spoken lingua franca english in tertiary education at a swedish technical university: an...
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Spoken lingua franca English in tertiary education at a Swedish technical university: an investigation of form and communicative-pedagogical effectiveness. Beyza Björkman, Department of English. Outline. Background information: English in Sweden This setting - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Spoken lingua franca English in tertiary education at a Swedish technical
university: an investigation of form and communicative-pedagogical
effectiveness
Beyza Björkman, Department of English
2Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 23-04-22
Outline• Background information:
English in Sweden This setting
• This project: A study on spoken lingua franca English in tertiary education at a Swedish technical university AimSpeech events and subjectsPoints of investigation and methodsFindings
• Beyond the findings • What is next?
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 3
English in Sweden • History
• 1900sExpected proficiency: French, German,
EnglishInstruction: Swedish
• 1980s-to presentExpected proficiency: EnglishInstruction: Swedish, increasingly English
• Standards are relatively high • Swedish English generally ranked high
”almost mother-tongue like, ..., clear, well-mastered” (Jenkins, 2008)
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 4
The setting• A technical university in a large city in Sweden• Responsible for 1/3 of Sweden’s technical research
and engineering education• ca 20,000 students• ca 3,000 employees
predominantly Swedishalso Russian, Chinese, German etc.
• ca 1,500 exchange students in 2006• English used extensively
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 5
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
1999
(10)
2000
(10)
2001
(12)
2002
(13)
2003
(16)
2004
(23)
2005
(27)
2006
(34) 13 in Swe.
Master's programs in English at the site
Number of programs
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 6
Context: Technical communication
• Data• Real high-stakes technical dialogues
from content courses•Different from speech events in language
courses (comparative corpus)
• Interviews and questionnaires
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 7
Speech eventsELF
Dialogic Monologic
Group work
28 hours
Students
Presentations
17 hours
Lectures
48 hours
Students
Teachers Lecturers
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 823-04-22 8
L1s and speakersSpanishGermanSwedishLang.s from IndiaArabicRussianPersian/FarsiIcelandicFrenchTurkish
ItalianChineseSomaliGreekUzbekFinnishCatalanEnglish PolishSerbian
Number of speakers: 107
(in all types of speech events, excluding audiences in lectures)
Number of L1s: 20
Monologic (lectures):
54% Swedish, 46% Foreign speakers
Dialogic:
51% Exchange students
24.4% Ethnically non-Swedish
24.4% Swedish
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 9
Points of investigation• Morpho-syntactic non-standard usage (Disturbing? Non-
disturbing?Irritating? )
• Criteria: What is a commonality?The feature:• occurs in different types of speech
events• by different speakers with different L1s • 10 times
23-04-22 10
Y
N
Y
N
N
Y
Y
N
Potentially problematic
?
Covertly disturbing?
Irritating?
Overtly disturbing? Unsuitable for LF situations
Suitable for LF situations
Suitable for LF situations
Suitable for LF
situations?
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 11
Categorization of findings1. Morphological (41)Variations in word form:
e.g. boringdom, discriminization, forsify, levelize, more big, more easy, more clear,…
2. Syntactic (178)Correctly formed words used appropriately but in
syntacticallydeviant constructions
2.1 Phrase level NPVP
2.2 Clause level
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 12
Phrase level: NP (1) Not marking the plural
..200 degree..
..two type of …We have four
parameter..…two more condition....two way..Over 10 meter....6000 hour per year…It is always ten digit...ten glass vessel..
We need all the detail……just to get result..There are some difference….There are some different type of
reference…..several conclusion…you have several unknown…..same advantage compared with
other technology.There are other reason.
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 13
Phrase level: NP (2) Article usage
Superfluous/Incorrect articles
The poor people use…I have a exam.
No article when needed
…solve the problem as ? wholeThis is ? more tricky one.But they have ? very good subway system.It’s not ? effective solution.
SomeWe need to give some proposal. In high school, you do some examination report. ..some conclusion…,.. some commas.., ..some line here..,..some different type of reference…,
Zero article normally means indefinite.
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 14
Phrase level:VP • SVA
• 3P e.g. …these functions describes.., people doesn’t.., Engineers works like this,…
• 3S e.g. It come from this equation, The volume increase…, The traffic have gone beyond….
• Tense and aspect e.g. ...A power system is called a power system, because it is using different generator systems. You can remember what a turbine is doing, it is taking care of...
• Passive and Active voicee.g. But we affect by the flow../Some of these graphics devices can attach to your pc... / It can be happened that…
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 15
Clause level (1): Non-standard question formulation
• Two different types:• Wh questions
How many pages they have?
So where we are?
Why it is black?
What other equation I would use?
Why the function looks like that?
What we have in the outlet?
•SVOWe should go through every topic?We have to choose one of them?You’re sure it is solar? This is to fit in the equation?
<S1> er... in the outlet , what we have in the outlet? </S1>
<S2> . what?</S2><S1> in the outlet what we
have? <S1/><S2> (xx) reflection for vapor
</S2>
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 16
Clause level (2): Left dislocations
This rate you have it.Diffusivity you need it.This report we’ll do it later. The composition of the liquid it’s the same,..The supercapacitors I don’t know much about
them. All these chemical reactions they are
reversible.
Increased explicitness (Mauranen, 2007)
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 17
Clause level (3): Unraised negative
I think he won’t be here.I think my X is not OK here. It looks not good.I think it’s not a proper way to describe it.I think the teacher can’t read (the report) carefully. She has
no time.
Do you have any ’non’s on T4 that lead not to 0 here? Transfer or cognitive?
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 18
Disturbance?
NDLeft dislocations NDNegation
D! Non-standard question formulation
NDPassive/Active voice problems NDTense and aspect issues NDSubject-verb disagreement NDIncorrect plural forms/countability
NDDouble comparatives/superlatives
NDNot marking the plural NDNon-standard word formations Overt disturbance Morphosyntactic features
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 19
Questionnaires and interviews
• Intolerance: Students Teachers
Challenging?
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 20
Success of communication in ELFsettings seems to depend on two
factors:
1.SituationOrientation: content (not form)
2. Nature of lingua franca features
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 21
Nature of lingua franca features
1. Non-standard usage that leads to disturbance in communicatione.g. Non-standard question formulation
2. Successful reductions of redundancye.g. Not marking the plural
3. Devices that increase comprehensibility & economy e.g. Left dislocation and unraised negative
23-04-22Beyza Björkman, Department of English, [email protected] 22
Conclusions • Settings in which English is a lingua franca are too
dynamic for ELF to be a stable variety.• There are commonalities and common procedures.• ELF features reported so far might be reassertions
(Crystal, 2008) • Purist grammarians introducing artificial rules
e.g. informations (1800s) information informations
• More research needed.• Emphasis in teaching?
Department of English
www.english.su.se