for neutrality and unity, English was instituted as the official language. This means it is introduced from the very start of primary education. However, the incorporation of English-language teaching and the use of English as the medium for some lessons – and especially in teaching the children about good manners – only adds another layer of complexity. This creates a double linguistic barrier for many of the students and reinforces a hierarchy of languages in which English as national and global language is of ultimate value, followed by the regional language common in urban centres (in this case Nyanja), and finally, the local Soli.

The effects of these challenges on the students are often very clear and sometimes heartbreaking. Steward’s struggles over the course of the year are particularly touching – especially in one scene where he stays behind at the end of class, silently crying at his desk, his teacher unable to coax him into sharing his problems with her. However, the classroom footage and Steward’s own example makes it clear that the students’ face more than just linguistic barriers. Grade 1A comprises of at least forty children of various ages who attend school each morning (Grade 1B is the afternoon class, led by the same teacher). Various scenes show children squabbling over learning materials and some children not even having a pen or pencil to bring to class to do their work. Class attendance is patchy at best, with class dwindling to just seven students on the final day of Term 2. Interviews with Steward’s father suggest that his home life may also be a source of struggle for him.

While the choice to prioritize Nyanja and English in the classroom creates serious challenges for these young students, many acknowledge and often accept the reasons behind these choices. Teachers who do not speak Soli can obviously not use it to teach, and even those who do speak it, like another teacher interviewed in the film, may not be comfortable using it to teach concepts that they themselves learned in another language. Likewise, there is a lack of learning resources, like books, in the language. The students’ parents also speak about how important it is for their children to learn English – the official language of Zambia – and see it as fundamental to their children finding good careers and succeeding in the world. Even Elizabeth’s parents, who believe that she would learn much more efficiently in Soli, acknowledge the importance of her learning English – because “everything is written in English”.

The political and ideological reasons for favouring more powerful languages, and ultimately valuing English most highly, create a significant stumbling block. Perhaps the most poignant scene in the film is where the teacher is attempting to teach the class the Zambian national anthem. She explains a little about its background, about Zambians being proud of having struggled and being an independent nation, free from its past colonial oppressors. The teacher then starts singing “Stand and sing for Zambia, proud and free, Land of work and joy in unity…”. In English. The students stand facing their teacher, trying to copy the sounds of these words, in the official and most highly valued language of Zambia and its education system: English – the language of neutrality and unity in a country of over 70 languages, but ironically also the very same language of the country’s colonizers, the independence from whom the anthem celebrates.

While the parents and teachers acknowledge the linguistic difficulties the children face, they accept this reality and focus their energies on supporting the young students to do their best within the existing system. Yet, if we explore the beliefs, policies and influences behind this system more closely, their validity begins to fall apart. For example, research suggests that students who are introduced to English later, after having their first language as the medium of instruction in their early years of study are actually likely to do better at learning it. The inability of the teaching staff to use Soli (either because of their own linguistic background or because they did not study in this language) is arguably a result of policy rather than a mere coincidence. The absence of Soli as a language of education – including in higher education – over the course of one generation nearly guarantees its absence in the next. As UNESCO suggests, such an issue could potentially be addressed through programs emphasizing training teachers from regional areas who have the requisite languages skills.

The elder interviewed for the film shares his love for the Soli language, which he sees as having a rich tradition, and his beliefs that the language is actually growing in strength. However, the distinct domains in which these different languages have been used, along with all the other challenges dealt with in the film, mean that despite the many benefits of first language education, it may be hard for local people like him to even imagine Soli becoming the language of instruction. When the interviewer proposes the idea of Soli-medium schools, he stops to think and smiles. “Could this happen? Is it possible?” he asks. “We would love that, but can it be?” Still, once he considers this, we see his ideas quickly develop and with a twinkle in his eye he goes on to suggest that students could even go to university and get a degree in it. “It would be nice”, he says.

Colours of the Alphabet delicately presents the complexities that Steward, M’barak and Elizabeth confront in their first two terms of primary education, in a classroom where the local language, Soli, has no place. Their experiences suggest that lack of access to education in one’s own language, while a surprisingly common phenomenon on a global level, helps to create or entrench serious inequalities in our societies: at the very least, these students have to work much harder to achieve what other students learn through their first languages. This film is therefore an important one in drawing our attention to this very real and pervasive challenge, which is highlighted on International Mother Language Day.

For international students, it’s sink or swim (Image source: luvimages.com)

It is one of the basic findings of decades of research in bilingual education that language submersion is not a productive way to educate minority students. ‘Language submersion’ refers to a situation where students are made to study exclusively through the medium of a language that they have not yet fully mastered; i.e. they are learning a new language AND curriculum content at the same time; usually in the presence of peers who are native speakers of the language of instruction and in the absence of any structured language learning support.

It is beyond doubt that this type of education produces poor results, both in regards to language outcomes and in regards to content learning. In Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Colin Baker (2006, p. 219) lists the negative consequences of submersion education:

Listening to a new language demands high concentration. It is tiring, with a constant pressure to think about the form of the language and less time to think about curriculum content. A child has to take in information from different curriculum areas and learn a language at the same time. Stress, lack of self-confidence, ‘opting-out’, disaffection and alienation may occur.

Indeed, in a famous court case, Lau vs. Nichols, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1974 that submersion education constituted a violation of civil rights:

[…] there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education.

Research that has demonstrated the negative consequences of submersion education has mostly been conducted at the primary and, to a lesser degree, the secondary level (see Baker 2006, Ch. 10 for an overview). The relative absence of research at the tertiary level is probably due to the fact that most attention has been devoted to students who do not speak the language of instruction at all. However, in higher education a certain proficiency level in the language of instruction is typically an admission requirement. Even so, it is reasonable to assume that students who meet the language-related admission requirements but do so at a relatively low level of proficiency will still be disadvantaged by the combined weight of having to improve their linguistic proficiency and having to learn complex academic content at the same time.

A recent study of the academic progress of pharmacy students in a four-year degree at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, demonstrates exactly that (Green 2014). The study analysed the performance data of 297 students entering the program in three consecutive years and examined whether performance in the program could be predicted on the basis of student variables such as English language proficiency, ethnicity and residency status. 265 of these graduated in the end; 28 had to repeat a year; and 105 failed at least one paper at some point during their studies.

It is an admission requirement into the program where the study took place to sit an English diagnostic test. Those who fail may still enter the program but will be required to pass a remedial English paper in the first year. The number of students who were admitted despite failing the English diagnostic test was 48 and these were coded as having ‘weak English.’ The number of students who should be considered English language learners was probably higher but the study did not use further measures of English language proficiency. The data were coded for ethnicity, though (94 students were European/Maori; 186 Asian; and 17 ‘other’), and one might assume that the ‘non-local ethnicity’ students (Asian and ‘other’) included some more language learners even if their English might have been good enough to pass the diagnostic test.

The strongest predictor of success in the program (graduating within four years; not having to repeat a year; not failing a paper) was, unsurprisingly, academic performance on entry. The predictors of low performance (not graduating; having to repeat a year; failing one or more papers) were more complex, and included “having weak English, being of non-local ethnicities, being male, and having lower grades at entry” (Green 2014, p. 5).

In his discussion, the author (who is not a language but a health researcher) sums up the language problem as follows and, implicitly, provides a perfect description of language submersion in higher education:

Within our own university, the students reported on in this study that are identified as having lower English proficiency in the [admission] screening test are enrolled in a remedial programme that they are required to pass. All students are then re-screened in the second year of our programme, but none of those identified in the first year excel, and 77 % of them fail a subsequent screening test in second year, and are then directed to further remedial help and further rescreening. That the students who are initially identified in the first year continue to have academic difficulties, even at the end of the programme, in spite of having to seek remedial help, and being further re-tested suggests two possibilities. The first is that the remedial help is ineffective, but the second, and in my opinion more likely, possibility, is that students who start with weaker English will be improving their English skills over time during the course, but are unable to make up enough ground. (Green 2014, p. 8)

None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about bilingual education. What is surprising is that – despite decades of research that show the detrimental effects of submersion education – submersion education in higher education has, paradoxically, come to be widely perceived as the IDEAL method of English language learning and higher education. This supposedly ideal method is, of course, not called ‘submersion education’ but ‘international education’ or ‘global education,’ and includes international students coming to study in English-dominant countries and the proliferation of programs with English as medium-of-instruction around the world.

As Green’s research demonstrates, the price for this misguided belief in the sink-or-swim method is, inter alia, paid in academic performance.

References

Baker, C. (2006). Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 4th ed. Bristol, Multilingual Matters.
Green, J. (2014). The effect of English proficiency and ethnicity on academic performance and progress Advances in Health Sciences Education DOI: 10.1007/s10459-014-9523-7

University rankings drive the Englishization of global academia

The Intercultural Communication Special Interest Group of the British Association of Applied Linguistics is hosting a seminar at Newcastle University next week devoted to “Intercultural Communication in Higher Education – principles and practices.” Given that internationalization of higher education is all the rage internationally, the seminar could not be more timely. I am one of the invited speakers and, as I cannot be there in person, have just finished recording my lecture about the “Englishization” of global higher education.

I use the term “Englishization” to refer to the spread of English as medium of instruction in institutions of higher education in non-Anglophone countries. A recent case study of English as medium of instruction in higher education in South Korea, particularly at the elite university KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), demonstrates that the pursuit of “global excellence” as expressed through a high rank in global university rankings is a key driver behind the expanding use of English as medium of instruction (Piller & Cho 2013).

University rankings are based on assessments of four broad areas: research and publications, learning environment, reputation of graduates, and internationalization. Of these four areas only ‘learning environment’ is a language-independent variable. It measures things like infrastructure and student-teacher ratio.

The fact that measurement of ‘research and publication,’ usually the most heavily-weighted criterion, is language-dependent is well-known: the most highly ranked journals (as measured by being indexed or having an impact factor) are predominantly published in Anglophone countries and, even if published elsewhere, tend to use English as their medium of publication. Reputation of graduates, too, is language-dependent as it is usually measured through surveys of the HR departments of international corporations where English is widely used.

Here I want to focus on ‘internationalization.’ While ‘internationalization’ is usually the assessment area with the lowest weighting, it is an important aspect of any institution’s strategy to improve its ranking because it is relatively easy to manipulate. Notching up points for ‘internationalization’ takes much less time than to improve research, the learning environment or the reputation of graduates. And achieving a quick jump in rankings through improved internationalization from one year to the next will have flow-on effects on the measurement of research (where reputation also plays a huge role, as evidenced by attempts to influence research reputation votes such as this one by University College Cork) and graduate reputation.

So how is an institution’s ‘internationalization’ measured? In the Korean rankings explored by Piller & Cho (2013), there were four measurements:

• The proportion of foreigners among a university’s teaching staff
• The number of international students
• The number of exchange students
• The proportion of English-medium lectures

Internationalisation is therefore both directly and indirectly language-dependent: the proportion of English-medium lectures is a direct measurement of language; measurements of foreigners among students and faculty are indirectly language-dependent as foreign faculty are more likely to lecture in English than Korean and as the presence of foreign students (even if they are almost exclusively from other non-Anglophone countries, particularly China) is – in circular logic – used as a further justification for the ‘need’ to have English as medium of instruction.

In sum, the desire to perform well on national and international university rankings pushes for English as a medium of instruction in a number of direct and indirect ways. University rankings are phenomenally influential: students base their decisions on where to seek admission on university rankings, governments base their funding decisions on university rankings, the public increasingly understand the value of academia based on university rankings. In that sense, increasing the use of English as medium of instruction is a rational strategy for a university as it has consequences for its position on university rankings. Sadly, in the rush to compete no one seems to have taken pause to reflect on the intrinsic value of the measurements that go into university rankings. Does the proportion of foreigners, for instance, really mean anything much other than, well, the proportion of foreigners?

The benefits to an individual institution of performing highly on university rankings are obvious. The costs of academic competition usually remain hidden. However, there are significant social costs attached to the Englishization of global academia. Here on Language on the Move we have recently discussed the transfer of the burden of language learning from society to the individual; increased social stratification as those who can afford private tuition in English will enjoy better access to higher education than those who cannot; and the damage done to critical inquiry if the medium is more important than the message. Cho (2012) adds educational costs as teachers may feel insecure, or lack proficiency and confidence when teaching in English or students may simply find lectures delivered in English incomprehensible.

All this raises a key question about Englishization and internationalization: What is the meaning of ‘excellence’ if it does not involve service to the common good?

Cho, J. (2012). Campus in English or campus in shock? English Today, 28 (02), 18-25 DOI: 10.1017/S026607841200020X
Piller, I., & Cho, J. (2013). Neoliberalism as language policy Language in Society, 42 (01), 23-44 DOI: 10.1017/S0047404512000887