Hong Kong Association for  Applied  Linguistics

 

Executive Committee 1999-2000 Chair : Roger Berry (Lingnan) Hon. Secretary : Fiona Hyland (OUHK) Treasurer : Bob Adamson (HKU) Asst. Secretary : Liz Walker (HKIEd) Members : May Fan (PolyU) Tony Hung (HKBU) Richard Pemberton (HKUST) Web Master : Fu Baoning (Lingnan) Contact: fhyland@ouhk.edu.hk HAAL Website: www.ln.edu.hk/eng/info/haal/

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

This being the last HAAL Newsletter of the 20^th century, many readers will no doubt be expecting the Editorial writer (like everyone else) to gaze into the crystal ball, and make optimistic predictions about ‘Language-teaching in the 21^st Century’, or even (dare I use that by now ubiquitous word?) ‘the New Millennium’.

I’ve chosen instead to look back, to one of the major issues in teaching – particularly language-teaching – in the last few decades, with (of course) hopeful glances at the future. My thoughts were initially triggered by a feature article by Pauline Bunce which appeared in the South China Morning Post on 27 October, where she lamented ‘The dreadful depths of dreary teaching’:

I recall that, in discussing this issue, we first defined the attributes of a professional. Apart from the obvious ones, such as the lengthy period of specialised training that professionals have to undergo, and so on, there is one particular attribute that stands out in my mind in the present context. It is the fact that professionals carry out their work with a large measure of autonomy, with plenty of scope to exercise their professional judgements. In diagnosing and treating their patients, doctors rely on their medical knowledge and experience – they do not constantly appeal to some higher ‘authority’ for guidance or instructions on what to do. So do lawyers in handling their legal cases, and architects in designing buildings, and all other professionals whatever their work may be. Of course, they all have to work within a set of constraints (e.g. the laws of the country, codes of conduct, budgets, etc.), but within those limits, they make their own decisions and use their own initiatives in dealing with the matters that they are entrusted with, as professionals.

How do language teachers measure against other professionals in this crucial attribute? The attitude expressed by the teacher in the above episode certainly does not give cause for comfort. It is for the reader to judge how widespread this mentality is. And it is for the reader to ponder whether the general upgrading of teachers’ academic and professional qualifications in recent years (many primary school teachers now hold university degrees) has brought a corresponding rise in the level of professionalism among them.

Teachers who admit to a lack of professional initiative say that the system is largely to blame. True, our education system tends to be over-regimented, in spite of signs that it is becoming less so. More insidiously, society as a whole may not regard teachers as professionals. In most institutions of higher learning in Hong Kong, language instructors are not treated as ‘academics’, or even (in one case) as ‘teachers’ (which leaves one mystified as to what they actually do, if not to teach). The unspoken assumption is that language teachers and instructors merely teach a ‘skill’ (like cycling or tennis perhaps?), and that they can do so just by following a manual or syllabus.

But ultimately, the responsibility rests with the teachers themselves. The system does not, in actual fact, prevent them from using their own initiative in teaching their subject. More perhaps than teachers of any other subject, language teachers need to be true ‘professionals’. They need to exercise their own professional judgements constantly in carrying out their work, because language cannot be taught strictly according to a set of instructions or procedures. Language is too rich and variable a phenomenon, and is too pervasive a part of our daily lives and experience, to be captured and confined within the covers of a syllabus or textbook. Language teachers need above all to be responsive to their students’ interests, needs, motivation, prior experience, level of proficiency, cultural background, and a host of other factors. And if they hope to be taken seriously as professionals, they will have to rise to these challenges like professionals, and not like mechanics.

Tony Hung
 
 

The Executive Committee
At the AGM held on October 12, 1998, the following were elected:

Chair: Roger Berry (Lingnan)
Treasurer: Bob Adamson (HKU)
Asst. Sec.: Liz Walker (HKIEd)
Members: Liz Hamp-Lyons (PolyU)
Tony Hung (HKBU)
Ken Hyland (CityU)

Chairman’s Statement

Two developments in the past year are worthy of note. Firstly, the decision to cut down on the number of seminars held (from 8 or 9 to 5 or 6), signalled in last year’s report, has proved justified, I believe. Attendance at all this year’s seminars (we organised 5, but one had to be cancelled at the last minute owing to unforeseen personal circumstances) was good to very good.

The second development was the introduction of the HAAL Article Prize, which is an award of $2000 to be presented to the writer of the best refereed article (nominated by a HAAL member) written in a particular year in the field of Applied Linguistics and of relevance to Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the response in the first year was not overwhelming and it was decided not to make an award for 1998 articles. However, we will redouble our efforts to solicit contributions and simplify the procedure. The nomination season begins now, so I would like to encourage members to add to the two we already have.

The fundamentals of the Association are healthy. Membership, at 109 at year’s end is holding up well. In terms of finance we are better off than last year and have even taken the adventurous (for HAAL) step of opening a savings account. This will ensure that the Association’s assets are not eroded.

However, it is not simply of matter of sitting on and enlarging our hoard; it is incumbent upon us to see that it is put to good use. The Article Prize mentioned above is one such initiative, but we must be thinking of others.

Finally, I would like to give advance warning that a new leadership will be needed in a year’s time. More than one of the current office bearers will be unable (for one reason or other) to continue. So if there is anyone out there who would like to get involved in the running of the Association, please let us know.

Activities
We held four seminars:

October: Professor Ruth Hayhoe
December: Professor Peter Skehan
February: Professor Michael Halliday
April: Dr Fiona Hyland and Dr David Bunton

Roger Benny
Chair
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

Income                                                                                HK$  Balance brought forward  -Current Account                       21,429.82 -Petty Cash                                    619.50 Sub-total                                22,049.32 Membership subscriptions         15,525.00 Interest on Savings Account              72.85		Expenditure                                                                              HK$ Secretarial services                        500.00 Postage & stationery                        627.40 Entertainment of speakers              960.00 AILA dues                                 3,142.38
New Income for 1998-99      15,597.85		Expenditure for 1998-99        5,229.78 Capital (1/10/99) - Current Account                  11,549.74 - Savings Account                  20,072.85 - Petty Cash                                794.80 Sub-total                               32,417.39
TOTAL                                  $37,647.17		TOTAL                               $37,647.17

Prepared by:

Bob Adamson
Hon. Treasurer
1^st October 1999
 
 

Which local institution is currently offering, as part of its MA Programme in English Language Teaching, a course in 'Disprogramme and Pragmatics'? Are they at the cutting edge of Applied Linguistics and is this a new term that we'll all need to master? Before you all reach for your Richards et al., let me tell you: no, it isn't. The real task is to work out how this solecism came about. (Hint: the top of the page says 'Programme Structure and Contents' but that has probably been changed.)
 
 

Date : December 17-19, 1999

Theme : "Language, Curriculum, and Assessment: Research, Practice and Management'

Venue : The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Contact : Ms Charlotte Law Wing Yee, ILEC'99,
Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong.

E-mail : wylaw@cuhk.edu.hk

Website : http://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~hkier/seminar/s991216/index.htm
 
 

Date : December 11-12, 1999

Venue : The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Contact : Dr Tim Shi
Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies,
The Polytechnic University of Hong Kong.

E-mail : ctdshi@polyu.edu.hk

Tel. : 2766-7440

Fax : 2334-0185

ALL LSHK members are cordially invited to attend and present papers at this year's ARF. A special topic of the ARF this year is ‘Linguistics and the New Millennium’.
 
 

If you are among those who think that size is important, you would probably have enjoyed being at AILA’s 12^th World Congress held in Tokyo this summer. Some 2,300 participants from 60 countries gathered on Waseda University’s leafy campus to give about 1,000 papers, 40 key note addresses, and 100 symposiums. The ground was thick with internationally renowned linguists, dignitaries, and notables from fields ranging from acoustic phonetics to xenolinguistics. Familiar faces were everywhere and you always thought you might just run into people you had last met when you were both trying a beta-version of the Silent Way at a remote oasis town in Chad.

The conference opened with a plenary from Henry Widdowson on Sunday afternoon. This was unfortunately scheduled at the same time as a Mr Bean repeat on my American Airlines flight from Dallas so I am unable to say much about it, nor about the reception which followed. Monday was rather better, and we had a choice of keynotes by Malcolm Coulthard on forensic linguistics, Braj Kachru on Asian varieties of English, Ron Carter on rhetorics of everyday language, Jef Verscheuren on pragmatics, Mark Warschauer on CALL, and yet more others. As you can imagine, scheduling these papers simultaneously resulted in a great deal of agonizing indecision, although this was a problem that became less acute as the week wore on. It was almost as though the programme committee had a plane to catch on Wednesday morning and had decided to pack most of what glittered into the first two days.

Monday’s keynote speeches were followed by 21 Symposia and I jumped between Di Slade’s team of systemicists discussing "Discourse analysis of spoken English", and "ESP in the 21^st Century: new trends, new challenges" which covered some interesting areas of genre analysis, both as a research tool and in ESP courses. Fortunately, even though the afternoon session offered over 300 papers to choose from, there were no further titles which referred to either the year 2000 or the millennium.

Tuesday morning and more stressful rummaging through the programme to choose between Gillian Brown on discourse interpretation or Elena Shohamy on democratic testing. Eventually I opted for Geoffrey Leech talking about results from the Longman grammar project. A fascinating speaker on an interesting topic and it was even worth sitting on the floor to hear it. This was followed by a symposium by Birmingham linguists on innovative studies using corpora. Malcolm Coulthard’s paper on his role in using text analysis to help absolve a writer accused of plagiarism was excellent, as was Carmen Caldas-Coulthard’s discussion of toys and ideology. Fortunately by this time I had worked out that I didn’t need the abstracts for previous sessions and had begun to reduce the weight in my conference bag considerably by ripping out handfulls of pages from the conference programme. By Tuesday afternoon it was down to the size of the London Yellow Pages.

Wednesday saw everyone heading for Mt Fuji and Asakusa Kannon Temple. This was a free day for cultural activities and mobs of conferees could be found wandering around the Ueno Park art galleries with their conference bags stuffed with wood block prints or staring at blackened-faced youths in Harajuku. Back to Waseda the next day and a symposium on "New directions in literacy research" which looked at new areas of social literacy research in terms of globalization and new technologies. By the afternoon the programme was starting to look a little less engaging with rather more good ideas for when you get home than most of us could really handle. The symposium "Multiple discourses in Business education", reporting a local project conducted by four Hong Kong universities, was interesting, but by now at least a few people were beginning to look a bit frayed by too many papers and Waseda’s indifferent air-conditioning. I ended the afternoon browsing through the sauna of the book exhibition consuming yet more cups of the powdered coffee-like drink always available at conferences in lieu of refreshments.

Up early again for the final day and a special lecture by the respected veteran of ESL teaching, Wilga Rivers, who reflected on sixty-five years of language teaching. The conference was wrapped up by a final plenary symposium led by Chris Candlin , currently President of AILA and Chair Professor at City University. Time to chat under the trees again and fan ourselves with the remains of our programmes, and it was all over for another three years.

The conference then, did not lack diversity. An interesting week, with large numbers of Applied linguistics luminaries giving their views and reporting research on an enormous range of topics. Plenty of opportunities to run into the many Hong Kong colleagues who attended, and to catch up with friends. A reasonable venue, with quiet, tree-lined avenues and plenty of ramen shops nearby, although rather overwhelmed by numbers and lacking in air-conditioned meeting places. Perhaps quality control could have been a bit tighter in the selection of papers and the keynotes could have been spread out more thinly, but despite frustrations, I enjoyed AILA’s first conference in Asia.
 
 

In case you don’t know, IATEFL stands for the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language. It was founded in 1967 and currently has a membership of over 2,000*. I’ve been a member for 15 years.

Every year IATEFL holds a major international conference, just before or after Easter and usually in the UK (not to mention several other more regional gatherings that it co-sponsors). By major, I am talking about 1,500 participants and 350 presentations (in as many as 20 parallel sessions) over four days - figures which in the field (to my knowledge) are only beaten by the TESOL Convention and equalled by JALT and AILA. And this year’s, held at Heriot-Watt University, just outside Edinburgh, was no exception.

Academically speaking, it cannot claim high status; for one thing papers submitted are not vetted. This would not be consistent with IATEFL’s aims of "linking, developing and supporting English Language Teaching professionals worldwide". Nevertheless, it does attract some big names, not just as plenary speakers. Our own David Nunan and Liz Hamp-Lyons were there, as were Michaels Breen and Wallace; Henry Widdowson is a regular. And although a majority of papers would not make you want to cross the road, there is enough quality and variety to suit any type of Applied Linguistic palate, provided that you choose carefully (but then, which conference isn’t that true of?).

And at those times when there isn’t a good paper you can always check out the book exhibition, or look out for old friends. Tony O’Brien, a former HAAL Hon. Sec., was spotted there; he’s now Director of ELT for the British Council (look what happens to people after they leave HAAL).

If there is one thing that makes me uneasy (about the conference as well as the association in general), it’s the way it is dominated by publishers and private language schools. There are too many presentations sponsored by the former hawking their wares or aimed at teachers in the latter promising a quick fix. But these can be avoided.

It’s a well-organised conference, and there is always a good social program. I’ve been to five conferences now and always found it worthwhile.
 
 

Non-Native Educators in English Language Teaching

Edited by George Braine (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999

The book consists of 13 chapters and provides a forum for non-native authors to raise and discuss professional, sociopolitical, and pedagogical issues relating to English language teaching.

The place of native and non-native speakers in the role of English teachers has probably been an issue ever since English was taught internationally. Although ESL and EFL literature is awash, in fact dependent upon, the scrutiny of non-native learners, interest in non-native educators is a fairly recent phenomenon. Till recently, the voices of non-native speakers raised on behalf of their own concerns have been even rarer. Except for a few prominent names such as Braj Kachru and Claire Kramsch, these voices have been submerged in the multitude of presentations and publications.

Non-Native Educators in English Language Teaching is a response to this notable vacuum in the ELT literature, providing a forum for non-native English educators from diverse geographical origins and language backgrounds. They include Claire Kramsch, Ulla Connor, Peter Medgyes, Suresh Canagarajah, and George Braine. In addition to presenting autobiographical narratives, the authors argue sociopolitical concerns and discuss implications for teacher education. Every chapter, whatever the theme, bears the mark of the author's personal experience as a non-native speaker of English.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Carless, D. (1998). Managing systemic curriculum change: A critical analysis of Hong Kong's Target-Oriented Curriculum initiative. In P. Stimpson & P. Morris (Eds.), Curriculum and assessment for Hong Kong: Two components, one system. Hong Kong: Open University of Hong Kong Press.

Carless, D. (1998). A case study of curriculum implementation in Hong Kong. System 26(3), 353-368.
 
 

This thesis traces the problematic history of the English junior secondary school curriculum in the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1949 to 1994. The status and role of English as a school subject in the PRC have fluctuated since 1949 because of its desirable but sensitive connotations. English is the international language of technology, trade and communications, which makes its study an important strategy in implementing internationally-oriented policies for 'modernisation', while its historical overtones of imperialism, capitalism and even barbarianism are unwelcome for those who prefer more self-reliant and isolationist approaches. This ambiguity has created dilemmas for curriculum developers. The specific research questions addressed in this thesis are:

• What were the particular socio-political and pedagogical influences on curriculum innovation in general and on syllabi and textbooks specifically in the field of junior secondary school English in the People's Republic of China between 1949 and 1994?

• How did the People's Education Press as a political and educational body handle the socio-political and pedagogical influences when compiling the syllabi and textbooks for junior secondary English between 1949 and 1994?

The study finds that, while curriculum change originates in shifts in the macro political climate, an increasingly pluralistic system of curriculum development has evolved through the involvement of various agencies in the process, which has permitted greater contestation of the curriculum, and is reflected in the strengthening of pedagogical, linguistic and moral content of the syllabi and textbook resources, and the reduction of overtly political content. Six distinct phases in this evolution are identified. The study argues that the overall process of policy-making, and curriculum development specifically, has been characterised by a complexity and pattern of development which is not adequately recognised in existing portrayals. It also contends that the pedagogical innovations that have played an important role in curriculum change are not direct borrowings from overseas, as suggested by some commentators; instead there is an increasingly sophisticated process of synthesis that grafts foreign ideas to traditional indigenous practices.

Membership is open to all those who are interested in Applied Linguistics. To apply, please fill out this form and send it, along with a cheque for HK$150 payable to the "Hong Kong Association for Applied Linguistics", to:

Dr. Fiona Hyland

School of Education and Languages,

Open University of Hong Kong,

30 Good Shepherd Street,

Homantin, Kowloon.

We will not send a receipt to you, but you will start receiving our circulars. If you are simply renewing membership, just fill in your name, address, email address and any other new information.

Full Name (Surname in capitals): _________________________________________

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If you have provided an e-mail address, we will assume that you wish to received your HAAL circulars there unless you tick here, in which case we will post them to you. ___

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