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Title
Abstract
Figures
Background and Theoretical Framework
Aims of the Present Study
Design
Materials and Procedure
Legal and Practical Implications of the Findings
Wa Statistical Division
Fundamental Policy Question
Textual Move: Acknowledgement of Existing Practice
Implications
Method
Subject Arrangements
Concluding Discussion
Objectives of the Study
Participants and Data Collection
Demographic Background
Data and Methodology
The Participants
Discussion and Conclusion
Aims and Background
Background Literature
Approach and Methodology
Background Information
Methods
Subject, Test Design and Data Collection
Data Analysis
Introduction and Literature Review
Research Questions
Methodology
Procedure
Participants
Questionnaires and Interviews
Findings
Background
Subjects
The Study
Questionnaire Part 1
Demographic Questionnaire
Use of Ocsi by Proficiency Levels: Manova Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Introduction
Previous Studies in Hong Kong
Research Setting and Participants
Materials
Results
Procedures and Data Analysis
Conclusions
References
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Languages and Linguistics
Applied Linguistics
Studies in Applied Linguistics and Language Learning
Caroline Lipovsky
Ahmar Mahboob
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Abstract
Studies in Applied Linguistics and Language Learning brings together new and original studies in the area of critical applied linguistics, language policy and planning, and language learning and teaching. The book, divided into three sections, first offers critical views on various aspects of language in society, ranging from the construction of national identity, language and justice, racial and identity issues in the ELT industry, to language in business discourse. It then reports on language policy in the school curriculum, language learning in tertiary education, and Aboriginal languages policy. In the third section, it addresses issues in language learning and teaching, such as the role of parents in literacy learning, multiple script literacy, and language learning and maintenance strategies.
Figures (49)
The reason so much of the data resembles Ventola's linguistic services is that the conferences are pedagogic discourses with regulation projectinc integration. Accordingly we double-code many exchanges as both actio1 and knowledge negotiating interactions. For ease of representation, we lay out with regulatory moves to the left (colunm 3) and integrative knowledge moves to the right (column 6); each exchange is numbered tc the left of each analysis (columns 2 and 5), and tums are designated i column 1. The example just reviewed, along with two succeedinc exchanges, is presented along these lines below. The Convenor: prospective "OK" moves, designed to facilitate the exchange by encouraging a response from the YP, have been labelled "invite" moves There are two moves which explicitly solicit the events of the recount anc which have been labelled K2 in the integrative discourse column. The conference exchange which the two preceding examples are based on actually proceeded as follows, with both regulatory and integrative work going on:
The next set of exchanges is purely regulatory® in function, encouraging the YP to speak louder for the benefit of the Youth Liaison Officer and pethaps for the benefit of our recording crew. There are two "missing" verbalisations of A1 moves, one in exchange 6 since the Y P in fact stops talking when interrupted by the Convenor rather than verbally agreeing to, and one in exchange 11 where the Convenor simply assumes the YP will agree to speak up.
The young person then resumes his testimony through a long relatively monologic series of K1 move complexes, at the end of which the Convenor invites some more and is challenged by the Y P's closure - That's it. The K1 moves are supported by two non-verbal tracking moves (back- channels realised by a nod of the head), and finally with a K2f. In these examples and those which follow, we've included as part of the regulatory discourse any moves explicitly structuring the genre or
Questions of moral responsibility are also raised:
He then focuses on the mother having to attend the conference, in the presence of three uniformed police officers (and in the following exchange sequence, members from the wider community - i.e. the two members of our research team who are observing the conference):
The ELO then explicitly makes the point that the young person is creating a bad impression for the Muslim community®; his behaviour doesn't just affect himself, but his family and his ethnic group as well:
Later on this point is reinforced, with the ELO registering his extreme disgust and embarrassment about the negative stereotyping that is being reinforced:
In this conference the ELO also makes explicit moves to distance the young person from his mates, who have in fact invited him to be present at a fight they have arranged with rivals:
As with the convenor in the previous conference, once again there is a highly visible regulative discourse, with the ELO controlling the interaction. He initiates all knowledge exchanges - Dk1 and K1 moves (but as primary, rather than secondary knower). And once again, the interpretation of the commissioned recount is jointly constructed with the ELO assuming more even control than the convenor, and YP responding a word or phrase at a time.
Figure 1. Effects of argument strength on the perceived culpability.
Figure 2. Effect of racial appearance on culpability.
Table 2: Number of Indigenous people speaking only English at home by statistical division: Westem Australia 2006
Table 4: Key references made to research in the National Framework
Figure 1: Integrated Model of Language-in- Education Planning of a Student Exchange Program
Table 1: Participating universities and response rates
With regard to gender, the overall percentage of male students leaminc German increased between 1987 and 2005 from 28.5% to 36.5%, which i: a positive trend in light of a general underrepresentation of boys ir language classes at secondary level (see for example Carr and Pauwel: 2006; Barton 2006). There was however a highly significant difference between the two language levels with the beginners level recording < percentage of over 40% of male students versus only 27.7% at the intermediate level (7=7.459, df=1, p=006). One explanation appears tc be that more female than male students begin their university language study with some previous knowledge of German and, hence, seem to star at a higher language level. The data reveals a highly significant difference between the two genders with regard to previous language leaming a secondary school (,7=7.505, df=1, p=006). While only 34.7% of all male
Table 3: Degree distribution (first and second degree)
Table 6: Areas of interest
Why are you learning G erman at university? Please think carefully about all the following reasons and tick on the scale between “strongly agree=1”, “agree=2”, “not sure=3”,, “disagree=4” and “strongly disagree=5” . The first six reasons mav not be apvlicable to vou (“ N/A” ).
NB Judgement scores were out of 20, meaning and pronunciation scores were out of 10. The subjects' judgement, meaning and pronunciation scores varied widely (see Table 3).
Table 4: Weighted results of vocabulary quiz.
Table 7: Subgroups of the subjects
Table 2: Reasons for choosing both NETs and LETs
Table 1: Students’ preferences for English teachers
Table 3: Advantages of NETs
Table 4: Disadvantages of NETs However, the surveyed students also critically acknowledged the disadvantages of NETs, which were classified into the categories shown in Table 4.
Table 5: Advantages of LETs
Table 6: Disadvantages of LETs The disadvantages of LETs were classified into six categories as shown in Table 6 below:
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Studies in Applied Linguistics
and Language Learning

Studies in Applied Linguistics
and Language Learning

Edited by

Ahmar Mahboob and Caroline Lipovsky

Studies in Applied Linguistics and Language Learning, Edited by Ahmar Mahboob and
Caroline Lipovsky

This book first published 2009

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2009 by Ahmar Mahboob and Caroline Lipovsky and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-1239-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1239-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements .................................................................................. viii

Preface ........................................................................................................ ix

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1
Identities, Policies and Practices in Applied Linguistics
Ahmar Mahboob & Caroline Lipovsky

Part I: Critical Applied Linguistics

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 14
Critical Constructions of A National Australian Identity
Maria Chisari

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 29
Racism in the English Language Teaching Industry
Ahmar Mahboob

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 41
Negotiating Shame: Exchange and Genre Structure in Youth Justice
Conferencing
J.R.Martin, Michele Zappavigna & Paul Dwyer

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 73
Dialect and Credibility Judgements of Indigenous Australian Suspects
Sowmya Devaraj & Jane Goodman-Delahunty

Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 85
Business Discourse as a Site Of Inherent Struggle
Alan Jones

Part II: Language Policy and Practice

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 108
Developing an Aboriginal Language Policy for Western Australia: Some
Issues
Graham McKay

vi Table of Contents

Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 124
The Place of Languages in the School Curriculum: Policy and Practice in
Australian Schools
Anthony J. Liddicoat & Timothy Jowan Curnow

Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 139
Australian Values Education Policy: The Official Discourse
Dana Anders, Christina Gitsaki & Karen Moni

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 158
Language-in-Education Planning of Student Exchanges between Japanese
and Australian Universities
Hiroyuki Nemoto

Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 176
Dimensions of Learning German At Australian Universities
Gabriele Schmidt

Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 203
Language Maintenance Strategies and Language Attitudes of New
Migrants from Italy
Antonia Rubino

Part III: Language Learning and Teaching

Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 226
Learning to become School-Literate Parents of ESL Children
Honglin Chen & Pauline Harris

Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 244
Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy
Michele De Courcy & Hana Yue

Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 271
Reading L2 Text: How More and Less Skilled Learners Read L2 Text
Sayuki Machida

Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 289
Pronunciation as Categorisation: The Role of Contrast in Teaching English
/R/ and /L/
Helen Fraser

Table of Contents vii

Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 307
EFL Learners' Use of Oral Communication Strategies
Hsin-Fei Victoria Wu & Christina Gitsaki

Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 325
Student Perceptions of Native English Teachers and Local English
Teachers
Lai Ping Florence Ma

About the Contributors ............................................................................ 349

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An edited volume requires a lot of support from a range of professionals
and academics and we would like to thank all of these wonderful people
who have made the current volume possible. We would specifically like to
thank the contributors to this volume and the academics who took out time
from their busy schedules to write reviews of the contributions. Given that
a number of the papers included in this volume were first presented at the
Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA) 2008 Conference
held at the University of Sydney, we would like to acknowledge the
support of the ALAA conference team, ALAA conference volunteers, and
the ALAA executive board. We would like to thank Margaret Hennessy
for helping us with proof reading the volume. And, finally, we would like
to give special thanks to Alexander Stanley, whose computer expertise
supported us throughout.

PREFACE

This volume takes a fresh look at applied linguistics and language learning
research, and engages readers in challenging a number of current
assumptions in the field. The idea for this book came as Caroline and I
were organising the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA)
2008 Conference. Given the theme of the conference – Critical
Dimensions in Applied Linguistics – we received a number of papers that
looked at issues of identity, policies, power and privilege in applied
linguistics and language learning. Following the conference we asked
these participants to submit their papers to us to be included in this
volume. In addition, we also approached and solicited new papers from
other applied linguists in Australia who work in the area of critical applied
linguistics.
All papers submitted for publication to this volume went through a
rigorous blind review process and selection was based on the outcome of
this review process. Twenty-eight (28) papers were initially submitted for
publication and seventeen (17) of them are included in this volume.
Although this volume does not focus only on Australia, many of the
authors included here work and/or have studied in Australia. Thus, the
papers included in this volume have an Australian outlook to Applied
Linguistics, although it is in no way a comprehensive representation of the
work on Applied Linguistics that is currently being carried out in
Australia. Given the breadth and scope of this volume, we believe that
these papers will contribute to the field as it continues to grow.

Ahmar Mahboob & Caroline Lipovsky
Sydney, June 2009

CHAPTER ONE
IDENTITIES, POLICIES AND PRACTICES IN
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
AHMAR MAHBOOB & CAROLINE LIPOVSKY

1. Introduction
As disciplines go, Applied Linguistics is a rather new addition to
academia. The first course in Applied Linguistics was introduced in 1946
at the University of Michigan in the United States of America, and the first
journal, Language Learning: A quarterly journal of Applied Linguistics,
was launched in 1948. In these early years, studies in Applied Linguistics
focussed on second/foreign language learning. However, over the last 50
or so years, the field has grown extensively and there are literally
thousands of publications on the subject. With time, Applied Linguistics
research expanded its domain, and started exploring new areas such as
bilingualism, clinical linguistics, critical discourse analysis, forensic
linguistics, language policy and planning, lexicography, multilingualism,
and translation and interpretation. These areas have now evolved into sub-
fields of specialisation, with books, edited volumes and journals dedicated
to them. This book attempts to bring some of these diverse areas together
into a single volume, and includes original studies that extend the scope of
the field.
The volume, divided into three sections, includes original and new
studies in the area of critical applied linguistics, language policy and
planning, and language learning and teaching. The book first offers critical
views on various aspects of language in society, ranging from the
construction of national identity, language and justice, racial and identity
issues in the ELT industry, to language in business discourse. It then
reports on language policy in the school curriculum, language learning in
tertiary education, and Aboriginal languages policy. In the third section, it
addresses issues in language learning and teaching, such as the role of
parents in literacy learning, multiple script literacy, and language learning
and maintenance strategies. In this manner, this book addresses multiple
aspects of interest to applied linguists. The studies included in this volume
are described in some detail below.

2 Chapter One

2. Critical Applied Linguistics
The first section of this volume offers critical views on a range of issues in
various contexts of institutional discourse.
In the opening chapter, "Critical constructions of a national Australian
identity", Maria Chisari questions the former Howard government's
official depiction of Australia's national identity, and its re-
conceptualisation of citizenship in relation to a predefined set of
"Australian values". This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of the
language used to outline Australian values and history in the resource
booklet Becoming an Australian Citizen (this booklet is required reading
for applicants attempting the Australian citizenship test, and provides
information about Australian systems, history, culture and values). Chisari
argues that the Australian identity, as represented in the booklet, is "one
where Australia is a nation with unique, identifiable, core Australian
characteristics", that "advocates for integration rather than
multiculturalism", "has strong white allegiances" and "underplays the
nation's multi-lingual and multicultural population" (p. 14). Chisari
investigates the government's official rhetoric on Australian national
values and identity in its social and political context, using van Dijk
(2000), who argues that such discourses are so "premised on seemingly
legitimate ideologies and attitudes, and often tacitly accepted by most
members of the dominant majority group that they become a form of
'ethnic hegemony'" (p. 34). In doing so, Chisari reflects on hegemonic
struggles within societies, and probes notions of identity and belonging.
Ahmar Mahboob further explores hegemonic discourse and subsequent
issues of marginalisation and exclusion in "Racism in the English
Language Teaching Industry", an investigation of the concept of
nativeness in the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry. In this
paper, Mahboob highlights race and nativeness based discrimination in the
ELT industry. Based on an analysis of web-based postings, survey data,
and a sample of the current literature in Applied Linguistics, Mahboob
shows that hegemonic discourses on the White native speaker teacher's
superiority ensure that he/she continues to be the referent of the English as
an Additional Language classroom. The fact that the native speaker of
English is described as White and speaking a variety of English associated
with the UK, Canada, the USA or Australia, while non-White individuals
who speak a variety of English associated with a South country (such as
India, Nigeria or Singapore) are constructed as non-native speakers,
defines two dimensions of prejudice in the ELT industry: 'Whiteness' and
'native speakerism'. This results in discriminatory employment policies

Identities, Policies and Practices in Applied Linguistics 3

and hiring practices, whereby employers hire native speakers over non-
native speakers, and White non-native teachers over other non-native
teachers. In a global world where communication in English between non-
native speakers tends to prevail, Mahboob posits that the notion of a White
native speaker as a model for language learning and teaching should be
challenged and revised.
The next three chapters discuss how language is used and adapted in
various contexts. J.R. Martin, Michele Zappavigna and Paul Dwyer, in
"Negotiating shame: Exchange and genre structure in youth justice
conferencing", explore the way in which participants negotiate meaning in
the context of restorative justice. They state that in recent decades,
governments around the world have begun to experiment with various
relatively informal legal processes, often characterised as forms of
"restorative justice", as an adjunct or alternative to formal court
proceedings. In this paper, they focus on the model of "youth justice
conferencing" which has been operating in New South Wales, Australia,
since the late 1990s. Evaluations of conferencing consistently show that
the majority of participants are highly satisfied with it as a process but the
theoretical accounts to explain this phenomenon have so far paid almost
no attention to close-up discourse analysis, relying instead on social-
psychological theories of affect, and implying that an ideal-typical
conference moves through a core sequence of remorse, apology and
forgiveness. Martin, Zappavigna and Dwyer's examination of the
exchange structure of the interactions between convenors (or ethnics
liaison officers) and offenders highlights the presence of a regulatory
pedagogic discourse, which in turn projects an integrative discourse of
social responsibility whereby young offenders are realigned with the
values of their communities and families in place of the values of their
peers. This highlights the dominant contribution of the convenors and
ethnic liaison officers, compared with the relatively passive and scaffolded
role of the young offenders. The authors' close linguistic reading, however,
allows them to counter-balance ensuing reservations about the sincerity of
the offender's apology—and its ability to satisfy the victim—with the
opportunity for all involved (offender, victim, families and police) to
negotiate solidarity.
Issues of language and justice are also considered by Sowmya Devaraj
and Jane Goodman-Delahunty in "Dialect and credibility judgments of
Indigenous Australian suspects", in which they turn their attention to
issues of credibility, in relation to suspects' racial appearance, pauses in
conversation, and argument strength. In Devaraj and Goodman-
Delahunty's paper, concerns are raised as to whether the rate of Indigenous

4 Chapter One

overrepresentation in the legal system can be attributed to biased
judgments about their credibility. Devaraj and Goodman-Delahunty
highlight three factors that might contribute to biased credibility
judgments about Indigenous suspects: racial appearance (Aboriginal vs.
Caucasian), silence during conversation (long pauses in speech vs. no long
pauses) and force of exculpatory argument (weak vs. strong). Their
investigation of these factors shows how cultural differences in norms of
verbal communication—such as periods of silence in conversation in
Standard and Aboriginal English—could affect veracity judgments in legal
settings, such as police interviews and the courtroom. As such, theirs is an
important contribution to the body of studies which expose the
disadvantage that speakers of minority varieties suffer in institutional
settings where a different variety is the norm.
In the next chapter, "Business discourse as a site of inherent struggle",
Alan Jones argues that the orientation to communication and language in
business discourse is fundamentally dissimilar from the one that prevails
in non-institutional contexts. In this paper he assembles sources suggesting
that business discourse is inherently conflictual. He links the business
ideology of competition (Porter 1979, 1980, 1985) to the Habermasian
concept of strategic action (Habermas 1984), and argues that business
discourse is both consciously and unconsciously strategic, leading in the
latter case to what Habermas (1976, 1984) calls "systematically distorted
communication". He represents business as a set of discursive practices
that not only account for and mirror movements of money and material
goods but, especially in their more spontaneous enactments, reveal the
internal dilemmas of strategic actors who are also bound by the
"involvement obligations" of the interaction order (Goffman 1959, 1967).
While Jones's analysis of business discourse is grounded in empirical
descriptions of discourse in use, it also transcends specific contexts of
communication and genres, as he goes beyond the examination of the
immediate discourse situation to explore the relationship between
participants' language use and their socio-economic interests. In doing this,
Jones discusses three kinds of evidence capable of showing that the
discursive practices of the business world are unconsciously conflictual, or
"distorted." These are: a) the occlusion of risky topics; b) a high incidence
of discursive shifts or alternations, indicative of competing motivations;
and c) the occurrence of impeded or self-contradictory speech.

Identities, Policies and Practices in Applied Linguistics 5

3. Language Policy and Practice
The second section includes studies that report on various aspects of
language policy in Australia, ranging from Aboriginal languages policies
to language policies and practices in schools and universities, and
language maintenance strategies of recent migrants.
In "Developing an Aboriginal languages policy for Western Australia:
Some issues", Graham McKay sets out the background to the development
of an Aboriginal languages policy for Western Australia as he considers
the initial issue of what languages should be considered Aboriginal
languages for the purpose of such a policy. McKay states that the
Australian Government led the way in 1987 in adopting a National Policy
on Languages which incorporated policy on Aboriginal languages and
included creoles and Aboriginal English in its scope. He points out that
New South Wales was the first State to adopt an Aboriginal languages
policy, and Victoria is about to follow suit; the Western Australian
Department of Indigenous Affairs is still investigating developing an
Aboriginal languages policy for Western Australia. McKay states that
these State developments, two decades after the Commonwealth policy,
raise a number of questions. In his discussion of these questions, McKay
explores wider issues regarding the significance of language in relation to
Aboriginal people's sense of identity, as well as issues of communication
between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, of inter-generational
communication among Aboriginal people, of Indigenous education, and of
successful participation of Aboriginal people in all aspects of wider
society in general. In doing so, McKay highlights the importance in the
development of an Aboriginal languages policy in Western Australia of
accommodating the diversity of language needs of the various Aboriginal
communities, and emphasises the need to not only recognise and
strengthen traditional Aboriginal languages, but also recognise Kriol and
Aboriginal English. In taking a broader approach to what constitutes
Aboriginal languages, McKay advocates Australia's multilingualism and
multiculturalism, downplayed in the Howard government's depiction of
Australian identity (see also Chisari, this volume).
In the next chapter, "The place of languages in the school curriculum:
Policy and practice in Australian schools", Anthony J. Liddicoat and
Timothy Jowan Curnow review State and Territory documents concerning
language-in-education policies in Australian schools. They point out that
although the language policy at the national level and at the State and
Territory level in Australia has been concerned with the question of the
place of languages in the school curriculum for over 20 years, the place of

6 Chapter One

languages remains highly problematic. This paper surveys current State
and Territory language education policies in Australia to examine the ways
in which the place of languages is constructed. Liddicoat and Curnow
argue that the quantity of policy around languages in Australia does not
represent a position of policy strength. Rather, languages seem to have a
relatively fragile position in education in general. Liddicoat and Curnow's
review highlights a wide range of approaches in the language-in-education
policies adopted in the different Australian States and Territories.
Altogether, however, the policies reveal a movement away from mandated
language study, weakening the status of language learning in the
Australian school curriculum.
Dana Anders, Christina Gitsaki and Karen Moni, in "Australian values
education policy: The official discourse", turn their attention to another
education policy document: the National Framework for Values Education
in Australian Schools (2005), which defines values teaching and learning
in Australian schools. The document seeks to promote the government's
official rhetoric and, as such, provide legitimacy to the values it
advocates—in ways similar to the resource booklet Becoming an
Australian Citizen (see Chisari, this volume). In their analysis of the
document, Anders suggests that it fulfils several strategic functions: to
create legitimacy and relevancy for the framework, to persuade its
receivers to view the Government initiative favourably, and to create the
impression that such an intervention is based on widespread consensus.
They points out that the National Framework, like all texts, is a political
one in that it is crafted to meet its communicative purpose, and, in this
respect, the text is effective in promoting a framework for values
education in schools. However, as they adds, the question remains if such
promotional aims are fulfilled at the cost of glossing over contested
educational and social issues.
The next two chapters focus on aspects of language education in
Australian tertiary institutions. In "Language-in-education planning of
student exchanges between Japanese and Australian universities",
Hiroyuki Nemoto investigates student exchanges in the novel context of
collaborative language education. Nemoto's study investigates structural
arrangements of a student exchange program for Japanese students at an
Australian university. The focus in Nemoto's study is placed on the impact
of policies and practices of such an exchange program on Japanese
exchange students' participation in the Australian host community.
Nemoto reports that tensions emerged in relation to credit transfer
systems, subject arrangements, and academic support systems, and his
analysis highlights the importance of examining the structural

Identities, Policies and Practices in Applied Linguistics 7

arrangements of student exchanges, and shows how bottom-up planning
and evaluation mechanisms could enhance outcomes of such exchanges.
Nemoto suggests that improvements to the system would include tailoring
appropriate pre-departure programs for exchange students, consolidating
support programs at the host universities, setting up one-to-one
relationships between exchange program staff and exchange students,
including English for Academic Purposes courses into students' curricula,
re-examining policies with regard to subjects tailored for exchange
students and to language and study support, and providing financial
support to students and to incoming exchange programs. Ultimately, he
argues, reciprocating incoming with outgoing exchange programs might
be the key to improving students' participation in exchange programs and
to increasing government and institutional funding.
In "Dimensions of learning German at Australian universities",
Gabriele Schmidt turns her attention to the sources of motivation that
influence students in their initial choice to study German at university.
Schmidt points out that German has been taught at Australian universities
for over 150 years, and is currently offered by thirteen universities.
Schmidt observes that for the vast majority of students, learning German is
a free choice and is usually not required by their degree. As a result of this,
she reasons, it is not surprising that the number of tertiary students
learning German in Australia has declined between 2000 and 2005 by
18%. To study this, Schmidt conducted a questionnaire survey of 520
students from ten Australian universities who were enrolled in German
courses at beginners or intermediate level. Schmidt's study highlights how
students' root motivations have a substantial bearing upon their choice to
study German at university. She shows that students' reasons for learning
German are quite diverse, with a general interest in learning languages
coming first. Coming after are a strong interest in travelling to a German-
speaking country and in communicating with German speakers, as well as
an interest in their culture. Schmidt argues that these findings should be
taken into account when designing curricula and marketing German to
potential learners.
In the next chapter, "Language maintenance strategies and language
attitudes of new migrants from Italy", Antonia Rubino explores
multilingualism and language maintenance amongst new Italian migrants
to Australia. In her paper, Rubino analyses the language maintenance
strategies and attitudes of a group of Italian women who migrated to
Australia throughout the nineties under different immigration categories
(family reunion, work, own business). During in-depth interviews, the
women were asked to talk about their linguistic practices and their

8 Chapter One

personal experiences dealing with languages both in Italy and Australia, as
well as their interaction with earlier Italian migrants. Rubino's study sheds
light not only on the impact of recent socio-economic and socio-cultural
circumstances on bilingualism, but also on the influence of the linguistic
practices of earlier migrants on the language attitudes and maintenance
efforts of later migrants. Rubino also shows how recent Italian women
migrants seem to have better opportunities to be bilingual than earlier
migrants did. Contributing factors include their use of Italian at home,
exposure to other languages before migrating, higher levels of education,
close contact with Italy via the internet or visits, and a strong motivation to
transmit Italian language to their children. Their language maintenance
efforts are also fostered by their interactions with earlier Italian migrants
in that they promote puristic attitudes about their language use, such as
steering away from transfers, code-switching or language mixing. The
broader Australian context also comes into play, as Australia is perceived
as a country where languages are not actively promoted (see Liddicoat and
Curnow, this volume), hindering their language maintenance efforts.

4. Language Learning and Teaching
The third section of this book includes chapters that address issues in
language learning and teaching. Literacy is investigated through the role of
parents in their children's literacy development, and a study of children's
experiences of multiple script literacy. Students' reading comprehension in
L2 Japanese, and learners' use of oral communication strategies in L2
English are also examined, while the effectiveness of explicit use of
contrast in teaching English pronunciation is investigated. Finally,
students' perceptions of their native vs. non-native ESL teachers are
discussed.
As more children with a non-English speaking background enter
Australian schools, teachers face the challenge of engaging with their
parents' beliefs about literacy practices, so as to maximise the children's
literacy development. How this can be successfully achieved is central to
Honglin Chen and Pauline Harris's study in "Learning to become school-
literate parents of ESL children". Chen and Harris state that although the
role of significant others (e.g. parents) in children's literacy learning has
been well documented, there are few studies that inform schools of how
parents of ESL children facilitate their children's literacy learning. Chen
and Harris point out that most of these parents had their schooling in a
different context mediated through a different language, and were brought

Identities, Policies and Practices in Applied Linguistics 9

up with a different set of literacy practices. Thus, their previous literacy
experiences may affect their perceptions of what it means to be literate in
English at school, and the kinds of literacy experiences they provide at
home. Drawing on theories of identity and situated learning, and using a
case study approach, Chen and Harris explore how one parent of an ESL
student learned her role as a facilitator for her children's literacy learning.
Their study highlights the complexities, for parents of a non-English
speaking background, of gaining access to English literacy practices in
order to participate in their children's literacy learning, as this means
questioning and redefining their original beliefs about literacy practices.
For the parents of ESL children, becoming a school-literate parent in the
novel context of Australian schooling actually entails negotiating a new
identity, as they reshape their beliefs about literacy learning. The study
further posits the question of reciprocity, and how schools may tune into
children's home literacy practices.
In some Australian schools, ESL children receive part of their school
curriculum in their first language, and part in English. In this case, what
enables children to transfer their knowledge of literacy from one language
to the other? This is the question that Michèle de Courcy and Hana Yue
attempt to answer in "Children's experiences of multiple script literacy".
De Courcy and Yue argue that in the second language development of
bilingual children, a particularly important role has been found for literacy
in the first language, even when the second language "does not share the
same writing features, grammar, graphic conventions or even the same
type of writing conventions" (Arefi 1997, iii) with the first. De Courcy and
Yue point out that concepts of print, directionality of script, sound-
grapheme correspondence (if applicable), and strategies for getting
meaning from print—using semantic, grapho-phonic and syntactic cueing
systems—once learnt in one language can be transferred to the other
language (Cummins and Swain 1989). However, they state, "transfer of
academic skills across languages will not happen" automatically
(Cummins 2000, 184), and, where the two languages are quite distant, it
may be more that underlying skills to do with literacy are transferred,
rather than knowledge of surface features (Eisterhold 1990, 97-98). De
Courcy and Yue's study highlights how strategies that significantly affect
literacy development can transfer from a first to a second language, even
when the two languages use different scripts. They also demonstrate how
the transfer of strategies, skills and knowledge from the first language
actually fosters literacy development in the second language. This shows
the positive interrelation of literacy development in first and second
languages, regardless of the first language spoken by the children.

10 Chapter One

Sayuki Machida, in "Reading L2 text: How more and less skilled
learners read L2 text", investigates the reading comprehension of a group
of advanced learners of Japanese, and reports on a piece of small-scale
research which investigates how L2 Japanese advanced learners read an
expository text in Japanese. Machida's study highlights a number of
factors that play a role in L2 learners' reading comprehension process,
such as the importance of word recognition and syntactic knowledge in
order to be able to retrieve ideas and propositions, as well as linguistic and
pragmatic discourse knowledge in order to be able to combine
propositions into rhetorical units. Machida also shows that students' higher
performance in retrieving propositions (the lower level of processing)
increases their performance in connecting ideas and building a text's
rhetorical structure.
In "Pronunciation as categorisation: The role of contrast in teaching
English /r/ and /l/", Helen Fraser challenges the Critical Period
Hypothesis—or belief that adults cannot learn new phonological
contrasts—as she extends previous demonstrations (eg. Lively et al.
(1994) that adults can effectively be taught phonological categories. Fraser
reports an experiment designed to test the effectiveness of explicit use of
contrast in teaching the distinction between /r/ and /l/ to Asian learners of
English. The experiment uses computer-based training in which users not
only receive right/wrong feedback on their perception of English r/l
minimal pairs (e.g."fruit/flute"), but are also able to explore the contrast
under their own keyboard control. Based on the results of her study, Fraser
argues that a shift of perspective from physical sounds to conceptual
sounds entails considering the learning of pronunciation as part of a
conscious and socially situated context. This inclusion of a concept
formation approach in the teaching of sounds calls for a guided
exploration of contrasting examples so that learners can establish
appropriate phonological concepts and improve their perception and
production.
In "EFL Learners' use of oral communication strategies", Hsin-Fei Wu
and Christina Gitsaki explore Taiwanese learners' Oral Communication
Strategies (OCS), and study how these are related to their gender, age,
language proficiency, the frequency of using English in and out of school,
and their motivation. Interestingly, while most students in Wu and
Gitsaki's study reported that they were learning English to enhance their
career prospects, those students whose motivation was to make more
friends had the highest frequency of use of OCS strategies. Other reasons
for learning English included travelling abroad and personal interest.
These results are similar to those in Schmidt's study (this volume), and

Identities, Policies and Practices in Applied Linguistics 11

highlight the precedence of personal interests over professional interests in
students' motivations for learning a foreign language or improving their
ability.
In "Student perceptions of native English teachers and local English
teachers", Florence Ma adds to the native vs. non-native speaker debate as
she examines the "native speaker fallacy" according to which the ideal
language teacher is native (see Phillipson 1992). Ma's paper analyses
student perceptions of Native English teachers (NETs) and Local English
teachers (LETs) in Hong Kong, in the hope of contributing to the
discussion of issues regarding non-native speaker English teachers
(NNESTs). Ma's study supports Mahboob's (2004) findings that students
find both their NETs' and LETs' contributions valuable in their English
language learning—e.g. NETs' for facilitating the learning of speaking and
listening skills, and LETs' for their comprehensibility and ability to use
students' L1.

5. Concluding Remarks
The papers included in this volume are of interest to applied linguists who
work in diverse sub-fields. These papers critically review the issues in
Applied Linguistics and contribute to and/or challenge some of the current
thinking. As such, we believe that these papers will contribute to the field
as it continues to grow.

References
Arefi, Marzieh. 1997. The relationship between first and second language
writing skills for Iranian students in Sydney: An application of the
interdependence hypothesis. PhD diss., University of Western
Sydney. (Unpublished)
Becoming an Australian citizen: Citizenship: Your commitment to
Australia. 2007. Canberra ACT. (Printed September 2007)
Commonwealth of Australia. 2005. National Framework for Values
Education in Australian Schools. Canberra, Australia:
Commonwealth of Australia.
Cummins, Jim. 2000. Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual
Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Cummins, Jim and Merrill Swain. 1989. Bilingualism in Education.
London: Longman.

12 Chapter One

Eisterhold, Joan Carson. 1990. Reading-writing connections: Toward a
description for second language learners. In Second Language
Writing: Research Insights for the Classroom, ed. Barbara Kroll, 88-
102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New
York: Doubleday.
Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual. New York: Pantheon.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1976. On systematically distorted communication.
Inquiry 13: 205-218.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action Vol 1:
Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Trans. T. McCarthy.
Cambridge: Polity.
Lively, Scott E., David B Pisoni, Reiko A. Yamada, Yohichi Tohkura, and
Tsuneo Yamada. 1994. Training Japanese listeners to identify English
/R/ and /L/. III. Long Term Retention of New Phonetic Categories.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 96(4): 2076-87.
Mahboob, Ahmar. 2004. Native or nonnative: What do the students think?
In Learning and Teaching from Experience: Perspectives on
Nonnative English-Speaking Professionals, ed. Lia Kamhi-Stein,
121-147. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Phillipson, Robert. 1992. Linguistics Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Porter, Michael E. 1979. How competitive forces shape strategy. Harvard
Business Review, March/April 1979.
Porter, Michael E. 1980. Competitive Strategy. New York: Free Press.
Porter, Michael E. 1985. Competitive Advantage. New York: Free Press.
van Dijk, Teun A. 2000. New(s) racism: A discourse analytical approach.
In Ethnic Minorities and the Media, ed. Simon Cottle, 33-49.
Philadelphia: Open University Press.

PART I
CRITICAL APPLIED LINGUISTICS

CHAPTER TWO
CRITICAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF A
NATIONAL AUSTRALIAN IDENTITY
MARIA CHISARI

1. Introduction
In October 2007, the former Howard government introduced a citizenship
test for immigrants seeking Australian citizenship. Enacted through the
Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Testing) Bill 2007, the test consists of
twenty computer-based multiple choice questions that assess candidates'
knowledge of Australian systems, history, culture and values. The
government proclaimed that the new citizenship test would ensure that
migrants embrace "Australian values" and Australian culture and integrate
into Australian society. Prospective candidates prepare for the test by
studying the contents of the resource book, Becoming an Australian
Citizen: Citizenship-Your Commitment to Australia.
The Australian identity depicted in the resource booklet is one where
Australia is a nation with unique, identifiable, core Australian
characteristics that hark back to a nostalgic history of the bush, diggers
and prime ministerial sports heroes. It is a national identity that is
reminiscent of the narratives espoused by controversial historians such as
Geoffrey Blainey. It is a national identity that advocates integration rather
than multiculturalism. It is an identity that has strong white allegiances and
it is one that reveals some "absences" in the narratives of Australia's past.
The Australian history portrayed in the resource book not only underplays
the nation's multi-lingual and multicultural population but it is also a
constructed "Australianness" that does not acknowledge Stolen
Generations. This paper aims to problematise the portrayal of Australia's
national identity as depicted in the resource book, Becoming an Australian
Citizen, and suggests that reassurance and integration are key concepts
being promoted in the current debates surrounding citizenship in Australia.

Critical Constructions of a National Australian Identity 15

2. Background and Theoretical Framework
Recently in Australia, public notions of citizenship are being
reconceptualised in terms of promoting the gaining of citizenship as a
particular way of being an Australian citizen. According to government
discourses, the granting of citizenship now entails adopting and living by a
predefined set of "Australian values". These values in turn are purported to
represent a unique Australian identity and their adoption promises
successful entry into the Australian community.
Many recent studies in sociolinguistics, sociology and political science
have explored the multiplicity of public and media texts relating to
national identities, immigration issues and citizenship rights (Anderson
1991; Castles and Miller 2003; Elder 2007; Jupp, Nieuwenhuysen and
Dawson 2007; Moran 2005; Ware 2007). Many studies employ discourse
analytical approaches in order to describe the structures and strategies of
these texts and relate them to social and political contexts (Pavlenko and
Blackledge 2004; Pillar 2001; Ricento 2003; van Dijk 2000). Similarly, in
her analysis of official "rejection" letters relating to family migrant
reunions in Austria, Wodak combines her discourse-historical approach
with van Leeuwen's critical discourse analysis (CDA) in order to
"intertextually connect" related genres of discourse and strategies to the
history of post-war immigration in Austria, including Austrian
immigration laws (1999). This triangulated approach to CDA not only
describes discourse as representative of and constituted by social practices
but it also reflects hegemonic struggles within societies. This paper also
uses discourse analyticial approaches to explore "the knowledge" and
language portrayed in Becoming an Australian Citizen with the aim to
disrupt "commonsense", "mainstream" views about what becoming an
Australian citizen entails.

3. Testing Australian Values
The contemporary phenomena of globalisation, mass transmigrations, war,
environmental disasters and perceived threats of terrorism have raised
concerns about the significance of nationalism in today's world (Jupp
2002; May and Fenton 2002; Weedon 2004). This in turn has heralded a
global crisis in citizenship which has brought into question commonsense
notions of identity, belonging and nationhood (Weedon 2004). As a
response to this "crisis", the Howard government followed trends in
nations such as Britain, Canada, USA and the Netherlands and introduced

16 Chapter Two

the citizenship test as a tool for migrants to learn to become "good
citizens". The recently elected Rudd government has not challenged the
former Howard government's agenda of using a test as a means of
promoting a particular way of life, that is, to emphasise a particular way of
being Australian. Testing, after all, is the instrument by which those who
hold authority and power monitor and investigate the knowledge of those
being tested and those wanting entry into a particular field which in this
case is the Australian community.
A pivotal requirement of the recently introduced Australian citizenship
test is that candidates respond correctly to all three multiple choice
questions about Australian values. These values are defined as respect for
the individual; freedom of speech, religion, association and secular
government; support for parliamentary democracy; equality of opportunity
for men and women and under the law; peacefulness, tolerance and mutual
respect (Becoming an Australian citizen, 2007). The booklet states that:

In particular, new citizens are asked to embrace the values of Australia.
As important as the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship, these
values provide the everyday guideposts for living in Australia, for
participating fully in our national life and for making the most of the
opportunities that Australia has to offer (page 4).

The phenomenon of defining in official rhetoric the values that a nation is
to live by is neither new nor limited to Australia. Political scientists have
argued that the formation of the nation-state was always based on the
concept of shared values (Castles and Davidson 2000). Nor is the practice
of relating national values to an established and widely held national
identity a new concept. What is interesting in discourses about national
values in the current climate is the "commonsense" and universal
acceptance that these values imply and whilst they are proclaimed to be
unique to a nation, they are also presented as pertaining to some
"universal" qualities of humanity.
Through the seductive discourses of "values" such as freedom and
democracy, the test succeeds in masking the marginalisation it produces,
for example, the fact that refugees have the highest failure rate. As van
Dijk argues, these kinds of discourses appear to be so "normal", "natural"
and "commonsensical" and

premised on seemingly legitimate ideologies and attitudes, and often
tacitly accepted by most members of the dominant majority group that
they become a form of 'ethnic hegemony' (van Dijk 2000, 34).

Critical Constructions of a National Australian Identity 17

The resource booklet continues:

These values and principles reflect strong influences on Australia's
history and culture. These include Judeo-Christian ethics, a British
political heritage and the spirit of European Enlightenment. Distinct
Irish and non-conformist attitudes and sentiments have also been
important (page 5).

What is most notable about this passage is the exclusion it implies. By
choosing the lexical items, Judeo-Christian, British, European and Irish, a
description is set up of an Australia that is not inclusive unless you share
in the practice of Judeo-Christians and have British, Irish or European
ancestry. It is not inclusive of the multitude of cultural and social
backgrounds that make up the Australian population. Yet what is more
startling is that the sentiments of this passage were expressed in similar
terms by the former Prime Minister in the Australia Day Address to the
National Press Club in 2006, when John Howard stated:

Most nations experience some level of cultural diversity while also
having a dominant cultural pattern running through them. In Australia's
case, that dominant pattern comprises Judeo-Christian ethics, the
progressive spirit of the Enlightenment and the institutions and values
of British political culture. Its democratic and egalitarian temper also
bears the imprint of distinct Irish and non-conformist traditions.

Clearly, the resource booklet reflects the same sentiments held dearly by
John Howard.

4. There is NO multiculturalism in Australian values
The term "multiculturalism" is nowhere to be found in the resource book
as presumably, it does not reflect the opinions or values of its unnamed
authors. Instead, there are references made to the Australian population's
"ethnic and cultural diversity" and Australia's "cohesive and integrated
society" (p. 1) as well as "a society that is stable yet dynamic, cohesive yet
diverse" (p. 5). Derivatives of diversity and cohesion are the preferred
terms as are references to integration.
The absence of the term multiculturalism seems deliberate and is
controversial when taking into account the significance of multiculturalism

18 Chapter Two

in contemporary political discourses. For over thirty years,
multiculturalism has been the driving force in Australia's social policy 1.
Introduced in 1972, multiculturalism was the cornerstone for creating
social cohesion amongst the diverse groups of people that came to make
Australia their home. Indeed, for many migrants it was the practice of
multiculturalism that attracted them to Australian shores. Yet from its
inception, multiculturalism has had its staunch critics and by the time of
the introduction of the citizenship test, the Howard government had
succeeded in downplaying its role in Australian history and had practically
removed it from official usage. On November 4, 2006, The Australian
newspaper reported that the Howard government was attempting to
remove the word multiculturalism from public policy; Multiculturalism is
a dirty word read the headlines. The same practice is influencing the
current Rudd government. The new minister of immigration also avoided
using multiculturalism when he was asked on the current affairs program,
Lateline (11 June 2008) if integration was replacing multiculturalism. He
did not respond to the question and changed the direction of the
discussion.
This shift in policy reveals the government's preference for integration
as state policy. In current popular usage, the term integration has been
redefined and reconceptualised since the original integration policy that
followed the abandonment of the assimilation policy in the 1950s and
1960s. The integration that is promoted today has been repackaged as the
new philosophy for securing social cohesion and makes strong claims to
notions of commonsense and universal support by the citizens of
Australia.
Although the resource book states that "Australia's cultural diversity is
a strength which makes for a dynamic society" (Becoming an Australian
Citizen, 2007, 7), there is greater emphasis on Australia's British heritage.
For example, on page 28, the booklet states, "The founding population of
Australia was made up of the English, Scots and Irish".
Describing how most convicts, as well as the free settlers of the
nineteenth century, originated from Britain, the extract continues, "Their
Anglo-Celtic heritage was the basis of the new nation" (Becoming an
Australian Citizen, 2007, 9). On page 29 we are reminded that throughout
the nation's history, "[t]hough national feeling had grown, the sense of
being British as well as Australian was still strong". Such remarks do not
promote diversity but paint an image of a well-established homogeneous

In this study, multiculturalism is defined as government social policy that accepts
that people of diverse backgrounds have the right to maintain their social and
cultural practices in Australian society.

Critical Constructions of a National Australian Identity 19

society that built the nation of Australia. The following passage is quite
revealing:

The founding population of Australia was made up of the English,
Scots and Irish. They were different people with different traditions
and had been in the past at war with each other. The Irish were the
most distinct group, separated by their Catholic religion and their
bitterness at rule by the English. In this new country the three groups
mixed with each other and did not live in separate communities.
On the whole they did not want old-world disputes and bitterness to
take root here. Both the Scots and the Irish did not want the English to
rule over them and the Church of England soon lost its privileged place
in Australia. The Scots were prominent in education and business. The
Irish, less well educated, took unskilled jobs but some flourished in
small businesses. Their lively spirit made its mark on the emerging
Australian identity (p. 28).

There are many interesting readings that can be made from this excerpt.
Firstly, the description of different people with different traditions seems
to allude to modern-day conflicts between religious sects in nations such
as Iraq and Afghanistan. In these countries, populations are divided into
Islamic sects. Among these sects there have been wars as there have been
with the English, the Scots and the Irish. Yet, the passages suggests that,
unlike the current warring factions of Islam, the British counterparts were
able to put their differences aside in their newly adopted nation of
Australia as "the three groups mixed with each other" and lived side by
side in the Australian community.
There is also ambivalence with the portrayal of the Irish in this excerpt.
Such a representation has historical links as traditionally there has been
conflict between the English and the Irish. In this context, the people of
Ireland are portrayed as "different". They are the exotic "Other" with their
"non-conformist" and "larrikin" behaviour. There are also negative
descriptions. They are represented as the "less well educated" who took
"unskilled jobs but some flourished in small business". The use of the
conjunction "but" is interesting here as it sets up an opposition. One
reading of this, then, is that despite their disadvantage, some were able to
succeed. The excerpt also suggests that modern-day groups too should
leave behind "old-world disputes" and abandon religious attachments
when entering Australian society.
Yet the role of the church and other religious institutions as depicted in
the resource booklet is full of contradictions. Australia's desire for a

20 Chapter Two

secular state is reiterated throughout the booklet: "All Australians are free
to follow any religion they choose" (p. 6). This paragraph is immediately
followed by the statement, "Australia has secular government and no
official or state religion". The following paragraph then provides details
about divorce laws and the custody of children and states that bigamy is
illegal in Australia. The association between divorce, child custody and
bigamy seems incongruous unless we contrast these notions with some
stereotypical Islamic practices that are depicted in Western media. These
three paragraphs come under the heading of Freedom of religion and
secular government. It is difficult not to surmise that this section alludes to
conservative practices of non-secular nation-states that are considered to
be reactionary and fundamentalist by the "broader Australian community".
Yet the claim for a secular state is contradicted on many occasions.
The sentence, "Australia has no official or state religion and all
Australians are free to practise any religion they wish" (p. 13) is
immediately followed by:

Australia has a Judeo-Christian heritage, and two-thirds of Australians
describe themselves as Christians… Religious laws are not recognised
and have no legal status in Australia. Australia uses a Christian
calendar. This means that days like Good Friday, Easter Sunday and
Christmas Day are public holidays (p. 13).

On page 16, Christmas Day and Easter are also listed under national days.
It is difficult to understand how the authors of the booklet can claim that
Australia is a secular state and then highlight important days in the
Christian calendar as national public holidays. The message, then, can
suggest that Australia must be emphasised as being a secular state for non-
Christian religious systems. Christian practices are the exception to this
declared secularisation.
Reading the resource booklet, a portrayal begins to emerge of a nation
that is secular yet Christian, culturally diverse but with strong British
roots, democratic yet promoting a classless society. It is predominantly a
white society that is promoted. On page 29, the booklet states:
"Australians had also become conscious of the need to keep out the people
who seemed to threaten their new way of life". Similarly, in today's world,
the citizenship test aims to "keep out" the people who threaten the
Australian way of life. The passage continues with an explanation of why
the White Australia policy was introduced:

Critical Constructions of a National Australian Identity 21

The colonists, like most people then, believed that there were
differences between races and that the Chinese were inferior, but they
also did not want a society with deep divisions or where foreign
outcasts worked for low wages and lowered the dignity of all labour (p.
29).

Locating the excuse in an historical context, "the colonists, like most
people then", the text continues with how the non-Chinese colonists
wanted a society that did not exhibit "deep divisions". Again, in this
passage as in the previous one, the assumption is that the Chinese and
people of other "races" brought "division" and conflict to the peaceful
Australian community. The implication is that difference breeds division
whereas sameness equates to peacefulness and unity. The final point
alludes to the notion of Australians as hard working "battlers" who fought
long and hard for labour rights which were threatened by the cheap labour
offered by "foreign outcasts". Indeed, the description of the Other is
portrayed with strong negative language; inferior, foreign outcasts, low
wages and lowered. This is contrasted with the dignity of the colonists.
Yet what is most reminiscent of the citizenship test's connection with
the White Australia policy is the insistence on promoting the English
language as "an important unifying element of Australian society" (page
10). From the first page, the book declares that "new citizens are expected
to have a basic knowledge of English". It continues on page 10 with
"English is the national language of Australia. It is an important part of our
national identity".
Drawing together the notions of Australia's British heritage and
national values, the book states emphatically that "the influence of Britain
survives in Australia's institutions, in many of its values and of course, in
its common language–English" (p. 30). The colloquial use of "of course"
suggests commonsense notions and consensus for the support of English
as the exclusive language of "our" national identity.
All of these examples point to a return to integration as state policy as
"We have integrated millions of people with diverse backgrounds" (page
9). The use of "we" is interesting in this context. It gives agency to
Australians, or more precisely to the "real Anglo-Celtic Australians", who
by implication are those who do not need to be integrated and thus are not
from diverse backgrounds. It "normalises" and gives the dominant group
"a place of pre-eminence" within Australian society (May and Fenton
2002) and it describes what Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999, 93) have
termed "constructive strategies" which "invite identification and solidarity
with the 'we' group".

22 Chapter Two

Yet integration, in the context of the citizenship test and immigration
policy, needs to be explicitly defined. The public and government rhetoric
of recent times suggests that integration is now taking on the meaning of
assimilation of the early twentieth century. Integration, as it was known in
the 1950s and 1960s, signified a desire for the second generation of
migrants to become Australian. In the current context, patience has worn
out as it is newly arrived migrants that are required to adopt "Australian
values" and live by the "Australian way of life" in their everyday lives.
Multiculturalism does not feature in this portrayal of Australian identity.
The portrayal of Indigenous Australians is also on the outskirts of the
national identity.

5. There is NO Stolen Generation in Australian history
The first reference made to Indigenous Australians does not occur until
page 9 with the statement declaring that "Indigenous Australians have
been here for between 40,000 and 60,000 years. Their culture is one of the
oldest in the World". Throughout the booklet, this theme of Aboriginal
culture as ancient is constantly repeated, as in "Australian Indigenous
culture is the oldest surviving culture in the world" (p. 32). Once more, in
a section of the booklet entitled, Early Australia, the text states:

Humans have inhabited Australia for at least 40,000 to 60,000 years.
The Aboriginal people lived as hunters and gatherers. They existed in
language and clan groups which occupied different parts of the vast
land. It is thought they came to Australia through what is now
Indonesia, sailing across the seas between the islands and the last 100
kilometre gap to Australia (p. 17).

This description has traditional anthropological overtones with the use of
such lexical items as "humans", "hunters and gatherers" "humankind" and
"existed". The use of "humans" immediately followed by "hunters and
gatherers" conjures up images of "primitive" times and "primitive" people
in "a natural world". This image is reinforced through the repeated
association of Aboriginal culture and the land. This association is not a
spiritual one that draws on Indigenous traditions and belief systems but it
is one that reinforces a connection with "prehistory". It also alludes to the
notion of terra nullius as, under the heading of A harsh country, the text
states:

Critical Constructions of a National Australian Identity 23

Very little of Australia is fertile country. It is a hostile environment for
humankind. The Aboriginal people had learnt to manage and live in
this environment though they too could suffer in hard times of drought
and their population remained small (p. 19).

The theme of Aboriginal history occupying "prehistory" is evident, with
time before 1788 being referred to as "pre-settlement" (p. 32). This
reference is immediately followed by the sentence, "Aboriginal cultures
have strong hunter-gatherer traditions but have always had great respect
and care for the natural environment" (p. 32). Again, the use of "but" is
interesting as it implies that there is negative or contrasting information to
follow. The world of Indigenous Australia is therefore constructed as "the
natural world" (p. 32) which not only emphasises their "Otherness" but
also reinforces the difference between "their natural world" and the
Australian nation's modern world.
The Aboriginal history portrayed in the booklet is negative and at
times even offensive. The decline in Aboriginal population is attributed to
"a number of factors, including conflict with the new settlers and
especially the impact of new diseases" (p. 10). Details about the atrocities
faced by Aboriginal people are vague. For example,

[T]here has been great debate about how many people were killed in
the frontier battles. Many more Aboriginal people than settlers were
killed. Everyone agrees that the greatest killer of Aboriginal people
was disease (pp. 32-33).

The reader is left to ask who "everyone" represents, certainly not
Aboriginal Australians. The writers are searching for consensus and what
van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999, 105) refer to as "conformity
authorization" . The reference made to "killed settlers" seems to be offered
as conciliation.
The paragraph continues: "The fall in population was immense, and
where white settlement was dense, catastrophic" (p. 33). The reader can
surmise, then, that disease was the greatest killer of Aborigines. The killer
disease is reinforced with words such as "catastrophic". Disease also
suggests that perhaps Aboriginal deaths were unpreventable and
inevitable.
In the section that describes the Dreamtime, the paragraph ends: "[t]he
success of Australia was built on lands taken from Aboriginal people after
European settlement in 1788" (p. 32). Here the bad deed of "lands taken"
is contrasted with "the success of Australia", which suggests that it was a

24 Chapter Two

necessity, that is, a sacrifice for the good of the nation. This theme is
continued on page 32:

The British Government did not consider that it had to make a treaty
with the Aboriginal tribes, who seemed to them to have no firm
attachment to the land and did not cultivate it. By contrast, America
and New Zealand the British government did make treaties with
Indigenous people.

Notwithstanding the grammatical error in this last sentence, this paragraph
has many startling implications. Firstly it attempts to justify the taking of
Aboriginal lands through the use of "seemed" to have "no firm
attachment". Secondly, it justifies the actions of the British by making
comparisons with America and New Zealand, who, we can assume, did
have firm attachments with the land because there was no concept of terra
nullius.
Another major theme portrayed in the resource booklet is that
Indigenous Australians rejected the help of the white settlers. The booklet
states: "[m]issionaries attempted to convert them to Christianity but with
only very limited success" (p. 32). The use of the qualifier "very limited
success" suggests that conversion to Christianity was a failure and that
Indigenous Australians need to take responsibility for their "limited
success". Even the noble Governor Macquarie attempted to help
Aborigines, "[b]ut very few Aboriginal people were willing to move into
European society, they were not very interested in what the Europeans had
to offer" (p. 32). This suggests subversive behaviour and ingratitude on the
part of Indigenous Australians.
The narrative in the booklet acknowledges bad treatment of Aboriginal
people, including "killing", and "authorised punitive expeditions against
Aboriginal people who had speared settlers or taken sheep and cattle" (p.
32). Yet "punitive" suggests punishment that was warranted because of the
bad behaviour of spearing settlers and stealing sheep. When this extract is
contrasted with the end of the sentence, "a force of native police was
ruthless in killing Aboriginal people who resisted the taking of their land"
(p. 32), it suggests that Aboriginal people themselves, including "native
police", can be "ruthless" and turn against their own people.
In contrast, the booklet declares that "the Aboriginal people were not
without friends. Some squatters were able to maintain good relations with
them and employed them on their sheep runs" (p. 32). The passage
continues:

Critical Constructions of a National Australian Identity 25

Missionaries attempted to convert them to Christianity but with only
very limited success. Governor Macquarie (1810 – 1821) took a
special interest in them, running a school for their children and offering
them land for farming. But very few Aboriginal people were willing to
move into European society; they were not very interested in what the
Europeans had to offer (p. 32).

Here, the "civilised" offers from Christianity and Governor Macquarie
with their schools and farming are contrasted with the lack of interest and
rejection from Indigenous people. The passage is written in a very
patronising tone. Even when the text is attempting to describe the
hardships faced by Aborigines at the hands of white settlers, the tone is
still condescending:

After the frontier battles were over, Aboriginal people survived on the
edges of society, taking casual work or begging … Governments
provided handouts of food and set aside small reserves in recognition
of the great losses they had suffered (p. 33).

In this passage, the government is the agent. It is again a few paragraphs
later:

The Australian people showed their willingness to see Aboriginal
people become full members of Australian society when in 1967 they
gave an overwhelming YES vote (90 per cent) to a proposal to change
the Aboriginal sections of the constitution (p. 33).

The actions of the "Australian people" are written in the agentive active
voice, unlike the previous descriptions of Aboriginal actions that are
written in the passive voice.
There is no use of the term Stolen Generation. Instead, the shameful
practice is described as follows:

Aboriginal people … could have their children taken from them. There
has been a great debate too on the intent of these policies, particularly
over the forcible removal of children from their parents (p. 33).

Ironically, the phrase "there has been great debate" is used to describe
what has been a bitter and heart-felt struggle. There is no explanation of
what the outcomes of the debate are and there is very little
acknowledgement of the outcomes caused by the actions of white

26 Chapter Two

authorities who are unnamed and "could have" taken children, implying
that they did not always do so.
The section detailing Indigenous Australians concludes with the
following statement:

But many of the Aboriginal people in these remote locations do not
live well. This is a great dilemma facing Australian society.
Australia faces an ongoing challenge to ensure that the Aboriginal
people fully share in the life and prosperity of the nation (p. 33).

No solutions are offered. No reference is made to the shameful policy of
intervention that preceded the introduction of the citizenship test. There is
no "sorry" in the discourses of Australian national identity.

6. Conclusion – Addressing the absent migrant voices in
Australianness
In critical circles, there is popular belief that the introduction of the
citizenship test is about excluding "the Other" from Australian society.
The critical discourse analysis of the resource booklet, Becoming an
Australian Citizen, supports this view. According to the resource booklet,
there is no multiculturalism in Australian values and there is no Stolen
Generation in Australian history.
Yet the citizenship test is not just about exclusion. Closer scrutiny of
the booklet reveals that the language, the narratives and the imageries used
to depict this "Australianness" is more suited and better understood by
those people who were born Australian citizens, rather than those who
wish to become Australian citizens. This suggests that the resource booklet
also acts as a means of reassuring the dominant white, Anglo-Celtic
community of Australia that nothing would change for them and that
integration could be achieved.
The CDA reveals that there is no "commonsense" or "naturalness" in
the national identity portrayed in the resource booklet and the analysis
further suggests that the booklet can be used to perpetuate a very narrow
and racist identity of Australia. The Australian Citizenship Review
Committee did not miss this point as their Report released in November
2008 has recommended that the booklet be rewritten to highlight the civic
duties and responsibilities of citizenship rather than to focus on "trivial"
information that detracts from the importance of citizenship. The Rudd
government supports this recommendation. It is hoped that this critical

Critical Constructions of a National Australian Identity 27

discourse analysis of the Becoming an Australian Citizen resource booklet
can be used to inform the future revision of this resource to include a
portrayal of an Australian national identity that is multi-coloured, multi-
voiced and multilingual.

Reference List
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections of the
origin and spread of nationalism. 2nd ed. London: Verso.
Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Testing) Bill 2007
(Cwlth).
html (accessed March 14, 2008)
Becoming an Australian citizen: Citizenship: Your commitment to
Australia. 2007. Canberra ACT. (Printed September 2007)
Castles, Stephen and Alastair Davidson. 2000. Citizenship and migration:
Globalization and the politics of belonging. London: Macmillan Press.
Castles, Stephen and Mark Miller. 2003. The age of migration. 3rd ed.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Elder, Catriona. 2007. Being Australian: Narratives of national identity.
Crows Nest, Australia: Allen and Unwin.
Jupp, James. 2002. From White Australia to Woomera: The story of
Australian immigration. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jupp, James, John Nieuwenhuysen, and Emma Dawson. 2007. Social
Cohesion in Australia. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
May, Stephen and Steve Fenton. 2002. Ethnonational identities.
Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Moran, Anthony. 2005. Australia: Nation, belonging and globalization.
New York: Routledge.
Pavlenko, Aneta and Adrian Blackledge, eds. 2004. Negotiation of
identities in multilingual contexts. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual
Matters.
Pillar, Ingrid. 2001. Naturalization language testing and its basis in
ideologies of national identity and citizenship. International Journal of
Bilingualism 5 (3): 259-279.
Ricento, Thomas. 2003. The discursive construction of Americanism.
Discourse and Society 14 (5): 611-637.
Van Dijk, Teun A. 2000. New(s) racism: A discourse analytical approach.
In Ethnic minorities and the media, ed. Simon Cottle, 33-49.
Philadelphia: Open University Press.

28 Chapter Two

Van Leeuwen, Theo and Ruth Wodak. 1999. Legitimizing immigration
control: A discourse-historical analysis. In Discourse Studies 1 (1): 83-
118.
Ware, Vron. 2007. Who cares about Britishness? A global view of the
national identity debate. London: Arcadia Books.
Weedon, Chris. 2004. Identity and culture: Narratives of difference and
belonging. Maidenthead, UK: Open University Press.

CHAPTER THREE
RACISM IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
TEACHING INDUSTRY
AHMAR MAHBOOB

1. Introduction
This paper argues that the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry
often does not treat all speakers of English as equal in its hiring practices.
Rather, it gives preferential treatment to White native speakers of English.
That one's race may play a role in hiring decisions is not news. In fact, the
social and political movements that make discrimination in employment
on the basis of race legally unacceptable are quite recent. For example, the
Civil Rights movement in the United States that led to desegregation of
Black and White people is still less than 50 years old. However, such laws
do not exist globally. The lack of anti-discrimination policies can impact
who is hired, as well as the terms and conditions under which they are
hired. In countries such as the U.S., where anti-discrimination laws do
exist, employers have developed ways of abiding by the laws, yet still
maintaining discriminatory practices in their hiring policies (see Mahboob
2003; Moussu 2006). In the ELT industry, this often happens through a
preference for native speakers of English, who are positioned as the
referent of the EAL (English as an additional language) classroom. A
common assumption in describing a native speaker of English is that a
native speaker is White, and speaks a variety of English associated with
the UK, Canada, the USA or Australia. Non-White people who speak a
variety of English associated with a South country, for example, India,
Nigeria, or Singapore, are constructed as non-native speakers of English.
In addition to positioning people based on their accents and language
histories, the preference for native speakers conceals a bias in favor of
White teachers (Amin 2000; Golombek and Jordan 2005; Leung, Harris,
and Rampton 1997; Paikeday 1985; and Rampton 1990). While there are
no published studies that document the extent of bias against non-White
non-native ELT teachers, there is ample anecdotal evidence that employers
in the ELT industry prefer to hire White native speakers to other speakers
as language teachers. Current studies also convincingly show that there is

30 Chapter Three

a preference for hiring native English speaking teachers over non-native
ones (Mahboob 2003; Mahboob, Uhrig, Newman, and Hartford 2004).
The results of Mahboob's study indicate that, all other factors being equal,
a native speaker will have a higher chance of being hired than a non-native
speaker.
The current paper explores the complex relationship between non-
Native English Speaking Teachers (NNESTs), race, and ELT hiring
practices and is divided into three sections. The first section examines the
perceived racism in the ELT industry and its employment policies. In the
following section, Mahboob's (2003) data is reanalyzed to explore how
expert discourses in TESOL and Applied Linguistics have evolved to give
prominence to White native speakers. After studying the relationship
between the construct of a native speaker and Whiteness, the paper adopts
van Dijk's (1993) understanding of 'elite discourses of racism', and
identifies and examines specific terms and concepts that are used in
Applied Linguistics to study phenomena that operate to privilege native
speakers. The paper ends by identifying additional questions that need to
be studied.

2. Perceived Racism in ELT Employment
Much of the current understanding of racism in TESOL and Applied
Linguistics is based on the narratives of non-White teachers (see for
example Braine 1999; Curtis and Romney 2006). In addition to such
narratives, numerous websites that are focused on ELT issues include
anecdotes that represent perceived racism. In this paper, two such web-
posts are discussed: the first one comprises selected portions of a lengthy
online discussion on race and the second one is an online job
advertisement.
The first excerpt, from a web-discussion quoted below, revolves
around a question from an Asian-Canadian woman who wants to know
what her chances are of getting a job in the Middle East.

Quote 1: Post: …but would anyone on this list be familiar with how an
Asian-American or Asian-Canadian or ANY female with obviously
Asian ethnic blood (but who grew up in the West) would be treated in
the Middle East? Would I be at a disadvantage in the hiring process
(since we're required to send photos) because I don't have the Western
"look" despite my Western credentials and upbringing?

Racism in the ELT Industry 31

Response: In almost all of the top TESL jobs in the UAE [United Arab
Emirates], recruitment decisions are taken by Western expats…
Without the luxury of anti-racist legislation in the West, you may very
soon become appalled by attitudes of fellow Western expats.

Response: As for getting a teaching job, well let me put it like this: it
would be perfectly normal for a white Brit with mediocre experience
and qualifications to be preferred over a non-white native-speaker of
English with excellent qualifications and extensive experience. Sad,
but unfortunately very true. Sadder still: it's normally Westerners
making these decisions NOT locals! (Source: ESL-Café)

This quote was selected for several reasons: 1) the racial dimension in
employment is clearly articulated by those who have personal experience,
2) it is a discussion that takes place over a number of days, 3) there are
several contributors, and 4) all the contributors agree with a racial reading
of the hiring process (providing some internal triangulation). The web-
discussion suggests that having appropriate ELT credentials and being
raised in the West are not seen as sufficient qualifications and that being
White is perceived to be the most privileged credential by the discussants.
In this, the quote validates Lee's (in press) study in which she adds her
voice as a non-White native speaker of English who grew up in Canada,
but faces (racial) discrimination in the ELT industry when it comes to
employment opportunities. This interpretation of the web-discussion also
corroborates Lee's experiences in that the preference for native speakers in
ELT camouflages a racial prejudice as well.
In discussing a racial dimension in ELT, it needs to be clarified that the
argument is not that all White ELT practitioners are racist, but rather that
being White is an advantage in the field and one that does not relate to
professional needs. Furthermore, as the web-discussion illustrates, it is not
simply non-White people complaining about racist behavior by White
people, but rather, there are many White people in the field who find their
colleagues' attitudes towards other speakers discriminatory. Furthermore,
non-White individuals are also seen to discriminate against other non-
White individuals in the field (Mahboob 2006).
The next piece of data to be examined comes from a different category
of web-postings. The following is an online advertisement that specifies
that the employers are looking for an English language teacher who is
'white and not too old'.

32 Chapter Three

Quote 2: we are a school in beijing shijingshan district and looking for
a native english speaker who is white and not too old. it is very urgent
because the new teachers are supposed to work from September 1st.
the salary is 7000rmb per month. the working time is 3 to 6 from
monday to friday. please contact me at XXX. (Source: China-Daily)

The clearly articulated preference for 'White' teachers (note that no other
qualification/experience requirements are listed) in this ad supports the
perceptions cited in the previous quote that some employers will hire only
White native speakers. In addition, it raises the issue of ageism, which is
beyond the scope of this paper and is, therefore, not taken up here (for a
discussion of this issue see Templer 2003).
These quotes suggest that there are at least two dimensions of
prejudice in ELT: Whiteness and native speakerism 1; and that both these
factors contribute to the status given to various teachers. In fact, as will be
argued in the following sections, the two factors are linked. An unmarked
native speaker is White and a preference for native speakers as employees
is usually a polite and politically correct (or at least acceptable) way of
saying that only White candidates need apply.

3. Survey of adult EAL programs in the United States
In the previous section we examined some anecdotal evidence that showed
that White native speakers are perceived to be favored by employers in the
field of ELT. In this section, we will reexamine data from a previously
published research project to further explore the relationship between race
and NNESTs. Based on a survey of 122 adult English Language
Professionals (ELPs) in the United States, Mahboob (2003), and
Mahboob, Uhrig, Newman, and Hartford (2004), report that employers
consider being a native speaker to be an important criterion when making
hiring decisions. The instrument used in this study invited participants to
rate 10 possible hiring criteria on a 6-point Likert scale. The study showed
that the more importance program administrators gave to the 'native
English speaker' criterion, the fewer the number of NNESTs employed in
their programs. More importantly, based on a regression analysis, the
study found that three criteria, 'native English speaker,' 'recommendation'
and 'teaching experience', explain the ratio of NNESTs in a program. Of

Two other factors that were raised in the web-postings that were surveyed include
‘ageism’ and ‘expatriateness’. These factors are, however, not discussed here.

Racism in the ELT Industry 33

these, the most significant independent variable was 'native English
speaker'. Thus, the results of this study indicated that all other factors
being equal, a person's status as a 'native speaker' can make a difference to
whether they will be hired or not.
Although not fully analyzed in these studies, the data included
administrators' evaluation of the role of ethnicity and national origin in
making hiring decisions. In re-examining this data with a focus on race, it
was noted that while being a 'native speaker' was considered an important
factor, 'ethnicity' and 'nationality' were perceived as having low
importance. The mean ranking for 'ethnicity' was the lowest amongst the
10 criteria listed. The mean ranking for 'nationality' was also amongst the
lowest. The mode for both these criteria was '0', implying that most
respondents claimed that they do not find these criteria relevant in making
hiring decisions. However, it was noted that these ratings are not
consistent with the actual distribution of teachers in these programs when
sorted based on their national and ethnic origins.
The survey reported that out of the 1425 teachers listed, only 107
(7.86%) were NNESTs. While these NNESTs represented a wide range of
countries (48), a quick reanalysis of the data based on ethnic and racial
origins points to a preference for White teachers. Of the 107 NNESTs, 56
(52.3%) were White, 28 (26.2%) were Asian, 3 (2.8%) were of (Black)
African origin, and 20 (18.7%) comprised the 'other' category. This
distribution of the teachers shows a majority of White teachers within a
non-native minority. While this majority of White non-native speakers
does not necessarily mean that the hiring decisions were racially motivated
(to argue this, one must study these numbers in relation to the applicant
pool in order to evaluate such a claim), it does highlight a dominance of
White teachers among the already small pool of NNESTs.
The relatively high number of White NNESTs with a contrasting low
importance given to ethnic and national origin in the survey may be partly
explained by the cautiousness that influences employers' decisions when
completing surveys. Being conscious of what is and is not potentially
disadvantaging may impact how people respond to survey questionnaires.
To say that one takes ethnicity and nationality into consideration when
making hiring decisions is implicitly stating that one is being
discriminatory – which is both politically incorrect and legally prohibited
in many situations in the United States. Thus, the safe response in a survey
is to give such criteria low or no rating, which represents a shortcoming of
the research method. However, a careful study of the survey data can show
inconsistencies to help identify issues that need further investigation. In
this reanalysis of the survey data, such a discrepancy was observed – the

34 Chapter Three

low ratings of ethnicity and nationality appear to be in contrast with the
majority of White teachers in the NNEST pool that are employed by these
schools. It is revealing that when NNESTs are hired, there is a
disproportionately high representation of White teachers compared to non-
White teachers. This finding suggests that being White is an unmarked
feature of being an ESL teacher.

4. An Unmarked EAL Teacher
In the survey discussed here, it was observed that 'ethnicity' and
'nationality' are considered politically unmarked and therefore listed as
being not important in making hiring decisions. On the other hand, 'native
speaker' is marked and is listed as an important criterion in making hiring
decisions. It was argued that this is perhaps a reflection of participants'
understanding of what they consider to be safe answers. It was also
observed that regardless of the administrators' responses, there is a
majority of White teachers within the NNEST pool. One important
question to ask here is: Why was native speaker listed as an important
criterion whereas ethnicity was not? This is perhaps a trick question
because, in many ways, as will be argued here, the concept of a native
speaker of English has always included a specific ethnic and racial
identity. Davies (1991) emphasized this point when he wrote that the first
recorded use of the term 'native speaker' is in the following definition by
the American linguist Leonard Bloomfield: "The first language a human
being learns to speak is his native language, he is a native speaker of this
language" (Bloomfield 1933 cited in Davies 1991). In defining the
characteristics of a native speaker and native language, traits such as birth,
heredity, and innateness of linguistic qualities have always been
emphasized. These traits form the backbone of how the term native
speaker is understood. For example, the Oxford Advanced Learner's
Dictionary (1989, 84) defines a native speaker as a "person who has
spoken (a particular language) since birth, rather than learning it later".
The inclusion of such terms in dictionaries underscores their widespread
use. Based on such an understanding, the native speaker of English is seen
as American, Australian, English or Canadian. More importantly, a native
speaker of English is seen as a White person who was born and raised in
these countries. People of other races are not identified as native speakers
of English; rather they are seen as speakers of, for example, Black
English/Ebonics, Pakistani English, or Chinese English. Such an
understanding of how race relates to native speaker status is relevant in

Racism in the ELT Industry 35

TESOL. For example, the specific requirement of 'white' native speakers
in job ads (e.g. quote 2 above), requirements of submitting colored
photographs, and narratives of discrimination against non-White speakers
of English (e.g. quote 1 above), all provide evidence of how EAL
programs accept the construct that being a White native speaker is an
important aspect of being a teacher in the field of TESOL (also see Leung,
Harris, and Rampton 1997; Rampton 1990).
The use of the 'native speaker' construct to veil a preference for hiring
White native speakers in EAL is also influenced by recent developments
in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. One of the most influential of these
developments has been Chomsky's use of the 'idealized native speaker-
hearer' concept (Chomsky 1986) as an abstraction for theoretical linguistic
research. For English, this 'idealized native speaker-hearer' is seen as a
White person and this notion has been extensively used in Applied
Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research. The
influence of the Chomskyan paradigm on SLA can be measured by the
following statement from Gregg (1993, 278), who states that the purpose
of SLA is to study "the acquisition (or non-acquisition) of L2 competence,
in the Chomskyan sense of the term". One result of this influence is that
non-White native and non-native speakers of English are seen as life-long
learners of English.
An understanding of the preference for native speakers of English and
a non-recognition by White TESOL practitioners of race and ethnicity as
factors in the hiring process in EAL programs can also be developed by
using van Dijk's (1993) framework of elite discourses of racism. van Dijk
argues that liberal discourses of elite racism tend to deny racism. He refers
to a "worldwide system of military, economic and cultural power of the
white West over the Rest" [emphasis added] (van Dijk 1993, x), in which
the elites – political, media, educational, corporate and academic – play a
role in the enactment, legitimation and reproduction of racism through the
ages. He posits that ethnic dominance and racism are still a reality in
Western societies and that elite discourses continue to play a primary role
in the reproduction of contemporary ethnic and racial inequalities. The
racism of the elites is predominantly discursive; through their influential
text and talk, they "manufacture the consent" (van Dijk 1993, 8) needed
for the legitimation of their own power in general, and for their leadership
in maintaining the dominance of the White group in particular. Popular
racism, concludes van Dijk, can be effective only when it is spread
through the population by the mass media and similar forms of public
discourse controlled by the elites. One such powerful public discourse is
that of academia. This paper will therefore now outline how academic

36 Chapter Three

discourses of TESOL and second language acquisition research shape the
public mind to consider White native speaker models as being the target
norm for English language acquisition.
There are a number of ways that academic discourses of TESOL
contribute to the view that native speakers of English are ideal teachers.
These include couching a preference for native speaker norms of language
and cultural practices in expert scientific and research-based arguments.
The use of an 'idealized native speaker' discussed earlier can, in fact, be
understood as an example of such liberal discourse of elite racism – White
native speakers are privileged through academic discourses and their
language is identified as the target language for English language learners
world-wide. Bhatt (2002) posits that expert discourses in Applied
Linguistics perpetuate inequality by using terms such as 'interlanguage'
and 'fossilization,' which give prominence to White native speakers by
assuming that the goal of language learners is to acquire native-like
proficiency. These terms suggest that since most learners fail to sound like
White native speakers, they are 'fossilized' at a certain point in their
'interlanguage'. Such interpretations and assumptions of learner goals and
failure to sound like native speakers have been promoted by many TESOL
experts and are accepted by the larger population. This acceptance of the
underlying principles behind these terms by the non-experts can be judged
by their inclusion in dictionaries. The mainstream literature in SLA, which
uses terms such as 'interlanguage' and 'fossilization', offers an example of
how, perhaps unwittingly, experts in Applied Linguistics and TESOL
contribute to and reflect a racial understanding of the world – one where
White native speakers are model users of the English language and Non-
White native speakers of Non-White Englishes aim to achieve competency
in the 'standard' or White English. These assumptions then contribute to a
discourse that gives higher status to White native speakers and portrays
other speakers as life-long learners (see also Mahboob 2005). Thus, it can
be argued that Lee (in press) and other non-White speakers of
standard/White English are complimented on their language ability
because they are considered to be model language learners – they look
foreign, but speak English like White native speakers. Kachru's (1991,
1992) work on World Englishes is worth discussing here as well as its
main point is that speakers of English from the Inner Circle countries –
England, Canada, the US, and Australia – are constructed as the model,
while the varieties of English from the Outer Circle (e.g., Singapore,
Ghana, and Sri Lanka) and Expanding Circle (e.g., Brazil, China) are
marked as being not only different, but deficient. Although the varieties of
English from regions other than the Inner Circle produce a sizeable

Racism in the ELT Industry 37

literature in English and use the language for both internal and external
communication, they are studied in terms of their deviations and
differences from White Englishes 2. Although World Englishes are
growing as an area of focal research, there are experts who dismiss World
Englishes as being 'ideologically intoxicated' (Quirk 1990, 9).
In summary, a critical understanding of the term native speaker and the
current literature in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics suggests that
Whiteness and First World status are essential characteristics in being
considered native speakers of English and that this unmarked 'native
speaker' is framed in the literature as being the ideal English language
teacher.

5. Concluding Remarks
This paper has attempted to show that hegemonic discourses of the White
native speaker teacher's superiority ensure that he/she continues to be the
referent in ELT. The paper suggests that employers seem to think that they
should hire native speakers over non-native speakers because native
speakers are better teachers; and that native speakers are imagined as
White. A reanalysis of Mahboob, Uhrig, Newman, and Hartford's (2004)
survey further indicates that even in ELT institutions that hire non-native
speakers, there is a majority of White non-native teachers. What can ELT
experts do to address this imbalance in hiring practices in both North and
South countries? First of all, more empirical research should be conducted
in order to further document such practices. As has been illustrated, this is
not a simple task, as respondents are aware of what are "safe" and "unsafe"
answers, and give safe answers, which may not necessarily reflect their
hiring preferences. Hence more sophisticated data collection instruments
have to be developed in order to triangulate employers' responses. The
more difficult challenge is for TESOL to unravel and demystify the
discourses that construct White native speakers as the best teachers.
Questions that need to be addressed include: For what professional reasons
do White native speakers continue to be privileged? As teaching is an
activity which has to be learned, what value should be put on someone

At one level, World Englishes offer a pluralistic paradigm that is largely ignored
in Applied Linguistics and TESOL literature. However, it can be argued that there
is a hierarchy among World Englishes on the basis of race: White Englishes are
constructed as Inner Circle English varieties while the Outer Circle Englishes are
seen as non-White varieties.

38 Chapter Three

who is born in a White English-speaking family? Here, it needs to be
pointed out that non-White teachers may also be born in an English-
dominant family. Another point worth addressing is that proficiency in
language can be learned/developed in a formal setting, that is, in a school,
so that being born in an English-dominant family may not be relevant.
In addition to these questions, a discussion of the goals of language
teaching is also needed: Should a White native speaker model continue to
be the goal of language learning/teaching? And if so, why? In the 21st
century, the role of English as the world language appears to be taking a
different direction than in the latter half of the 20th century, which was
characterized by colonialism, immigration from South to North countries,
and American imperialism, whereby South speakers of English felt they
needed to communicate with North speakers of English in North varieties
of English. It appears that the future of English is that of an intralanguage,
that is, of an additional language between speakers who have different first
languages, say Chinese, Urdu, and Ibu, and hence the native speaker of
English may be less and less relevant as a model for language teaching and
learning.
Finally, it needs to be stressed that if ELT wants to develop into a
profession rather than remaining a largely unlegislated industry, then it
should aim to eradicate all forms of discrimination. To evolve into a
profession, the ELT community needs to challenge and remove from its
belief system the notion that 'some speakers are more equal than others,' to
give all members of the TESOL community the justice and equality that
they deserve.

Reference List
Amin, Nuzhat. 2000. Negotiating nativism: Minority immigrant women
ESL teachers and the native speaker construct. PhD. diss., University
of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. (Unpublished.)
Bhatt, Rakesh. 2002. Experts, dialects, and discourse. International
Journal of Applied Linguistics, 12 (1): 74-109.
Braine, George. 1999. (Non-native educators in English language
teaching (pp. 93-104). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
China-Daily. Retrieved May 15, 2005, from
Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Barriers. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.

Racism in the ELT Industry 39

Curtis, Andy and Mary Romney. 2006. Shades of meaning: Articulating
the experiences of TESOL professionals of color. Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Davies, Alan. 1991. The native speaker in applied linguistics. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
ESL-Cafe. Retrieved May 15, 2005, from
Golombek, Paula and Stefanie Jordan. 2005. Becoming "black lambs" not
"parrots": A poststructuralist orientation to intelligibility and identity.
TESOL Quarterly 39: 513 – 533.
Gregg, Kevin. 1993. Taking explanation seriously; or, let a couple of
flowers bloom. Applied Linguistics 14: 276-294.
Kachru, Braj. 1991. Liberation linguistics and the Quirk concern. English
Today 7(1): 1 - 13.
Kachru, Braj. 1992. The other tongue: English across cultures. (2nd ed.).
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Lee, E. (in press). Race: A third voice in the native/nonnative speaker
debate.
Leung, Constant, Roxy Harris, and Ben Rampton. 1997. The idealised
native speaker, reified ethnicities, and classroom realities. TESOL
Quarterly 31: 543 - 560.
Mahboob, Ahmar. 2003. Status of nonnative English speaking teachers in
the United States. PhD. diss., Indiana University, Bloomington.
(Unpublished.)
Mahboob, Ahmar. 2005. Beyond the native speaker in TESOL. In Culture,
context, and communication in English language teaching, ed. Z. Syed,
60 - 93. Abu Dhabi, UAE: Military Language Institute.
Mahboob, Ahmar. 2006. Confessions of an Enraced TESOL Professional.
In Shades of meaning: Articulating the experiences of TESOL
professionals of color, eds. A. Curtis and M. Romney. Mahwah, New
Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Mahboob, Ahmar, Uhrig, Karl, Newman, Karen, & Hartford, Beverly.
2004. Children of a lesser English: Nonnative English speakers as ESL
teachers in English language programs in the United States. In
Learning and teaching from experience: Perspectives on nonnative
English-speaking professionals, ed. L. Kamhi-Stein, 100 - 120. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

40 Chapter Three

Moussu, Lucie. 2006. Native and non-native English-speaking English as
a second language teachers: Student attitudes, teacher self-
perceptions, and intensive English program administrator beliefs and
practices. Ph.D. dissertation, Purdue University. (ERIC Document
Reproduction Service No. ED 492 599.)
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. 1989. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Paikeday, Thomas. 1985. The native speaker is dead! Toronto: Paikeday
Publishing.
Quirk, Randolph. 1990. Language varieties and standard language. English
Today 21: 3-10.
Rampton, Ben. 1990. Displacing the 'native speaker': expertise, affiliation
and inheritance. ELT Journal 44 (2): 97-101.
Templer, Bill. 2003. Ageism in TEFL: Time for concerted action. TESL
Reporter 36 (1): 1-22.
Van Dijk, Teun. 1993. Elite discourse and racism. London: Sage
Publications.

CHAPTER FOUR
NEGOTIATING SHAME: EXCHANGE AND
GENRE STRUCTURE IN YOUTH JUSTICE
CONFERENCING
J.R.MARTIN, MICHELE ZAPPAVIGNA & PAUL
DWYER 1

1. Youth justice conferencing
Youth justice conferencing is a program which has been running in New
South Wales, Australia, since the late 1990s. These conferences are an
alternative to sentencing by a children's court magistrate and bring a young
person who has pleaded guilty to an offence into a face-to-face meeting
with the victim (or a victim's representative), support people for the young
person and victim (family, friends, perhaps a social worker or teacher) and
police (typically a youth liaison officer but also, on occasion, the arresting
officer or, if relevant, an ethnic/indigenous community liaison officer).
The convenor of the conference has no direct judicial or law enforcement
role but is a citizen acting in a private capacity (convenors are, however,
trained and contracted by the NSW Department of Juvenile Justice). The
purpose of the conference is to review the offence and its repercussions,
and to broker an "outcome plan" according to which the young person
agrees to undertake various reparative actions such as unpaid work in a
community organisation (these outcome plans do go back to the children's
court magistrate for final ratification).
The program is broadly comparable to legal processes in many other
jurisdictions (eg. "family group conferencing" in New Zealand, "victim-
offender mediation" in North America and Europe, "circle
sentencing/Koori Court" in Australia) which have been widely promoted
in recent decades as part of a more general "restorative justice" reform
movement. For proponents of such reforms, crime is conceived not simply

We are indebted to Chris Cleirigh and Jane Pong for help with the analyses
reported here. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Australian
Research Council through its Discovery Grants program.

42 Chapter Four

as law-breaking but as "a violation of people and relationships", hence
justice is considered less a matter of retribution/punishment and more an
effort to involve "the victim, the offender and the community in a search
for solutions which promote repair, reconciliation, and reassurance" (Zehr
1990, 181). While the links which some commentators (Braithwaite 1997;
Weitekamp 1999) have made between contemporary restorative justice
programs and traditional forms of dispute settlement in indigenous
communities around the world have been contested (Blagg 2008; Cuneen
2002), conferencing has at least proved "flexible and accommodating
toward cultural differences" (Daly 2001, 65) and its early development in
New Zealand was certainly seen as part of a wider political response to the
over-representation of young Maori and Pacific Islander people in the
criminal justice system (Maxwell and Morris 1993). Studies of Australian
conferencing programs have suggested that they may help lower
recidivism rates and have also found that offenders and victims generally
report high levels of satisfaction with the process (Palk et al. 1998;
Trimboli 2000; Strang et al. 1999).
Criminologists and social psychologists have made a number of claims
regarding the nature of the social interaction which "restores justice" in
conferencing, invoking such concepts as "social bond threats", "collective
vulnerability" or "reintegrative shaming" (Retzinger and Scheff 1996;
Moore and McDonald 2001; Braithwaite 1989; Ahmed et al. 2001). As
specialists in functional linguistics, social semiotics and performance
studies, our aim is to look closely at the verbal and non-verbal interaction
within youth justice conferences in order to describe the way in which
meaning is negotiated among participants. In this paper we report on some
of our preliminary work on genre and exchange structure and draw on
Bernstein's notion of pedagogic discourse to frame our interpretation of
what is going on.

2. Generic structure
The current model of youth justice conferencing in New South Wales is a
designed genre which borrows elements from a model trialled in Wagga
Wagga in 1991 (with police as convenors) as well as from the New
Zealand family group conferencing model developed in the 1980s (Daly
2001 offers an account of this history). Convenors are trained to
implement this design and, as part of this training, are provided with a
synopsis of what are considered the major steps in a conference, along
with suggested questions/prompts to use. Whether convenors should stick

Negotiating Shame 43

to these prompts as a kind of script or whether they should be freely
adapting them is a matter of debate within the restorative justice field
(Moore and McDonald 2000; Hoyle et al. 2002). The analysis presented
here draws on participant-observation of 4 convenor training workshops
conducted by staff of the NSW Department of Juvenile Justice and our
observations of 10 conferences (of which 5 were documented on video and
have been transcribed).
Technically speaking, conferencing is a macro-genre (Martin and Rose
2008), involving a series of elemental genres, each of which appears to
have its own recurrent configurations of meaning and staging according to
the task involved. We offer the following as a provisional characterisation
of these elements (parentheses indicate optional elements):

gathering
legal framing
commissioned recount of the offence
exploring consequences for various parties
(apologies and acknowledgments)
tabling possible remedies
(break and private negotiations)
brokering a collective agreement
ratification of outcome plan
(apologies and acknowledgments)
formal closing
(shared refreshments)
dispersal

Before the conference "proper" can begin (when participants are seated in
a circle), there must be some period of gathering during which roles and
expectations are already being negotiated (convenors, when interviewed,
have often commented on the effects of how participants choose to dress
and, sometimes, on the need to "stage-manage" the order in which
participants arrive at the venue). This is followed by an episode during
which the conference is constituted as a legal process, with confirmation
of, among other things, the offender's admission of guilt. This is succeeded
by a series of recounts and rejoinders by various parties, establishing from
different perspectives the events leading up to and constituting the offence,
and exploring their repercussions. Often, the convenor will return at this
point to the young offender and ask if there is "anything else" they want to
say to any of the other conference participants (an implicit invitation to
make an apology, which is not always taken up). Participants are

44 Chapter Four

encouraged to make some initial suggestions for an outcome plan. They
are offered a break, during which the different parties (associated with the
offender and victim, respectively) can consider more concrete proposals.
When the participants are brought back into the circle by the convenor,
these proposals are collectively discussed and, following verbal
agreement, the details are written up and read back to the group. Where
the outcome plan explicitly requires an apology, this can sometimes be
made on the spot. This is followed by a formal closing, the option of
shared refreshments and dispersal. We have documented some variation in
the sequence of participants' recounts and rejoinders; and some convenors
have already canvassed in some detail the major elements of an outcome
plan in pre-conference meetings with the different parties so that the break
becomes a time for filling out paperwork (documents to go back to the
children's magistrates court, participant survey forms etc.).
We are currently working towards a more precise functional labelling
of the elemental genres described above. Legal framing, for instance, has a
very recognisable configuration of meanings and predictable staging as
follows (^ signals sequence and freedom of sequence in this notation):

[Official welcome ^ Legal invocation ^ Role declaration ^ Goal
affirmation] . House-keeping

Even where participants have already introduced themselves to one
another upon arrival, convenors will offer an official welcome once
everyone is seated as a way of formally marking the start of proceedings.
The convenor will then invoke the NSW Young Offender's Act (YOA) as
the relevant legal framework for the conference. 2 Participants will be
asked, one by one, to state their name and role. This stage can sometimes
appear quite stilted. For instance, while the YOA prefers the term "young
person" to "young offender", we are yet to hear the formula "I'm X and I'm
the person who did Y" spontaneously produced by a young person at the
start of a conference. Similarly, we have observed reluctance on the part of
police officers, who have sometimes been punched, kicked or spat upon by
a young person, to introduce themselves as a "victim" unless prompted
very explicitly to do so by the convenor. The convenor will then offer a
brief gloss of what the conference is meant to achieve. Finally, "House-

The Act contains various provisions regarding the confidential nature of
proceedings by which we, as researchers, are also bound. Under the terms of our
ethics protocol (approved by the NSW Attorney General), we are able to reproduce
portions of transcript only where names of participants, localities or other
identifying features are absent.

Negotiating Shame 45

keeping" covers such matters as the convenor pointing out to people where
the nearest toilets are, offering people a glass of water and so on. Overall,
this period in a conference tends to involve frequent tacking back and forth
by the convenor between talk which emphasises the formal legal status of
proceedings (where participants have roles and obligations) and talk which
seems to be more about "knocking the sharp edges off the law", intimating
that conference participants have assembled with at least some common
purposes in mind.
The first account of the offending behaviour which is given in a
conference (and the main focus for the rest of this paper) is what we have
labelled a Commissioned Recount because it typically has to be
"extracted" from a less than forthcoming adolescent by the convenor. It
has the following structure (parentheses in the notation signal an optional
element of structure):

Orientation ^ Record of events ^ (Re-Orientation) ^ (Extension) ^
Interpretation ^ Ramifications

This genre begins with an Orientation which sets the recount in time and
space and introduces the main participants; it continues with a Record of
events, which presents the sequence of events leading up to and
constituting the offence from the young person's perspective; the next
stage, Re-Orientation is optional and wraps up the recount and returns
participants from reconstructed past events to the spatio-temporal setting
of the conference itself; this is followed by an optional Extension stage
which a convenor may deploy to elicit a fuller account from the young
person 3; in the following Interpretation stage the recount is evaluated, as
emotions and social values in relation to the offence are explored; finally
in the Ramifications stage, some of the pertinent consequences of the
offence are canvassed. The first three stages of one example of this genre
are presented below (for its relation to other story genres see Martin and
Rose 2008).

Orientation
Yeah, I was, I was walking to a mate's house.

Record of events
This guy just came up to me

Convenors have read the police record of events, and have met with the police,
young person and victim/s before the conference, and so are fairly familiar with the
offence.

46 Chapter Four

and goes "Do you want to buy a phone?"
and I go "No"
and I go "Do you want to swap?"
[inaudible] want to swap with my phone
and he looked at my phone
and he goes "Yeah"
and we swap
and I went and stayed at my mate's house
and when it came to night time I was going back home,
and we was walking, was walking up the road
and the police just came and got us.

Re-orientation
That's it.

A monologue text of this kind is unrepresentative of the very interactive
nature of the conference as a whole, which is overwhelmingly dialogic.
For example, the Extension stage for this recount proceeds much more
interactively as follows:

Convenor: And then what happened? They came and got
you. They found the phone. What did they say
to you?
Young person: They go that this phone was stolen

Convenor: OK. What did you say?
Young person: I go, you know, I swapped it. Yeah, they just
took took me.

Convenor: Took you where?
Young person: Police station

Convenor: And who did they ring when they brought you to the
police station?
Young person: My dad.

In order to appreciate the nature of this interactivity, we need to turn from
genre to exchange structure (drawing on Martin and Rose 2003/2007 2nd
edition).

Negotiating Shame 47

3. Exchange structure
The dialogue analysis deployed here is based on systemic functional
linguistic (hereafter SFL) research across a range of registers (including
classroom interaction, quiz shows, service encounters and casual
conversation (Berry 1981a, 1981b; Martin 1992, 2000; Martin and Rose
2003/2007; Ventola 1987). The NEGOTIATION system is situated on the
discourse semantic stratum, in the interpersonal metafunction; as such it
plays a role in construing social relations of power and solidarity (tenor) in
social context, and is in turn realised through MOOD, MODALITY, POLARITY
and VOCATION options in lexicogrammar (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004)
and TONE choices in phonology (Halliday and Greaves 2008). An outline
of the relevant systems is presented as Table 1.
Negotiation comprises a number of key oppositions, which we will
briefly review here. Along one dimension, it considers the commodity
exchanged - namely, knowledge or action (information or goods &
services in Halliday and Matthiessen's 2004 terms). Knowledge exchanges
in other words negotiate propositions, whereas action exchanges negotiate
proposals:

Knowledge exchanges (negotiating propositions)
Convenor: So did you commit the offences you are charged with?
Young person: - Yes.

Action exchanges (negotiating proposals)
Convenor: I need you to speak a bit louder.
Young person: - OK.

Another dimension considers who is negotiating. For knowledge
exchanges, the primary knower (K1) is the person with ultimate authority
over the validity of the information exchanged and the secondary knower
(K2) is the person for whom that information is confirmed; for action
exchanges, the primary actor (A1) is the person who hands over goods or
performs a service (or promises to do so) and the secondary actor (A2) is
the person who receives the goods or for whom the service is performed.

48

REGISTER DISCOURSE SEMANTICS LEXICOGRAMMAR PHONOLOGY
NEGOTIATION
TENOR - speech function - mood - tone (& 'key')
- exchange - tagging

power APPRAISAL
(status) - engagement - 'evaluative' lexis - loudness
- affect - modal verbs - pitch movement
- judgement - modal adjuncts - voice quality
- appreciation - polarity - phonaesthesia
- graduation - pre/numeration - [formatting]
- intensification
solidarity - repetition
(contact) - manner; extent
- logico-semantics
- vocation
Chapter Four

INVOLVEMENT
- naming - proper names - 'accent'...
- technicality - technical lexis - whisper...
- abstraction - specialised lexis - acronyms
- anti-language - slang - 'pig latins'
- swearing - taboo lexis - secret scripts
- idioms
- grammatical metaphor

Negotiating Shame 49

Convenor: K2 So did you commit the offences?
Young person: K1 - Yes.

Convenor: A2 I need you to speak a bit louder.
Young person: A1 - OK.

Next there is the question of who initiates the exchange. For knowledge
exchanges, this may be the primary knower, asking a question about
information on which they are in fact the ultimate authority; exchanges of
this kind thus require a third move, where this authority is actualised. This
kind of initiating move is referred to as Dk1, with 'D' for delay since the
move which actualises authority is in effect delayed while the person
questioned offers a response. This kind of initiation is familiar to most of
us from quiz shows and classroom interaction (ELO stands for Ethnic
Liason Officer in the examples below).

ELO: Dk1 Mate, what's your mum wearing on
her head?
Young person: K2 - Scarf.
ELO: K1 - Yeah.

Alternatively, a knowledge exchange can be initiated by the secondary
knower, asking a genuine question to which they do not themselves know
the answer:

Convenor: K2 Does your mum wear a scarf?
Young person: K1 - Yeah.

Or the primary knower can initiate an exchange by simply asserting the
information they control:

Young person: K1 My mum wears a scarf.

Similarly for action exchanges, there are comparable points of departure.
The secondary actor can delay handing over goods or performing a service
by first checking if the goods or service are desired:

Convenor: Da1 Would you like some water?
Young person: A2 - Yes please.
Convenor: A1 - Here you go.

50 Chapter Four

Alternatively, the secondary actor can initiate the exchanges, demanding
goods or services:

Young person: A2 Can I have some water please?
Convenor: A1 - Here you go.

Or the primary actor can initiate, by proferring goods or performing a
service.

Convenor: A1 Here's some water (handing it over).

Note that in all cases the K1/A1 move is obligatory and nuclear. It can be
optionally followed up by the secondary knower/actor:

ELO: K2 How does that make our community
look?
Young person: K1 - Worse.
ELO: K2f - It does, doesn't it?

Convenor: A2 I need you to speak a bit louder.
Young person: A1 - OK.
Convenor: A2f - Thanks.

And if there is a follow-up, then this can be acknowledged by the primary
knower/actor:

ELO: K2 How does that make our community
look?
Young person: K1 - Worse.
ELO: K2f - It does, doesn't it?
Young person: K1f - Yes.

Convenor: A2 I need you to speak a bit louder.
Young person: A1 - OK.
Convenor: A2f - Thanks.
Young person: A1f - No problem.

The generalised structure potential (using the same notation as for genre
structure above) is thus:

Negotiating Shame 51

((Dx1) ^ X2) ^ X1 ^ (X2f ^ (X1f))

This can be further specified for knowledge and action exchanges:

((Dk1) ^ K2) ^ K1 ^ (K2f ^ (K1f))

((Da1) ^ A2) ^ A1 ^ (A2f ^ (A1f))

The model thus allows for exchanges consisting of between 1 and 5
moves. The options considered here are consolidated in a system network
in Fig. 1 (in this diagram, curly brackets mean 'and' and square brackets
'or'; there are thus three simultaneous systems, each of which allows for a
further choice for one of its options).
In order to operationalise a model of this kind for text analysis we also
need to allow for move complexes, where an element of exchange
structure is realised by more than one move, one simply rephrasing the
other:

ELO: K2 Who went and visited you?
K2 Who went and saw you there?
Young person: K1 No-one.

ELO: A2 You show me where in the Koran it
says...
A2 You show me where.
A2 Tell me where.
...

In addition, we need to acknowledge tracking and challenging moves,
which interrupt or at times block the culmination of exchange structure.
By and large tracking moves clarify experiential meaning (the content that
is being negotiated):

ELO: K2 Any of your friends go?
Young person: tr At the police station?
ELO: rtr Yeah.
Young person: K1 No.

52

Table 1: NEGOTIATION in relation to interacting interpersonal systems

anticipate nuclear move dA1/dK1^A2/K2^A1/K1
primary knower/actor initiation
perform nuclear move A1/K1

secondary knowe r/actor initiation A2/K2^A1/K1

knowledge

immediate compliance action obligatory, verbalisation optional
action
prospective compliance verbalisation obligatory, action optional

primary knower/actor follow up A1/K1^A2f/K2f
Chapter Four

secondary knowe r/actor follow up
no follow up
no follow up

Figure 1: negotiation systems

Negotiating Shame 53

Challenging moves function as resistance to the interpersonal trajectory
of an exchange, frustrating and at times derailing completely the
cooperative culmination of an exchange:

ELO: K2 You respect your mum?
Young person: K1 - Yes.
ELO: ch - No, you don't.

4. Issues arising from youth justice conferencing exchange
analysis
As ever in text analysis, idealised models such as that just presented for
exchange structure face challenges of interpretation. At times it appears
that obligatory moves are inferred rather than explicitly instantiated. In
the following exchange, the ELO doesn't in fact play the K1 move
predicted by his Dk1, but opts instead to imply its presence by asking a
genuine question (K2) which takes it as given (YP stands for Young
person in the examples from this point on):

ELO: Dk1 Does religion say you can do what you just did?
YP: K2 - No.
ELO: [K1]/K2 So why you contradicting the religion for?

In such cases the ELO's second move functions as a conflation of a K1
move closing one exchange and a K2 move opening another. Without such
inferencing, the negotaition would have proceeded as follows:

ELO: Dk1 Does religion say you can do what you just did?
YP: K2 - No.
ELO: K1 - No it doesn't.

ELO: K2 So why you contradicting the religion for?

Another pattern of ellipsis we encountered involved the ELO answering
his own Dk1 move, without waiting for an intervening K2 move from the
YP. So the first exchange below unfolds predictably:

ELO: Dk1 What uniform are they wearing?
YP: K2 - Police uniform.

54 Chapter Four

ELO: K1 - OK.

But in the following exchange, perhaps because he realises he has asked a
question the YP cannot answer, the ELO, after a slight pause, moves from
his Dk1 directly to his K1 move:

ELO: Dk1 Where are these people from?
YP: Ø -
ELO: K1 - They're from a certain place.

Adjustments of both kinds are part and parcel of dialogic communication
in real time and have been usefully discussed along various dimensions in
Ventola 1987 and Eggins and Slade 1997/2005. As part of this discussion
Ventola (1987, 90) notes that "...okay may frequently appear as a
responding pair to a statement [... t]his has to do with the fact that in
service encounters giving information is treated as a 'linguistic service'".
The problem here is that words normally indexing an exchange of goods
and services (e.g. please, Okay, thanks) function as moves in what
otherwise appear to be knowledge exchanges:

K2 What's the time please?
K1 - Two thirty.
K2f - Okay, thanks.

Ventola (1987, 117) suggests double-coding exchanges of this kind as an
action exchange conflated with a knowledge exchange, warning that "In
future work how expansive the phenomenon of linguistic services in
various genres is needs to be explored."

A2:LS [[K2]] What's the time please?
A1:LS [[K1]] - Two thirty.
A2f:LS [[K2f]] - Okay, thanks.

Comparable phenomena are in fact very common in youth justice
conferencing, which is clearly structured as a linguistic service by those in
charge (i.e. the Convenor and Liason Officers). The convenor for example
can be very directive when extracting the recount, treating the re-telling as
a task to be performed:

Convenor: What I want you to do now is I need you to tell us in a
really loud voice what happened on that particular day. Alright? So I

Negotiating Shame 55

want you to tell me everything that happened on that day that led to
you being stopped by the police with the telephone. OK? Can you do
that for us? Thanks. Off you go.

Convenor: You need to tell us why you took the phone.

Convenor: Tell me what happened when Mum found out what you
did.

Similarly, in the following examples, an ELO constructs answers to his
probing questions as a service to be performed on his behalf by the YP:

ELO: What are you doing; I'm asking you M.

ELO: You tell me what you think.

ELO: You tell me brother how its part of our our culture or our
religion or our tradition to do things like that.

This structuring may be prospective, as in the examples just reviewed,
which are oriented to what the YP is supposed to do. Or it may be
retrospective, ratifying a service which has been performed:

YP I was going to a mate's house and I was [inaudible] and I
was walking with him. This guy just came up to me and
he goes "Do you want to buy this phone?"
Convenor OK, can I stop you just for one second...

Convenor They found the phone and what did they say to you?
YP They go that this phone was stolen.
Convenor OK. What did you say?
YP I go, you know, "I swapped it."
Convenor Yeah.
YP And they just took me.
Convenor Took you where?
YP The police station.
Convenor OK. And who did they ring when they brought you to
the police station.
YP My dad.
Convenor OK. ...

56 Chapter Four

This on-going co-construction of what are essentially knowledge
exchanges as linguistic action is part of a syndrome of features which
raises questions about the status of youth justice conferences as a form of
pedagogic discourse, to which we now turn.

5. Pedagogic discourse
Bernstein (1990, 183) defines pedagogic discourse as "the rule which
embeds a discourse of competence (instructional discourse) into a
discourse of social order (regulative discourse)...". What he is exploring
here is the relation between the discourse of the subjects being taught in
school (e.g. science, history, mathematics) and the discourse used to teach
them (including control of student behaviour and the pacing, sequencing
and evaluation of what is learned). Fundamental to his argument is the
idea that "the regulative discourse is the dominant discourse... because it is
the moral discourse that creates the criteria which give rise to character,
manner, conduct, posture..." (Bernstein 1996, 48). As a consequence, the
discourses of the subjects being taught are always recontextualised
discourses, taken out of the contexts in which they are professionally
deployed and re-worked into the moral order of schools. In his terms, the
purpose of the device is "to provide a symbolic ruler for consciousness."
(Bernstein 1996, 50) Christie develops this work in her analysis of
classroom discourse, preferring Halliday's notion of projection to
Bernstein's embedding: "The first order or regulative register, it will be
argued, 'projects' a second order or instructional register." (Christie 2002,
25) Developing the notion that pedagogic discourse is not restricted to
school settings; Muntigl develops the concept for relationship counselling
discourse: "I shall argue that the narrative counselling discourse interview
[...] includes both a regulative and instructional register. Regulation
involves the degree to which the client's social actions are managed by the
counsellor [... t]he instructional register [...] involves [...] the ways in
which the clients are meant to construe experience [...] it is by regulating
clients' verbal behaviour that a certain view of problems and their
influences becomes possible." (Muntigl 2004, 124)
Rephrasing this with respect to the model of language and social
context assumed in this paper, we can argue that regulative discourse is in
effect a genre (coordinating the register variables field, tenor and mode)
which projects a recontextualised field of social integration intended to re-
align the YP with the values of his or her family, ethnic group and
community and diminish the relatively malign influence of peers. With

Negotiating Shame 57

youth justice conferencing what we appear to have is a pedagogic
discourse constituted by an evolving legal genre projecting a discourse of
social responsibility; this evolution reflects the genesis of the genre in the
concerns of both the criminal justice and social work systems (Cuneen and
White 2007). The regulatory dimension of this pedagogic discourse
reveals itself, in part, through the construal of the interaction by convenors
and liason officers as linguistic servicing. A crude visualisation of the
projection principle involved here is outlined in Fig. 2 below.

integrative discourse

regulative discourse
Figure 2: Regulative discourse projecting integrative discourse in youth
justice conferencing

Reconceived in these terms, it's not surprising that exchanges in youth
justice conferences can be interpreted as both knowledge and action. From
the perspective of regulatory discourse, they organise the social order
realised through both genre and exchange structure:

Speaker Talk Regulative
Convenor So what I need you to do is admit you're guilty. A2
Young
A1
person OK. [nods]

And from the perspective of integrative discourse, they establish the
parameters whereby the YP can be re-affiliated with relevant
communities:

Speaker Talk Integrative
Convenor You've already admitted your guilt to this
K2
offence and you're here of your own free will?
Young person Yep. [nods] K1
Convenor Yep? K2f

58 Chapter Four

The conference exchange which the two preceding examples are based on
actually proceeded as follows, with both regulatory and integrative work
going on:

Speaker Talk Regulative Integrative
Convenor So what I need you to do is A2
<A1 K2
guilt to this offence
and you're here of your own free
will?>>
Young
K1
person Yep. [nods]
Convenor Yep? K2f
OK A2f

The reason so much of the data resembles Ventola's linguistic services is
that the conferences are pedagogic discourses with regulation projecting
integration. Accordingly we double-code many exchanges as both action
and knowledge negotiating interactions. For ease of representation, we lay
out with regulatory moves to the left (column 3) and integrative
knowledge moves to the right (column 6); each exchange is numbered to
the left of each analysis (columns 2 and 5), and turns are designated in
column 1. The example just reviewed, along with two succeeding
exchanges, is presented along these lines below. The Convenor's
prospective "OK" moves, designed to facilitate the exchange by
encouraging a response from the YP, have been labelled "invite" moves 4.
There are two moves which explicitly solicit the events of the recount and
which have been labelled K2 in the integrative discourse column.

Inviting moves are a kind of dynamic move, not canvassed in Ventola (1987) or
Martin (1992).

Negotiating Shame 59

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
What I want you
to do now is I
A2… need you to tell us
in a really loud
voice,
invite <>
YP A1 [nods]
what happened on
…A2 2 K2
that particular day.
A2f Alright
so I want you to
tell me everything
C that happened on
A2 that day that led to K2
3 you being stopped
by the police with
the telephone. 3
invite OK?
YP A1 [nods]
Can you do that
C A2
for us?
YP A1 [nods]
C A2f Thanks.

Laid out along these lines, the YP offers the first part of his recount as a
linguistic service in response to the Convenor's Off you go move, a service
she then thanks him for - OK. From the perspective of the projected
integrative discourse, this move complex is treated as a series of K1
moves. In the tables which follow exchanges have been numbered
sequentially as they unfold in the conference; repeated moves within an
exchange constitute move complexes.

60 Chapter Four

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
C A2 Off you go.
I was- I was going to
YP A1 K1
a mate's house
C A1 Yep. [nods] bch
A1 And [inaudible] K1
and I was walking 3
A1 K1
5 with him.
This guy just came
YP A1 K1
up to me
and he goes "Do you
A1 want to buy this K1
phone?"
C A2f OK

The next set of exchanges is purely regulatory 5 in function, encouraging
the YP to speak louder for the benefit of the Youth Liaison Officer and
perhaps for the benefit of our recording crew. There are two "missing"
verbalisations of A1 moves, one in exchange 6 since the YP in fact stops
talking when interrupted by the Convenor rather than verbally agreeing to,
and one in exchange 11 where the Convenor simply assumes the YP will
agree to speak up.

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
Can I just stop you for
6 A2
one second?
7 K1 I'm sorry.
Julie has a problem
8 K1 with her hearing at the
moment.
C 9 K1 Her ears are blocked
10 K1 so she can't [inaudible]
So she needs you to
A2
speak a bit louder.
11 invite OK?
Thank you.
A2f
Thanks YP.

Note that this regulatory phase includes both knowledge and action moves; the
knowledge moves explain why the Convenor is requesting the Young Person to
speak up.

Negotiating Shame 61

The young person then resumes his testimony through a long relatively
monologic series of K1 move complexes, at the end of which the
Convenor invites some more and is challenged by the YP's closure - That's
it. The K1 moves are supported by two non-verbal tracking moves (back-
channels realised by a nod of the head), and finally with a K2f.

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
Yeah, I was, I was
YP walking to a mate's K1
house.
C [nods] bch
This guy just came
K1
up to me
and goes "Do you
want to buy a K1
phone?"
and I go "No" K1
and I go "Do you
want to swap
[inaudible] want to K1
swap with my
phone?"
and he looked at my
YP K1
phone
and he goes "Yeah" K1
and we swap K1
and I went and
stayed at- at my K1
mate's house
and when it came to
night time I was K1
going back home,
and we was walking,
was walking me up K1
the road
C [nods] bch
and the police just
YP K1
came and got us.
C invite Oh, OK. [nods] K2f
12
YP ch That's it.

In these examples and those which follow, we've included as part of the
regulatory discourse any moves explicitly structuring the genre or

62 Chapter Four

exchange structure, along with any moves they prospectively prompt or
retrospectively construe as a linguistic service.

6. Joint construction
The close readings of exchange structure outlined above allow us to make
precise observations about the contributions made by different participants
in youth justice conferences. The Extension stage of the commissioned
recount, for example, is much more interactive than the Record of events.
The convenor assumes a leading role, initiating exchanges in relation to
aspects of the offence she wants tabled at this meeting:

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
And then what
C [A1] K2
happened? 6
YP [A1] They found the phone. K1
They came and got
C [A1] K1
you. 7
YP 13 [A1] Yeah. [nods] K2f
[A1] They found the phone. 8 K1
C and what did they say
[A1] K2
to you?
They go that this phone 9
YP [A1] K1
was stolen.
A2f [nods] OK. bch
What did you say? K2
I go, you know, [rubs
YP 10 K1
face] "I swapped it".
C Yeah, K2f
YP and they just took me. K1
C [A1] Took you where? cl
11
YP 14 [A1] The police station rcl
C A2f OK. [nods] bch

The Interpretation stage proceeds along similar lines, with the convenor
orchestrating the evaluation of events. She explores the emotional
reactions of those involved, including the young person's family:

Negotiating Shame 63

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
And who did they ring
C [A1] when they brought you K2
12
15 to the police station?
YP [A1] My dad. K1
A2f OK.
And what did your dad
C 13 K2
say?
[A1] Was he angry, happy? K2
YP [A1] [nods] Angry. K1
16 14
[A1] Angry. [laughs] K2f
A2f Yeah. OK. K2f

Questions of moral responsibility are also raised:

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
Did you- Did you
C realise that this K2
phone was stolen? 15
YP [nods] K1
You did. K2f
So why did you
C take it if you
K2
realised it was 16
stolen?
YP [inaudible] K1
[bobs head] You
C A2 need to tell us why K2
you took the phone. 17
YP 17 A1 Because it was new. K1
A1 Because it was new. K2f
A1 Newer than yours. K2
18
YP A1 [nods] Yeah. K1
So you didn't care
that it was
K1
C somebody else's
phone? 19
invite Is that right?
YP 18 [A1] Yeah. K2f
C A2f OK

As far as the convenor is concerned, the general pattern is one in which
she enacts a highly visible regulatory discourse, managing both global

64 Chapter Four

genre staging and local exchange structure. The convenor initiates all
knowledge exchanges as a secondary knower (K2 moves). Since she is
familiar with the police report, these are however rather calculated K2
moves, topologically closer to Dk1 moves in contexts where the secondary
knower has less idea what the answer to questions could be. Significantly,
interpretation of the recount is jointly constructed with the convenor in
control; she introduces virtually all evaluation and the young person
responds a word or phrase at a time.
Interpretation of the impact of the recount is of course crucial to the
projected integrative discourse in youth justice conferences, since this is
where attempts are made to distance the young person from the circle of
mates leading him astray and re-align him with the values of the
community at large, his ethnic group and family. In the second conference
we consider in this paper, a Muslim ethnic liaison officer intervenes to
extend the convenor's interpretation, apparently out of frustration with his
reading of its integrative effectiveness to that point in the conference. He
begins by focusing attention on the young person's mother's headscarf
(hijab), which in Australia is a highly visible and politicised symbol of
membership in the Muslim community:

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
Listen, I want
to take, with
your
permission, I
wanna take a
different
ELO A2 angle.
ELO 1 invite OK (2)?
Mate, what's
your mum
wearing on
ELO [A1] her head? 1 Dk1
YP [A1] Scarf. K2
ELO [A1] Yeah. K1
ELO 2 A2f OK (3).

He then focuses on the mother having to attend the conference, in the
presence of three uniformed police officers (and in the following exchange
sequence, members from the wider community - i.e. the two members of
our research team who are observing the conference):

Negotiating Shame 65

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
What a- where is she
ELO now?
In the presence of
ELO who? 2 Dk1…
YP = Me. K2
ELO = Who- who's- ...Dk1
ELO No ch
ELO who's sitting here? Dk1
Who's sitting here 3
ELO right now? Dk1
ELO A2 Have a look across.
YP 3 [A1] Men. K2
Have a- but have a
ELO A2 look across
what uniform are
ELO [A1] they wearing? Dk1
YP [A1] Police uniform. K2
ELO 4 A2f OK (3). [K1]

The ELO then explicitly makes the point that the young person is creating
a bad impression for the Muslim community 6; his behaviour doesn't just
affect himself, but his family and his ethnic group as well:

This was a sensitive issue in Australia at the time, since the conservative
government of that era (led by John Howard) was manipulating racist sentiment in
support of its pro-American foreign policy (including membership of the “coalition
of the willing” in Iraq); in Sydney this laid the ground for an outburst of racial
tension in Cronulla (the so-called “Cronulla riots”), involving violent conflict
between young members of the Lebanese migrant and self-appointed “local”
“Australian” communities and the bashing of innocent bystanders of “Middle
Eastern appearance”.

66 Chapter Four

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
ELO [A1] Where are these guys from? [K1]/Dk1
They're from a certain 5
ELO [A1] place. K1
ELO 5 A2f OK (3).
What's the perception going
ELO to be? 6 Dk1
YP Think bad of me. K2
ELO [A1] What are they gonna- [K1]/Dk1
when they see your mum
ELO [A1] wearing a scarf, Dk1…
I'm Muslim background 7
ELO [A1] myself. <>
What are they going to
ELO [A1] think? ...Dk1
YP [A1] Bad. K2
ELO 6 A2f OK (1). [K1]

Later on this point is reinforced, with the ELO registering his extreme
disgust and embarrassment about the negative stereotyping that is being
reinforced:

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
Number two,
man, when I see
someone of my
own background
bringing their
mum in wearing 13
ELO [A1] a hijab, K1…
ELO 10 A2f OK,
honestly man
ELO inside I feel sick. ...K1
ELO K2 You understand?
YP 11 K1 Yes.

In this conference the ELO also makes explicit moves to distance the
young person from his mates, who have in fact invited him to be present at
a fight they have arranged with rivals:

Negotiating Shame 67

Speaker RE# Regulative Talk IE# Integrative
I'm asking you
ELO A2 YP.
ELO 7 A2f OK.
Because I'm
listening to you
ELO [A1] man K1
and I don't see
you as a leader at
ELO [A1] the moment. K1
I see you 9
following your
ELO [A1] friends. K1
I see your friends
ELO [A1] say jump, K1
you say how
ELO [A1] high. K1
That's how I see
ELO 8 [A1] you. K1
10
ELO A2f OK.
YP Yeah. K2f
You wanta be
11
ELO tough. K1
But you just-
you're not, 12
ELO number one. K1

As with the convenor in the previous conference, once again there is a
highly visible regulative discourse, with the ELO controlling the
interaction. He initiates all knowledge exchanges - Dk1 and K1 moves
(but as primary, rather than secondary knower). And once again, the
interpretation of the commissioned recount is jointly constructed with the
ELO assuming more even control than the convenor, and YP responding a
word or phrase at a time.

7. Restorative justice – passion play or ritualised
integration?
In this paper we have concentrated in particular on an interpretation of
youth justice conferencing as a form of pedagogic discourse, with a
regulative discourse projecting an integrative one, and the kind of

68 Chapter Four

convenor/liaison officer-controlled interaction explicitly visible regulation
affords. This raises questions about the way in which youth justice
conferences facilitate, or not, the kind of projected integrative discourse
envisioned by restorative justice theorists. For John Braithwaite,
conferencing achieves restorative effects through "reintegrative" (rather
than "stigmatizing") shaming, that is "by communicating disapproval of an
act with respect, with special efforts to avert outcast identities and to
terminate disapproval with rituals of forgiveness or reconciliation"
(Ahmed et al. 2001, 39). Other theorists have downplayed the centrality of
shame (Morris 2002) or interpreted it more as a collective experience, a
"visceral reminder" to participants that they "can experience positive
emotions in each other's company" which thereby prompts a transition
towards cooperation and resolution (Moore and McDonald 2001, 138).
Nevertheless, a vision of conferencing as a kind of redemptive passion
play, with a "core sequence" of remorse, apology and forgiveness
(Retzinger and Scheff 1996), has remained largely intact in the restorative
justice literature. While we do not discount the possibility of such a
sequence occurring, and occurring as a very visceral experience, it has
only rarely been evident in the ten conferences we have observed thus far
in our research.
In this regard, we are struck by the recent re-examination of some
seminal evaluations of conferencing by the criminologist Hennessey
Hayes and the doubts he has raised about the restorative potential of the
genre; his most relevant comments can be summarised as follows:

Results of these major [research] projects, as well as results from the
various evaluations studies, are remarkably consistent and show that
offenders and victims view conferencing processes as fair and are
generally satisfied with the outcomes. However, there is less evidence
that shows conferences are also 'restorative' […] there may be marked
limits on how far conferences can go in repairing harm, inducing
remorse, and helping victims and offenders move on […] conferences
sometimes do not induce remorse, young offenders sometimes do not
feel sorry and offer an apology, and victims sometimes do not forgive
[...] in New Zealand, Maxwell and Morris observed [...] that […] 25%
of victims felt worse for having attended a conference, mainly because
'the victim did not feel that the young person and his or her family was
truly sorry'. (Hayes 2006, 370, 377-378)

In his paper Hayes reviews two sources of difficulty with the restorative
apology-forgiveness ideal. One is that there can be a drift from apologetic

Negotiating Shame 69

discourse to mitigating accounts, with the young person offering excuses
for their behaviour. The following exchange from our second conference
illustrates this point:

ELO: So if you don't like anybody dictating to you what to do
right, what gives you the right to go and hurt other
people?
YP: No right, but he hurt my mate...

Hayes' second point has to do with the presence of third parties (e.g.
convenor, liaison officers), so that "The youth justice conference process...
transforms the private act of apologising and offering forgiveness into a
public drama of restorative justice" (Hayes 2006, 379). To these
misgivings we can now add our observations about the dominant role of
the convenor and relatively passive role of the young person in exchange
structure. What kind of apology is possible when the young person's
participation is so heavily scaffolded?
That said, we do not mean to suggest that scaffolding is necessarily a
bad thing. On the contrary, given that youth justice conferencing is still an
emerging genre and a novel, typically one-off experience for most
participants (not to mention the low levels of literacy and fluency in
English of some of these participants), some form of scaffolding is clearly
essential. Furthermore, while the regulative discourse in conferencing
inscribes hierarchical power relations between participants, this is often
paired with close and certainly negotiable relations of solidarity. Indeed,
this readily observable tension between the vertical and horizontal
dimensions of tenor aligns with what we are beginning to think of as the
ritual-like, performative "force" of conferencing.
The public nature of conferencing renders the act of making an
apology difficult, yet one can understand the satisfaction that participants
might derive from what (following Turner 1969/2008) we could define as
ritualised redressive action designed to deal with the broader "social
drama" of juvenile delinquency. The conference—whether or not it
produces an apology and forgiveness—is an orderly convocation of
persons who present themselves to one another as citizens interested in
promoting orderly behaviour. At the very least, a victim's words are
attended to by an appropriately constituted "community of care". To do the
conference at all requires enacting, on the spot, some of the (re)integrative
effects it is hoped the conference might be able to foster in the longer
term: a young person is made to talk and to listen but is also given, then
and there, an opportunity to affiliate with his family, his ethnic group, the

70 Chapter Four

wider community (with the possible support of police liaison officers)
alongside, or in place of, his hitherto dominating affiliation with mates.
Who knows which affiliations will stick? The conference is still likely to
have emerged as a suitably formal legal process, though accessible to lay
persons, in and through which various preferred affiliations may be "re-
presented" or "modeled" (Handelman 1990). The opportunity for young
people, victims, their families, friends and police to affiliate simply in
relation to the doing of a conference is already a paradigm shift for
criminal justice systems which have for so long manifestly failed to
rehabilitate offenders and to meet the needs of victims.

Reference List *
Ahmed, E., N. Harris, J. Braithwaite, and V. Braithwaite 2001. Shame
Management through Reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bernstein, B. 1990. Class, Codes and Control 4: the structuring of
pedagogic discourse. London: Routledge.
Bernstein, B. 1996. Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: theory,
research, critique. London: Taylor and Francis (Critical perspectives
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Berry, M. 1981a. Systemic linguistics and discourse analysis: a multi-
layered approach to exchange structure. In Studies in Discourse
Analysis, ed. M. Coulthard and M. Montgomery, 120-145. London:
Rouledge.
Berry, M. 1981b. Towards layers of exchange structure for directive
exchanges. Network 2: 23-32.
Blagg, H. 2008. Crime, Aboriginality and the Decolonisation of Justice.
Sydney: Hawkins Press.
Braithwaite, J. 1989. Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Braithwaite, J. 1997. Restorative justice and a better future. The Dalhousie
Review 76(1): 9-31.
Christie, F. 2002. Classroom Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum.

The authors have made a principled political decision not to use names in
references, to avoid discrimination against female authors.

Negotiating Shame 71

Cuneen, C. 2002. Restorative justice and the politics of decolonization. In
Restorative Justice: Theoretical Foundations, eds. E. Weitekamp and
H.J. Kerner, 32-49. Cullompton, UK: Willan Publishing.
Cuneen, C. and R. White 2007. Juvenile Justice: youth and crime in
Australia. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Daly, K. 2001. Conferencing in Australia and New Zealand: variations,
research findings, and prospects. In Restorative Justice for Juveniles:
Conferencing, Mediation and Circles, ed. A. Morris and G. Maxwell,
59-83. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing.
Eggins, S and Slade, D. 1997. Analysing Casual Covnversation. London:
Cassell 1997 [Reprinted by Equinox 2005].
Halliday, M.A.K. and C.M.I.M. Mattiessen 2004. Introduction to
Functional Grammar. London, UK: Arnold.
Halliday, M.A.K. and W.S. Greaves 2008. Intonation in the Grammar of
English. London, UK: Equinox.
Handelman, D. 1990. Models and Mirrors: towards an anthropology of
public events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hayes, H. 2006. Apologies & accounts in youth justice conferencing.
Contemporary Justice Review 9(4): 369-385.
Hoyle, C., R. Young, and R. Hill 2002. Proceed with Caution: an
evaluation of the Thames Valley police initiative in restorative
cautioning. York, UK: York Publishing Services.
Martin, J.R. 1992. English Text: system and structure. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.
Martin, J.R. 2000. Factoring out exchange: types of structure. In Working
with Dialogue, ed. Coulthard, M., Cotterill, J and Rock, F, 19-40.
Tubingen: Niemeyer.
Martin, J.R. and D. Rose. 2007. Working with Discourse: meaning beyond
the clause. 2nd ed. London: Continuum.
Martin, J.R. and D. Rose. 2008. Genre Relations: mapping culture.
London: Equinox.
Maxwell, G. and A. Morris. 1993. Family, Victims and Culture: youth
justice in New Zealand. Wellington: Social Policy Agency and the
Institute of Criminology, Victoria University.
Moore, D. and J. McDonald 2000. Transforming Conflict in Workplaces
and other Communities. Sydney: Transformative Justice Australia.
Moore, D. and J. McDonald 2001. Community conferencing as a special
case of conflict transformation. In Restorative Justice and Civil
Society. eds. H. Strang and J. Braithwaite, 130-148. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

72 Chapter Four

Morris, A. 2002. Shame, guilt and remorse: experiences from family group
conferences in New Zealand. In Punishing Juveniles: principles and
critique, eds. I. Weijersand and A. Duff, 157-178. Oxford: Hart
Publishing.
Muntigl, P. 2004. Narrative Counselling: social and linguistic processes
of change. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Discourse Approaches to Politics,
Society and Culture).
Palk, G., H. Hayes and T. Prenzler. 1998. Restorative justice and
community conferencing: summary of findings from a pilot study.
Current Issues in Criminal Justice 10(2): 125-137.
Retzinger, S., and T. Scheff. 1996. Strategy for community conferences:
emotions and social bonds. In Restorative justice: international
perspectives, ed. Galaway, B and Hudson, J, 315-336. Monsey, NJ:
Criminal Justice Press.
Strang, H., G. Barnes, J. Braithwaite, and L. Sherman 1999. Experiments
in Restorative Policing: a progress report on the Canberra
Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE). Canberra: Research
School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.
Trimboli, L. 2000. An Evaluation of the NSW Youth Justice Conferencing
Scheme. Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
Turner, V. 2008. The Ritual Process: structure and anti-structure. 2nd ed.
New Brunswick and London: Aldine Transaction.
Ventola, E. 1987. The Structure of Social Interaction: a systemic approach
to the semiotics of service encounters. London: Pinter (Open
Linguistics Series).
Weitekamp, E. 1999. The history of restorative justice. In Restorative
juvenile justice: repairing the harm of youth crime, eds. G. Bazemore
and L. Walgrave, 75-102. Monsey, NJ: Criminal Justice Press.
Zehr, H. 1990. Changing Lenses: a new focus for criminal justice.
Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press.

CHAPTER FIVE
DIALECT AND CREDIBILITY JUDGEMENTS OF
INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN SUSPECTS
SOWMYA DEVARAJ &
JANE GOODMAN-DELAHUNTY

1. Introduction
Indigenous Australians make up 2.3% of the Australian population
(Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001), and are the most disadvantaged
minority group in Australia. When compared to non-Indigenous
Australians, Indigenous Australians are disadvantaged in the areas of
health, education, employment, housing and the criminal justice system
(Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001). It is undisputed that Indigenous
Australians are over-represented in the criminal justice system. Nationally,
the imprisonment rate for Indigenous adults is approximately 12 times the
rate for non-Indigenous adults (Snowball and Weatherburn 2006).
Concerns have been raised as to whether the over-representation of
Aboriginal people in the criminal system can be partially attributed to
racial bias throughout the legal system (Cunneen 2001). Racial bias in the
legal system is defined as the disparate treatment of minority group
individuals in a legal setting (Cunneen 2001). One potential way in which
racial bias in the legal system may contribute to over-representation of
Indigenous Australians is its impact on credibility judgments. Credibility
judgments are assessments of a suspect's believability or veracity and are
important throughout the criminal justice process.
Recent research suggests that racial prejudice against Indigenous
Australians is prevalent in Australia. A study using a Perth community
sample found that a large proportion of respondents (48%) scored high
(above the midpoint) on the Attitudes Towards Indigenous Australians
(ATIA) scale. This scale measures negative attitudes held about
Indigenous Australians (Pedersen et al. 2004). Research has also
investigated reports of racism from Indigenous Australians. A recent study
interviewed Indigenous adults from Melbourne about their experiences of
racist events (Mellor 2003). Almost all participants reported experiences

74 Chapter Five

of harassment by police. Participants perceived that police abused their
position of authority and power. These findings suggest that Indigenous
individuals may experience racism from the police and other fact-finders
in the legal system.
Another factor that may affect judgments made about Indigenous
Australians is cultural differences in communicative norms. Research has
documented many cultural differences in norms for verbal and nonverbal
communicative behavior between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
Australians. Some Indigenous individuals speak Aboriginal English, a
dialect of English that differs significantly from Standard English (Eades
2000). Differences exist between Aboriginal and Standard English for both
verbal and non-verbal communication. The main verbal differences are
that Aboriginal English uses gratuitous concurrence (the tendency to
respond affirmatively to a question asked by an interviewer even when the
individual does not actually agree with or understand the question), the use
of contextual (referring to aspects of climate, geography or social life)
instead of quantifiable specification (specific dates and numbers),
pronunciation and slang. The major non-verbal differences are the absence
of direct eye contact in Aboriginal English, the acceptability of long
periods of silence in Aboriginal English and the gestures used during
conversation (Eades 2000). These cultural differences in norms for verbal
and non-verbal communication can affect veracity judgments because
Aboriginal English is unfamiliar to speakers of Standard English and
consequently is difficult to understand and interpret correctly. Thus,
perceivers unfamiliar with these differences may automatically judge
speakers of Aboriginal English as less credible than speakers of Standard
English.
Communication differences between Standard and Aboriginal English
are often exacerbated in legal settings, such as police interviews and the
courtroom. Eades (in press) suggests that the key feature affecting
credibility judgments of Aboriginal individuals in the legal system is the
negative interpretation of long periods of silence in conversation. Research
with speakers of Aboriginal English has shown silence is often a positive
and productive feature of interactions. By comparison, research with
Australian speakers of Standard English has shown silence during
conversation is a sign of deception (Vines 2005). To date, no experimental
research has demonstrated whether and to what extent variations between
Standard and Aboriginal English, such as protracted silences in Aboriginal
English, affect credibility judgments in a legal context.

Dialect and Credibility Judgements of Indigenous Australian Suspects 75

2. Aims of the Present Study
The present study investigates how suspect racial appearance (Aboriginal
versus Caucasian), long pauses in conversation (long pauses before
answering questions and in the middle of statements versus no long
pauses) and strength of the suspect's exculpatory argument (Strong versus
Weak) affects credibility judgments made in a legal setting.
In line with previous research indicating that Australians consider long
periods of silence during conversations as a sign of deception (Vines
2005), it is hypothesised that suspects who paused during speech will be
judged less credible than those who did not pause. Consistent with
research indicating high levels of racism against Indigenous Australians
(Pedersen et al. 2004), it is expected that Caucasian suspects will be
perceived as more credible than Aboriginal suspects. It is also predicted
that suspects with strong exculpatory arguments will be perceived as more
credible than those with weak arguments.

3. Method

3.1. Design

The experiment employed a 2 (Suspect racial appearance: Aboriginal
versus Caucasian) x2 (Pauses during conversation: long pauses during
speech versus no long pauses) x 2 (Strength of suspect's argument: strong
versus weak) between-subjects factorial design. Suspect racial appearance
was operationalised by providing photographs of the suspect and a written
description of the suspect's ethnicity. Pauses during conversation were
operationalised by the presence (long pause condition) or absence (no
pause condition) of long pauses in the suspect's speech in the middle of
statements and before answering questions. Argument strength was
operationalised by the presence (strong argument condition) or absence
(weak argument condition) of an eyewitness. All participants answered a
"manipulation check" question to determine whether they correctly
recalled the race of the suspect.

3.2. Participants

A total of 192 participants participated in this study; 135 participants were
Psychology students from the University of New South Wales. The

76 Chapter Five

remaining 57 were from the general community. The sample included 65
males (33.9%) and 127 females (66.1%). The mean age of the total sample
was 21.29 years (SD = 6.33), with ages ranging from 17 to 59 years.

3.3. Materials and Procedure

All materials were presented on an internet website in written and audio
format. Participants adopted the role of a police officer who had been
asked by a work partner for an opinion regarding the credibility of a
suspect. Participants simultaneously read and listened to an investigative
police interview of a suspect in an assault and theft case.
The investigative police interview was adapted from an excerpt of an
actual police interview of a suspect in an assault and theft case (Dixon and
Travis 2007). The interview was presented in written and audio formats.
To ensure the authenticity of the audio, an Indigenous actor played the role
of the suspect and a Caucasian actor played the role of the police officer.
Participants completed a non-standard written questionnaire that
measured credibility judgments about the suspect and beliefs regarding the
meaning of silence during conversation. The suspect's perceived
credibility was assessed based on: (a) ratings (0-100%) of the likelihood
that the suspect is guilty of assault and of theft; (b) ratings (1-18) of the
perceived credibility of the suspect; and (c) rating (0-100%) of the
likelihood the suspect is lying. Participants also completed the Attitudes
Towards Indigenous Australians Scale (ATIA) (Pedersen et al. 2004).

4. Results
This study explored three factors that may influence credibility judgments:
long pauses during conversation, suspect racial appearance and strength of
suspect's argument. As predicted, suspects who used long pauses during
their speech were judged less credible than those who did not use long
pauses and suspects with strong arguments were judged more credible than
those with weak arguments. Contrary to predictions, suspects whose
appearance was stereotypically Aboriginal were judged more credible than
suspects who appeared Caucasian, irrespective of the strength of argument
presented by the suspect.
In the Aboriginal racial appearance version, 94.32% of participants
correctly recalled the suspect's race and in the Caucasian racial appearance
version, 88.54% of participants correctly recalled race.

Dialect and Credibility Judgements of Indigenous Australian Suspects 77

4.1. Pauses during speech

Consistent with predictions, on the measure of perceived credibility,
suspects who used long pauses before answering questions or in the
middle of statements were perceived as significantly less credible (M =
9.67; SD = 3.42) than suspects who did not use long pauses (M = 11.04;
SD = 3.20; F (1,184) = 8.50, p <.05). Suspects who used long pauses
during conversation were also judged significantly more likely to be lying
(M = 57.25; SD = 21.76) than suspects who did not use long pauses (M =
47.11, SD = 21.21; F (1,184) = 11.30, p =.001).
There was a main effect of pauses during conversation on the
perceived likelihood of culpability of theft F (1,184) = 7.88, p =.006).
However, the effect of pauses during conversation was moderated by a
significant interaction between argument strength and pauses during
conversation F, (1,184) = 9.39, p=.003 (see Graph 1). Argument strength
had a greater impact when the suspect did not use long pauses during
speech than when the suspect used long pauses during speech. When the
suspect did not pause during conversation the mean perceived likelihood
of culpability of theft when the suspect's argument was weak (M = 59.33;
SD = 23.78) was rated significantly higher than when the suspect's
argument was strong (M = 35.56; SD = 20.17). However, when the suspect
used long pauses during speech, there was little difference in the perceived
likelihood of culpability of theft in response to weak (M = 58.91; SD =
22.42) versus strong arguments (M = 54.04; SD = 21.94).

70
60
50 Long
40 pauses
30 No long
20 pauses
10
Strong argument Weak argument

Figure 1. Effects of argument strength on the perceived culpability.

No main effect of pauses during conversation on the likelihood of assault,
emerged, F (1,184) = .18, p <.05. However, there was a statistically
significant interaction of pauses during speech and suspect racial

78 Chapter Five

appearance F (1,184) = 4.54, p =.04. Caucasian suspects were perceived
more likely to be culpable of assault when they used long pauses during
speech (M = 74.15; SD = 18.55) than when they did not use long pauses
(M = 66.44; SD = 23.85). The effect of pauses during conversation was in
the opposite direction for Aboriginal suspects: they were judged less likely
to be culpable of assault when they used long pauses during speech (M =
65.92; SD = 22.54) than when they did not use long pauses (M = 71.33; S
D= 20.63). Thus the effects of pauses during speech varied depending on
the suspect's racial appearance.

76
74
72
70
Long pauses
68
No long pauses
66
64
62
60
Caucasian Aboriginal

Figure 2. Effect of racial appearance on culpability.

4.2. Beliefs regarding pauses in oral communication

In response to an open ended question asking what else (other than
deception) is indicated by long pauses in conversation, participants offered
a variety of explanations including that the suspect may have been worried
or thinking about what happened. However, none of the explanations
pertained to cultural differences.

4.3. Suspect Racial Appearance

Contrary to predictions, Aboriginal suspects were judged more credible (M
= 10.90; SD = 3.41) than Caucasian suspects on the measure of total
perceived credibility (M = 9.75; SD = 3.28; F (1,184) = 5.83, p=.02). The
effect of suspect racial appearance was similar for likelihood of lying and

Dialect and Credibility Judgements of Indigenous Australian Suspects 79

for likelihood of theft. Aboriginal suspects were perceived as less likely to
be lying (M = 48.40; SD = 21.17) than Caucasian suspects (M = 56.43; SD
= 22.26); F (1, 184) = 6.49, p =.01. They were also judged as less likely to
be responsible for theft (M = 48.94; SD = 22.26) than Caucasian suspects
(M = 55.61, SD = 25.12; F (1,184) = 4.19, p =.04).

4.4. Racism

The range of possible scores on the Attitudes Towards Indigenous
Australians (ATIA) scale was 17-119; higher scores indicate higher levels
of racism. Participants' scores on the ATIA scale ranged from 17 to 116
with a mean score of 45.00 (SD = 16.87). The majority of participants had
low scores on this scale: only 9% scored above the midpoint of 59.5.

5. Discussion
Concerns have been raised as to whether biased judgments about the
credibility of Indigenous Australians contribute to the over-representation
of Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system. To determine
whether these concerns are valid, the factors that influence credibility
judgments must be examined. The results regarding three factors that may
influence credibility judgments - long pauses during conversation, suspect
racial appearance and strength of suspect's argument - are discussed
below.

5.1. Effect of Dialect of English

Suspects who used long pauses during conversation were judged as less
credible than those who did not use long pauses on the measures of
likelihood of lying and perceived credibility. This is consistent with
research showing that Australians consider long pauses as a sign of
deception (Vines 2005). The interaction between pauses during speech and
argument strength on the perceived likelihood of culpability of theft
showed that when the suspect did not use long pauses during speech,
argument strength had a greater impact than when the suspect used long
pauses during speech. This indicates that long pauses during speech
decreased the influence of argument strength on credibility judgments,

80 Chapter Five

possibly because participants who were speakers of Standard English paid
less attention when the suspect used long pauses during conversation than
when the suspect did not use long pauses.
The interaction between dialect and racial appearance on ratings of
likelihood of assault indicated that Caucasian suspects who used long
pauses during conversation were perceived as more likely to be culpable
of assault than suspects who did not use long pauses, whereas Aboriginal
suspects who used long pauses during conversation were perceived as less
likely to be culpable of assault than those who did not use long pauses.
Some insight into why Aboriginal suspects who used long pauses during
speech were judged less culpable of assault than those who did not use
long pauses comes from an experiment in which Aboriginal offenders
were judged less responsible for an offence than similarly-situated
Caucasian offenders (Feather and Souter 2002). Participants in this study
also reported less anger towards and more sympathy for Aboriginal
offenders than for Caucasian offenders. Feather and Souter proposed that
the most likely explanation for these results was that Australians were
sympathetic towards Indigenous Australians because of the discrimination
they have faced in the past and their current disadvantaged position in
Australian society. Similarly, participants in the current experiment may
have been sympathetic towards suspects who appeared stereotypically
Indigenous. Participants who were unaware that long pauses are a
normative feature of the Aboriginal dialect may have perceived the
speaker who used long pauses as less intelligent or less educated. This
perception may have reinforced beliefs that Indigenous Australians are
disadvantaged and deserving of sympathy. Consequently, suspects who
used long pauses during conversation may have been perceived as more
deserving of sympathy than those who did not use long pauses.

5.2. Beliefs regarding silence during conversation.

When asked what else (other than deception) long pauses during speech
may signify, not a single participant proffered the explanation that long
pauses are a communicative norm in certain cultures. The absence of any
comments along these lines indicates that participants were unaware that
silence is a normative and positive feature of Aboriginal English.

Dialect and Credibility Judgements of Indigenous Australian Suspects 81

5.3. Effect of Suspect Racial Appearance

Suspects of a typical Aboriginal appearance were judged more credible
than similarly-situated Caucasian suspects, regardless of argument
strength, on measures of culpability for theft, lying and credibility. A
possible explanation is that participants felt sympathetic towards
Indigenous Australians due to their disadvantaged position in society. This
is consistent with the contention by Feather and Souter (2002) that
sympathy towards Indigenous Australians causes Australians to treat
Aboriginal suspects more leniently than similarly-situated Caucasian
suspects. Alternatively, participants may have been responding in what
they regarded as a socially desirable manner, to avoid appearing
prejudiced by the racial appearance of the suspect.

5.4. Racism

Although no specific hypotheses about explicit racism were made, the
levels found in this experiment are inconsistent with the results of
Pedersen et al. (2004), who reported that approximately 48% of
respondents scored above the midpoint on the ATIA scale. In the current
experiment, only 9% of participants scored above the midpoint. This
difference is likely to be attributable to a combination of factors such as
age (the current sample was significantly younger), location (NSW versus
Western Australia) and social demand to respond in a socially desirable
manner.

5.5. Legal and Practical Implications of the Findings

The main finding of this experiment was that suspects who use long
pauses during conversation were viewed as less credible than their
counterparts who did not use such long pauses. This is likely to have
negative legal consequences for speakers who use long pauses such as
speakers of Aboriginal English. The findings are concerning because they
suggest that when information is given by a speaker of Aboriginal English
potential fact-finders are less likely to consider legally relevant
information, such as the presence of an eyewitness. The results of this
experiment also showed that suspects who used long pauses during
conversation but did not look stereotypically "Aboriginal" were judged as

82 Chapter Five

less credible than those suspects who looked stereotypically "Aboriginal".
This suggests that Indigenous Australians who speak Aboriginal Enlgish
but do not look stereotypically "Aboriginal" will be particularly
disadvantaged in the criminal justice system.
The finding that participants were unaware that pauses in conversation
are normative and positive features of Aboriginal English indicates that
cross cultural communications training may be helpful to potential jurors
and others who work with Indigenous Australians or are required to assess
their credibility.
Although the finding that Australians are likely to judge Aboriginal
suspects as more credible than Caucasian suspects controverts other
research suggesting that the Australian legal system is biased against
Indigenous Australians (e.g., Cunneen 2001), bear in mind the fact that the
student participants in this study may hold more positive attitudes towards
Indigenous Australians and may be more sympathetic towards them than
police officers.
The foregoing implications are relevant not only to the criminal justice
system but also to other contexts where judgments of credibility are
formed about individuals based on interview responses, such as in
business, in psychological or medical relationships, and in the educational
system.
The main limitation of this experiment is that the only feature of
Aboriginal English that was manipulated was the use of long periods of
silence. In an actual interview between a police officer and a suspect, other
differences between Standard and Aboriginal English would be observed,
such as presence and absence of eye contact. The differences between
Standard and Aboriginal English also vary with the type of Aboriginal
English spoken. This depends on factors such as the Indigenous group to
which the speaker belongs and the location of the speaker.
Second, the finding that participants judged Aboriginal suspects as
more credible than Caucasian suspects may not generalise to police
officers, lawyers, judges and others who work in the criminal justice
system. The student and community participants have little experience or
skill with interviewing techniques, and lack exposure to Indigenous
Australians. While their perceptions and views may be analogous to those
of some citizens who are called to serve as jurors in criminal cases, they
are poor substitutes for police officers. To determine the generalisability of
these findings to police, the study should be replicated with a sample of
police participants.

Dialect and Credibility Judgements of Indigenous Australian Suspects 83

6. Conclusion
This experiment suggests several fruitful avenues for future research.
These include research on the effects of other aspects of Aboriginal
English and research on police perceptions of Aboriginal speech and
suspects. Research investigating the influences of other features of
Aboriginal English (e.g., lack of eye contact and gratuitous concurrence)
should be designed to assess the interaction of dialect with factors such as
racial appearance and argument strength, as this will yield the strongest
indicators of the way in which Aboriginal English affects credibility
judgments about Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system. In
addition, further research is needed on the attitudes of police officers and
others in the criminal justice system towards Aboriginal suspects.
As the first experiment to investigate credibility assessments of
Indigenous suspects in Australia, this study has made a unique and
valuable contribution to the existing literature. The results revealed that
although Aboriginal suspects were judged more credible than Caucasian
suspects, suspects who used long pauses during speech were judged less
credible than those who did not use long pauses. These findings suggest
that the use of long pauses during speech may bias credibility judgments
about Indigenous Australian suspects. Only by expanding our
understanding of the formation of judgments of credibility about
Indigenous Australians at different points in the criminal justice system
can we identify sources of bias against Indigenous Australians. Future
research of this nature has the potential to reduce the over-representation
of Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system.

Reference List
Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2001. Indigenous profile Australia.
Canberra: Author.
Cunneen, Christopher. 2001. Assessing the outcomes of the Royal
Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. Health Sociology
Review 10: 53-64.
Dixon, David and Gail Travis. 2007. Interrogating Images: Audio-visually
recorded police interrogation in NSW. Sydney: Sydney Institute of
Criminology.
Eades, Diana. 2000. Aboriginal English in the courts: A handbook.
Brisbane: Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General.

84 Chapter Five

Eades, Diana. 2007. Understanding Aboriginal silence in legal contexts. In
Handbook of intercultural communication, ed. Helga Kothoff and
Helen Spencer-Oatey, 285-298. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Feather, T. Norman and Jacquline Souter. 2002. Reactions to mandatory
sentences in relation to the ethnic identity and criminal history of the
offender. Law and Human Behavior 26: 417-438.
Mellor, David. 2003. Contemporary racism in Australia. Personality &
Social Psychology Bulletin, 29: 474-486.
Pedersen, Anne, Jaimie Beven, Iain Walker, and Brian Griffiths. 2004.
Attitudes towards Indigenous Australians: The role of empathy and
guilt. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 14: 233-
249.
Snowball, Lucy, and Don Weatherburn. 2006. Indigenous over-
representation in prison. Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and
Research.
Vines, Prue. 2005. Law and justice in Australia:Foundations of the legal
system. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER SIX
BUSINESS DISCOURSE AS A SITE OF INHERENT
STRUGGLE
ALAN JONES

1. Introduction
I will argue in this paper that the forms of talk and the written texts
produced by business organisations in the course of their operations (in all
of the complex sites and activities involved in doing or carrying on
business) implicate an orientation to communication and language that is
largely distinct from that found in other orders of life, and especially from
the orientation that prevails in the non-institutional contexts of the
lifeworld. The idea that business in a free market economy is
fundamentally orientated towards competition and competitive advantage
has been widely and explicitly accepted for several decades (Porter 1979,
1980, 1985). Thus, individual success is the underlying criterion in all
business activity. Success in a competitive environment implies strategic
thinking and acting, and is measured against the financial bottom line, the
only essential one for business (see Friedman 1962). The achievement of
business success is mediated by the operationalisation of certain other key
values–efficiency, access to privileged information, innovation, increasing
productivity, continuous improvement, and growth.
Doing business consists, in a very important sense, of discursive
practices (see Boden 1994; Weick 1995; Grant, Keenoy and Oswick 1998;
Chia 2000; Mumby and Clair 1997; Sarangi and Roberts 1999; Alvesson
and Kärreman 2000; Scollon and Scollon 2001; Coorey 2000, 2004;
Tsoukas 2005; Coorey, Taylor and Van Every 2006). Through these
discursive practices, coherent discourses (or rationalities) are espoused
and/or enacted. These discourses in turn legitimise positions and
strategies, and since they mirror and enact the disparate interests of
different parties (i.e. different business entities), they are always in
potential or actual conflict. Hence, discursive conflict is characteristic of
all business communication, though it manifests itself in different ways at
different levels of an organisation and in different communicative
contexts. The conflictual nature of business discourse, in fact, is

86 Chapter Six

presupposed in the business literature on strategic ambiguity (as Eisenberg
1984 made clear); and the whole contemporary emphasis on strategy (in
business and management discourse) implies a context of competing and
potentially conflicting interests. The concept of strategy in business and
management thinking came to the fore rather decisively in 1980 when
Porter published a widely read book called Competitive Strategy, and the
Strategic Management Society founded the Strategic Management
Journal. However, it is important to understand that business and
management thinking have always been strategic, insofar as they are
inherently competitive.
The interpersonal problems that are potentially posed by competing
interests, interest-orientated discourses, and conflictual or distorted
communication have traditionally been avoided by strategies that, by their
very existence, attest to the existence of the potential problems. Some
classic strategies that have evolved in business organisations are a)
compartmentalisation and separation of functions or interest groups, b)
strategic uses of ambiguity and vagueness, and c) strategic
interdiscursivity (Candlin and Candlin 2002; Candlin 2006; Iedema 2003;
Iedema, Degeling, Braithwaite and White 2004). As Leitch and Davenport
(2007) point out, the strategic use of ambiguity allows multiple
perspectives and objectives to co-exist, while also enabling discourse
actors who subscribe to more or less incommensurable ideologies to work
together or in parallel.
The inherently conflicting interests of employees and owners/managers
have certainly been exacerbated by the advent of the new capitalism and
the new managerialism that accompanies it, with its emphasis on
standardisation, responsibilisation, accountability and transparency (Gee,
Hull and Lankshear 1996; Lankshear 1998; Chiapello and Fairclough
2002). However, Jürgen Habermas, the German social theorist and
political philosopher, has proposed more deeply-seated causes for the
inherently conflictual nature of certain types of discourse in his elaborate
theory of social action (Habermas 1984, 1987); of these, business
discourse represents a prime example. Habermas is almost alone in
acknowledging the fundamental necessity of deception in strategic action,
and argues that we need to distinguish conscious deception from
unconscious deception (see especially Habermas, 1976, 2001; the concept
is taken up in Deetz 1992). Conscious deception relies on deliberately
strategic uses of communication, while unconscious deception results in
strategically distorted communication.
Unconscious deception accompanied by conflict, or distortion,
typically appears in four distinct sites of spontaneous business

Business Discourse as a Site of Inherent Struggle 87

communication: i) communication between business organisations; ii)
communication between employers and managers and their employees; iii)
communication between sellers and buyers (with every organisation
assuming each role on different occasions); and iv) communication
between owners (and agents) and their financiers and shareholders. Three
distinct manifestations of spontaneous conflict or distortion are discussed
in this paper: a) the occlusion of risky topics, b) a high incidence of
unconscious discursive alternations, and c) the occurrence of impeded or
self-contradictory speech (and sometimes writing).

2. A social theoretical framework
As noted above, the social theory of Jürgen Habermas makes important
hypotheses about language use in different spheres of social life (his
"universal pragmatics"). His claims remain largely untested by linguists.
This paper is an attempt to identify the kinds of contexts where one might
expect to find evidence to support them.
Habermas (1998) writes of the three "steering mechanisms" that hold
society together: Money, Power and Solidarity. The first two of these
mechanisms constitute systems–the political system and the economic
system. These systems are realised by strategic action, and characteristic
goals consist of the successful implementation of plans, or strategies. The
third mechanism operates within the lifeworld, the everyday taken-for-
granted cultural and social environment in which we all normally interact
(Habermas 1987, 119-52). The lifeworld is, in a sense, the product of
communicative action, realised through reciprocal speech acts aimed at
mutual understanding and agreement. For Habermas, social action reflects
a fundamental distinction between actions orientated to mutual
understanding and actions orientated to individual success. As he describes
it (Habermas 1984, 1987), the split is between communicative action and
strategic action. In effect, we have two very broad modes of social action:

i) communicative action aimed at reaching mutual understanding and
agreement through openness and honesty–the discourse of the
lifeworld; and
ii) strategic action aimed at individual success; this usually involves
attempts to influence the actions of others; strategic action thus
encompasses the possibility of deception, which may be conscious or
unconscious

88 Chapter Six

The subtypes of strategic action are set out diagrammatically in Figure 1
below (after Habermas 1984, 333):

Social action

Communicative action Strategic action

Concealed strategic action Open strategic action

Unconscious deception Conscious deception
(systematically distorted communication) (manipulation)

Figure 1: Subtypes of social action: subtypes of strategic action.

Conscious deception is part and parcel of the competitive world of
commerce or business, where privileged information is one of the
competitive advantages a firm can hope to gain, and in fact it does not
threaten the "internal" organisation of speech (Habermas 2001, 154).
Deception is one type of strategy. Systematically distorted
communication, on the other hand, is a pathological mode of
communication in which there exists in the minds of certain participants "a
confusion between actions oriented towards reaching understanding and
actions oriented to success" (Habermas 1984, 332). In both conscious
deception and unconscious deception (what Habermas refers to as
"systematically distorted communication") "at least one of the parties
behaves with an orientation to success, but leaves others to believe that all
the presuppositions of communicative action are satisfied." But, in
unconscious deception, "at least one of the parties is deceiving himself
[sic] about the fact that he [sic] is acting with an attitude oriented to
success and is only keeping up the appearance of communicative action"
(Habermas 1984, 332; my emphasis). It is the tension created by this last
situation, both subjectively (for the individual) and intersubjectively (in
dialogic interaction), that I wish to explore in this paper, in relation to
discourses of business organisations.

Business Discourse as a Site of Inherent Struggle 89

3. Business as a set of discursive practices
Communicative action, conceived as a discourse, is the characteristic
relational discourse of the lifeworld: the everyday taken-for-granted
cultural and social environment in which we normally interact (Habermas
1987, 119-52). Meanwhile the constraints of strategic action generate a
discourse of competitive, goal-directed action. While the values of the
lifeworld range over Maslow's hierarchy of individual needs, they also
encompass communitarian values of the kind that help small-scale
communities and societies to cohere: active affiliation with group
members, adherence to spoken and unspoken norms of behaviour, loyalty,
honesty and sincerity. These values are encoded in the discourse of the
lifeworld. Meanwhile, the values of strategic action correspond in most
ways to the goals of a business or economic enterprise, so well described
by Freidman (1962) and Porter (1985): a competitive advantage in the
marketplace, translating into financial gains. And the discourse of business
reflects these values.
A business owner (or owners) must influence separate, potentially
resistant groups of stakeholders if the business is to survive and prosper.
These are:
• Employees
• Suppliers
• Wholesale customers
• Retail customers
• Shareholders and financiers

Distortion has three important sources: i) the competing roles and/or
interests of the actors, within or between organisations; ii) the inherent
psychological and moral ambivalence of the employment contract; and iii)
the intersection of one discourse domain by discourses from another. The
main types of conflictual communication that are characteristic of business
discourse reflect the three types of relationship identified above. They are
in a double sense asymmetrical, since each party in each main type
attempts to protect and promote disparate interests:

BusOrg Other
Employer – Employees
Supplier – Customers
Customer – Suppliers
Owners – Shareholders

90 Chapter Six

In this paper, my subject matters consists of, essentially, all the business
oriented discourses of business organisations. Although "Business
Communication" and "Organisational Communication" and "Management
Communication" have long been recognised as separate fields of research
and practice (Smeltzer, Glab and Golen 1983), it is argued here that we
can treat all these types of communication as manifestations of business
discourse. Some writers make an implicit assumption to this effect.
Grant and Hardy (2004, 5) have argued that an organisation can be
defined in terms of its communicative, or symbolic, practices – practices
that together constitute a culture and (as they say) a "discourse":

The term 'discourse' has been defined as sets of statements that bring
social objects into being (Parker 1992). In using the term
'organizational discourse', we refer to the structured collections of
texts embodied in the practices of talking and writing (as well as a
wide variety of visual representations and cultural artefacts) that bring
organizationally related objects into being as these texts are produced,
disseminated, and consumed (Phillips and Hardy 2002; Grant et al.
1998).

The term business discourse has a broader scope than organisational
discourse, reflecting a broader sphere of social action (just as
organisational discourse per se contains elements foreign to strategic
action). As a goal-oriented discourse, business discourse is focused on
carrying on economically beneficial transactions, making deals that favour
one party over others, and ultimately–in one way or another–accumulating
capital. The latter aim is traditionally referred to as the "bottom line".
However, to accomplish this, business discourse must constitute and
sustain organisational structures and relations that mediate its activities.

4. Symptoms of unconscious conflict and internal struggle
Based on a survey of the literature, there appear to be three distinct ways
in which business discourse–in the broadest sense–can be "distorted."
Firstly, two or more distinct discourses, or rationalities, may be co-present
in the discursive repertoire of an organisation, and hence in the repertoires
of the individuals who are its members. Not only do individuals come into
conflict as they espouse and attempt to enact a particular discourse, but
frequently the same person will vacillate between discourses. This is
illustrated below with data from Iedema et al. (2004). Secondly, certain

Business Discourse as a Site of Inherent Struggle 91

kinds of discourse can be totally suppressed, or occluded. This is another
ultimately counterproductive process that Chris Argyris has spent much of
his life documenting and attempting to reverse. Discursive actors become
so used to repressing views they consider unpopular or simply face-
threatening that they become incapable of articulating any opinions except
the ones that are dominant in an organisation. They develop "defensive
mechanisms" that are almost impossible to breach (Argyris 1993, 2002;
Argyris and Schön 1996). Finally, under certain kinds of pressure, some
individuals produce "distorted" utterances where competing or conflicting
discourse appear side by side and their contradictions interfere with
communication itself. Iedema et al. (2004, 15) note in this connection that
their data show "that the doctor-manager positions himself across these
discourses and manages their inherent incommensurabilities before a
heterogeneous audience and on occasions even within the one utterance."
This will be illustrated briefly below with unpublished data from Healey
(2006).

The three forms of distortion recognised above are in summary:

a) Occluded discourse;
b) Competing discourses;
c) Impeded or self-contradictory discourse.

4.1. Occluded discourse

The term "occluded discourse" is meant to reflect the suppression of
genuine communication–the open and honest expression of personal
thoughts and judgements–in business organisations. This happens when
the individual's thoughts and judgements are perceived to challenge or
conflict with the dominant discourse of the organisation, or to be
embarrassing or in some way threatening to other members of the
organisation. Chris Argyris, a Harvard management scholar, has over the
past thirty years documented and analysed this phenomenon. He has also
described the sophisticated tropes of "defensive reasoning" that need to be
overcome before such occluded discourses can be acknowledged and
dismantled (Argyris 1993, 2002, 2004; Stark 2004; Argyris and Schön
1996). He has written of the "underground organisation" with its hidden
discourses (in ways reminiscent of the "hidden transcripts" of subordinate
groups described by Scott 1990). Occlusion means that criticism can be
shaken off (as 'not our fault'), while opposing or innovative points of view

92 Chapter Six

may be discouraged. Argyris emphasises the face-threatening nature of an
occluded discourse, suggesting that personal-relational issues are what
mainly inhibit free expression. Thus, discourses are occluded when
individuals are "trying to solve problems that are potentially or actually
embarrassing, or threatening to their sense of competence in solving such
problems" (Argyris 2002, 211).
Argyris suggests that at times the organisation itself evolves these
kinds of defensive traits. It is as if the organisation has geared up to
"protect itself" through a system of methodical "cover-ups" (and cover-ups
of the cover-ups; Argyris, in Stark 2004). Argyris speaks of a "defensive-
reasoning mindset" and explains that little is done to counteract the effects
of the underground organisation "mainly because … those who share the
defensive reasoning mindset believe they must continue doing so to
prevent the organization from going out of control, from imploding." 1 He
also describes how abstract language is relied on to preserve the
individual's or the group's inefficient beliefs about how they should
behave, and how they should cope with critical incidents (such as occur in
business all the time). All this "leads to an organization that has an above-
ground management world, and a below-ground management world"
(Argyris in Stark 2004).
According to Argyris, the most widespread discourse used in business
organisations and transactions–what he calls a "theory-in-use"–is a
dysfunctional one, precisely in business contexts. Figure 2 below is based
on his schematic representation of this discourse system (referred to as
"Model I"; see Argyris 2002). The reader will note that the strategies it
incorporates reflect the kind of "involvement obligations" described by
Goffman (1967) as essential to the interaction order.

Argyris notes that there is often, simultaneously, a "productive reasoning
mindset" that produces "validatable knowledge, informed choices, and transparent
reasoning, so claims can be tested." The two mindsets interact in complex ways in
the life of an organisation.

Business Discourse as a Site of Inherent Struggle 93

Implicit Aims Dominant Consequences
Strategies
• Control the purpose
of the meeting or • Advocate your • Miscommunication
encounter position in order to •Self-fulfilling
• Maximize winning be in control, win, prophecies
and minimize etc.
• Self-sealing processes
losing • Unilaterally save face
• Escalating error
• Suppress negative - own and others
feeling
• Be rational
Figure 2. Model I: Theory-in-Use

In business contexts the communicative practices that arise from a
reluctance to discuss problems that are "potentially or actually
embarrassing, or threatening to their sense of competence" lead to
miscommunication on more vital issues that go to the successful (i.e.
efficient and effective) operation of a business organisation. Face-saving
strategies are dysfunctional in the context of business strategies, where
rational thought is meant to prevail over sentiment and irrational bias.
Argyris, and facilitators using his approach, specialise in helping managers
to enunciate their privately held views in a public forum, before
colleagues, and to justify these views and deal with relationship issues that
arise as a consequence of airing them. The goal of such interventions is a
new kind of discourse system, or "model of Theory-in-Use" (Model II).
Argyris (2002) compares the tacit imperatives of these two systems in
Figure 3 below:

94 Chapter Six

Model I: Theory-in-Use Model II: Theory-in-Use
Caring, help, and support Increase the others' capacity to confront
Give approval and praise to their ideas, to create a window into their
other people. Tell others what minds, and to face their unsurfaced
you believe will make them assumptions, biases, and fears by acting in
feel good about themselves. these ways toward other people.
Reduce their feelings of hurt
by telling them how much you
care and, if possible, agree
with them that the others acted
improperly.
Respect for others Attribute to other people a high capacity for
Defer to other people and do self-reflection and self-examination without
not confront their reasoning or becoming so upset that they lose their
actions. effectiveness and their sense of self-
responsibility and choice. Keep testing this
attribution (openly).
Figure 3. Two competing Theories-in-Use (idealized)

Kallio (2007) has recently described the occlusion of conflicting
discourses in terms of tacit "taboos" on particular topics, focusing on
discourses of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The three taboos he
identifies are a) a taboo on the topic of amoral business goals (à la
Friedman 1962), b) a taboo on the topic of continuous economic growth
and c) a taboo on discussing the political nature of CSR, by which Kallio
means the competitive and strategic pursuit of individual goals, or
economic advantage.

4.2. Competing discourses

The New Work Order described by Gee, Hull and Lankshear (1996) has
resulted in new types of workplace tension. For workers, there are new
responsibilities reflecting the demands of a "textualised" workplace, and
complex new literacies are called for in new sites of communication (e.g.
meetings and reports; Iedema and Scheeres 2003). The Karpin report on
new management needs in Australia (Enterprising Nation, 1995) described
many of these new demands, but from a managerial viewpoint.
Watson (2001) has described the dilemmas facing managers in the new
work order, and he described them explicitly in terms of competing
discourses (see: In Search of Management: Culture, Chaos and Control in

Business Discourse as a Site of Inherent Struggle 95

Managerial Work). Watson's insights are based on a year's participant
observation in a large UK company that had been taken over by another
firm with a very different organisational "culture". Managers had to
reconcile a discourse of empowerment, skills and growth that they had
inherited from their original employer with a new, imported discourse of
control, jobs and costs (and associated tasks, such as 'selecting people for
redundancy' or 'losing heads'). To further complicate matters, the
managers also struggled with an evolving, adaptive discourse of personal
identity ('the sort of person I am'). Similarly conflicted situations are
described for newly appointed team leaders in rapidly "textualising"
manufacturing companies (Scheers 1999; Iedema and Scheeres 2003).
Iedema (2003), in his Discourses of Post-Bureaucratic Organisations,
and subsequently in a jointly written paper (Iedema et al. 2004) describes
research carried out into the changing discourses and discursive practices
of New South Wales hospitals, where a "clinical pathways" system has
been introduced. Multi-disciplinary teams now come together regularly, in
meetings chaired by a new class of doctor-manager, to map out optimal
care pathways for patients suffering from specific health problems. Iedema
describes how the new doctor-managers perform their dual roles and
"manage" their frequently conflicting identities, as managers and
clinicians. With his colleagues, he finds that the typical doctor-manager
has to be "three-ways multi-vocal," interweaving three analytically
separate discourses: "the profession-specific discourse of clinical
medicine, the resource-efficiency and systematization discourse of
management, and an interpersonalizing discourse devoted to hedging and
mitigating contradictions" (2004, 15). It is clear from the examples that
this is not a conscious strategy, but a spontaneous response–albeit a
"skilled" one–to the conflicting demands of the situation. I have selected
several extracts from the data presented in Iedema et al. (2004) to illustrate
one key strategy.
Iedema et al. (2004, 25) explain first how, to 'manage' the tension
between managerial and medical concerns, "the doctor-manager interposes
a third position to buffer the first two." This position involves–through
countless throwaway references and formulations–displacing the
implementation of the pathway initiative into the unforeseeable future
(ibid.). Extracts 6 and 7 are indicative of this approach:

Extract 6
[It is important] on behalf of the institution that we recognize what
we're up to. I think it's a very useful conversation I'm hearing and it's
important that we're at this point in thinking.

96 Chapter Six

Extract 7
...we're talking about having an organizational structure development
workshop in June. Let's say at the end of this workshop we are
sufficiently interested in pathways as a tool in managing the work and
a tool for costing and acquiring the appropriate funds, all of those. If
we decide to go down that track and start setting up pathways we need
to form ourselves into appropriate working parties which are multi-
disciplinary teams. How that fits into a structure of taking
responsibility and the ability to govern the hospital we all need to
consider and think about. (Workshop transcript, 41)

The reader will have noticed that the doctor-manager a) formulates the
implementation of the pathways as a harmless conversation (negotiation?)
and b) uses conditionals to present their options as hypothetical ones.
(Note also that none of this is in fact the case: the pathways are for urgent
implementation.) Iedema et al.'s (2004, 25) description of the doctor-
manager's strategy here is worth quoting at some length:

The contradiction between the imperative to pathway the clinical work
and the medical view that decision-making cannot be reduced to 'a
series of steps' is diluted not only by referring its resolution into the
future, but also by construing it as an innocent and resolvable matter.
Thus, this workshop is not an extremely awkward debate among people
whose professional views, identities, and futures are on the line.
Instead, it is a 'conversation'. In addition, this 'conversation' is part of
an unfolding trajectory, a form of progress: 'it's important we're at this
point in thinking'. By portraying the incommensurabilities between
clinical and managerial interests and concerns as an innocuous
'conversation', on the one hand, and by embedding this conversation
into an unfolding trajectory of sensemaking, on the other, the doctor-
manager 'manages' to recast current tensions as effects of an
underdeveloped situation.

Elsewhere, in recognition of their difficult communicative functions,
Iedema (2003, xi) refers to the doctor-managers as "discourse absorbers"
and emphasises the underlying "disjunctions and chasms" that render any
response, no matter how strategic, ultimately futile, while suggesting that
certain topics must indeed be "occluded":

Business Discourse as a Site of Inherent Struggle 97

Their organizational influence depends less on what they can achieve,
than on how well they can mask the disjunctions and chasms that
separate the discourses that populate their organization, and continue
as if there is management, as if there is organization.

4.3. Impeded or self-contradictory discourse

Conflictual, impeded or self-contradictory talk and texts generally reveal
serious, partly suppressed confusions in the mind of the speaker or writer.
Tracy and Coupland (1990) collected some interesting research on
production difficulties arising when speakers are juggling multiple
discourse goals. However, contextualised examples of business discourse
marred by competing aims are somewhat rare. Bavelas, Black, Chovil and
Mullett (1990, in Tracy and Coupland 1990) remains a seminal paper,
albeit espousing an experimental rather than an ethnographic
methodology, as it deals with effects of conflicting goals on discourse such
as deception and equivocation. Galasinski (2000) is also good on
equivocation in politicians' talk.
El-Sawad, Arnold and Cohen (2004) have demonstrated just how
prevalent self-contradiction is in accounts of organisational life. However,
they found that the organisational members interviewed for their study
usually succeeded in keeping their different goals, attitudes and discourses
cognitively separated in a process the authors refer to as "double-think" (a
phrase borrowed from Orwell’s 1984 (now Orwell 2008). Thus there was
no evidence of contradiction within the same utterance. Musson and
Duberley (2007) show how different supervisors in a UK manufacturing
organisation engage very differently with the official discourse of
participation, in the context of ongoing organisational change, but again
the diversity is only evident across – not within – individuals. On the other
hand, while many supervisors adhere to the managerial discourse of
participation in formal settings, they express critical and even resistant
views in private, backstage interaction. But what about conflict in the
actual production of talk? Iedema et al. (2004, 15) note that their data
show "that the doctor-manager positions himself across these discourses
and manages their inherent incommensurabilities before a heterogeneous
audience and on occasions even within the one utterance." However, even
with some latitude as to how one defines an utterance, it is rather difficult
to find authentic examples of this phenomenon as taken from business or
organisational contexts.

98 Chapter Six

Below I give some examples from transcript data collected by Eric
Healey (2006) where the linguistic evidence for conflicting
communicative purposes is clear and abundant. The parties to the
exchanges below are Stan and Terry, agents representing two
manufacturing companies linked in a supply-chain relationship. Terry's
firm provide parts that are used by Stan's firm in assembling certain
products. Stan has had to ring Terry to ask for assurances about his firm's
ability to deliver a certain quantity of overdue parts to a certain standard
by a certain date. In Stan's contributions a conflict is evident between the
imperative to adhere to the "involvement obligations" of the interaction
order (see Goffman 1967) and the need to put trust on the line in the
interests of an underlying business relationship.
Stan's turns are marked by production difficulties, such as marked
pauses and false starts, by hyper-mitigation, and by hybridised speech acts
(where orders are transformed into requests, for example, as they are being
constructed). He fluctuates between inclusive uses of the first person
plural pronoun we and more distancing use of you as he not only suggests
how Terry might attempt to placate Marion (Stan's line manager, to whom
Terry is ultimately accountable), he also simulates addressing her, as
Terry might, recounting exculpatory events, just as Terry might. After
cementing solidarity and mutuality in this way, he feels able to express his
own concerns about Terry's frankness about his firm's ability to supply the
needed goods at the requisite rate. In the following, Stan's suggestions
about the "line" Terry might take with Marion is underlined with a broken
line, his simulated talk is underlined with an unbroken line, and the halting
expression of his own concerns is shaded.

Uh he I think you're right Terry I think we do have to ... get on the
phone with Marilyn and let her know we have an issue. You know um
I think that that if it were jist..ya know the fact that you've run into a
quality issue..you've rejected a lot of parts I think you could sell that
on the basis that we're doing…you could sell that on the basis that
we're doing as much as is distasteful..as much as you don't wanna hear
it ya know ah customer… but ya know we … ya know we..e... there
was a minor blemish and we're just not prepared to release that not on
the first shipment and that's affecting this production rate. But what
concerns me Terry i..[sigh].. is... wi::ll we...be.. ya know will we.. do
you feel comfortable that we’re going to be able to move from this
point forward.. aand... first off hit eh hit these rates and these rates by
the way are not .... are not consistent with what... Clemmons really
needs.

Business Discourse as a Site of Inherent Struggle 99

Note the numerous repetitions and false starts in the shaded portion of
Stan's talk; the request for an expression of affect ("do you feel
comfortable that …") as a token of sincerity, to strengthen the requested
prediction about production; and at the end the almost parenthetical
acknowledgement that Terry's firm's production rates are already below
what is required by Stan's firm, Clemmons.
It is worth noting Iedema's own writing in Discourses of
Postbureaucratic Organizations (2003) displays a degree of ambivalence
and self-contradiction with regard to the change phenomena he is
describing (indeed see the quotations from Iedema et al. 2004, and Iedema
2003, above). Where Scheeres (1999) often emphasises the benefits and
opportunities available to workers in the new communicative workplace,
Iedema seems torn between an acceptance of these benefits and
opportunities and a recognition of the many downsides of the new work
order for ordinary, unskilled and semi-skilled blue-collar workers, as well
as for those less skilled in the new "technologies of interaction" (Scheeres
2003).

5. Discussion
In 1992, Sarangi and Slembrouck (1992, 117) argued that applied
linguistics and discourse analysis needed to go beyond the examination of
situated interactions and the immediate discourse situation to take account
of "societal factors," i.e. to examine "the correlations between participants'
socioeconomic interests, their social identities, the social and situational
powers they (do not) possess, their expectations about activities, etc., on
the one hand, and principled forms of language use, on the other." Their
explicit aim was a social pragmatics within which institutional orders of
discourse (as opposed to the interactional one) could be adequately
explicated. More recently, Candlin has made a similar plea, calling for
"studies where analysis of business discourses [is] linked to analysis of
influencing external social movements and forces" (Candlin 2002).
Since 1992, a considerable literature has developed–in and around the
burgeoning field of Critical Discourse Analysis–constituting a
sociologically informed linguistic critique of the corporate and workplace
discourses of advanced capitalist economies. In 1992 Fairclough published
his seminal Discourse and Social Change. In 1996, Gee, Hull and
Lankshear published their critique of The New Work Order, linking the
changed workplace contexts of post-fordist production and fast capitalism

100 Chapter Six

to a new emphasis on communication skills and team skills; they argue
that increasing levels of responsibility and accountability even for
relatively unskilled workers demand new and complex literacies.
Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999) investigate Discourse in Late
Modernity, while Chiapello and Fairclough (2002) focus on the new
management ideology. However, too much of this is commentary and not
what Sarangi and Slembrouck (1992) originally called for. Like Habermas,
Sarangi and Slembrouck were concerned with "universal" communicative
processes; but at the same time they wished to ground these in–and test
them against–empirical descriptions of situated communicative action, or
discourse in use. For them, universals of communicative action have no
existence except in their local and contingent manifestations The latter
reflect very general orientations to consociation, as well as "the social
positions of the speaking and listening subjects and the societal anchoring
of activity-type specific norms for information exchange" (Sarangi and
Slembrouck 1992, 140). Thus the textual orientation originally advocated
in Fairclough (1992) is a sine qua non.
As noted above, much in the extant literature on communication and/or
discourse in business organisations presupposes the existence of
competing interests, and hence conflictual or distorted communication but,
in the same breath as it were, establishes that these can be contained and
even harnessed by managers and owners (see Kerosuo and Engeström
2003, on the notion of "productive resistance"). Eisenberg assumed the
existence of disparate viewpoints, divergent interpretations, and
conflicting goals or interests in organisations (Eisenberg 1984; Eisenberg
and Goodall 1993; Eisenberg and Witten 1987), but showed how strategic
ambiguity could function to reconcile and domesticate all these, promoting
'unified diversity' by allowing multiple viewpoints and interpretations to
coexist and fostering agreement on abstractly formulated issues. This is
also the stance of Leitch and Davenport (2007), who also stress the uses of
ambiguity in the service of organisational "sustainability"–allowing
divergent objectives to coexist and allowing ideologically diverse groups
to work together or at least "in parallel."
In the "sense-making" literature (Weick 1995), disagreement and
conflict have always been viewed as necessary and constitutive elements
in the life of organisations. The "empirical struggles around meaning" that
(according to Grant, Hardy, Oswick and Putnam 2004) take place in–and
to some extent, at least, constitute–organisations are (to a very large
degree) discursively enacted. As they put it (2004: 22), "organizations do
not start out 'possessing' meaning; instead, meanings are created and
contested as a result of discursive interactions among organizational actors

Business Discourse as a Site of Inherent Struggle 101

and organizational publics with different interests." So, in theory at least,
disagreement and conflict can and (to some extent) must be embraced in
business contexts. Organisation emerges from the interaction of competing
interests and individuals.

6. Conclusion
I have argued that business discourse is inherently and unavoidably
conflictual. This emerges from a kind of societal analysis that transcends
specific contexts of communication and characteristic genres but which
can nonetheless be grounded in empirical evidence of the three types
described (however briefly) above. I suggest that it is consequently naïve
and probably counterproductive to teach students about "Business
Communication" without emphasising the dynamic nature of such
communication, where competing and conflicting demands must somehow
be balanced by means of communicative strategies that are simultaneously
circumspect and honest. Teachers and trainers working in this field can
usefully develop the approach of Rogers and Lee-Wong (2003), in which
competing communicative imperatives are juxtaposed and the question of
balance explicitly problematised. Business organisations too would benefit
from an awareness that business success and sustainability are best
achieved when competing interests are openly acknowledged and
reconciled.

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Part II
LANGUAGE POLICY AND PRACTICE

CHAPTER SEVEN
DEVELOPING AN ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE
POLICY FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA: SOME
ISSUES
GRAHAM MCKAY

1. Introduction
When the Western Australian Department of Indigenous Affairs began in
late 2007 to investigate the development of an Aboriginal languages policy
for Western Australia, New South Wales was the only state in Australia to
have adopted an Aboriginal languages policy (NSW Department of
Aboriginal Affairs 2004), though Victoria was reportedly close to
releasing such a policy too.
As the first stage of its investigation, the Department of Indigenous
Affairs commissioned the present author to write a discussion paper11 that
was to set out the background and make proposals for a policy framework
that could include such items as:

• Preservation/recording of languages;
• Language revitalisation;
• School age and pre-school education;
• Adult education;
• Language maintenance;
• Oral/written literature;
• Place naming;
• Broadcasting;
• Other initiatives;
• Which languages?
• Relationship to other language services and policies.

The present paper draws on the research for the discussion paper which was
funded by the Western Australian Department of Indigenous Affairs. I am grateful
to an anonymous reviewer, whose comments have led to significant improvements.

Developing An Aboriginal Languages Policy For Western Australia 109

The discussion paper was discussed by a forum of experts—both
Indigenous and non-Indigenous—in Perth on 23rd June 2008. This was the
first stage of a consultation process, the rest of which is still to take place.
The present paper sets out some of the background to the development
of an Aboriginal languages policy for Western Australia and discusses the
foundational issue of which languages should constitute Aboriginal
languages within such a policy.

2. The languages of Indigenous people in Western
Australia
In a survey of the Aboriginal languages spoken in the Kimberley region of
the north of Western Australia McGregor (1988) found that fifty-eight
traditional languages had been spoken in that region, though this figure
included a small number of languages spoken by people who came from
adjacent areas of the Northern Territory. A similar survey by Thieberger
(1987) of the rest of Western Australia lists seventy traditional Aboriginal
languages. The two lists have only seven languages in common, leaving a
total of one hundred and twenty-one traditional Aboriginal languages of
Western Australia. Some of these languages are no longer used, but lack of
clarity about the status of language use in many communities and for many
languages means that one of the important tasks required to be completed
in implementing a languages policy is to survey language use in specific
regions and communities to more accurately determine the status of
Aboriginal language use, as recommended by the National Indigenous
Languages Survey Report 2005 (Department of Communications,
Information Technology and the Arts 2005, 119, Recommendation 25).
Both McGregor and Thieberger mention that Aboriginal English and
Kriol (a north Australian creole) are widely used by Indigenous people in
certain regions of the state, alongside the traditional Aboriginal languages
and in some places instead of traditional Aboriginal languages. The status
of these modern languages used by Aboriginal people is a further
significant issue for policy development.
In broad terms the self-report data from the 2006 Australian census
reveals the following picture of Indigenous people's language use in
Western Australia (based on Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007 i06
(Western Australia))

110 Chapter Seven

• 79% speak only English at home
• 13% speak an Indigenous language at home (including 2.4%
who speak Aboriginal English or Kriol)
• 85% of those who speak an Indigenous language at home also
speak English well or very well

In other words, the traditional Aboriginal languages of Western Australia
are under strong pressure given the low number of speakers and the fact
that a vast majority of those who still use these languages also use English.
What is not clear from these statistics is what it means to say that most
Indigenous people in Western Australia speak only English. It is almost
certain that the majority of Indigenous people who indicated that they use
only English would be using a distinctive Aboriginal dialect of English, or
possibly even Kriol, rather than Standard Australian English (Malcolm and
Grote 2007, 153). We will not discuss the differences between these
varieties here but the differences have been well established at all levels of
language through extensive research by Malcolm and his colleagues in
Western Australia (e.g. Malcolm and Grote 2007; cf. McKay
forthcoming). In fact most Western Australians—both Indigenous and
non-Indigenous—are not aware of the significant differences between
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal varieties of English due to the superficial
similarities between these dialects. Furthermore there is a tendency to
think of those differences that are obvious to the standard English speaker
who is not linguistically trained as simply "bad English" or "problems with
English", while failing to recognise the significant communication
problems that result from the differences between the varieties. Probably
the majority of policy makers and legislators fall into the category of
standard English speakers without linguistic training. Aboriginal people,
too, are often unaware of the nature of the communication problems with
standard English speakers.
The range of traditional Aboriginal languages spoken in the state
presents a further challenging issue for policy development. The 2006
census data (based on Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007 i06 (Western
Australia)) reveal that a number of Indigenous languages from further
afield than the neighbouring regions are now spoken in Western Australia.
These include Arnhem Land languages and Yolngu Matha (north-east
Northern Territory), Daly River languages (north-west Northern Territory)
and Torres Strait languages (far north Queensland), as shown in Table 1.
In this table the number of speakers specifically identifying Kimberley
Indigenous languages looks relatively low, given that 4418 Indigenous
people in that region (35.85%) claim to speak an Indigenous language at

Developing An Aboriginal Languages Policy For Western Australia 111

home. Some of the major languages of the Kimberley area are classified as
Western Desert or Northern Desert Fringe Area Languages or Other
Australian Indigenous Languages. This last category includes 29 who
claim to speak Aboriginal English at home and 1237 who claim to speak
Kriol at home (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007 c37c Kimberley).

Language spoken at home in WA Number of
(Indigenous people) speakers
Speaks English only 46,469
Speaks Australian Indigenous languages:
Australian Indigenous languages nfd 669
Arnhem Land and Daly River Region Languages 31
Yolngu Matha 8
Torres Strait Languages 52
Northern Desert Fringe Area Languages 857
Western Desert Languages 2,671
Kimberley Area Languages 696
Other Australian Indigenous Languages 2,633
Total Indigenous Languages 7,617
Other languages and Language not stated 4,625
Total Indigenous Populationa 58,711

Table 1: Languages spoken at home by Indigenous people: Western
Australia 2006

Across Western Australia as a whole 120 Indigenous people claim to use
Aboriginal English at home and 1306 claim to use Kriol at home
(Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007 c37c Western Australia). This very
small number suggests that many Aboriginal English speakers do not
recognise that this is the form of English they speak, given that Malcolm
and Grote (2007, 153) suggest that a minority of Indigenous people across
Australia uses Standard English fluently.
The range of language situations in different communities across the
state presents yet another challenge to policy making in the area of
Indigenous languages. Some small indication of this is to be found by
looking at the proportion of Indigenous people in each of the various
statistical regions across Western Australia who use only English at home,
as set out in Table 2 (based on Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007 i06
(the various WA statistical divisions)).
Only in the Kimberley, the Pilbara and the South Eastern statistical
divisions does the English-only figure drop below 88% of the total
Indigenous population of the respective regions. In other words, only in
the relatively remote northern and eastern regions of the state are

112 Chapter Seven

traditional Aboriginal languages still relatively strong, though even there
English predominates. This fits the pattern across Australia whereby
Indigenous languages are strong only in the far north and central Australia,
that is in the most remote and relatively sparsely populated regions, where
non-Indigenous settlement is less intense and often more recent than in the
highly urbanised southern and south eastern regions of the country.
One of the problems of the Australian census data is that the language
question specifically asks about language spoken at home. This means that
language use outside of the home is not measured in any way. This in turn
means that the use of all languages may well be understated. The home
language use figure nevertheless gives some indication of relative rate of
active use in the community.

WA Statistical Division Speaks English only Total Indigenous
(% of Indig. pop) population
Perth 18,856 (88.4%) 21,323
Kimberley 7,906 (64.2%) 12,324
Pilbara 3,427 (60.9%) 5,631
Central 5,118 (88.5%) 5,781
Midlands 2,087 (95.4%) 2,187
Upper Great Southern 792 (94.5%) 838
Lower Great Southern 1,526 (89.1%) 1,713
South Eastern 3,082 (62.1%) 4,966
South West 3,495 (94.1%) 3,715

Table 2: Number of Indigenous people speaking only English at
home by statistical division: Western Australia 2006

3. English versus Aboriginal languages
In this section we use the term English to refer to Standard Australian
English rather than Aboriginal English, though we must recognise that
most people—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous—do not understand
that there are significant differences between these varieties of English.
English and Aboriginal languages are often presented in policy
discussion and in the popular mind as if they are in opposition to each
other and as if they present an "either–or" choice. This is not the view of
Aboriginal people themselves. Generally Indigenous people all over
Australia take instead a "both–and" view and want their children to
become proficient in English but not at the expense of their traditional
languages (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal

Developing An Aboriginal Languages Policy For Western Australia 113

and Torres Strait Islander Affairs 1992; Collins 1999, 117, 120).
According to Dana Ober, as reported by McKay (1996, 83):

[Torres Strait] Islanders are in favour of giving their children access
to good English skills but find that this desire has often been wrongly
interpreted by education authorities as a desire for English only.
The National Indigenous Survey Report 2005 notes that Indigenous people
have expressed a desire to see Indigenous language programs in schools
alongside English:

The great majority of Indigenous people in Australia are very
positive about the use of Indigenous languages in some form in
schools. In a S[outh] A[ustralian] survey of languages in 2002
(Amery et al 2002), 90 percent of respondents condemned the
'English-only' view, many in the strongest terms (McConvell et al
2003). A New South Wales survey conducted recently recorded a
similar view … (Department of Communications, Information
Technology and the Arts 2005, 19)
Aboriginal people often take this one step further in fact and wish to
implement "two-way" approaches that involve Indigenous and non-
Indigenous people taking one another seriously enough to learn from one
another.

4. A fundamental policy question
In the light of the background outlined above, a fundamental policy
question for the development of a Western Australian Aboriginal
languages policy is:

What languages should be considered Aboriginal languages for the
purposes of an Aboriginal languages policy?
The main options are to focus on the distinctive languages traditionally
used by Aboriginal people, even though they are currently in active use at
home by less than 13% of the state's Indigenous population, or to focus on
the full range of languages actually used by the Indigenous people of
Western Australia in their daily lives, including the traditional languages
but also including Standard English, Aboriginal English and Kriol.

114 Chapter Seven

In addressing this question we will first look at the role of languages in
Aboriginal communities and among Aboriginal people and then we will
look at some of the policy approaches adopted in other jurisdictions.

5. Significance of language
Language is centrally significant to all people, including Indigenous
people, in two major ways.
The first of these types of significance centres on identity, culture and
social justice. Basically language is integral to one's identity and the
recognition of Aboriginal people means recognising their languages and
the cultures that they express. Some of these aspects of culture may, it is
true, also be expressed, at least in part, through the medium of Aboriginal
English. Other aspects of the culture, however, especially those involving
ceremonial law and practice, are very much dependent on the use of the
traditional languages.
Traditional language is a specially significant factor in Aboriginal
people's perception of their identity. This has been reported widely in
Australia. It derives from Aboriginal people's links with their traditional
lands (Rumsey 1993; Walsh 2002) and may apply even in cases where
Aboriginal people do not actually speak the traditional language of their
heritage and their land (Department of Communications, Information
Technology and the Arts 2005, 21). Indigenous linguist Jeannie Bell from
south-east Queensland has written:

The fact that we may not speak the languages fluently anymore, or
use them as our main means of communication is not really an issue.
It is more about language being a marker of who we are in relation
and connection to our land and our ancestors. (Bell 2002, 49)
Government policy towards Indigenous people over recent years has
focused on what has sometimes come to be called "practical
reconciliation"—with an emphasis on areas such as health, education,
housing and English literacy, rather than matters of Indigenous language
and culture. The National Indigenous Languages Survey Report 2005
notes that

Indigenous people often observe that there is a relationship between
the loss of language and culture and the social problems that bedevil
many Indigenous communities. (Department of Communications,
Information Technology and the Arts 2005, 41)

Developing An Aboriginal Languages Policy For Western Australia 115

The same report devotes a whole chapter (Chapter 3, 33–45) to arguing the
importance of language policy for wider issues of health, economics and
education for Aboriginal people.
Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson from far north Queensland presented
the other side of the coin when he noted that Aboriginal people have
generally not willingly lost their traditional languages:

Intergenerational transmission of a large number of Australia's
languages is declining or has ceased. This is not the result of
Aboriginal Australians' choice to abandon our culture.
As almost everything else in our communities, it is a result of our
desperate disadvantage. Social dysfunction disables cultural and
linguistic transmission. (Pearson 2007)
Aden Ridgeway, an Indigenous man from New South Wales and at the
time a Senator in the Australian Parliament, said in 2002:

I think that languages don't rate as highly [to those providing
resources] as some of the more practical issues of health, housing and
education. While those things are important, there has to be an
underlying 'health of identity' which supersedes all the other issues.
There's no doubt in my mind that if language and culture were taught
as part of a cultural education curriculum, there would be ongoing
improvements to quality of living. (Ridgeway 2001)
I would argue that Aboriginal languages, particularly traditional
Aboriginal languages, are central to Aboriginal people's sense of identity,
even when they no longer actively use these languages. Because of this,
the effectiveness of other policy areas would be greatly enhanced by
effective recognition and support for Aboriginal languages. As a result,
policy providing effective recognition and support for these languages
should be seen as a precondition for policy and programs seeking to
achieve "practical reconciliation" in all its forms.
Furthermore, it is important to recognise that equality does not require
language uniformity and that bi- and multi-lingualism have cognitive
advantages (cf. Department of Communications, Information Technology
and the Arts 2005, 36–37).
The second type of significance centres on communication, education
and participation. Effective communication requires both parties to the
communication to use a common language (or to know each other's
language equally well). To achieve this one party will normally need to
accommodate to the other in terms of language. Typically, where the

116 Chapter Seven

power and status differential is great, as it typically is between non-
Indigenous and Indigenous Australians, the expectation is that the
Indigenous person will be the one to accommodate by using the standard
language. This is relatively ineffective because Aboriginal people have, in
many cases, not been enabled to develop good Standard English skills.
Effective education must begin by recognising and where possible using
the home language of the child, and, according to the research, this should
lead to more effective mastery of both first and second languages
(Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts
2005, 36–37; Collins 1999, 122).
In at least some communities, fostering the continuation of traditional
Aboriginal languages could also assist in inter-generational
communication and social cohesion.
The need for effective use of language in education and
communication is something that pervades all aspects of daily life and
encompasses health, justice, social services, business, education and so on.
In dealing with government and business and the wider society in general,
Standard English skills are important. To the extent that these are not
prevalent amongst Aboriginal people it may be necessary for non-
Aboriginal people and agencies to use interpreters or to develop
appropriate Aboriginal language skills themselves. The whole range of
such approaches may need to be incorporated within the policy.
For Aboriginal people in Western Australia, traditional Aboriginal
languages, Aboriginal and Kriol all play a part in their sense of identity
and in their transmission of culture. For different people, each of these
languages assumes different roles.
Similarly, for effective communication and education some Aboriginal
people will mainly use one or more traditional Aboriginal languages,
others Kriol, others various forms of Aboriginal English and still others
Standard Australian English. These patterns will differ between
individuals, between communities and between regions. Development of
an Aboriginal languages policy will therefore need to accommodate these
differences between the language needs of different Aboriginal people and
communities.

Developing An Aboriginal Languages Policy For Western Australia 117

6. Aboriginal languages in policy documents of other
jurisdictions

6.1. Australia

Australia led the way (at the commonwealth or federal level) in the 1980s
when it developed and adopted a national language policy. In 1984 the
Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts produced a report
entitled Report on a National Language Policy. This report proposed four
guiding principles for a national language policy (Senate Standing
Committee on Education and the Arts 1984, 4):
• competence in English
• the maintenance and development of languages other than
• the provision of services in languages other than English
• opportunities for learning second languages.

The report devoted a whole chapter (Chapter 8) to Aboriginal
languages and also recognised the significant role of Aboriginal English in
many parts of Australia, recommending the need for bidialectal education
programs for speakers of Aboriginal English (Senate Standing Committee
on Education and the Arts 1984, 59). Creoles are also recognised (Senate
Standing Committee on Education and the Arts 1984, 81).
Three years later, in 1987, the National Policy on Languages (Lo
Bianco 1987) was adopted by the Australian Government. This policy
document was arranged around three major areas:

• Status of languages
• Teaching and learning of languages
• Language services

Each of these was addressed in relation to each of three groupings of
languages
• English (and Aboriginal English)
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages (including
creoles)
• Other languages (including the Australian sign language
AUSLAN)

118 Chapter Seven

In other words this language policy at national level in Australia took a
broad view of its scope and attempted to address language in every facet
of life for all citizens of the country. The role of traditional Aboriginal
languages in identity was recognised but the policy also aimed to deal with
the role of these languages, as well as Aboriginal English and creoles, in
the provision of services and in education—what might be termed a
"whole of life" approach.
The full early promise of this national language policy was not realised
for long, as, over the years, the Australian Government's policy focus
shifted from a community wide vision of language as a resource, firstly to
a more education-centred and more utilitarian approach promoting
international languages of economic value, and subsequently focusing on
English as the paramount need of members of the Australian community,
seeing other languages as presenting problems for the mastery of English
(Lo Bianco 2001, 18; McKay 2007, 114–116).
Furthermore, since many areas of language use, especially school
education, are state rather than federal responsibilities in Australia, the
impact of language policy at the national level has been limited.

6.2. New South Wales

In New South Wales less than 1% of the Indigenous population claim to
use an Indigenous language at home (with less than 0.1% claiming to use
Aboriginal English) (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007 i06 New South
Wales (State)). The main language of communication of most Aboriginal
people in New South Wales is a form of English. New South Wales may
therefore be compared with those Aboriginal communities (the majority)
in Western Australia where traditional Aboriginal languages are no longer
in daily use but a form of English is the main means of communication.
The New South Wales Aboriginal Languages Policy (NSW Department
of Aboriginal Affairs 2004) took a somewhat different approach from that
of the National Language Policy. As noted above, New South Wales is the
only state in Australia to have adopted an Aboriginal languages policy
across the whole of government. The NSW Aboriginal Languages Policy
focuses on traditional Aboriginal languages, seeing them as an integral
part of a unique cultural heritage and a significant source of identity for
Aboriginal people in that state. To this end the policy seeks to enable the
revitalisation of Aboriginal languages through government support, as
well as attempting to make the wider populace aware of these languages.
The resulting policy goals come under four headings:

Developing An Aboriginal Languages Policy For Western Australia 119

• Language programs in Aboriginal communities
• Language programs in the educational system
• Language programs in gaols and detention centres
• Aboriginal languages in the broader community

There is an important and distinctive emphasis in the policy on the
importance of the local Aboriginal leaders in determining which languages
will be involved in programs in any particular location, as a result of the
important link language has with land in Aboriginal culture.
The focus of the New South Wales Aboriginal Language Policy, then,
is exclusively on the traditional Aboriginal languages and the culture and
identity that are linked with them. The policy pays no attention to the
broad communicative and educational needs of Aboriginal people inasfar
as these involve forms of English.

6.3. New Zealand

In New Zealand the Maori language has official recognition dating back to
the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) and the Maori Language Act (1987) and a
single indigenous language is used across the whole country, albeit with
some regional variation. To this extent the situation of Maori in New
Zealand differs from that of Western Australian Indigenous languages.
The Maori language is still in regular use in some communities and this
means that the New Zealand situation can be compared to some
communities in Western Australia where one or more Aboriginal
languages are still in regular use.
In New Zealand the Maori Language Strategy of 2003 has attempted
to move beyond the earlier focus on language programs, particularly
education programs, moving to revitalise the Maori language and establish
it more firmly in family and community use.

A twenty-five year vision has been developed as it reflects a
generation of change. Over the last twenty-five years, the emphasis
has been on Maori language teaching and learning and rebuilding a
critical mass of speakers, particularly through formal education.
While this work must continue, this strategy sets out to move the
Maori language to the next stage in revitalization over the next
twenty-five years, by focusing on greater Maori language use in
communities. This work is especially important in the whanau

120 Chapter Seven

["extended family"] environment. By normalizing the use of Maori
language in whanau settings, language acquisition by future
generations will become an accepted feature of everyday life and this
will see the language flourish.(Te Puni Kokiri 2003, 5)
The goals of the Maori Language Strategy have a primary focus within the
Maori community but also encompass the recognition of Maori by the
wider New Zealand community:

• Strengthening language skills
• Strengthening language use
• Strengthening education opportunities in the Maori language
• Strengthening community leadership for the Maori language
• Strengthening recognition of the Maori language
(Te Puni Kokiri, 2003, 7)

Like the New South Wales Aboriginal Language Policy, the Maori
Language Strategy is exclusively focused on the Indigenous language and
does not cover the communicative and educational needs and activities of
Maori people in English.

7. Policy response

What then should our recommended response be for Western Australia to
the question of what languages should be considered Aboriginal languages
for the purposes of an Aboriginal languages policy?
In the light of what we have seen of the importance of language to
Indigenous identity, whether the traditional languages are still spoken or
not, there is no doubt that a Western Australian Aboriginal languages
policy should have a strong focus on recognising and strengthening
traditional Aboriginal languages—with maintenance and even revival as
possible aims, depending on the situation in individual communities and
languages. The resulting recognition and strengthening of identity is a
prerequisite for effective programs in other areas such as health, education
and housing.
For practical day-to-day communication, however, the majority of
Aboriginal people in Western Australia use non-traditional but still
distinctively Aboriginal languages—Kriol and Aboriginal English.
Since it is important to go beyond strengthening Aboriginal people's
identity to enable them to deal with day-to-day issues that confront them

Developing An Aboriginal Languages Policy For Western Australia 121

and thus achieve greater social justice, it is important to recognise Kriol
and Aboriginal English also as Aboriginal languages under the policy.
These languages also express the identity of Aboriginal people to a
significant degree, but generally they do not occupy the same significant
role for Aboriginal people as the traditional languages of their heritage.
However, for the majority of Indigenous people in the state, these
languages are the main means of day to day communication, including
with the wider society.
The language situations in Western Australian Indigenous
communities are less homogeneous than those in New South Wales or
New Zealand. In some communities the traditional Indigenous languages
are still the main means of daily communication, while in other
communities Kriol or Aboriginal English have taken on this role.
Depending on the needs of individual communities there may be a need
for interpreting services, language education programs and for the
provision of services in the local language or languages. These needs will
affect government and non-government services and activities alike.
In other words, to respect and support the identity and culture of
Aboriginal people in Western Australia we should emulate the scope of
Indigenous languages policy in New South Wales and New Zealand by
recognising in policy the traditional Indigenous languages of the people.
At the same time, to impact on the whole life experience of Aboriginal
people in Western Australia and to address a wide range of practical day to
day issues, policy should go beyond the New South Wales and New
Zealand models and recognise the roles of all the languages of Aboriginal
people in Western Australia: traditional languages, Kriol and Aboriginal
English. Among these, the traditional languages will have a special place,
but for the majority they will not be the only languages requiring
recognition. For policy purposes, therefore, Aboriginal Languages should
include traditional Aboriginal languages, Kriol and Aboriginal English—
but with different roles.

Reference List
Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2007. Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006
Census of Population and Housing. Cat. No. 2068.0–2006 Census
Tables. Canberra: ABS.
Bell, Jeannie. 2002. Linguistic continuity in colonized country. In
Language in Native Title, eds. J. Henderson and D. Nash, 43–52.
Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.

122 Chapter Seven

Collins, Bob. 1999. Learning Lessons: An independent review of
Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory. Darwin: Northern
Territory Department of Education.
Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.
2005. National Indigenous Languages Survey Report 2005. Compiled
by Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
and FATSIL. Canberra: Department of Communications, Information
Technology and the Arts.
Department of Education and Children's Services. 2007. Languages
statement 2007–2011. Adelaide: Government of South Australia,
Department of Education and Children's Services.
House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Affairs. 1992. Language and Culture–A Matter of
Survival: Report of the Inquiry into Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Language Maintenance. Canberra: Australian Government
Publishing Service.
Lo Bianco, Joseph. 1987. National Policy on Languages. Canberra:
Australian Government Publishing Service.
Lo Bianco, Joseph. 2001. From Policy to Anti-Policy: How Fear of
Language Rights Took Policy-Making out of Community Hands. In
Australian Policy Activism in Language and Literacy, eds. J. Lo
Bianco and R. Wickert, 13-44. Melbourne: Language Australia.
Malcolm, Ian and Ellen Grote. 2007. Aboriginal English: restructured
variety for cultural maintenance. In The habitat of Australia's
Aboriginal languages: past, present and future, eds. G. Leitner and I.
Malcolm, 153–179. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
McGregor, William. 1988. Handbook of Kimberley languages: Volume 1:
General information, Pacific Linguistics C–105. Canberra: Pacific
Linguistics.
McKay, Graham. 1996. The Land Still Speaks: Review of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Language Maintenance and Development Needs
and Activities. National Board of Employment, Education and
Training, Commissioned Report No. 44. Canberra: Australian
Government Publishing Service.
McKay, Graham. 2007. Language maintenance, shift—and planning. In
The Habitat of Australia's Aboriginal Languages: Past, Present and
Future, eds. G. Leitner and I.G. Malcolm, 101–129. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.

Developing An Aboriginal Languages Policy For Western Australia 123

McKay, Graham. forthcoming. English and Indigenous languages in the
Australian language policy environment. In Making a Difference:
Challenges for Applied Linguistics, eds. H. Chen and K. Cruickshank:
Cambridge Scholars Press.
NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs. 2004. New South Wales
Aboriginal languages policy. NSW: NSW Department of Aboriginal
Affairs.
Pearson, Noel. 2007. Noel Pearson: Native tongues imperilled: Opinion.
The Australian, 10 March 2007.
Ridgeway, Aden. 2001. Senator Aden Ridgeway. Voice of the Land 18 (1).
Rumsey, Alan. 1993. Language and Territoriality in Aboriginal Australia.
In Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia, eds. M. Walsh and
C. Yallop, 191-206. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts. 1984. Report on a
National Language Policy. Canberra: Australian Government
Publishing Service.
Te Puni Kökiri. (2003). Te rautaki reo Mā ori — The Mā ori language
strategy. Wellington, NZ: Te Puni Kökiri.
Thieberger, Nicholas. 1987. Handbook of WA Aboriginal languages
(South of the Kimberley region). Preliminary first draft edition. Mount
Lawley WA: Institute of Applied Aboriginal Studies, Western
Australian College of Advanced Education.
Walsh, Michael. 2002. Language ownership: a key issue for native title. In
Language in native title, eds. J. Henderson and D. Nash, 231-44.
Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.

CHAPTER EIGHT
THE PLACE OF LANGUAGES IN THE SCHOOL
CURRICULUM: POLICY AND PRACTICE IN
AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS
ANTHONY J. LIDDICOAT &
TIMOTHY JOWAN CURNOW

1. Introduction
Australia has been actively engaged in language-in-education policy since
the mid-1980s at both Commonwealth and State/Territory levels. Most of
the focus in research, however, has been placed on analyses of
Commonwealth level documents (Baldauf 2004; Clyne 1991; Liddicoat
1996, 2004; Lo Bianco 1991; Ozolins 1993; Scarino and Papademetre
2001). Commonwealth documents have been influential in shaping the
broad agendas of language-in-education policies in Australia; however the
Commonwealth itself has no direct responsibility for school education.
This means that State and Territory policy documents have a much more
direct impact on what actually happens in practice in languages education
in Australian schools. Each of these policies makes statements about the
implementation of languages in the government school system and at the
same time constructs a view of the role and nature of languages education.
Policy texts do not simply present a plan of action in response to a
perceived need, but also construct the action and need in particular ways.
They constitute a Discourse (Gee 1990) about the world and create and
shape ways of thinking about the world. In so doing, policy texts encode
the world in certain ways and privilege some ways of understanding the
world over others. As Schiffman (1996) argues, language policies are
based on belief systems, attitudes and values surrounding language and its
use (that is, linguistic culture). Policies contain, [re]produce and transmit
values and assumptions about the phenomena they seek to act on and

Languages in the School Curriculum 125

thereby define what is valuable and what is valued by those engaged in
policy making (Considine 1994). 1
This paper seeks to examine language-in-education policy in each
Australian State and Territory in order to investigate the positioning of
languages education at the policy level with a focus on the policy position
up until 2007.2 2 The paper will briefly overview the key national and
Commonwealth documents of this period, as these documents represent a
framework within which State and Territory policies respond, and it will
then examine the policy position in each Australian State and Territory.

2. National policies
Over the past two decades there have been a number of policies relating to
languages education which have been at a truly national level, involving
representatives of both federal (Commonwealth) and State/Territory
governments.
The National Goals for Schooling in Australia were originally
developed in 1989 by the Australian Education Council (consisting of
State, Territory and Commonwealth Ministers of Education) in the Hobart
Declaration (AEC 1989), and a knowledge of languages other than English
was explicitly listed as one of the goals of schooling. Ten years later, the
renamed Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and
Youth Affairs issued the Adelaide Declaration (MCEETYA 1999), which
listed languages other than English as one of the "eight key learning areas"
that form part of "a comprehensive and balanced curriculum in the
compulsory years of schooling".
The rationale for languages education, as given explicitly in the
National Statement and Plan for Languages Education in Australian
Schooling 2005–2008 (MCEETYA 2005), is based primarily on the need

It must be borne in mind that State and Territory policies are themselves designed
for the government school system. The other two main school jurisdictions, the
Catholic system and independent schools, are influenced to different extents by
these documents. While it is typical that Catholic and independent schools orient to
government policy documents in developing their own educational policies, there
remains considerable variation in how closely language-in-education policy across
the three systems—government, Catholic and independent—are aligned.
This study is based on data collected as part of the "Investigation of the state and
nature of languages education in Australian schools" funded by the then
Department of Education, Science and Training (Liddicoat et al. 2007). We
acknowledge the Department's permission to use the data collected in that project.

126 Chapter Eight

for intercultural awareness and understanding so that Australia can be
ready to deal with the consequences of a globalised world and the
internationalisation associated with this. This Statement acknowledges the
wide diversity in languages education in Australia, and allocates to
jurisdictions the decisions on what sort of language provision is
appropriate for them, based on issues such as local needs and aspirations,
the availability of teachers, and the continuity of languages learning
throughout the years of schooling.

3. Commonwealth policies
While the Commonwealth government is not directly responsible for
schooling in Australia, over the past twenty-five years there have been a
number of policy documents released at this level of government which
have been strongly influential.
One of the major policy documents of this type is the National Policy
on Languages (Lo Bianco 1987), which considers that languages in
Australia are vital for equity needs, economic needs, educational and
cultural enrichment, and external needs. The later Australian Language
and Literacy Policy (DEET 1991) continues the emphasis on languages for
all Australians, although with a much stronger focus on economic reasons
for languages and much less emphasis on the idea of community
languages.
While not strictly a policy, the National Asian Languages and Studies
in Australian Schools Strategy (NALSAS) had a very strong impact on the
provision of languages education across Australian schools, from its
inception in 1994 until it was abolished in 2003. While acting alongside
the Australian Language and Literacy Policy, NALSAS provided special
support for four Asian languages: Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and
Korean. The implementation of the National Asian Languages and Studies
in School Program will potentially have a similar strong effect, but at this
stage its impact is unclear.

4. The Australian Capital Territory
Each individual state and territory in Australia is responsible for primary
and secondary education, and consequently responsible for the integration
of languages within the broader curriculum, including such issues as

Languages in the School Curriculum 127

whether languages are mandated, and for making any recommendations
about time allocation and duration of study.
Languages are not, and have not been, a mandated area of the
curriculum in the ACT. Time allocations and any other expectations about
languages are not stated in the curriculum.
The ACT government sector developed an action plan for languages in
1993, Setting directions for LOTE 1994–2006. This stated that all primary
schools were expected to offer a languages program for all learners K–6;
however it recognised that this might not be possible, but stated that
languages programs were mandatory in years 3–6. In 1997, the ACT
reported that most primary schools offered a language in years 2–6. It was
also reported that the vast majority of secondary schools had language
programs at least for years 7–8, while in years 9–10 languages tended to
be elective for students, although there were a small number of schools
with compulsory language study in years 7–10 (MCEETYA 1998).
The government action plan from 1993 also recommended minimum
teaching times of 60 minutes for lower primary and 90 minutes for upper
primary. Data on actual teaching times was not collected, but in 1997 it
was reported by the ACT that there was a range across schools with 30–
150 minutes of language teaching per week in primary schools, and an
average of 150 minutes per week in secondary schools (MCEETYA
1998).
The most recent revision of the ACT's curriculum framework, Every
chance to learn is designed to "give students every chance to learn a core
of discipline-based study from the eight key learning areas of English,
mathematics, ... languages and the arts" (ACT DET 2007, 6); however the
relevant Essential Learning Area is "the student communicates with
intercultural understanding", and the framework discusses only learning
"about" languages, noting that in the implementation "individual schools
make decisions about languages offered and when and how they are
taught" (ACT DET 2007, 145).

5. New South Wales
New South Wales has an Aboriginal Languages Policy, which the NSW
Department of Education is involved in implementing, but no other
explicit languages policy.
However under the New South Wales Education Act 1990, the School
Certificate mandatorily includes the Languages Key Learning Area, and
completion of this area is recorded on the student's School Certificate. The

128 Chapter Eight

Board of Studies NSW thus requires students to study at least 100 hours in
a single language within a 12 month period "between Years 7–10, but
preferably in Years 7–8" (Board of Studies NSW 2004, 16). These 100
hours "must cover the Stage 4 outcomes and content of the chosen
language syllabus" (Board of Studies NSW 2007, 22).
Thus languages education is mandated in NSW, although the time
dedicated to study is the smallest of any jurisdiction which mandates
languages study.

6. The Northern Territory
In 1997, the Northern Territory Policy on Languages and Implementation
Guidelines replaced the earlier 1987 policy. Under the new policy,
language study was mandatory, although schools could differ in
implementation, and the NT Board of Studies gave recommended time
allocations for different levels of schooling. Up to Year 3, it was merely
recommended that some time be dedicated each week to each of the eight
learning areas; from Years 4–7, there should be at least two hours per
week of language study; over the period from Years 8–10 there should be
a total of 280 hours of study, with an emphasis on continuity of learning
over consecutive terms. These time allocations were recommended only,
but came with the understanding that language study was compulsory
during the entire period of compulsory schooling.
The curriculum was revised in 2004, and the Northern Territory
Curriculum Framework has as one of its "inter-related structural
components" the "eight nationally agreed Learning Areas", including
languages (NT DET c2004, 4), although how these are included is not
made clear. This curriculum revision removed the explicit time allocations
for languages, and this has led to considerable confusion within the
Northern Territory. Some people believe that languages continue to be
mandatory, and that the recommended time allocations have simply been
removed; others interpret the removal of the time allocations as a new
policy, the removal of mandated language study. The Framework itself
does not clarify which interpretation is correct.

7. Queensland
The 1991 Queensland LOTE Initiative (Braddy 1991), which was the
policy until 2008, contained both the mandating of languages and time

Languages in the School Curriculum 129

allocations, with all students expected to study a language in Years 6–8. In
Years 6–7 in State primary schools, students would have 90 minutes of
instruction per week, preferably over three 30-minute sessions; in State
secondary schools, Year 8 students would have a minimum of 90 minutes
of instruction per week, with a recommendation of 120 minutes, over the
full year. At other levels of schooling, offering and time allocation was up
to the individual school, although there was an expectation that language
study would extend from Year 4 to Year 10.
This strategy is currently under review, with the trialling and phasing
in of Regional LOTE Education Plans. These Plans are designed "to
provide more flexibility in how LOTE education is offered" (Delivery of
LOTE review 2006). The overall emphasis of the Plans is a change from a
focus on student participation to one of access and outcomes. The goals
include improving the retention rate for language students to Year 12,
providing access to a language for students from Year 8 at least, and
providing continuity of language from primary school on (Qld DETA
2006); however the focus here is on access and provision of programs,
rather than participation. The statement that "the existing LOTE strategy
will continue, including the mandatory provision in Years 6–8, until a
region's LOTE Education Plan has been developed and approved"
(Delivery of LOTE review 2006) strongly suggests that mandatory
provision from Years 6–8, the current policy, is not necessarily required in
Regional LOTE Education Plans.

8. South Australia
Until 2007, languages education in government schools in South Australia
followed the Languages other than English plan 2000–2007, which had as
its goal that

by the year 2007, all R–10 students in Department of Education,
Training and Employment schools will be learning at least one
language other than English in quality programs that are an integral
and valued part of a broad and balanced curriculum (SA DETE 1998,
3)

In order to achieve this goal, all government schools offering primary
schooling had to establish a languages program by 2004, and all secondary
schools would do the same by 2007.

130 Chapter Eight

In 2007, language policy for South Australia was updated with the
Languages statement 2007–2011. It states that:

All DECS students [i.e. students in government schools] will be
engaged in quality languages programmes enabling them to achieve the
Outcomes and meet the Standards described in the South Australia
Curriculum, Standards and Accountability Framework, the required
curriculum for all DECS schools (SA DECS 2007, 8)

This statement is less explicit about the mandating of languages in schools,
and this appears to have caused some confusion, with some belief that
languages are no longer mandatory from R–10. In fact, while languages
are not explicitly mandated from R–10 in the new version of the policy,
outcomes are now tied to the SACSA Framework, and the levels expressed
in this document assume a similar amount of language study as a program
from R–10, although the study time could be organised in a different
structure.

9. Tasmania
Tasmania has a less multicultural population than many mainland areas,
and there has not been a strong community push for languages education
in the state. Languages are not compulsory in Tasmanian schools, and
there are no recommended or mandated time allocations in the curriculum
for languages (or other areas).
Support for languages education has been mixed in Tasmanian state
policy. Commonwealth government funding under the NALSAS program
led to a strong primary school languages program across the state in the
past decade; at its peak, more than 80% of primary schools were involved.
Although the initial funding was from the federal government, the
Tasmanian government then provided substantial funding each year to
maintain this program, and the Tasmanian Minister for Education publicly
committed support for the National Statement and Plan for Languages
Education (MCEETYA 2005).
However there is less explicit mention of languages in the Tasmanian
curriculum than in most other Australian curriculum documents. The
curriculum was being revised during 2007, but all versions were explicit in
stating that language teaching is encouraged, but that languages are not
compulsory in Tasmanian schools.

Languages in the School Curriculum 131

Rather confusingly, in the final version of the 2007 reform of the
Tasmanian curriculum, languages has ended up as an explicitly stated
subset of English-literacy (in some previous versions, there was no explicit
mention of languages in the curriculum at this level at all). Thus there are
seven curriculum areas, one of them being the rather unusual "English-
literacy (including LOTE)", which has a "stronger focus on English as a
subject and literacy; LOTE included" (DET 2007b). The curriculum area
"English-literacy (including LOTE)" then divides at the next level into
"English-literacy" and "LOTE - Languages other than English" (DET
2007a).

10. Victoria

The LOTE strategy plan (MACLOTE 1993) was released in Victoria in
1993. This aimed to have all learners in P–10 and twenty-five percent of
learners in Years 11–12 learning a language in school by 2000. It was
recommended that a minimum of 150 minutes per week be allocated to
language study at all levels of compulsory schooling; a review noted that
in 2001 this minimum was not achieved in many schools (DEETV 2001,
22).
The recently introduced Victorian Essential Learning Standards
include Languages other than English (LOTE) as one of the discipline-
based learning strands. With this shift in curriculum policy, there has also
been a shift in the way in which languages are talked about in terms of
mandating and expectations. Rather than all learners in P–10 learning a
language, as under the previous policy, the current position is that "the
Department of Education and Early Childhood Development expects that
schools provide Languages other than English from Prep to Year 10"
(DEECD 2006a); as with other jurisdictions, there has been a shift from
compulsory study to compulsory provision. Also similarly to other
jurisdictions, there is a strong focus on outcomes in the new policy, with
government schools being expected to report student achievement in
language learning against standards from 2008. This outcomes focus has,
to some extent, assumed the role of recommended time allocations, with
the standards against which student learning is reported having been
"developed on the assumption that students have studied their language
from Prep for the recommended 150 minutes contact time per week"
(DEECD 2006b). There is additionally an explicit statement that a "quality
LOTE program" comprises a minimum of 150 minutes per week, spread
through the week (DEECD 2006b).

132 Chapter Eight

11. Western Australia

Compulsory languages education was introduced in Western Australia
with the LOTE 2000 policy (EDWA 1995), which required all Year 3–10
students by 2003 to be studying a language, sixty percent an Asian
language. The initial target was for all students in Years 3–7 (primary
school) to be studying a language.
The policy of compulsory language for Years 3–10 was continued in a
revised form in the following LOTE Beyond 2000 policy (EDWA 2001).
Having achieved the target of all students in Years 3–7 studying a
language (at least according to the policy documents), the new policy gave
timelines for all students in Years 8, 9 and 10 to be studying a language.
However it also introduced the idea of an outcomes-based framework in
languages, with milestones in 2004 of all Year 3–10 students achieving
particular learning outcomes (EDWA 2001, 8).
The current policy in Western Australia is strongly outcome driven.
The most recent version of the curriculum, assessment and reporting
policy requires that all students study a language in Years 3–10, with some
flexibility in Year 10 and optional study in Years 1–2, with particular
curriculum and reporting emphases for each year level (DET WA 2008,
17). There is no specific time allocation given for any year level.
Interestingly, while the outcomes and standard framework gives an
outcomes progress map describing student achievements for three areas
(Listening and Responding, and Speaking; Viewing, Reading and
Responding; and Writing) across eight levels, there is only a single
achievement target for languages other than English: Year 9 students
should achieve Level 3 in their language study in Listening and
Responding, and Speaking. This contrasts quite strongly with the
achievement targets for many other areas; for example, mathematics has a
number of achievement targets for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

12. Discussion
The above discussion of each State and Territory reveals considerable
variability and complexity in language-in-education policy around
Australia (see Table 1). It is clear that there is no single approach which
has been adopted, in spite of the existence of national and Commonwealth
documents which project more unified understanding.
Table 1 shows that languages range from being explicitly mandated in
New South Wales and (currently) Queensland to being not mandated in

Languages in the School Curriculum 133

the ACT and Tasmania, with this being very explicitly framed in policy in
Tasmania. Victoria has an "expectation" of languages teaching, while
South Australia and Western Australia have an implied mandate in that
they expect students' achievement in languages to be reported. The
Northern Territory's position is ambiguous because of a lack of clarity in
recent policy changes.
The Table also shows considerable variation in how much languages
education is expected and at what level of schooling. Victoria and South
Australia frame languages as being for the duration of compulsory
schooling, while Western Australia delays the beginning of language
learning until the middle of primary school. In Queensland, language
learning is focused in middle schooling, beginning at the end of primary
schooling and moving into early secondary schooling; while in New South
Wales languages are a secondary school subject.

State/ Status Extent Comment
Territory of study

ACT not mandated
NSW mandated 100 The 100 hours are to be studied
hours in secondary school, normally in
Years 7 and 8
NT not mandated? Policy on mandating is unclear
Queensland mandate being Years Level of mandating for
revised 6–8 individual schools has been
reduced; Year 12 retention
targets
SA implied R–10 Year levels not explicitly stated;
mandate reporting requirements
Tasmania not mandated
Victoria expectation of P–10 Expectation expressed in terms
teaching of provision of programs rather
than study by students; reporting
requirements
WA implied Years Reporting requirements; students
mandate 3–10 expected to reach Level 3 by
Year 9

Table 1: Summary of policy positions in States and Territories

134 Chapter Eight

This range of policy positions reveals a diverse range of construction of
what exactly is meant in the nationally agreed Adelaide Declaration's
(MCEETYA 1999) statement that languages are part of "a comprehensive
and balanced curriculum in the compulsory years of schooling". In some
States and Territories, such an agreed position does not seem to equate
with a policy of including languages as a key learning area to be studied
by all students, while in others, the place of languages in a
"comprehensive and balanced curriculum" is seen as occupying only a
small part of the period of compulsory education. The various treatments
of languages around Australia reveal that such nationally agreed
statements as the Adelaide Declaration do not represent a common
approach to education and are not realised through consistent policy
approaches.
Australian State and Territory policy developments reveal a movement
away from the idea of mandating language study, whether with or without
recommended time allocations. Recent policy changes seem to favour a
policy mechanism based not on curriculum inputs—the amount of
language study expected—but rather on curriculum outputs—the level of
attainment to be expected. This movement implies that languages will be
studied to a particular level in schools affected by the policy, which does
not offer guidelines indicating exactly what is expected as a curriculum for
reaching these levels, nor does it specify what the consequence will be (for
students or schools) if students do not reach the required levels.
Overall language-in-education policies seem to be rather weak
formulations of expectations for language learning in that they say very
little about how much language learning is considered to constitute a part
of normal education for Australian learners. They generally set low or
vague targets if such targets are set, and there appear to be few
consequences if targets are not met. Even the strongest policy position—
mandating languages—does not appear to mean that all students will study
a language, as participation statistics reveal that not all students study a
language even where it is mandated (see Liddicoat et al. 2007). Similarly,
recommended time allocations do not seem to produce learning contexts in
which the majority of students receive the recommended amount of
instruction. Rather, policy formulations often seem to be taken as
expressions of maximum requirements rather than normal provision when
language programs are implemented in schools.

Languages in the School Curriculum 135

13. Conclusions
At one level, language-in-education policy in Australia appears to be
strong: the Commonwealth and all State and Territory governments have
policy statements relating to the place of languages in education, and
languages are included in nationally agreed documents on education.
However, the quantity of policy around languages in Australia does not
represent a position of policy strength; rather languages seem to have a
relatively fragile position in education in general. This fragility is
represented by a number of features of Australia's State and Territory
policies:

• different positions on how languages will be included in
education: explicit mandating, implied requirements, or optional
study;
• lack of clarity around expectations of study and how these link to
learning outcomes;
• variations in provision of languages and the extent of language
study; and
• lack of consequences for schools not meeting policy goals.

This fragility is not simply a fragility of provision but is rather a discursive
fragility which grows out of the vague and conflicting constructions of the
role, value and position of languages as an area of study within broader
constructions of educational provision.

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chance to learn: Curriculum framework for ACT schools, preschool to
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AEC (Australian Education Council). 1989. The Hobart declaration on
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(accessed 12 September 2008).
Baldauf, Richard B., Jr. 2004. Issues of prestige and image in language-in-
education planning in Australia. Current Issues in Language Planning
5 (4): 376–88.

136 Chapter Eight

Board of Studies NSW. 2004. Information for parents and the community
about the mandatory courses in years 7–10. Sydney: Board of Studies
NSW.
ts_710_mandatory.pdf (accessed 12 September 2008).
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Braddy, Paul. 1991. A statement from the Minister: Languages other than
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Clyne, Michael. 1991. Australia's language policies: Are we going
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Considine, Mark. 1994. Public policy: A critical approach. Melbourne:
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Victoria). 2006a. Languages other than English (LOTE) domain.
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DET (Department of Education, Tasmania). 2007b. A focus on curriculum
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September 2008).
DET WA (Department of Education and Training, Western Australia).
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September 2008).
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EDWA (Education Department of Western Australia). 2001. LOTE
beyond 2000. Perth: Education Department of Western Australia.
Gee, James. 1990. Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourse.
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Liddicoat, Anthony J. 1996. The narrowing focus—Australia's changing
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Liddicoat, Anthony J. 2004. The conceptualisation of the cultural
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Liddicoat, Anthony J., Angela Scarino, Timothy Jowan Curnow, Michelle
Kohler, Andrew Scrimgeour, and Anne-Marie Morgan. 2007. An
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English, Victoria). 1993. LOTE stategy plan. Melbourne: Directorate
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Melbourne: Language Australia.
Schiffman, Harold F. 1996. Linguistic culture and language policy.
London: Routledge.

CHAPTER NINE
AUSTRALIAN VALUES EDUCATION POLICY:
THE OFFICIAL DISCOURSE
DANA ANDERS, CHRISTINA GITSAKI
& KAREN MONI

1. Background
The National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools
(hereafter, the National Framework) was released by the Commonwealth
Government in 2005. The National Framework was said to have been
based on the Values Education Study (2003), a study that involved the
funding by the Commonwealth Government of 50 values education
projects in 69 schools, and the final report of which was released in 2003.
The Values Education Study (2003) and subsequent National Framework
were accompanied by a staged release of values education resources
distributed by the Curriculum Corporation, a company which describes
itself as "an independently operated, not-for-profit organisation owned by
all Australian Education Ministers" (Curriculum Corporation 2005). The
first package of resources, the Values for Australian Schooling Kit, was
released in 2006, with the second package, Building Values across the
Whole School: a resource package, released in late 2007. There have also
been two additional rounds of government funding for values education
projects in schools: the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project
Stage 1, which commenced in 2005, and the Values Education Good
Practice Schools Project Stage 2, which commenced in 2006. There is also
an annual National Values Education Forum and several articles and other
publications, including a values education newsletter, all of which can be
accessed from a national values education website.

2. Theoretical Framework
The analysis of the National Framework undertaken in this paper forms
part of a larger study examining discourses in values education. Critical

140 Chapter Nine

discourse analysis combines theories and models of text analysis with
social and cultural theories (Luke 2002). In effect this means that research
in critical discourse analysis draws on multiple theories and methodologies
in its examination of discourse (Meyer 2001). In the current study it was
specifically Gee's approach to critical discourse analysis that provided the
framework for the examination of values education Discourses (Gee 1996,
1997, 2004a, 2004b, 2005). Gee's (2005) approach enables a focus on not
only the content of a text but also on how this content is presented,
encompassing aspects of style and grammar in a text. In Gee's approach to
analysis, Discourse is conceived as an essentially Foucauldian construct
where discourse is more than just talk or text but rather encompasses all
the beliefs, values, practices and modes of communication of socio-
cultural groups and institutions (Collins 2000).
Data in the broader study included semi-structured interviews with
classroom teachers as well as curriculum and policy documents (Anders
2008). In this paper, however, focus is retained on a key official document,
namely the National Framework, which was endorsed by all State and
Territory Ministers of Education and distributed to all Australian schools
in February 2005. It can be argued that this text is representative of the
official values education Discourse/s in Australia.

3. Introduction
In this paper, the global structure of the National Framework is analysed,
with repetitive patterning among multiple national frameworks indicating
that the National Framework is representative of a particular text type.
Discussion of the global characteristics of the National Framework is
presented as a series of "textual moves" that characterise the text. Locating
the National Framework as part of a more global text type in this manner
provides a platform upon which more subtle linguistic features can be
explored (see Martin and Rose 2003, who recommend using genre to get a
handle on discourse). Discussing the National Framework in terms of its
textual moves, moreover, allows for consideration of the strategic
functions of the text, which is an important aspect of policy analysis
(Chilton and Schaffner 1997). Politicising texts in this way is also in
keeping with much research on discourse analysis that seeks to displace
prevailing discourses (Youdell 2006), so that 'typical' ways of thinking and
operating in the world can be opened up for scrutiny. In the final section of
the paper, implications of the policy are discussed.

Australian Values Education Policy 141

4. Global text characteristics of the National Framework
Overall, the structure of the National Framework mirrors that of other
national frameworks such as the Family-School Partnerships Framework
and the National Safe Schools Framework. The structure of each national
framework shows a repetitive pattern that appears typical, constituting a
'type' of text (see Table 1).

National Safe Schools Family-School National
Framework Partnerships Framework Framework for
Values Education
in Australian
Schools
Introduction Introduction Introduction
Context Context
Vision Vision Vision
Values for
Australian
Schooling
Guiding Principles Principles Guiding Principles

Key Supporting Structures Key Elements and
Elements/Approaches Approaches that
that Inform Good Practice Inform Good
Practice
Key Dimensions and
Suggested Strategies
Glossary & Appendices Glossary & Appendices Glossary &
Appendices

Table 1: Generic Structure of National Frameworks

There is, however, a change of wording in the title of each document. The
framework on family-school partnerships does not have the word national
in the title, although it is as national in scope as the other two frameworks.
The National Safe Schools Framework is written in such a way that the
national and the framework are separated by the topic of safe schools.
Thus in abbreviating this text, one is inclined to describe it as the Safe
Schools Framework, with the word national omitted. In regard to the
framework under focus in this chapter, however, the national and the

142 Chapter Nine

framework have been placed together, with the topic values education
coming afterwards, rather than inserted in the middle, and there is
additional information tagged at the end not included in the other
frameworks: the circumstance of in Australian schools.
More than other national frameworks, therefore, there is strong appeal
in the National Framework to nation and country. This more overt use of
patriotic banners suggests that values education is potentially a more
contested issue than that of safe schools or family-school partnerships,
which could already be expected to garner a significant amount of
consensus among stakeholders. The framework regarding values
education, therefore, has to work harder than other similarly structured
frameworks at engendering such consensus.
The similarity in stages through which each national framework
progresses is matched by a similarity in the style of each text, where
content may change across frameworks but the rhetorical organisation
remains consistent. In each national framework there is an
acknowledgement of existing practice, an emphasis on the collaborative or
consultative nature of the framework, and explicit reference to the
framework's intent to provide support or practical guidance. There is
usually also an appeal to research, examples of good practice and strong
reference to partnership and community.
Table 2 provides examples from the National Framework of each of
the text characteristics common to the three national frameworks surveyed.
These characteristics are described as textual moves in an attempt to
capture the way in which the text actively moves to meet specific
functions. In the next section, some of the ways in which legitimacy is
harnessed through these textual moves are briefly discussed.

Australian Values Education Policy 143

Textual Moves/Stages National Framework for Values Education in
Australian Schools
Acknowledgement of "recognises …policies and programmes already in
existing practice place"
"recognises that there is a significant history of…"
Emphasis on "… widespread consultation on a Draft National
consultative/collabora Framework"
tive nature of the "… unanimously supported…"
framework "All key stakeholders…have a strong commitment
to values education"
An appeal to research "The Study revealed…. the Study provided… the
Study clearly demonstrated…"
Examples of 'good "These approaches are not intended to be
practice' exhaustive, but provide examples of good
practice…"
Emphasis on offering "help schools to implement…"
support and practical "suggested approaches"
guidance "to support schools"
"providing practical guidance"
Function of "…is an essential part of effective schooling"
schooling:
quality/effective
An emphasis on "…partnerships with parents and caregivers and
'partnership' and their local community was fundamental to
'community' successful…"
"in partnership with…"

Table 2: Examples of textual moves in the National Framework

5. Textual Moves in the National Framework for Values
Education in Australian Schools

5.1. Textual Move: Acknowledgement of Existing Practice

The interplay between the subject of the introduction section (the National
Framework) and its acknowledgement of existing practice is instructive in
terms of the strategic function fulfilled. The National Framework is placed
at the beginning of each of the clauses in the introduction section,
constituting the Theme of the section. New information (Rheme) is placed
at the end of each clause (see Table 3).

144 Chapter Nine

Marked Theme (process) Rheme/New
Theme
The National has been from the outcomes of the
following Framework developed Values Education study
for Values and widespread
Education in consultation on a Draft
Australian National Framework
Schools
The recognises the values education
Framework policies and programmes
already in place in
education authorities and
Australian schools
It also recognises that there is a significant
history of values education
in government and non-
government schools,
drawing on a range of
philosophies, beliefs and
traditions
It acknowledges that schools in all sectors
are developing effective
approaches to values
education in the twenty-
first century
The includes a context;
Framework an underpinning vision…;
a set of values …;
guiding principles …; and
key elements and
approaches…

Table 3: Theme-Rheme pattern in the introduction section of the
National Framework

It may be unsurprising to find the National Framework positioned as
Theme in the manner outlined in Table 3, since the explicit goal of the
text, indicated in the heading, is to introduce the National Framework.
This pattern does, however, position how a reader negotiates with the text.
If, for example, the acknowledgement of existing practice was presented
without its anchoring in the National Framework, the relevancy of the
National Framework would become more readily questionable as the
reader would no longer view the Rheme (New information) from the
perspective of the National Framework. The "policies and programmes

Australian Values Education Policy 145

already in place", "significant history of values education" and "effective
approaches" are all potential rebuttals to the introduction of a National
Framework. By having "the National Framework" acknowledge and
recognise these points from the outset, the text is attempting to align the
reader, and in this regard the framework is a persuasive text. Force is also
used to persuade: the history of values education is described as
"significant", and it is noted that schools in "all" sectors are developing
"effective" approaches. The schools are "Australian" and are both
"government and non –government". Overall, one could question the need
for repetitive reference to "Australian" in the National Framework, as it
would appear to be largely redundant in a framework that could not apply
to any other country.
The explicit reference in the National Framework to approaches being
developed "in the twenty-first century" is a time circumstance tagged at
the end of the final sentence in the opening paragraph of the National
Framework, whichsuggests that the writers of the National Framework
were attempting to create a link between these approaches under
development and the Adelaide Declaration on the National Goals for
Schooling in the Twenty-First Century (Commonwealth of Australia
1999). Using twenty-first century, moreover, creates the impression that
something new is needed for the current times.
The acknowledgment of existing practice but placement of the
National Framework in Theme and Subject position of each main clause,
as well as careful use of tense and circumstance all contribute to a strategic
building of relevancy and legitimacy for the National Framework that the
reader is positioned to view favourably.

5.2. Textual Move: Consultation and Collaboration

While positioning the reader to view the introduction of the National
Framework favourably, there is also an emphasis in the framework on
consultation and collaboration. Indeed in moving from the draft to the final
version of the National Framework, the word "consultation" was added to
both the introduction and guiding principles sections of the framework.
Reference to the Adelaide Declaration on the National Goals for
Schooling in the Twenty-First Century was also added to the section in the
National Framework that lists a set of nine values "for Australian
schooling". Through these additions, the National Framework, its "guiding
principals" and the list of nine values presented are all given the added

146 Chapter Nine

appearance of being produced from a large base of consensus or
agreement among stakeholders.
The National Framework is said to be the result of "widespread
consultation on a Draft National Framework", creating the impression the
framework is based on the input of many people (consultation is
"widespread"). The Ministerial Council on Education, Employment,
Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) is also said to have
"unanimously supported" the Values Education Study, further reinforcing
the impression that many people support the National Framework that is
said to have emerged from this Study. Further, "all key stakeholders" are
said to have a "strong" commitment to values education, making it appear
as if everyone of importance in Australian education is behind the push for
values education. The very existence of a National Framework, however,
can be contentious as educational responsibility is actually held by each
State/Territory rather than the Commonwealth. Using the term "key
stakeholders", moreover, leaves the identity of the actual persons who hold
this commitment open to considerable question, and that it is claimed to be
"all" of these stakeholders masks the fact that there is still considerable
ongoing debate surrounding values education. The strong commitment
attributed to "all key stakeholders" is said to be reflected in the National
Goals, the Adelaide Declaration supported by "all education ministers".
The actual viewpoints declared in Adelaide by the education ministers are
couched as national goals. The National Goals, in turn, "recognise" a
highly political statement regarding Australia's future and include further
highly political statements regarding what qualities and capacities students
should have when they leave school.
By careful selection of participants and verbs in the National
Framework, therefore, claims regarding values education are distanced
from personalised participants and presented as self-evident or as
politically neutral. The National Framework is also a carefully controlled
text that includes voices in support of the framework but excludes mention
of any voices in opposition to a Commonwealth Government intervention
in the area of values teaching and learning in schools. The way in which
the text works hard to engender consensus does however suggest an
awareness of the potential resistance to the National Framework and hence
the need to promote a consensual base of support.

Australian Values Education Policy 147

5.3. Textual Move: Appeal to Research

Another way in which the National Framework carefully moves to
establish legitimacy and the appearance of consensus is through marked
and repetitive reference to research. In addition to "widespread
consultation", the National Framework is said to be based on the outcomes
of a Values Education Study. The Study was intended to "inform the
development of a National Framework". The Study is said to have
revealed, provided, demonstrated and reported various aspects of "good
practice" values education. The nine values put forward in the National
Framework, moreover, are said to have "emerged from" the Study. Table 4
outlines key appeals made in the National Framework to research:

Elements of the Process Research
National Framework
The National developed from outcomes of Values
Framework Education Study;
widespread consultation on
Draft National Framework
Nine Values for identified for National Framework
Australian
Schooling
emerged from Australian school
communities;
National Goals for
Schooling in Australia in the
Twenty-First Century
Guiding Principles developed from Values Education Study;
subsequent consultation
Key elements and stem from Guiding Principles
approaches that
inform good practice

Table 4: Key references made to research in the National Framework

"Australian school communities" (see column three row three of Table 4)
refers to the schools that participated in the Values Education Study and
thus is an implicit reference to that study. This raises the point that the
Values Education Study is largely a compilation of anecdotal reports from
schools on how they used government funds to support a values school
program or initiative. The constant referral to a Study helps to create the
impression of extensive research. The document in which the experiences
of schools that were funded are compiled and summarised is actually a

148 Chapter Nine

Final Report. The National Framework does not make reference to the
Final Report, but rather to the Study, thereby heightening the perceived
legitimacy of the research.
By constant reference to the Study and the forming of key associations
between it and elements within the National Framework, significant
legitimacy is built for the principles, strategies, approaches and values
advocated in the framework. The Government has capitalised on its values
education funding to create a major tool of legitimacy for the National
Framework. Thus the National Framework can recognise, acknowledge,
include and so on from a position of perceived authority.

5.4. Textual Move: Good Practice

The appeal to research in the National Framework lends support for the
values education "good practice" advocated in the framework, as practice
can be claimed to be based on the outcomes of such research. The "good
practice" in the National Framework extends to "good practice pedagogy",
where teachers are to be skilled in "good practice values education".
Reviewing practices and monitoring programs against identified outcomes
are also aspects of the "good practice" provided in the National
Framework. Indeed monitoring outcomes was a significant addition
between the draft and the final version of the framework, noticeably added
as an extra point in the "vision" section of the final document.
The Values Education Study (or, the Final Report on it) showed,
however, how difficult it was for schools to measure or assess outcomes of
values teaching and learning. There was ample feedback from people
involved in values education in schools regarding the success of programs
but little tangible evidence could be provided. Where such evidence was
provided, it was usually in terms of a decrease in the frequency of
behaviours that conflicted with school rules, such as absenteeism or "yard
behaviours" (Commonwealth of Australia 2003, 28).
The linking of values education with student behaviour is not
surprising since such an education, as defined in the framework, assumes
an intervention of some form into the behaviour of students: "the
principles and fundamental convictions which act as general guides to
behaviour" (Commonwealth of Australia 2005, 8). The blurring of the
distinction between school rules and values, or between values education
and school discipline, raises important questions as to the intent and scope
of such educational endeavours.

Australian Values Education Policy 149

5.5. Textual Move: Support and Practical Guidance

The ambiguous authority of national education policy is also evident in the
way that the principles in the National Framework are "guiding" and
intended to "support", rather than directly command. Similarly, the
elements and approaches offer "guidance". The guidance is "practical",
moreover, suggesting a broader neo-liberal emphasis on what is often
couched as 'common-sense' (Keil 2002). Not mentioned in the National
Framework is the condition placed on Government funding for values
education: each school must prominently display the list of nine values
(the Values Education poster) to be eligible for funding. Although schools
are given permission to develop their own lists of values in consultation
with their school community, these values must be consistent with the
National Framework.
The timeless quality of the list of principles for good practice values
education also lends them a sense of authority as they simply 'exist',
without need of justification or further substantiation, prefaced as they are
by reference to the Values Education Study. After the careful staging of
the National Framework, with reference to unanimous support, all key
stakeholders, the Study, the National Goals and school communities along
with self-evident facts regarding the purposes of education and what
parents expect, it is not surprising that the lists compiled at the end of the
National Framework are presented as authoritative examples of "good
practice" and "effective values education". There is little room for the
reader to negotiate the validity of these claims.
Thus the National Framework itself, though couched in language of
support and guidance, actually comes with considerable political power
attached. Indeed that the schools in the Values Education Study managed
to demonstrate outcomes, or exhibited action in the three domains
mirrored in the "vision" of the framework suggests that the Government
was able to control selection of schools, projects and the criteria for
funding. That for which the participating schools are said to have
demonstrated "will" and "desire" largely corresponds with that reportedly
desired by MCEETYA and the National Goals, making the reported
experience of schools in the Values Education Study appear somewhat
contrived.
Government intervention in the area of values education is also
evidenced by the roll-out of resource materials distributed to schools as
part of the introduction of the National Framework. The anecdotal reports
in the Values Education Study Final Report revealed a large number of
commercial values education programs used in schools. The proliferation

150 Chapter Nine

of commercial programs was enabled by government funding in the
Values Education Good Practice Schools Project Stage 1 and 2. Whilst
the resources released by the Curriculum Corporation in the latter part of
2007 as part of the Government's values education initiative include lesson
plans, this package of resources is far less comprehensive than many
commercially available programs, and it is easy to envisage that school
reliance on these purchased packages may continue yet for some time. The
packaged nature of these programs and the fact that they present a
predetermined or prescribed approach to the teaching and learning of
values has the potential to undermine much of the consultation that is,
according to the National Framework, supposed to occur between schools
and stakeholders in the development of such programs. Moreover, whilst
the call for values education has centred around an explicitly "Australian"
set of shared values, it is evident that schools are adopting programs
largely developed elsewhere.

5.6. Textual Move: Quality Effective Schooling

In every national framework a perspective on the role or purpose of
education is constructed. In the National Framework for values education
this perspective is evident through direct reference to The Adelaide
Declaration on the National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First
Century and the lists of assumptions made by MCEETYA at its meeting
on the 19 July 2002 and reproduced verbatim in the National Framework.
Most significant is the bullet-point list in the National Framework, where
MCEETYA "acknowledged that education is as much about building
character as it is about equipping students with specific skills". This phrase
is used so frequently in media releases and ministerial statements (Nelson,
April 29, 2004), and in the Values Education Study (2003) and so on that
it could be likened to the governmental 'catchcry' regarding values
education. Such use of "banners" in policy texts is not atypical (Gasper
1996). MCEETYA's acknowledgement of this dual educational purpose,
however, creates the impression that the statement is self-evident rather
than actually a contested simplification of educational purpose:
categorised into "building character" and the equipping with "specific
skills".
Specific extracts from The Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for
Schooling in the Twenty-First Century are also used to lend values
education a sense of national importance. Indeed the National Framework
(2005, 2) states that "Australia's future depends upon each citizen having

Australian Values Education Policy 151

the necessary knowledge, understanding, skills and values for a productive
and rewarding life", and that "high quality schooling is central to
achieving this vision". Another excerpt from the preamble to the National
Goals which is cited in the National Framework (2005, 2) states that
"Schooling provides a foundation for young Australians' intellectual,
physical, social, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development". The use of
"citizen" and "young Australian" tap into nationalistic sentiment more
effectively than the use of "student" elsewhere in the National Framework.
The National Framework ignores goals in the curriculum and social
justice section of the Adelaide Declaration, and instead focuses on two
goals in the section related to talents and capacities. Both of these goals
(1.2 and 1.3) relate to student qualities and capacities, such as the qualities
of self-confidence and optimism, and the capacity to exercise judgement
and responsibility in matters of morality and make sense of the world.
These goals provide a mandate for schools to explicitly teach values.
Student qualities are categorised independently, however, suggestive of a
Western paradigm inconsistent with all cultures (Fraser 2004). Although
students need only have the "capacity" to make sense of the world and
exhibit numerous personal qualities, the list presented is formidable. The
individual student is also made the primary site of change. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the schools in the Values Education Study
tended to focus on changing the behaviour of students.

5.7. Textual Move: Partnerships and Communities

One of the key mechanisms for making "values education a core part of
Australian schooling" is through funding for "national partnership
projects" (Commonwealth of Australia 2005, 3). Schools are to develop
approaches to values education in partnership with students, staff, families
and the school community. Much of the substance of these "partnerships",
however, remains unclear.
There is a long list of organisations represented in the "Values
Education Project Advisory Committee", the names of which are listed on
the inside cover of each of the values education publications distributed to
schools. There is also information on the websites of some of these
partners that makes reference to the government's values education
initiative. Although information does not constitute a "partnership",. the
Australian Principals Associations Professional Development Council
actually characterises their participation as "an information dissemination

152 Chapter Nine

strategy tailored to the needs of school leaders", "contracted" by the
Australian Government (APAPDC Inc 2008).
The extent of the Committee input into the development of the
National Framework is also unclear. The addition of Professor Brian Hill's
definition of values in the Final version of the National Framework does
suggest that they may have been able to exert some influence. Professor
Terrence Lovat is also the chief investigator, through the Australian
Council of Deans of Education (ACDE), on values projects contracted by
the Australian Government (Lovat and Toomey 2007). Other studies in
recent policy development of national education initiatives, however, tend
to have found such input minimal (Heck 2003).
In addition to partnership, there is repetitive reference made in the
National Framework to "community". Students are depicted as community
members and a discussion on values is said to be taking place in the
community "at large". All other references to community are made in the
context of the articulation of values. The repetitive use of the word
"community" creates a lexical chain in the National Framework that helps
the text cohere and, in this regard, makes use of the phrase "community at
large", instead of alternatives such as 'society', understandable.
Such marked use of the word "community", however, and in instances
regarding the articulation of values, provides a convenient 'buffer' in the
National Framework against two frequently repeated questions, well-
documented in the broader literature, regarding the teaching of values:
what values? and, whose values? The policy writers have gone to
considerable lengths in the National Framework to assuage these potential
concerns by emphatically answering with the word, "community". It is
clearly the values of the community that are to be taught in schools. The
policy writers themselves seemed to have sensed the nebulous nature of
the word "community", however, and included a definition of "school
community" in the Glossary of the National Framework, reassuring
readers that this word includes "students, families, school staff, other
professionals, other support staff and volunteers" (National Framework
2005, 8).
The articulation of a set of values is potentially contentious and
explains the constant association of values with "community" in the
National Framework. This association is made most clear at the most
potentially contentious point regarding the articulation of values: where
the policy writers list a set of nine values in the National Framework.
"Community" is made even more embracing through appeal to an
additional layer of patriotic unification: that of "Australian". Thus the
values listed in the National Framework are values for "Australian"

Australian Values Education Policy 153

schooling and have emerged from "Australian school communities" and
are a part of "Australia's common democratic way of life" (National
Framework 2005, 4). Appeal to the nation, to community, to democracy
and to a "common" way of life all combine very effectively to buffer
potential perceptions of a Government-imposed set of values for schools in
a pluralist democratic society. By hiding agency through use of
intransitives (where values "have been identified" but by whom is left
unclear), moreover, the persons promulgating these values are removed as
a potential target of criticism. The values identified are "for this National
Framework", leaving the potential recipients of such a list of values
unclear and hence in less of a position to object.
The need for schools to work with the community in developing a set
of values for the school is also problematic. Schools are supposed to hold
community forums, and money has been made available by the
Government for schools to do so. The experience of the schools in the
Values Education Study, however, indicated that genuine dialogue
between schools and the community, as defined in the glossary of the
National Framework, is extremely difficult. Many of the schools managed
to variously morph the forum requirement into school presentations at
assemblies or classroom 'open days', or held forums at which parent
attendance was low. It was also evident from the experience of some
participating schools that such meetings with parents were opportunities to
inform parents of the values of the schools rather than an opportunity to
seek input that could lead to a change in the values education practices of
the school. Whilst the National Framework avoids potential objections to a
set of articulated values through stipulating that such values are to be those
of the community, the consultative nature of the process appears difficult
to apply. It is also doubtful if a community-derived list of values would be
any less contentious than those that have been forwarded in the national
policy text.

6. Implications
The National Framework is a document designed to fulfill several strategic
functions: to create legitimacy and relevancy for the framework, to
persuade the receivers of such a document to view the Government
initiative favourably, and to create the impression that such an intervention
is based on a widespread consensus. By reference to consultation,
partnership and community, the authority of the text is implicit and, as
such, all the more powerful as it 'sells' an approach to values education for

154 Chapter Nine

all schools. These promotional "genres of governance" (Fairclough 2003;
Heck 2003) have been well documented, as have the managerial (Humes
2000), participatory (Anderson 1998) and consensual aspects (Gale 2003)
of educational policy usually associated with neo-liberalism.
The implications of promoting a policy built on consensus, shared
values and a romanticised view of community are several. First, the
"rhetoric-reality" gap (Grace and Sharp 2000) between policy and
classroom practice is potentially wide. The emphasis on shared values, for
example, is at odds with the conflict that actually marks the domain
(Snook 2005). Second, and leading on from this, is the exclusionary effect
of teaching a set of shared values that may not be shared by everyone
(Kiwan 2007). Although public schooling has played a role in teaching
values necessary to the establishment of the 'common good' in democratic
societies (Halstead 2007), how far governments should intervene in the
private lives of its citizens remains contentious (Ferres and Meredyth
2001). Values education brings to the fore concerns surrounding the
indoctrinative effects of a didactic approach to the teaching of values
(Wardekker 2001). The mapping of a fixed and universal set of values
(community-derived or otherwise) onto a diverse social landscape creates
explicit articulations of what it is to be 'normal' and alienates those who
are now 'not normal'. In the classroom, this has led to the differentiated
delivery of values education and the view that some students are more in
need of a specific type of values education than others (Ten Dam and
Volman 2003). Third, with its focus on student behaviour, values
education largely ignores structural or systemic levels of oppression or
injustice (Boyd 2004; Purpel 1997).

7. Conclusion
There are many implications of a values education policy which purports
to be non-contentious, but those briefly canvassed in this paper give cause
to doubt the utility of the policy in an educational context. Teachers have
long been 'brokers' of policy in the classroom, using policy as a 'cover
story' and mitigating its effects in the classroom (Harreveld 2002). The
rhetorical 'spin' in the policy (Gillies 2008) may also be regarded by
teachers as irrelevant and have little impact (Connolly 2006). The potential
for values education to be used as an indoctrinative tool and its
exclusionary capability, combined with the promulgation of several
government-funded school programs, suggests that values education in its
current guise must be treated with caution.

Australian Values Education Policy 155

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CHAPTER TEN
LANGUAGE-IN-EDUCATION PLANNING OF
STUDENT EXCHANGES BETWEEN JAPANESE
AND AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES

HIROYUKI NEMOTO

1. Introduction
Along with increasing recognition of student exchanges as a way of
internationalising higher education, Japanese universities have been
sending a growing number of students to Australian universities on
exchange. Currently, Japanese exchange students constitute not only the
third largest cohort among all the groups of exchange students at
Australian universities but are also by far the largest group among the non-
English-speaking background (NESB) exchange students (Australian
Vice-Chancellors' Committee 2005). The one-academic-year study in
Australia provides Japanese exchange students with opportunities to
involve themselves in host communities as full-time students and to
develop academic competence in an English-speaking environment.
Although student exchanges aim to promote both students' intercultural
experience and language development, the nature of such one-academic-
year participation obliges us to consider student exchanges as not merely a
cultural experience program which allows students to participate in a
different academic culture as a guest. Rather, we should focus on the role
played by student exchanges as a collaborative language education
program between home and host universities.
The view of student exchanges as a language education program
enables us to allow for intensified cultural contact between the academic
systems of Japanese and Australian universities and to attend to obstacles
to Japanese exchange students' development of English academic
competence at the host universities. Although the importance of organised
management of cultural contact at the institutional level has been
reconsidered (cf. Neustupny 2004), the structural arrangements of student
exchanges have not been comprehensively discussed to date. This study
investigates how student exchanges are organised as a language education

Planning of Student Exchanges 159

program and the impact of structural arrangements on Japanese exchange
students' participation in an Australian host university. When we examine
how the structures of communities facilitate or constrain learners' access to
the linguistic resources, it is necessary to pay close attention to how
communities and their practices are structured (cf. Norton and Toohey
2001). From this perspective, the investigation of this study is made on the
basis of two research questions:

(1) What kinds of policies and practices underlie student exchanges
from Japanese to Australian universities?

(2) How do policies and practices assist Japanese exchange students'
participation in an Australian host university?

This study aims to help home and host universities to identify the
problems related to the policies and practices of student exchange
programs and to facilitate subsequent decision-making and
implementation of better policies.

2. Language Planning in Education Systems
Given that the focus of this study is placed on structural arrangements of a
language program, language planning theory, which has been used as an
"organised pursuit of solutions to language problems" (Fishman 1973, 79),
can be effectively applied. Language planning aims to maintain, preserve
or change current language behaviour, and involves deliberate efforts to
influence the behaviour of others with respect to the acquisition, structure
or functional allocation of their language codes (Cooper 1989, 45). Such
planning is generally divided into three types of planning: corpus, status
and acquisition or language-in-education planning (cf. Clyne 1997; Corson
1999; Kaplan and Baldauf 2003; Weinstein 1980). Corpus planning and
status planning are traditional concepts of language planning, which are
respectively related to language forms and external social goals, whereas
acquisition or language-in-education planning is a relatively new
development within the concept of language planning and more relevant to
the current research. Acquisition or language-in-education planning
consists of user related learning goals that need to be achieved usually
through the educational system, and focuses on micro-level involvement
of and support to individuals (cf. Cooper 1989; Ingram 1990; Kaplan and
Baldauf 1997, 2003; Kennedy 1984, 1989; Paulston and Mclaughlin

160 Chapter Ten

1994). The planning aims at developing both policies and specific methods
and materials to support individual and community language development
for a variety of language uses (Kaplan and Baldauf 2003). This type of
planning can thus assist linguistic minority students' participation in an
academic context and be utilised to develop systems which meet
individual linguistic needs.
When we apply the theory of language planning in educational
settings, the planning should also be considered in relation to goals of
policy planning and cultivation planning, and examined in terms of the
directions of planning (Haugen 1983, 1987; Kaplan and Baldauf 1997,
2003). While policy planning goals pertain to the form of language
planning, cultivation planning goals deal with its function. These policy
and cultivation planning goals are interdependent, and planning may occur
at a number of different levels, such as macro or polity level, meso or
community/organisational level, or at the micro or individual level
(Kaplan and Baldauf 2003). Each level of language planning is influenced
by two contrastive directions of implementation processes: top-down
planning and bottom-up planning (Kaplan 1989). Top-down planning is
defined and prescribed, for example, by government for its own purposes,
whereas bottom-up planning is a grassroots level of planning which
originates in the needs identified among the populace. The top-down
approach often prevents us from recognising the real needs of populations.
In fact, several researchers have levelled the criticism that language
planning should not be solely conducted by authoritative bodies, which
tend to ignore the rights of linguistic minorities (cf. Fishman 1994; Luke,
McHoul and May 1990; Neustupny 1994; Tollefson 1981). The criticisms
have led us to reconsider the importance of bottom-up planning, which
"more significantly increases the probability of the avoidance of problems
than top-down planning, despite its time-consuming nature and high
design cost" (Kaplan 1989). Following this trend, Kaplan and Baldauf
(1997) illustrated a language planning model, identifying five steps of the
process, survey, survey report, policy decisions, implementation plan and
execution. Their illustration of process of language planning indicates that
as the awareness of bottom-up planning increases, it has become more
crucial to investigate the ways in which the policies are designed and
utilised.

Planning of Student Exchanges 161

3. Conceptual Framework
As shown in Figure 1, Kaplan and Baldauf's (1997, 2003) concepts of
language-in-education policy planning goals and cultivation planning
goals were applied in this study. From the perspective of policy planning
goals in their theory, I adopted the following six criteria: access,
curriculum, methods and materials, community, resourcing and evaluation
policies. According to Kaplan and Baldauf, language-in-education policy
planning goals are to set criteria for those processes in the educational
system that determine what languages will be taught to whom, in what
manner, using what material as well as how success will be assessed. The
access policy provides a statement of who must study what subjects and
receive what support. In the curriculum policy, the space in the curriculum
allocated to language instruction is decided. The methods and materials
policy refers to what types of methods are prescribed, and what types of
materials are provided in the curriculum. The community policy is
developed as a result of consultation with communities about what they
believe are the most appropriate to be taught in educational institutions.
The resourcing policy pertains to funding which is provided in language
programs. Furthermore, the evaluation policy provides criteria by which
the impact of language programs can be measured in order to set the
desired goals of the programs.

Policy Planning Goals Cultivation Planning Goals

Access
Curriculum
Methods and materials Educational Needs
Community Learning Goals
Resourcing Motivational
Evaluation Investment

Figure 1: Integrated Model of Language-in-Education Planning of a
Student Exchange Program

162 Chapter Ten

Cultivation planning goals were the other perspective of language-in-
education planning that this study employs. These goals define how
language learning programs are to be tailored to meet the needs of various
groups who have different backgrounds and learn languages for different
reasons and goals. The adoption of these goals thus enabled this study to
identify the effectiveness of policies and practices and examine how
student exchange programs meet Japanese exchange students' educational
needs and goals as well as how the systems influence students'
motivational investments whereby they allocate different learning efforts
in different situations.

4. Method
Based on the framework, this study presents in-depth and micro-level
descriptions of policies and practices of student exchanges between an
Australian university (AU) and five Japanese partner universities (JUs).
AU currently has student exchange agreements with 11 Japanese
universities among 139 agreements with partner universities all over the
world. In 2002, AU accepted 11 Japanese exchange students out of a total
of 243 overseas exchange students, and sent 14 exchange students to
Japan. Japanese exchange students at AU are supposed to study in the
regular courses along with regular students for one academic year. They
are requested to enrol in four subjects in their first semester and three in
the second semester. The credits which the students obtain at AU are
basically transferable to their Japanese home universities, although in
some cases they do not necessarily need to obtain credits. However,
irrespective of their requirement of credits at host universities, it is still
necessary for the students to be regular participants and achieve well in
their host academic contexts as representatives of their home universities,
rather than participating partially as visiting students.
The participants of this study consisted of four different groups,
including five exchange program staff at AU, 10 exchange program staff
at JUs, six Japanese exchange students, and 26 teachers of the subjects in
which the Japanese exchange students enrolled at AU. The students were
two males (with the pseudonyms of Shingo and Kenji) and four females
(with the pseudonyms of Yuka, Mami, Chie and Aya). Five of them were
undergraduate students whereas the other one, Aya, was a Master student
at her home university and enrolled in an Honours course at AU. These
participants majored in various disciplines at their home universities:

Planning of Student Exchanges 163

Economics, Sociology, English Literature and Linguistics, American
Studies, International Relations and Astrophysics.
The data were collected from these four types of participants through
various procedures, including semi-structured interviews, a diary study
and follow-up interviews, questionnaires and examination of written
documents. The information elicited in the interviews was further followed
up at subsequent interviews or through e-mail interactions, if necessary.
The collected data were analysed inductively on the basis of the above-
shown criteria of language-in-education planning. The data collected from
exchange program staff were mainly used to identify the structural
arrangements of student exchanges, and they were further explored in
relation to Japanese exchange students' study behaviour, their perceptions
of their own participation in AU, and the treatment of the exchange
students by teachers at AU.

5. Findings
As shown in Figure 2, the findings describe various relationships among
what the student exchanges aimed at (Policies), how the exchanges were
actually undertaken (Practices) and how Japanese exchange students
participated in student exchanges (Students). This study found seven types
of tensions in structuring student exchanges among policies, practices,
educational needs or goals of Japanese exchange students, their
motivational investments and accessibility of current exchange systems to
the students. Tension A represents the imbalance between policies and
practices of student exchanges. Tension B1 pertains to the discrepancies
between policies and students' educational needs or goals, whereas
Tension B2 deals with the impact of policies on students' motivational
investments. The tensions between policies and the accessibility of
exchange systems to the students are shown as Tension B3. Tension C1,
C2 and C3 occurred as a result of incommensurability of practices with the
students' needs or goals, motivational investments and the accessibility of
systems. I identified these tensions in relation to credit transfer systems,
subject arrangements and academic support systems.

164 Chapter Ten

Policies

(A) (B1, B2 and B3)

Practices Student
(C1, C2 and C3)

1. educational needs or goals
2. motivational investment
3. accessibility of exchange systems

Figure 2: Seven Types of Tensions in Structuring Student Exchanges

5.1. Credit Transfer Systems

Tensions in credit transfer systems resulted from three factors: first,
conflicts between subject selection and credit transfer; second, the
complexity of administrative procedures; and third, the incompatibility of
grades between AU and JUs. AU's policy of subject selection conflicted
with JUs' policy of credit transfer, and the mismatch gave rise to Tension
A and C3 within credit transfer systems. The exchange program
coordinator at AU recommended that the students should select first-year
subjects on the grounds that such subjects provided students with an
induction to academic discourse and practices relevant to academic
settings, such as how to manage weekly assigned articles and how to write
an academic essay.
However, the policy of credit transfer at JUs hindered the participants
from selecting first-year subjects, since it required them to select subjects
which were similar to those offered at JUs but not equivalent to the ones
they had previously studied (Tension A). The students, who were third- or
fourth-year undergraduates and one first-year postgraduate student at their
home universities, had finished studying all basic subjects in their
disciplines before participating in the student exchange program at AU.
Consequently, the first-year subjects tended not to be eligible for credit
transfer and thus were frequently inaccessible to the Japanese exchange
students (Tension C3).
The complexity of administrative procedures of credit transfer also led
to Tension A and C3. While a credit transfer system is one of the

Planning of Student Exchanges 165

characteristics which make student exchanges worthwhile, the
administrative procedures of transferring credits from AU to JUs were not
effectively undertaken (Tension A). Japanese exchange students were
required to negotiate availability of credit transfer with the teachers in
their departments at JUs and to submit various documents, including
academic results, course outlines, and self reports on their academic
achievements. Consequently, the students felt reluctant to gain access to
the credit transfer systems (Tension C3).
The complexity also pertained to the fact that the coordinators of
student exchange programs at JUs could not mediate home and host
academic systems because not the coordinators themselves but teachers of
students' home departments were basically in charge of credit transfer. The
exchange program staff at JUs have thus claimed that quite a few Japanese
exchange students prefer to avoid relying upon credit transfer from
overseas host universities, and obtain most of the required credit points,
other than the graduation thesis, at their home universities before
participating in a student exchange program.
The other tension of credit transfer systems was related to the
incompatibility of grades. Irrespective of their academic results, the
credits, which the Japanese exchange students obtained at their overseas
partner universities, were accepted as "pass grade only" at JUs. The policy
of transferring grades at JUs could thus result in Tension B2 because the
policy per se tended not to encourage them to invest a lot of effort and to
increase their participation at the host academic settings. Hence, it seems
that the current system of credit transfer does not play a role as "a
motivation enhancing device" for Japanese exchange students'
participation in the host academic community (cf. Kaplan and Baldauf
1997). This problem requires urgent attention by universities on both
sides.

5.2. Subject Arrangements

The policy of subject arrangements in the student exchange program at
AU appears to have been designed whereby incoming exchange students
were recommended to take either or both of two specific subjects –
Australian Culture (AC) and Australian Nature Experience (ANE). In
addition, NESB exchange students were recommended to enrol in a
subject per semester from the course, Practical English (PE). Regular
subjects were then chosen by the students to complete their enrolment.
These arrangements meant that the recommended subjects by exchange

166 Chapter Ten

program staff covered four out of the seven subjects which exchange
students were required to enrol in during their two-semester studies.
However, the arrangements of the two recommended subjects for all
exchange students – AC and ANE – triggered Tension A and C3, because
of negative outcomes of the access policy, which treated all of the students
as a homogenous group. The access policy led the coordinators of these
subjects to pay closer attention to the linguistic majority – English-
speaking background (ESB) and near-ESB exchange students, who
constituted 88 percent of the incoming exchange students. Consequently,
the policy, which was designed for all the incoming exchange students,
ironically contributed to giving rise to inequity between linguistic majority
and minority exchange students (Tension A). Although the inequity was
not directly reflected in the marks, the students made critical comments
about the atmosphere of the AC classes and the teacher's attitudes towards
ESB and NESB exchange students. For example, since ESB exchange
students dominated the in-class discussions, Yuka reported:

I don't like the lecture because I have the impression that the teacher
mainly speaks to the exchange students from Europe and North
America in class. He likes to talk about the differences and similarities
in culture between Australia and other Western countries. He doesn't
care about Asian countries and Asian students.

This finding demonstrates that the classroom communities were not
necessarily accessible to Japanese exchange students (Tension C3).
Furthermore, the curriculum policy of allocating AC and ANE to
exchange students was not followed by adequate methods and materials
policies of the subjects. This inconsistency led to Tension C1. The course
syllabi of these recommended subjects mainly emphasised students'
participation in lectures, field trips and fieldwork for assessment, and
aimed to introduce Australia's unique culture and nature through activities.
In addition to the attendance-based assessment, these subjects required
students to undertake written assignments, oral presentations and
examinations, but these tasks were not assessed as severely as in other
regular subjects. Such arrangements did not necessarily meet Japanese
exchange students' educational goals at AU, because they generally aimed
to improve their previously-developed disciplinary knowledge and skills
through their involvement in the host academic environments. For this
reason, half of the Japanese participants did not select AC or ANE. The
remaining three participants – Yuka, Chie and Kenji – enrolled in AC,
while Kenji also participated in ANE. However, as Kaplan and Baldauf

Planning of Student Exchanges 167

(1997) claim, the simplified content and materials of these subjects did not
enable them to maintain their interest in the subjects (Tension C2). For
example, since Kenji expected to develop his theoretical knowledge about
the relationship between tourism and society for his forthcoming
graduation thesis in Japan, he was disappointed at general cultural
information provided by these subjects. Although he felt confident in
compensating for his linguistic disadvantage by activating his disciplinary
expertise, the subjects did not require him to apply his previously-
developed academic knowledge and skills. He commented, "The most
important thing in these subjects is how well we understand English and
how familiar we are with Australia. We don't need any academic skills".
Selecting a non-demanding subject in addition to three other subjects
might help Japanese exchange students to cope with all the academic
requirements. However, the attendance-based assessment and leniency in
assessment in the recommended subjects did not motivate the three
participants to undertake the assigned tasks properly. It seems that the
methods and materials policies of AC and ANE were oriented from the
view of student exchanges as a cross-cultural experience program. Hence,
Japanese exchange students, who aimed to achieve well academically,
tend to be dissatisfied with the content of such subjects.
Similar to AC and ANE, in the PE course, conflicts existed between
the curriculum policy and methods and materials policy since the
exchange program staff and the subject coordinator had different
expectations of the course. Such conflicts triggered Tension A and C1. PE
provided a subject per semester to first- to third-year NESB undergraduate
students. Thus, exchange program staff at AU strongly recommended the
Japanese exchange students to enrol in the subjects of this course, based
on their belief that PE served as an introductory subject of academic
English. Accordingly, four participants – Yuka, Mami, Chie and Shingo –
enrolled in the subjects in PE. Although Mami and Chie initially intended
not to select the subjects, their chosen subjects were actually changed by
the exchange program staff at AU to include a PE subject.
However, contrary to the expectations of student exchange program
staff at AU, the coordinator of the PE course stated that the purpose of the
course was not mainly to help NESB international students to learn
English academic discourse, but to introduce linguistic and sociolinguistic
theories and practices to these students. Thus, the curriculum policy,
which allocated PE as an introductory English course to exchange
students, did not sufficiently function in practice (Tension A). Although
the subjects briefly provided some academic introduction, such as how to
deal with conventions of academic writing in English, the four Japanese

168 Chapter Ten

exchange students had difficulty understanding the linguistically-oriented
content and managing the required tasks. All of them, even Yuka, who
majored in English Literature and Linguistics in Japan, commented that
PE was the most challenging among the four subjects in which they were
enrolled. Such struggles demonstrate that there existed a mismatch
between the course content and Japanese exchange students' educational
needs and expectations (Tension C1). The method and materials practice,
furthermore, caused Tension C2 on the ground that it did not help the
students to improve their motivational investments and increase their
participation at AU.
Despite the tensions discussed above, the access policy of PE gave this
course an advantage over the other subjects. Since it was tailored
particularly for NESB students, the subject provided Japanese exchange
students with rhetorical situations where they could actively participate.
For instance, while criticising the complicated content of the course, Yuka
stressed the comfort of studying with NESB international students by
stating, "In PE, I feel it is easier to ask questions and express my opinions
because all the students are non-native and at least I can feel I'm a better
speaker of English than some of my classmates". In this regard, it could be
argued that such a subject arrangement contributed to students' movement
from the periphery to becoming fuller participants in the target community
(cf. Lave and Wenger 1991). The present study found that the provision of
a course targeting the linguistic minority was important. However, as is
the case with AC and ANE, it seems necessary for a student exchange
program to review the methods and materials policies and practices of
subjects so that subject content can be more suitably developed for an
NESB cohort.

5.3. Academic Support Systems

The other structure of the student exchange program which this study
investigated was that of academic support systems for NESB exchange
students at AU. The student exchange program at AU aimed to support
incoming NESB exchange students' academic participation mainly by
recommending them to utilise the language and study support centres. The
faculty-based language and study support centres provided assistance in
academic adjustment to NESB international students as well as to local
Australian students. For example, in the Faculty of Arts, the centre
organised a five-week academic writing course at the beginning of each
semester and drop-in sessions throughout the semester, which enabled

Planning of Student Exchanges 169

students to discuss how to cope with academic tasks with language
instructors. One-hour private consultations were also available by
appointment at the centres, providing students with editing support for
their written assignments.
However, imbalance between the access policy and methods and
materials policies resulted in various tensions in the arrangements of
academic support. Exchange program staff at AU expected the language
and study support centres to offer ongoing support and treatment of
students' academic problems. Nevertheless, in practice, due to time
constraints and a limited number of personnel, it was difficult for the
centres to provide comprehensive assistance and rectify all the problems of
students, and thus the centres emphasised helping students to develop
autonomous task management skills (Tension A). Accordingly, the users
of the centres were only able to receive general guidance regarding
academic writing, advice on how to tackle specific academic tasks,
content-based assistance, and partial editing support such as correction of
grammar, spelling, expressions, in-text referencing and structures.
Given that only partial assistance was available at the centres, Japanese
exchange students needed to consult the instructors multiple times to
complete one task. However, Tension C3 hindered the students from
maximising the opportunities. The Japanese exchange students evaluated
the services negatively in that the services were frequently inaccessible to
the students. In fact, except for Chie, the students did not use private
consultations or drop-in sessions at the language and study support
centres. The students expected the instructors to proofread their whole
drafts, and thus considered 15 minutes allocation per person in the drop-in
sessions as insufficient to address all their problems with their written
assignments. The availability of the centre instructors for private
consultations was also limited since they had many students to assist,
particularly during periods when the submission deadlines for assignments
approached. It was difficult for the Japanese exchange students to identify
what to ask of instructors at the earlier stage of undertaking their
assignments, because they were likely to discover most major problems
while writing their drafts. Consequently, the participants could not utilise
the services when the instructors were more available for consultations,
and thus tended to rely on their peers to provide clarification of the
academic requirements and proofread their written drafts.
Tension C1 and C2 also occurred in relation to the writing course.
Although Yuka, Chie and Kenji attended the writing course, all of them
discontinued it because it mainly treated the theoretical aspects of
academic writing, and did not meet their educational needs to receive

170 Chapter Ten

specific assistance directly related to forthcoming academic tasks (Tension
C1). The course raised their consciousness about the complexity of
academic writing but the complexity also led them to become afraid that
they could not cope with forthcoming written assignments. In this sense,
the writing course did not enhance students' motivational investments in
academic writing as much as the exchange program staff and students
expected (Tension C2). Kenji commented:

The instructor explains abstract issues of academic writing in English
too often and emphasises difficulties in doing written tasks. So, the
course isn't really practical but it's boring and sort of threatening.
Probably, it is more useful for me to find out the styles of appropriate
writing after I start preparing for written assignments. So, I'd better
spend time reading weekly assigned articles rather than attending the
course.

These findings have indicated that exchange program staff needed to gain
a better understanding of how the language and study support centre
provided services to students and to suggest how exchange students should
use the services.
A questionnaire survey revealed that, similar to exchange program
staff, teachers in regular courses also had a policy of recommending NESB
students to seek help from the centres, rather than directly assisting them
in their linguistic struggles. As Corson (1999) points out, although
teachers might make an effort to promote fairness and recognise diverse
identities, it is likely that the professional roles that the teachers play, as
members of a social institution, put great limits on their actions to identify
students' problems and provide assistance in overcoming these.
Misconception of the language and study support centres as a panacea for
students' language problems led exchange program staff and teachers to
rely upon the centres excessively. It appears that such reliance hindered
them from working out other expedient remedial measures to help their
students.
The student exchange program at AU, furthermore, had an unofficial
policy of academic support through preparatory English courses. However,
the policy per se contradicted the accessibility of the courses to Japanese
exchange students and triggered Tension B3. Several EAP (English for
Academic Purposes) or IAP (Introductory Academic Program) courses
were available on a fee-paying basis at an affiliated language centre as a
preparatory course for NESB international students prior to their
enrolments. In the interview, the exchange program staff at AU stressed

Planning of Student Exchanges 171

such availability as a part of the policy of academic support. However,
Japanese exchange students did not participate in any preparatory English
courses since their participation tended to be hindered by the difference in
semester commencement between the Japanese and Australian
universities. The exchange students' participation in the courses also gave
rise to financial problems since the fees were not covered by their student
exchanges. If students are regarded as having insufficient English skills
and have a conditional offer of enrolment in AU, it is essential for them to
participate in a pre-enrolment bridging course. Otherwise, timing and cost
prevent Japanese exchange students from studying at the preparatory
courses. As some researchers have claimed, a serious problem in many
education policies is that expectations set in the program can be unrealistic
(cf. Genesee 1994; Kaplan and Baldauf 1997; Thomas 1981). This study
indicated that the preparatory English courses did not sufficiently serve as
an option of academic support to Japanese exchange students, contrary to
the exchange program staff's expectation.

6. Concluding Discussion
The focus on the aspect of language education in a student exchange
program enabled this study to explore the structures of student exchanges
in relation to management of cultural contact of academic systems
between AU and JUs. The findings demonstrated various tensions in
relation to policy planning goals and cultivation planning goals of the
student exchanges. It seems that these tensions were significantly affected
by two main interplaying shortcomings of student exchanges between AU
and JUs – insufficient establishment of evaluation policies and the
negative influence of top-down planning. Although AU and JUs reviewed
and evaluated student exchanges to some degree, the feedback was not
thoroughly implemented in the actual systems. For example, exchange
program staff at AU suggested the importance of consolidating support
programs for incoming exchange students, including establishing one-to-
one relationships between the exchange program staff and exchange
students, incorporation of EAP or IAP courses into the curriculum for
these students, and providing some financial support to the students.
However, the suggestions have not been turned into actual plans to reform
the exchange program.
The exchange program staff at JUs also stressed the need to collect
data about the host academic systems at overseas partner universities and
to promote Japanese exchange students' preparation for the host academic

172 Chapter Ten

requirements. JUs collected written reports from returned exchange
students, and also they sometimes organised visits to their partner
universities overseas. However, the reports tended to focus on university
social life rather than academic participation, and the visits, which mainly
focussed on inspecting facilities in just a few days, were not adequately
planned to investigate the structural arrangements at AU. Therefore, it is
obvious that the evaluation mechanisms of the academic support systems
for Japanese exchange students are still developing on both sides. The
home and host universities need to collaboratively "recognise and evaluate
the variation of academic systems and then consider strategies of
adjustment" (cf. Neustupny 2004).
Furthermore, it is likely that community and governmental attitudes
towards student exchanges as well as the government's allocation of
resources to student exchanges influenced policy planning of a student
exchange program at AU in a top-down fashion. The top-down planning
negatively affected systematising the support program for incoming
exchange students at AU. The Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee
(AVCC) has recently stressed that Australian universities need to send
more Australian undergraduates overseas on exchange, following the
successful case of ERASMUS, the European University Student Exchange
Program (AVCC 2001). The positive attitude of the community towards
sending exchange students overseas led to funding from the government to
design a study abroad program under UMAP (University Mobility in Asia
and the Pacific Region). In contrast, the incoming exchange programs are
less willingly funded by the Australian community whether it be at the
governmental or institutional level. Since it seems that exchange programs
for incoming students are not regarded as important or beneficial to
Australia as the outgoing ones, macro policies to support the incoming
cohort have not been fully designed.
To reduce these types of shortcomings, it is necessary for AU to
introduce meso- and micro-level modification of top-down policies to
meet the needs and goals of the incoming cohort. The modification would
require the exchange program at AU to examine the suitability of macro
policies for organising a well-balanced exchange program, and to mediate
the tensions between macro policies and required structural arrangements.
It is also crucial for AU and JUs to return to the early stage of bottom-up
planning – the surveying stage – and to develop horizontal consistency
between both sides. The student exchange program staff at AU need to
examine policies and practices with regard to subjects tailored for
exchange students, subject arrangements in each faculty, language and
study support centres at AU, and student exchange systems at JUs. The

Planning of Student Exchanges 173

analysed data should be shared with JUs so that they can devise
appropriate pre-departure programs and re-adjustment systems after
students return home. Subsequently, the exchange program staff at AU and
JUs will be able to identify the extent to which the programs should
provide academic support to Japanese exchange students and to elaborate
upon the access, curriculum, methods and materials policies of student
exchanges.
Horizontal consistency would be further consolidated if AU and JUs
collaboratively collected naturalistic data relating to the obstacles faced by
students' participation in the exchange program at AU (cf. Nemoto 2005).
The combined investigation of institutional systems and students'
participation could also assist the development of the evaluation
mechanisms. The micro-level modification of top-down planning and
development of horizontal consistency would enable a revision of the
student exchange program policies and an establishment of policies that
are more oriented from cultivation planning. The micro policies and
practices established through these approaches would also allow the
AVCC and governments to reconsider how student exchanges should be
organised and to reform the macro structures of student exchanges. Such
an approach would, furthermore, lead universities to identify ways to
manage cultural contact at an institutional level and to establish a
multicultural academic community where international students with
diverse backgrounds can participate actively.

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Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee (AVCC). 2005. Key Statistics –
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Clyne, Michael. 1997. Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning. Berlin and
New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Cooper, Robert, L. 1989. Language Planning and Social Change.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Corson, David. 1999. Language Policies in Schools: A Resource for
Teachers and Administrators. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

174 Chapter Ten

Fishman, Joshua. 1973. Language Modernization and Planning in
Comparison with Other Types of National Modernization and
Planning. Language in Society 2: 23-42.
Fishman, Joshua. 1994. Critiques of Language Planning: A Minority
Languages Perspective. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural
Development 15(2-3): 91-99.
Genesee, F. 1994. Integrating Language and Content: Lessons from
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at Santa Cruz: National Centre for Research on Cultural Diversity and
Second Language Learning.
Haugen, Einar. 1983. The Implementation of Corpus Planning: Theory and
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Kaplan, Robert, B. 1989. Language Planning V. Planning Language. In
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Kaplan, Robert, B., and Richard B. Baldauf. 1997. Language Planning:
From Practice to Theory. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
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25-46. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate
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Planning of Student Exchanges 175

Nemoto, Hiroyuki. 2005. The management of intercultural academic
interaction in student exchanges between an Australian and its
Japanese partner universities. PhD. diss., Monash University.
(Unpublished.)
Neustupny, Jiri, V. 1994. Problems of English Contact Discourse and
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Problems and Language Planning 4(1): 55-77.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
DIMENSIONS OF LEARNING GERMAN
AT AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES

GABRIELE SCHMIDT

1. Introduction
In 2007, Jäger and Jasny reported that between 2000 and 2005 the number
of Australian tertiary students learning German declined by 18%. Some of
the reasons for this development are:

• The abolition of language requirements at matriculation and graduation
level in the 1960s and 70s (Barko 1996).
• The decline in language learning at secondary level (Mehigan 2008).
• The introduction of economic rationalism into higher education
(Mehigan 2008).
• The still widespread monolingual mindset in the Australian society
(Clyne 2007) which, in general, does not encourage and reward
language learning.
• A worldwide decline (-27%) in learning German at tertiary level with
some countries recording much worse figures than Australia (Jäger and
Jasny 2007).

A decline in student numbers is a dangerous development, especially in
times when university funding is linked to enrolments. In order to respond
to this development, it is important to understand why students choose to
learn German as part of their undergraduate degree and what their
expectations are. Several surveys on the motivation of German Studies
students in Australia were published in the early 1990s (Ammon 1991;
Leal et al. 1991; Petersen 1993). Most of the data was collected in the late
1980s or early 90s and, hence, does not reflect more recent developments.
To fill this gap, the author conducted a new survey in 2005. This article
will present the study and its principal results. After a general overview of
the student profile, the article will explore the reasons for learning
German, whether these reasons have changed over the last two decades,

Dimensions of Learning German 177

and whether they differ between various sub-groups, for example with
regard to gender and degrees being undertaken.

2. Objectives of the study
According to Dörnyei (2001, 7) "the term 'motivation' presents a real
mystery", because many people use it, but with very different meanings
attached to it. This study focussed on what Dörnyei and Otto (1998) refer
to in their process model as "the preactional phase". The aim was to
investigate what reasons, goals and attitudes influence students in their
initial choice of studying German at university. Although it is widely
acknowledged that a learner's initial motives change during the learning
process, Oxford and Shearin (1994, 15) emphasise that

quite possibly the source of motivation is very important in a practical
sense to teachers who want to stimulate students' motivation. Without
knowing where the roots of motivation lie, how can teachers water
those roots?

3. Instruments
To find those roots, a nation-wide cross-sectional survey was conducted
among undergraduates enrolled in German courses. Following Dörnyei
(2001, 193) in his argument that questionnaires are "precise", and produce
"reliable and replicable data", and that "statistically significant results are
readily generalisable, thus revealing broader tendencies", a questionnaire
(Appendix A) was used for the data collection. The questionnaire was
structured into five sections:
1. The student's language learning history:
The main objective of the first section was to uncover whether the
respondent had learnt some German before entering university, and if so,
where and for how long, and whether he or she had already visited a
German-speaking country. One question also asked about knowledge of
other languages.
2. General information about the student's university study:
The second section was designed to reveal information about the
participant's degree enrolment, his or her majors, and whether language
study was a degree requirement.

178 Chapter Eleven

3. The student's reasons for learning German at university:
The third part of the questionnaire contained a list of twenty-six potential
reasons for learning German at university. The reasons were listed on a
five-point Likert scale and there was additional space for adding other
reasons.
4. The student's preferred topics in his/her German courses:
The fourth section had two questions. The first question asked students to
rank the four language skills with regard to importance, while the second
asked them to indicate the level of interest in eleven potential topics/areas.
The eleven topics were also listed on a Likert scale and, again, there was
space given to add additional topics.
5. General demographic information about the student and his/her
ancestry:
The last section focussed on demographic information. Respondents were
asked to provide information about their age, gender, country of birth, and
their first language. In order to gain some ancestral information,
participants were also asked to list their parents' and grandparents' country
of birth and first language.

4. Participants and data collection
In 2005, fifteen Australian universities offered German, of which ten
agreed to participate, including six of the Group of Eight universities.
Each institution distributed the questionnaire to two different groups; first,
to students learning German at beginners level, and second, to students
learning German at intermediate level. These two levels were chosen in
order to include students who began their language study at university
with little or no previous knowledge as well as students who had already
learnt German at secondary level. The two levels were also selected by the
two former surveys focussing on German Studies in Australia (Ammon
1991; Petersen 1993), and therefore allowed comparisons. Nearly all data
was collected in group administration during class time. The overall
response rates were high and the total number of returned questionnaires
was 520. Table 1 provides an overview of the participating universities
and the response rates.

Dimensions of Learning German 179

Beginners Response Inter. Response Total
Adelaide 55 100 % 2 ? 57
ANU 40 98 % 25 86 % 65
Macquarie 33 100 % 27 100 % 60
UNSW 39 100 % 18 100 % 57
UQ 57 80 % 28 100 % 85
USQ 28 100 % 5 100 % 33
Sydney 66 ? 18 95 % 84
UTAS 8 ? 9 ? 17
UTS 19 100 % 12 100 % 31
UWA 16 100 % 15 100 % 31
Total: 361 159 520

Table 1: Participating universities and response rates

5. Data analysis
All data was statistically analysed using SPSS. The first analyses
described the data by calculating frequencies, percentages, means, etc. For
those two variables on a Likert scale, reliability checks were conducted by
calculating the Cronbach's alpha coefficients (Pallant 2005). Both scales
had a good internal consistency, with both Cronbach alpha coefficients
above the .7 level.
The second stage focussed on exploring differences between sub-
groups. The data file allowed the forming of various groups. The main
groups used in the analysis were: gender, first language, German ancestry,
university, language level (beginners or intermediate), degree, language
study as a degree requirement, previous language study before university,
and majoring in German.
Chi-square tests for independence were used to compare frequencies
and Independent-samples t-tests to compare the mean scores of two
different groups, for example, exploring whether male students expressed
a higher or lower level of agreement to the statements given on the Likert
scale.
The third stage of data analysis explored relationships between the
various variables, investigating for example, whether there is a
relationship between "wanting to study in a German-speaking country"
and "being interested in German-speaking people and their culture".
Correlation tests were performed.

180 Chapter Eleven

6. Demographic background
As Figure 1 shows, the age of the 520 participants ranged from 16 to 64
with over three quarters (76.7%) between 18 and 22 years old. The
average age was 21.58 years (mean) with 19 the most frequent age (mode).
In comparison with 1987 (Ammon 1991, 18-19) the age distribution was
similar and the mode the same. 1

120
100

80
60

40
20

yr

yr

yr

yr

yr

yr

yr

yr

yr

yr

yr

yr
16

19

22

25

28

32

36

41

48

52

56

64
Figure 1: Age distribution

With regard to gender, the overall percentage of male students learning
German increased between 1987 and 2005 from 28.5% to 36.5%, which is
a positive trend in light of a general underrepresentation of boys in
language classes at secondary level (see for example Carr and Pauwels
2006; Barton 2006). There was however a highly significant difference
between the two language levels with the beginners level recording a
percentage of over 40% of male students versus only 27.7% at the
intermediate level (χ2=7.459, df=1, p=.006). One explanation appears to
be that more female than male students begin their university language
study with some previous knowledge of German and, hence, seem to start
at a higher language level. The data reveals a highly significant difference
between the two genders with regard to previous language learning at
secondary school (χ2=7.505, df=1, p=.006). While only 34.7% of all male

All comparisons with 1987 refer to Ammon’s (1991) survey.

Dimensions of Learning German 181

respondents had learnt German at secondary school, the comparable figure
for female students was 46.8%.
Engineering/IT was the only degree with a very highly significant
larger percentage of male students (76%) than females (χ2=25.688, df=1,
p=.000), while in contrast, Arts had with 68% a very highly significant
higher proportion of female students (χ2=12.468, df=1, p=.000).
The responses to the country of birth item uncover a very multicultural
student population coming from over forty countries. While only 1% were
born in Germany, there was still a solid German-speaking family
background among students learning German with 16% of all respondents
having at least one parent or grandparent born in Germany, Austria or
Switzerland. Great Britain was the largest overseas country of birth,
followed by Asian countries led by China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and
Malaysia. However, the percentage of overseas born students varied
significantly among the ten universities. For example, 89.2% of ANU
German Studies students were born in Australia, while the figure for
UNSW was only 47.4%.
The responses with regard to the student's first language align with
those about country of birth. The data reveals that nearly 80% (79.6%)
regarded English as their first language followed by Chinese with 5.8%,
Indonesian with 1.7%, Japanese and Croatian each with 1.3%, and German
and Russian each with 1.0%. With the exception of UTAS, Chinese was
the second most frequent first language at all universities, which is
consistent with official figures for 2005 (Commonwealth of Australia
2007). Twenty-six other first languages were listed, but all counting for
less than 1%. For that reason, all languages were grouped into language
families. Table 2 provides an overview of the distribution of the language
families.

Respondents' L1 family Frequency Percent
English 414 79.6%
German 5 1.0%
Other Germanic languages
6 1.2%
(w/o English and German)
Other Indo-European languages
36 6.9%
(w/o Germanic languages)
All non-Indo-European languages 54 10.4%
No response 5 1.0%
Total 520 100.0%

Table 2: Respondents' L1 family

182 Chapter Eleven

Only five students (1%) listed German as their first language, which, in
comparison with 7.1% in 1987, is a very highly significant decline
(χ2=31.95, df=1, p<.001). At the same time, the number of native speakers
of non-Indo-European languages had nearly doubled from 5.5% to 10.4%
(Ammon 1991, 92).
There were again large differences between the ten universities. The
percentage of students with English as their first language ranges from
93.8% at ANU to only 54.4% at UNSW. This indicates that universities
need to take different approaches with regard to their course offerings. For
example, the data shows that 85% of all students with a non-Indo-
European language as their first language attended the beginners level.
Accordingly they had the lowest percentage of studying German as one of
their majors and showed a much lower interest in wanting to read German
literature than students from an Indo-European language background.
Furthermore, the data clearly shows an interesting difference with
regard to having been exposed to German before university in relation to
the respondent's first language. Of those who listed an Indo-European
language as their native language, only 38% had had no previous
experience with German before university. In comparison, this figure was
70.4% for students from a non-Indo-European language background. This
is a very highly significant difference (χ2=23.602, df=1, p<.001) and
explains why native speakers of a non-Indo-European language were
largely overrepresented in the beginners level and might have a stronger
interest in acquiring language skills instead of other content such as
literature.

7. Degrees
The data shows a very diverse and interdisciplinary student body and
supports Pauwels' (2002) observation, that languages have become more
accessible to a wider range of students including those not majoring in a
language. About a quarter of all respondents were enrolled in a combined
or double degree, which explains why the overall percentages in Table 3
add up to more than 100%.

Dimensions of Learning German 183

Degrees Students Percent
Arts & Social Sciences 371 71.5%
Science 78 15.0%
Business/Economics/Commerce 73 14.1%
Engineering/IT 46 8.9%
Law 29 5.6%
Education (Bachelor/Dip.) 26 5.0%
Architecture 6 1.2%
Creative Arts (Music, Fine Arts) 15 2.9%
Other 7 1.3%
No response 1 0.2%
Total 652 125.4

Table 3: Degree distribution (first and second degree)

Combined degree students came over proportionally from Arts,
Economics, Education and Law. While 68.7% of all students studying
German were enrolled in an Arts degree (first or second degree), - this
percentage is slightly smaller than the 71.5% in the table, because some
students had both their first and second degree in the Arts category - it is
important to notice that about 30% were enrolled in German without
studying towards an Arts degree. It will later be examined whether those
latter students differ in their reasons and expectations towards their study
of German.
Another interesting result is that more than half of all respondents
(53.4%) were enrolled in a non-Arts degree (although sometimes
combined with an Arts degree). Among the non-Arts disciplines, Science
led with 15% before Economics (14.1%) and Engineering/IT (8.9%)
followed by Law (5.6%) and Education (5.0%).
Nearly a fifth of all respondents claimed that they had to learn a
language for their degree. They were mainly Arts students, who were
enrolled in an International Studies degree. But with only 20% of students
required to learn a language, the good news is that 80% were enrolled in
German for other reasons than "being forced to".

8. Reasons
The centrepiece of the survey was the question about students' reasons for
studying German. Participants were given a list of twenty-six potential
motives and were asked to mark on a five-point Likert scale how strongly
they agreed or disagreed with each motive. Table 4 provides an overview

184 Chapter Eleven

of all reasons, ordered according to their means. (The lower the mean, the
stronger the level of agreement.)

Given motives Mean
1. Because I enjoy learning languages. 1.82
2. Because I want to travel to a German-speaking country 1.84 2
as a tourist.
3. Because I want to communicate with German-speaking 1.84
people abroad.
4. Because I am interested in German-speaking people and 1.84
their culture.
5. Because learning German broadens my world view. 1.85
6. Because I liked learning German at school. 1.88
7. Because I spent some time in a German-speaking 1.90
country.
8. Because learning German is a challenge. 2.02
9. Because I have a German-speaking family background. 2.04
10. Because the knowledge of German improves my career 2.06
prospects.
11. Because learning German is fun. 2.11
12. Because I love the German language. 2.12
13. Because I want to work in a German-speaking country. 2.14
14. Because my partner speaks German. 2.18
15. Because German is a language of culture. 2.24
16. Because I was good at German at school. 2.26
17. Because I want to understand German films or videos. 2.27
18. Because German is an international language. 2.47
19. Because I want to study in a German-speaking country. 2.52
20. Because I want to read German literature. 2.68
21. Because German is an important business language. 2.70
22. Because I want to communicate with German-speaking 2.75
people in Australia.
23. Because I have to learn a language for my degree. 2.76
24. Because German is important for Australia. 3.27
25. Because German is easy to learn. 3.29
26. Because I want to become a German teacher. 3.93

Table 4: Respondents' level of agreement to given motives

The three reasons with the same mean have been put into this order according to
the frequency of “strongly agree”.

Dimensions of Learning German 185

First of all, it is notable that the motive with the strongest level of support
was "Because I enjoy learning languages", which came well ahead of
pragmatic reasons such as "Because German is an important business
language". This is important to keep in mind, because too often the
promotion of learning German focuses on choosing it for pragmatic
reasons as does, for example, one of the websites of the Goethe-Institut
Kanada (2008): "With knowledge of German, you improve your
employment opportunities - Germany has the largest economy in the
European Union and the third largest in the world."
The second, third and fourth motives, all with the same mean, express
a strong interest in travelling and communicating with speakers of
German. Other motives ranked in the top half of the table emphasise the
intellectual benefits of learning German, for example "broadens my world
view" and "is a challenge".
At the same time, the more instrumental and pragmatic reasons, such
as "to study in a German-speaking country", "an important business
language", "have to learn a language for my degree", "important for
Australia" and "to become a German teacher", can all be found at the
bottom of the list. There are two exceptions to this. It appears that there
was some interest in working in a German-speaking country, a reason
which came thirteenth on the list and had a mode of 1. And second, the
"working" motive goes along with the "improves my career prospects"
motive which is listed tenth.
While the general attitude towards learning German appears to have
been positive, there was also a high level of agreement that German is
difficult to learn. The motive "German is easy to learn" came second last
with a high mean of 3.29 and a mode of 4. The only motive even lower on
the list is "to become a German teacher" with a mean of 3.93. It is the only
motive with a mode of 5 (strongly disagree) which confirms that the career
prospect of becoming a German teacher was nearly unanimously
unpopular, even among Arts students, who recorded only a slightly lower
mean of 3.88.
Since the twenty-six reasons on the list could not anticipate all reasons
participants might have had for their decision of studying German at
university, respondents were given the opportunity to add other reasons in
an open-ended section. Altogether seventy-six students (15%) added
reasons ranging from doing a PhD in Philosophy to "hate maths". These
additional responses can be grouped together under five new reasons
which were not covered by the list.
First, there appears to be a strong feeling about not losing the language
skills acquired at school or overseas before university ("a shame to stop

186 Chapter Eleven

now"). Second, for some students the 'trigger' to learn German was "to do
something different". This reason was mainly listed by non-Arts students
studying Engineering/IT or Economics/Commerce. Third, since language
students come from various disciplines, language courses are regarded as
an opportunity to meet people from other areas. Fourth, the interactive and
communicative character of the language classroom with its small groups
seems to be appealing to students and a motive to enrol in German. There
were quite a few comments that there is "lots of laughter in language
classes" and "you get to know people more". And last, in particular
postgraduate students from other disciplines want to gain reading skills for
their research.

9. Changes since 1987
Twelve of the twenty-six motives from the 2005 questionnaire were
repeated from Ammon's 1987 questionnaire (Ammon 1991, 32-33), which
listed altogether twenty motives. Independent-samples t-tests were
conducted to compare the means of the level of agreement scores of the
twelve repeated reasons, and Table 5 provides an overview of the twelve
motives with their old and new means and p-values.

Mean Mean p
1987 2005
I want to communicate with German-speaking 1.53 1.84 <.001
people abroad.
I want to travel to a German-speaking country 1.64 1.84 <.001
as a tourist.
The knowledge of German improves my career 2.19 2.06 =.05
prospects.
I want to work in a German-speaking country. 2.29 2.14 =.05
I want to read German literature. 2.32 2.68 <.001
German is an international language. 2.33 2.47 =.05
I want to understand German films or videos. 2.38 2.27 >.05
German is a language of culture. 2.40 2.24 =.01
I want to communicate with German-speaking 2.42 2.75 <.001
people in Australia.
I want to study in a German-speaking country. 2.48 2.52 >.10
Learning German is a challenge. 2.98 2.02 <.001
German is easy to learn. 3.37 3.29 >.10

Table 5: Comparison of means from 1987 and 2005

Dimensions of Learning German 187

Five of the twelve reasons have experienced very highly significant
changes in their level of agreement. While the reasons "to communicate
with German-speaking people abroad", "to travel to a German-speaking
country as a tourist", "to read German literature" and "to communicate
with German-speaking people in Australia" all lost in their level of
agreement (increased means), the reason "learning German is a challenge"
has experienced the biggest change with the 2005 mean lower by nearly 1,
which means that in 2005 many more students than in 1987 agreed with
this statement, which might reflect an increased perception of German
being difficult to learn.
For the reason "German is a language of culture" the change has been
highly significant with more students agreeing in 2005 with this statement
than in 1987.
Three other reasons recorded significant changes. The two pragmatic
reasons "improves my career prospects" and "to work in a German-
speaking country" both received higher levels of agreement while fewer
students agreed with the motive "German is an international language".

10. Differences between sub-groups
The next stage of the data analysis investigated whether the various sub-
groups of the 520 participants differed in their level of agreement with the
twenty-six motives that were given. For example, whether learners from a
German-speaking background have other reasons for studying German
than those without a German-speaking link in their family, or whether Arts
students differ from non-Arts students. There were many significant
differences between the various groups, and the following provides some
examples with regard to gender, ancestry and degrees.
With regard to gender, there were eight statistically significant
differences. In seven of the eight cases, female students expressed a
stronger level of agreement with the reasons. Only one reason recorded a
significantly stronger level of agreement from male students and that was
"Because German is an important business language". The gender
variation is supported by other research, see for example Dörnyei and
Clement (2001).

188 Chapter Eleven

4.5
3.5
2.5
1.5
0.5 male
female

Figure 2: Significant differences between male and female students

However, it is important to keep in mind that these differences do not
mean that they were caused by gender. Other factors might play a role. For
example, it was earlier reported that female students had learnt German at
secondary school for a longer period of time than their male counterparts.
There were three statistically significant differences between
respondents with at least one parent or grandparent born in a German-
speaking country and those without. Interestingly, those students from a
German-speaking family background appear to be less enjoying learning
languages, seem to think less that learning German is fun, and expressed
less support for the statement that "learning German broadens my world
view".

Dimensions of Learning German 189

2.5

1.5
no German-speaking
1 family background
German-speaking family
0.5 background

enjoy learning learning broadens my
languages German is fun world view

Figure 3: Significant differences between students with a German-
speaking background and those without

With an increasing number of German Studies students enrolled in non-
Arts degrees, this study was in particular interested whether there were
relationships between the degrees and the level of agreement with the
twenty-six reasons. Altogether, the data revealed thirty-three significant
differences.
The degree with the highest number of significant differences was
Arts, which recorded eleven differences. In ten cases, Arts students
expressed an above-average level of agreement. There was only one
reason where Arts students scored below the average, and that was with
regard to "Because German is an important business language".
The degree with the second highest number of differences was
Engineering/IT with eight significant differences. However, this time,
students enrolled in an Engineering/IT degree had seven below-average
mean scores and only one, "Because German is an important business
language", above-average. In many cases, their scores were the opposite of
those of Arts students.
Again, the data only report differences and not their causes. Other
variables might also play a role. For example, Arts had a significantly
larger percentage of female students and a very high number of students
with an Indo-European first language. On the other hand, Engineering/IT
recorded not only a significantly larger number of male students, but, with
22%, also the highest percentage of students with a non-Indo-European
first language. And over 90% of Engineering/IT students attended the
beginners level, reflecting that they were the group with the least previous
knowledge of German before university (39%).

190 Chapter Eleven

11. Correlations
Several of the motives formed relationships. They were correlated with
each other by using Kendall's Τb non-parametric Rank Order Correlation
test. The reason "interested in German films" formed the largest number of
relationships (8) 3, which might reflect the increased prominence of film in
the area of German Studies. Those respondents who expressed a high level
of agreement with "interested in German films" also showed strong
support for the following reasons (in descending order according to the
strength of their relationship): "to read German literature", "broadens my
world view", "to communicate with German-speaking people abroad",
"interested in German-speaking people and their culture", "love the
German language", "a language of culture", "to communicate with
German-speaking people in Australia", and "spent some time in a German-
speaking country".

12. Areas of interest
The last section of the questionnaire asked the respondents about the areas
and topics they were interested in and would like to learn about in their
German courses (e.g. literature, history). They were given a list of eleven
potential areas and were asked to mark on a scale how strong their interest
was. The scale consisted of three points (strong interest=1, moderate
interest=2, no interest=3). Table 6 provides an overview of all areas,
ordered according to their means. (The lower the mean, the stronger the
interest in the area.)

Only those motives with a strong relationship (Kendall’s Τb >.49) and those with
a moderate relationship (Kendall’s Τb >.29 or <.5) were counted.

Dimensions of Learning German 191

Areas Mean Mode
Learning the Language for 1.21 1
Communication
Translating and Interpreting 1.53 1
Society and Contemporary Culture 1.64 1
History 1.69 2
Film 1.73 2
Linguistics 1.84 2
Literature 1.91 2
German for Specific Purposes, 1.94 2
e.g. Business German
Politics 2.19 3
Philosophy 2.22 2
Business/Economics/Commerce 2.29 3

Table 6: Areas of interest

The first and third ranked areas of interest, communication and
society/contemporary culture, are coherent with the three reasons ranked
second, third and fourth. In order to be able "to travel to a German-
speaking country as a tourist", "to communicate with German-speaking
people abroad", and to accommodate an interest "in German-speaking
people and their culture", one needs to learn "the language for
communication" and about "society and contemporary culture". Since
most German programs nowadays do not have a focus on translating and
interpreting, the second strongest area of interest was unexpected and
requires further investigation.
History and film further confirm the interest in German-speaking
culture, while the two more traditional areas of linguistics and literature
both attract a rather moderate interest. The area ranked eighth, "German
for specific purposes", was taken into the list to explore whether this is an
important area for students enrolled in non-Arts degrees. The overall mean
of 1.94 does not reflect a strong priority for the overall population;
however, Economics/Commerce and Engineering/IT students expressed a
highly significant stronger interest.
The next two areas, politics and philosophy, have both a mean of more
than 2, indicating little interest. The topic ranked last, business, also points
towards only a small interest in more vocational-oriented areas. Again,
both Economics/Commerce and Engineering/IT students expressed above-
average interest.

192 Chapter Eleven

The eleven given areas of interest covered only the main topic areas
generally associated with German Studies. For that reason, respondents
were asked to add additional areas of strong interest in case they thought
they were not covered by the list. A total of forty-seven students (9%)
added mostly new areas which were then grouped into categories.
A large number of responses (16) relate to Music, a category including
classical music, pop music, songs and even yodelling. The second largest
group (10) relates to Art in a very broad context, i.e. including
architecture, design, theatre, art history, etc. A further category carries the
label Everyday Culture, and includes food, sport, TV news and the
Austrian TV series "Inspector Rex". There was also mention (6) of some
specific content with regard to the German language (formal German,
colloquial German, German for Science, Germanic languages, punctuation
and poetry). Another category, with six additions, refers to (Medical)
Science, while the last group, with three entries, has the heading (German
for) Tourism. All other additional areas of interest, such as Psychology,
Cross-Cultural Communication, International Relations/Human Rights,
Ecology or Gender and Sexuality, were mentioned only once or twice.

13. Conclusion
Australian university undergraduates enrolled in German language and
culture courses represent a very diverse student body, particularly with
regard to their cultural and linguistic background. While 16% of the
survey's participants still had a German-speaking family background, the
data shows that this does not necessarily lead to a stronger interest to learn
the language. Furthermore, students are enrolled in a wide variety of
degrees, which confirms, that language programs have opened up to
disciplines other than those traditionally associated with Arts and
Humanities. About 30% of all respondents were not studying towards an
Arts degree, with Science, Business and Engineering/IT leading the non-
Arts disciplines. However, as the analysis of the motives for choosing
German has shown, this opening-up to other disciplines has not led to an
overall increase in the importance of more instrumental and pragmatic
reasons. This is in accord with Dörnyei's (1996, 76) observation with
regard to school students, that instrumental motivation is only relevant
"where relatively short-term pragmatic, utilitarian benefits are actually
available to the learners". This is important to keep in mind when German
is being advertised to prospective students. Despite some variation
depending on the students' gender, first language, degree, etc., the reasons

Dimensions of Learning German 193

with the strongest support all express a general interest in learning
languages and a strong interest in travelling and communicating with
speakers of German.
While these general trends were common across the ten participating
universities, there were some significant differences which need to be
taken into consideration when curricula are being developed. The
differences, most likely caused by different student profiles (degrees, first
language, previous knowledge of German, etc.), could, for example, be
found with regard to studying German towards a major, or honours. The
percentage of students doing a major in German ranged from 16.7% to
47.1%, while the intention to do honours ranged between 0% and 35.3%.
However, this diversity of the student population should be seen as an
advantage since it gives individual universities their own niche.

Reference List
Ammon, Ulrich. 1991. Studienmotive und Deutschenbild australischer
Deutschstudenten und -studentinnen. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Barko, Ivan. 1996. A history of language education in universities: the
recent past and today. Australian Language Matters 4(2): 6-7.
Barton, Amanda. 2006. Getting the Buggers into Languages. London:
Continuum International.
Carr, Jo and Anne Pauwels. 2006. Boys and Foreign Language Learning:
Real Boys Don't Do Languages. London: Palgrave.
Clyne, Michael. 2007. Are we making a difference? On the social
responsibility and impact of the linguist/applied linguist in Australia.
Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 30(1): 1-14.
Commonwealth of Australia. 2007. Students 2005: Selected Higher
Education Statistics. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Dörnyei, Zoltán. 1996. Moving language learning motivation to a larger
platform for theory and practice. In Language learning motivation:
Pathways to the new century, ed. Rebecca L. Oxford, 71-80. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press.
Dörnyei, Zoltán. 2001. Teaching and researching motivation. Harlow:
Longman.
Dörnyei, Zoltán and Richard Clément. 2001. Motivational characteristics
of learning different target languages: Results of a nationwide survey.
In Motivation and second language acquisition, ed. Zoltán Dörnyei
and Richard Schmidt, 399-432. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

194 Chapter Eleven

Goethe-Institut Kanada. 2008. Why learn German?
(accessed 15 August 2008)
Jäger, Andreas, and Sabine Jasny. 2007. Zur Lage der Germanistik in
Australien. Info DaF 34(5): 472-486.
Leal, Barry, Camilla Bettoni, and Ian Malcolm. 1991. Widening our
horizons: report of the review of the teaching of modern languages in
higher education. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing
Service.
Mehigan, Tim. 2008. How 'user pays' has tied our tongues. The
Australian, 7 May 2008: 31.
Oxford, Rebecca L., and Jill Shearin. 1994. Language learning
motivation: expanding the theoretical framework. Modern Language
Journal 78: 12-28.
Pallant, Julie. 2005. SPSS Survival Manual. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin.
Pauwels, Anne. 2002. Languages in the university sector at the beginning
of the third millenium. BABEL 37(2): 16-20.
Petersen, Karen. 1993. Zur Situation des Deutschen als Fremdsprache im
multikulturellen Australien. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang.

Dimensions of Learning German 195

Appendix A: Questionnaire (reformatted)

Why are you studying German?

I. Your language experience
Please tick or fill in the missing information on the dotted lines.

1. Where have you learnt German?
a) I speak German at home with my family. No  - Yes 
b) I learnt German at primary school. No  - Yes 
c) I learnt German at secondary school. No  - Yes 
Please tick in which years:
in year 7 ; in year 8 ; in year 9 ;
in year 10 ; in year 11 ; in year 12 
d) I learnt German somewhere else, e.g. ethnic Saturday school, private
tutor, in a German-speaking country, using it with relatives/friends.
No  - Yes  Please specify: ………………………….……

e) I only started to learn German at university. No  - Yes 

2. Have you visited a German-speaking country?

No  - Yes  Please specify:

Germany  ; Purpose of visit(s): ……………………………………....
Length of visit(s):
……………………………………………………………

Austria  ; Purpose of visit(s): …………………………………………
Length of visit(s):
…………………………………………………………...…

196 Chapter Eleven

Switzerland  ; Purpose of visit(s): ………………………………….…
Length of visit(s):
……………………………………………………...…

3. Have you learnt languages other than German?
No  - Yes 
Which language(s)? …………………...……….………..

II. General information about your university study
Please tick or fill in the missing information on the dotted lines.

1. Which degree program are you enrolled in? E.g. Bachelor
of Arts, Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Law, Bachelor of Arts
(European Studies), Bachelor of Arts (International
Studies/Relations), Bachelor of International Business (Europe),
Bachelor of Tourism, Diploma in Arts.
Please write the official name of your degree program:

….…………………………………………………………………

2. Which year of this degree are you in at the moment?
1st year ; 2nd year ; 3rd year ; 4th year ; 5th year ;

other: ………...…

3. Does your degree require compulsory language study?
No  - Yes  How many semesters? ………………….

4. How many years have you studied German at university
including this year?
…… year(s)

Dimensions of Learning German 197

5. What is your current language level in German?
1. Introductory/Elementary  2. Continuing 
3. Intermediate  4. Advanced 
5. (Near) Native  6. Other: ……

6. How long do you plan to study German at university?
………… year(s)

7. What is/are your major(s)?

…………………….…...…….…………………………………….…….
……….………..…………………………………………………………

8. Have you considered doing Honours in German?

Yes  - No  - Not sure yet 

9. Please list all the German courses you are enrolled in
this semester.

…………..............……… - ……………………………

…………..............……… - ……………………………

10. Do you study any other languages at university?

No  - Yes  Which language(s)? .…...…..………………...…

198 Chapter Eleven

III. Why are you learning German?

1. Why are you learning German at university?
Please think carefully about all the following reasons and tick on
the scale between “strongly agree=1”, “agree=2”, “not
sure=3”, “disagree=4” and “strongly disagree=5”. The first six
reasons may not be applicable to you (“N/A”).

1 2 3 4 5 N/A
a) Because I was good at
German at school.
b) Because my partner speaks
German.
c) Because I have to learn a
language for my degree.
d) Because I spent some time
in a German-speaking
country.
e) Because I have a German-
speaking family
background.
f) Because I liked learning
German at school.
g) Because I love the German
language.
h) Because I enjoy learning
languages.
i) Because I am interested in
German-speaking people
and their culture.
j) Because I want to become a
German teacher.
k) Because German is an
international language.

Dimensions of Learning German 199

l) Because learning German is
fun.
m) Because I want to study in a
German-speaking country.
n) Because German is easy to
learn.
o) Because I want to travel to a
German-speaking country
as a tourist.
p) Because I want to read
German literature.
q) Because German is an
important business
language.
r) Because I want to
communicate with German-
speaking people in
Australia.
s) Because I want to
communicate with German-
speaking people abroad.
t) Because I want to work in a
German-speaking country.
u) Because I want to
understand German films or
videos.
v) Because learning German
broadens my world view.
w) Because learning German is
a challenge.
x) Because German is a
language of culture.

200 Chapter Eleven

y) Because German is
important for Australia.
z) Because the knowledge of
German improves my career
prospects.
For other reasons. Please specify.
…………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………

2. For all reasons listed above, which three do you
consider as most important?
Please rank your ‘top three’ reasons in order of importance. (Fill
in the three letters.)
1. ………. ; 2. ………. ; 3. ……….

3. If you “agree” or “strongly agree” with t) or z) in which
profession do you hope to enter after graduating?

…………………………………………………………………………

4. Do you expect to use German in this profession?
Yes  - No 

IV. What would you like to learn about in your
German classes?
1. Which skills in German do you want to acquire?
Please number the following skills in order of preference (highest
preference = 1). Where you rate skills equally give them the same
number.

 Reading  Writing Listening ...  Speaking
... … ...

Dimensions of Learning German 201

2. Which areas/topics are you interested in and would like to
learn about in your German courses at university? Please tick.

Strong Moderate No
interest interest interest
  
a) Linguistics
b) Film
c) Translating and Interpreting
d) History
e) Society and Contemporary Culture
f) Learning the Language for
Communication
g) German for Specific Purposes
e.g. Business German
h) Politics
i) Philosophy
j) Literature
k) Business/Economics/Commerce
 Strong interest in other areas/topics. Please specify.
………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………

202 Chapter Eleven

V. Some information about yourself and your ancestry
Please tick or fill in the missing information on the dotted lines.

1. How old are you? ……… years
2. Your gender? male  - female 
3. Please state the country of birth, first language and other
languages of the following people:

Country of First Language Other
Birth Languages
spoken
You yourself
Your mother
Your father
Your mother’s
mother
Your mother’s
father
Your father’s
mother
Your father’s
father

Thank you very much for your assistance!

CHAPTER TWELVE
LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE STRATEGIES
AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDES OF NEW
MIGRANTS FROM ITALY 1
ANTONIA RUBINO

1. Introduction
This paper presents some early findings from a research project that
explores multilingualism and language maintenance amongst new Italian
migrants to Australia, i.e., people who migrated between 1993 and 1997.
The aim of the project is to verify whether, due to changed pre- and post-
migration circumstances, the new migrants and their families have better
possibilities to be bilinguals (or multilinguals) than was the case with
Italian migrants of earlier vintages, given the profound changes that both
the Italian and the Australian contexts have undergone since the 1970s.
Sociolinguistic studies about recent migration from Italy to Australia
are very scarce. Much available research, not only in sociolinguistics but
also in other fields, deals with either post World War II mass migration
from Italy or with the second generation of post-war Italian migrants,
given that the Italians in Australia represented the largest post-war migrant
group from a non-English speaking background 2. Although in quantitative
terms recent migration from Italy to Australia is a much smaller
phenomenon compared with past migration waves (see data below),
studies in this area can provide some useful insight into the impact of
changed socio-economic and socio-cultural circumstances – both of the
country of origin and of the host country – on bilingual outcomes.
Furthermore, they can enhance our understanding of the cultural and

This research was made possible by a Research and Development Grant from the
University of Sydney. My thanks are due to Antonella Biscaro for her invaluable
work on the project.
In the area of sociolinguistics, some major works are, amongst others, Bettoni
1991, Bettoni and Gibbons 1988, Bettoni and Rubino 1996, Ciliberti 2007, Rubino
2004. With regard to post-war Italian migration to Australia see the essays in
Castles et al. (1992).

204 Chapter Twelve

linguistic interaction of different migrant vintages, and of the way this may
influence language maintenance 3 both within and between vintages.
In Australia research on language maintenance and language attitudes
has been conducted among a wide range of immigrant groups 4. With
regard to post-war Italo-Australians, shift to English has been explained by
the following linguistic and socio-cultural factors, amongst others: dialect
– rather than Italian – as the first language 5 of the majority of migrants,
and negative attitudes towards dialects as languages of lower status and
prestige; the peripheral role of language in their value system 6; and
regional and village-based networks (cf. Bettoni and Rubino 1996). Less
attention has been paid to the specific issue of the interaction between
migrants of different vintages as a possible factor influencing language
attitudes and maintenance efforts 7. While it can be assumed that generally
continuing migration contributes to revitalising the language in the
migrant community (cf. Kipp and Clyne 2003, 36), the role played by
more recent arrivals as linguistic and cultural catalysts for earlier migrants
should not be taken for granted 8, especially in the case of diglossic

In this paper language maintenance is taken as a broad term to refer to both the
continued use of the first language by the migrant and intergenerational language
transmission.
For a recent comprehensive review, see Rubino 2007.
It is important to note that in the Italian context dialects are not so much
variations of Italian but separate languages differing from each other to the extent
of being mutually unintelligible if they belong to non-adjacent areas.
The reference here is to the theory of core values articulated by Smolicz (1981).
According to this paradigm, each immigrant group has particular cultural values,
including language, that are considered 'core' in that they are fundamental to its
existence as a group. As language is a core value to some groups not to others, this
would explain why some groups abandon their languages more easily and rapidly
than others. In Australia the core value theory has been applied to a wide range of
different minorities, including Italians (cf. Chiro and Smolicz 1993).
Australian studies which have compared different vintages and/or generations of
migrants are quite few; generally they have focused on the policies and the
attitudes of the host country as factors of particular relevance to migrants' language
maintenance (Pauwels 1988, 12; Clyne 1991, 75). For example, it has been shown
that migrants who lived through the assimilationist period have shifted to English
more quickly than those who lived during the policy of Multiculturalism (e.g. Kipp
and Clyne 2003, 35 for Germans; Rubino 2003 for Italians; Hatoss 2004 for
Hungarians) or display different attitudes towards the issue of language
maintenance (e.g. Pham 1998 for Vietnamese; Clyne and Kipp 1999, 319 for
Spanish speakers; Borland 2006 for Maltese).
With regard to the Maltese, for example, Borland (2006, 39) notes a disjuncture
between the new and old vintages which does not help language maintenance.

Language Maintenance Strategies 205

communities like the Italo-Australian one. Furthermore, it may also be
important to consider the reverse effect, namely, the linguistic and socio-
cultural impact that earlier migrants may have on more recent ones.
This latter point is one of the issues explored in this paper, which
focuses on the language maintenance strategies and the language attitudes
displayed by the women interviewed for this project. More specifically,
the paper analyses their views regarding opportunities for language
maintenance in the Australian context, their self-reported linguistic
practices and language maintenance strategies, and considers them in
relation to their attitudes towards the linguistic practices of earlier
migrants.

2. Recent Italian migration to Australia 9
To establish the exact number of Italians who have migrated to Australia
in the 1990s and their socio-demographic characteristics is not an easy
task because of the different parameters employed to collect statistics. In
spite of the discrepancy that emerges from the different data, however,
overall migration from Italy to Australia represents a fairly marginal
phenomenon in quantitative terms.
According to figures provided by the former DIMIA (Australian
Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs; now
Department of Immigration and Citizenship), between 1990 and 1999 the
number of migrant settlers from Italy appears to be around a few hundred
per year (ranging from 336 presences in 1994-95 to 168 in 1999-2000).
This data however only considers migrant settlers defined as those
"persons arriving in Australia who hold permanent visas, regardless of
stated intended period of stay" (DIMIA 2005, 62). Therefore, this data for
example would not take into account participants in my sample who were
holding temporary visas at the time of arrival in the 1990s and in
subsequent years. On the other hand, the figures of the 2001 Census
administered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (in Centro Studi
Emigrazione Roma (CSER) 2003) show that out of the 218,718 Italian
born people registered in the Census, 1,436 arrived between 1991 and
1995, and 2,075 between 1996 and 2000 (CSER 2003, 10). However, as
opposed to the DIMIA figures, ABS data would include all kinds of
temporary visas.

For lack of space figures regarding previous waves of Italian migration cannot be
included here; however the interested reader is referred to Castles et al. (1992).

206 Chapter Twelve

Italian sources (ISTAT data elaborated by CSER) provide a mean of
670 people per year in the 1990-99 decade, thus providing substantially
higher figures than those provided by DIMIA and the 2001 ABS Census.
Perhaps the existence of a 'long-term' circular migration could help to
explain this discrepancy. In other words, of those who have migrated to
Australia in the 1990s, a certain number may be holders of Australian
citizenship, such as children of return migrants to Italy, hence they would
not appear in the Australian official statistics.
In general, amongst the five different migration categories, the Family
Reunion category constitutes the largest migrant intake, with the Skill
migration stream representing one of the fastest growing ones.

3. Data and methodology
Participants for this study are twelve women who have migrated to
Australia since 1993 under different categories, mainly Family Reunion
and the Skill migration stream. They were recruited through
advertisements placed on websites, noticeboards and newsletters of Italian
associations, and through personal approach by the research assistant and
myself.
The data was collected in 2007 and 2008 through semi-structured
qualitative interviews that were audio-recorded and then transcribed. The
interviewer was a young woman/researcher from the north of Italy, who
has been in Australia for about seven years. Most women were
interviewed in their homes or, if not possible, in a mutually agreed place.
The length of the interviews ranged from one and a half to two hours.
In the initial part of the interview participants were encouraged to talk
in general about their history of migration (e.g., reasons for migrating,
steps taken, difficulties encountered). The following part focused broadly
on their language practices before and after migration, both at home and in
other contexts (e.g., at work, with friends); perceptions of language
maintenance and/or shift to English in their own and their family's
practices; narratives of personal experiences dealing with languages both
in Italy and Australia; ways of maintaining contacts with other Italians in
both countries; and their views about future developments in their own and
their families' linguistic practices.
Once they had agreed to be interviewed, the majority of participants
spoke at length about their experiences in Australia and offered their views
quite freely. Also the social identity of the interviewer – herself a
relatively recent arrival from Italy – in most cases facilitated the

Language Maintenance Strategies 207

interaction, thanks to the similarity of experiences, a point that was often
stressed by the interviewer as a way to stimulate, encourage and sustain
the interaction.
In order to analyse the participants' views and attitudes regarding
opportunities for language maintenance, their self-reported linguistic
practices and their language maintenance strategies, transcripts were coded
in relation to these areas and themes identified across the corpus (cf. Miles
and Huberman 1994). Furthermore, adopting a constructivist framework,
the interview is seen as a co-construction by both participants rather than a
type of discourse where information is conveyed from the interviewee to
the interviewer (Schiffrin 1994; Warren 2001). Hence, rather than being
neutralised, the interviewer's interventions are also incorporated into the
analysis. Features of language alternation that occur in the interviews are
also taken into account, namely, transfers from English and occurrences of
code switching.

4. The Participants
Of the twelve women who participated in the study, eight are from the
North of Italy and four from the Centre-South. This slight geographical
imbalance can be at least partly explained by the snowball approach taken
in recruiting participants. The women come from places of very different
sizes, from large cities to medium towns and small villages.
In terms of age, at the time of interviewing, the participants ranged
from early 30s to early 50s, with the majority of them falling into the 40-
45 age bracket. With regard to educational levels, the sample is quite
diversified: half of the women left school either at the end of lower junior
high school, at 14 years of age (3 of them), or at the end of high school, at
18 (3 of them); the other half hold a University degree. In terms of
occupation, before migrating, most of them worked as employees in
businesses of different sizes; some were self-employed or homemakers;
two were teachers. Of some interest is the fact that after migration, a good
number of them have continued to work in similar areas. A minority of
them, on the other hand, have either changed their work profile thanks to
new Australian qualifications, or have temporarily given up work to stay at
home to look after their young children. Some of them also work in
environments where Italian is extensively used (e.g., Italian owned
business).
For the majority of women their first language is a regional variety of
Italian (i.e., marked at the phonological, prosodic and lexical levels) and,

208 Chapter Twelve

while they understand dialect, only speak it occasionally. Some of them,
on the other hand, speak a more regional-popular variety of Italian (i.e.,
also marked at the grammatical level), and the dialect of their region/town
is the language that they speak regularly with their families in Italy. As
well as this bilingual (Italian/dialect) background, the majority of them
have been exposed to other languages at school, mainly French; a small
minority has also spent long periods in other European countries before
coming to Australia. For half of them, however, learning English was a
new experience, and generally not an easy one.
With regard to the reason to migrate, half of these women have
followed an Australian partner (in some cases of Italian origin), generally
met in Italy or while travelling in other countries. As for the rest, four
moved to Australia as established family units which included teenage
children, while two arrived as individual migrants for other reasons. At the
time of interviewing, the sample included a majority of families with
children, either older ones born in Italy or younger ones born in Australia.
A major element to note is the fact that, compared with the main wave of
post-war mass migration, these recent migrants from Italy have not left the
country out of stringent economic necessity. Even in the case of the
families, the decision to migrate seems to be motivated more by the desire
to change their way of life. Furthermore, as they migrated as individuals or
nuclear families, their extended families remain in Italy 10.
In terms of networks in Australia, the women with families (either
from Italy or newly formed) appear to socialise mainly with recently
arrived Italians and less so with Italo-Australians. When this occurs, it is
generally with families who have helped them in the first phase of
settlement. Much broader are the networks of the women without children,
whose friends are of different nationalities. Two features are to be noted in
this regard: as in previous migration waves, Anglo-Australian friends are
the exception, but unlike previous waves, friends from the same region of
origin are not particularly sought after. Furthermore, the participants
showed only a very limited interest in engaging with structures (e.g.,
regional associations) of the established migrant community.
All women maintain very strong contacts with Italy, either indirectly or
directly. For example, they frequently use email, phone calls and Skype to
communicate with relatives and friends in Italy; they listen to and watch
Italian programs on radio and television quite regularly; and they read
Italian magazines and books. Furthermore, some of them often have

10
In this respect these recent migrants are more similar to the second wave of
Italian migrants, i.e., those who arrived at the end of the 1960s (cf. Rubino 2003).

Language Maintenance Strategies 209

visitors from Italy and also take regular trips to Italy 11. Overall, it seems
clear from what they say that for many of them 'home' is still in both
countries, as some of them state explicitly: "tutto sommato è come se
avessi due case" (…) è sempre casa, anche là" (Paola) ("overall it's as if I
had two homes, it's still home there") 12. Although all twelve women give
an overall positive assessment of their life in Australia, for many of them
the ideal life would consist of six months spent in each country – and some
of them admit to working towards it. Thus, the transnational nature of such
migration makes it quite different from previous patterns of Italian
migration 13.

5. Maintaining Italian in the Australian context
In line with the transnational profile of this group of migrants, it is not
surprising to find that throughout the interview all participants display
strong support for the importance of maintaining Italian within their
families. Whether or not the Australian context is viewed as supportive to
their language maintenance efforts is the first issue explored below.
Towards the end of the interview, after participants had the opportunity
to talk quite freely about their life in the new country, including their
language experiences, the interviewer asked them whether they thought it
was easy to maintain one's language of origin in Australia. Overall most
women expressed quite positive views regarding the possibility of
maintaining Italian, with little difference amongst women with various
migration histories. Below are the replies of Graziella, who formed her
own family in Australia, and of Barbara, who is a single woman without
children. These excerpts are quite typical of the replies elicited, and in
particular of the superlative terms that were frequently used
("assolutamente sì" "yes, absolutely"; "indubbiamente" "there is no doubt
about it"; "moltissimo" "very much so").

(1) Graziella: Assolutamente al cento per cento. Questa è la cosa più
bella di que- cioè è una delle cose belle in questo posto, è che
l'Australia è non so come si dice OVERWHELMED BY THE ITALIAN
CULTURE, e per me insomma non credo che sarà una cosa molto facile

11
The frequency of these trips can vary considerably, from once every year to once
every three-four years. Some of the women commented how the birth of children
has necessarily made these trips less frequent.
12
All names of participants have been changed to preserve anonymity.
13
Many post-war migrants only went back to Italy once or twice in their lifetime.

210 Chapter Twelve

per me perdere::: il senso del della lingua (…) vedi per esempio oggi
con te ho parlato esclusivamente in italiano. 14

(absolutely, one hundred per cent. This is the best thing, that is, it's one
of the best things in this place, it's that Australia is I don't know how to
say it overwhelmed by the Italian culture, and for me well I don't think
that it will be very easy for me to lose the sense of the language, you
see for example today with you I spoke exclusively in Italian)

(2) Barbara: Sì. Penso che- penso ah: penso di sì. Moltissimo
moltissimo perché (0.1) perché c'è questa libertà di poter usare, di
poter praticare le proprie tradizioni eccetera, per cui sì no no LOOK (.)
credo che sia molto molto più facile e accettiamo molto di più qui in
Australia che in Italia. Basta vedere, cammini per la strada senti
parlare in tutte le lingue. In ogni momento, per cui::: Sì, siamo molto
più::: accettiamo molto di più accettiamo molto di più. Ehm::: sì e io
continuo a mantenere il mio italiano per molti motivi::: e in molte
situazioni.

(yes, I think so. Very much so, very much so because there is this
freedom of being able to use, of being able to practise one's own
traditions, therefore, look I think that it is much much easier and we
accept much more here in Australia than in Italy. Suffice it to say, you
walk in the street you can hear all languages being spoken. At any
moment, therefore… Yes, we are much more, we accept much more,
we accept much more. Yes, I continue to maintain my Italian for many
reasons and in many situations)

Overall, then, there is a widespread perception that language maintenance
in Australia is possible and that languages can be used freely. Nonetheless,
in probing further the participants' responses, it can be noted that language
maintenance is framed by participants as essentially an individual
enterprise, where the final outcome is largely dependent upon personal
commitment. In some cases this is stated quite clearly, as in Paola's words:
"secondo me sì, dipende appunto dall'individuo" ("yes, in my opinion it

14
The following notations have been used in the transcriptions: [ overlapping
turns; (.) short pause; : :: ::: phonemic lengthening; [xxx] name of person; - false
start; (…) omitted text. The length of longer pauses is given in parentheses, and
notations regarding the situations in double parentheses. English words or
utterances are transcribed in small caps. English phrases mixed with Italian have
been italicised in the English translations.

Language Maintenance Strategies 211

depends upon the individual"). In other cases this is implied, for example
through negative comments that are expressed regarding the public
context, and in particular the Australian education system, which is viewed
as a site that is not particularly conducive to language maintenance or
language learning. Comments to this effect are expressed in particular by
some women who teach Italian in various educational contexts, like Luisa:

(3) Luisa: le lingue sono in crisi (.) eh e sentendo proprio quello che il
governo ha in testa no? Eh:: per cui c'è la possibilità? Sì sì la
possibilità di parlarla c'è, no? Che sia poi una possibilità che
effettivamente ti dà un potere no? Su questo non ne sono molto
convinta. Perché non viene celebrata, in questo momento viene cioè si
accetta la diversità nel senso è chiaro ci sono così tante culture di qua
e di là, però allo stesso tempo cioè imparate l'inglese fate il test
d'inglese punto e basta eh così no? (…) Secondo me è un grande choc
per tutti coloro che per esempio vengono dall'Italia o dall'Europa a
insegnare le lingue qua in Australia. Non c'è la stessa considerazione
(…)

(languages are undergoing a crisis, if we listen also to what the
government intends to do, so is there the possibility? Yes, there is the
possibility of speaking it [your own language] but I am not very
convinced that this is a possibility that gives you real power. Because
it's not celebrated, in this moment, yes, diversity is accepted, it's clear
there are so many cultures and so on, but at the same time learn
English, do the English test and that's it. (…) In my opinion it's a big
shock for those who for example come from Italy or Europe to teach
languages here. There is not the same consideration)

This commitment to bilingualism as an individual enterprise becomes
more explicit when we consider the language maintenance strategies that
the participants adopt with their children, especially the younger ones 15.
For the women who migrated with adolescent children, it is the family that
has proved to be the site where Italian (with or without dialect) has
continued to be used. All of them maintain that language practices in the
family have remained the same as they were in Italy. In one case a
participant refers in very strong terms to her efforts to keep out of the
house any form of Italian-Dialect-English language mixing. Interestingly,

15
Interestingly, some women also offered information about strategies that they
adopt so as not to lose their own competence of Italian (for example, doing
crosswords to maintain richness of vocabulary).

212 Chapter Twelve

in these families it was also the children themselves who insisted on
continuing to use Italian, even when the parents would have liked some
help with their English. For example, asked whether her daughter ever
talks to them in English, this is how Angela replies:

(4) Angela: No lei non lo fa eh e anzi è successo che i primi tempi in
particolare glielo chiedevamo sempre per avere questo suono e questa
lingua nell'orecchio ma [xxx] s'è sempre rifiutata dal primo giorno,
lei:::

(no, she doesn't, actually it happened that especially at the beginning
we used to ask her [to speak English] to have this sound and this
language in the ear but she always refused, from the first day)

In these families, therefore, Italian is well established as the language of
communication, and there is a distinct continuity with the pre-migration
context. Furthermore, as in the previous migration waves, one of the
elements that to an extent has facilitated this linguistic continuity is often
the mothers' limited English competence.
With regard to the families with the children born in Australia, the
situation is quite different, especially when the partner is of non-Italian
origin. All the younger mothers are deeply committed to bringing up
bilingual children and are extremely proactive in providing them with
opportunities to listen to and use Italian. For those with non-Italian
partners, the birth of the children has coincided with their own increased
use of Italian in the home for the children's benefit, although the majority
of fathers have at the most only a very basic competence in the language.
In (5), Paola explains to the interviewer the strategies that she has put
in place – both at home and outside – to maintain the 'one parent one
language' principle, to which she refers explicitly also in the course of the
interview.

(5)
Int: Ok e quindi con la bambina tu parli solo ed esclusivamente
italiano?
Paola: Sì
Int: E lui non si sente escluso?
Paola: No noi avevamo deciso così, e io faccio così indipendentemente
da chi è attorno a me. Cioè io spiego e mi scuso in anticipo, però io:::

Language Maintenance Strategies 213

non so MOTHERS' GROUP, ah::: gli ho sempre detto guardate che io
parlo solo italiano con lei
Int: Perché vuoi che lei impari l'italiano bene?
Paola: Sì e infatti lei è cresciuta bilingue al cento per cento (…) Ah
quindi lei, tranquillamente se è seduta a tavola con noi io e [xxx]
parliamo in inglese, lei mi deve dire qualcosa me lo dice in italiano
Int: A lui lo dice in inglese?
Paola: Sì sì sì, non
Int: Quindi le cose le deve dire due [volte?
Paola: [No no no. Beh dipende alcune cose le dice solo a me, cioè lo
dice per me quindi è inutile, lui non è che necessariamente::: vuol
saper o però insomma, finora il linguaggio di [xxx] è abbastanza
semplice. Quindi al livello di comprensione è arrivato se lui vuol
capire eh:: lo chiede allora poi lei glielo dice in inglese, però

(Int: Ok so with the child you only speak Italian?
Paola: Yes
Int: and he [the husband] doesn't feel excluded?
Paola: No we had decided on this and I do it independently of who is
around. That is, I explain and excuse myself in advance, but you know,
for example with the mothers' group, I always told them that I only
speak Italian to her
Int: Because you want her to learn Italian well?
Paola: Yes and she has grown up one hundred per cent bilingual. So if
she is sitting at the table with us I speak English to [name of husband],
if she has to say something to me she says it in Italian
Int: And she says it to him in English?
Paola: Yes yes no
Int: So she has to repeat the same thing twice?
Paola: [No no no. It depends, she only says certain things to me, so it's
useless, he doesn't necessarily want to know, anyway up until now the
child's language is rather simple, so up to his comprehension level. If
he wants to understand he asks her and she says it in English though)

Likewise, in (6) Chiara talks about the strategies that she adopts with her
two children to develop their reading skills in Italian:

(6) insomma, ecco, io cerco di fare quello che posso, ogni sera prima
di andare a dormire leggiamo qualcosa in italiano, un po' gliela leggo
io e un po' la leggono loro (…) io mi sforzo, leggiamo insieme, io dico

214 Chapter Twelve

io leggo tu segui, e poi magari lo faccio leggere per conto suo, magari,
una decina di righe tanto per non stressarlo troppo (…)

(well, I try to do whatever I can, every night before going to sleep we
read something in Italian, I read a little and they read a little, I try, we
read together, I say I read you follow, and then perhaps I ask him to
read on his own, perhaps a few lines so as not to stress him too much)

Other mothers report encouraging their children to talk regularly on the
phone to relatives – generally grandparents – in Italy, and/or to send them
emails. For a couple of mothers the Italian classes attended by the children
at school have provided a much sought after support to their family's use
of Italian.
It is clear, however, that in spite of their efforts, these mothers with
young children are quite aware of the challenges that a bilingual
upbringing involves in the Australian context. In (7), for example, Giulia
describes the fights that she is having with her daughter trying to convince
her to use Italian. In (8), on the other hand, Paola reports that her older
daughter is using Italian with her younger brother; however she is aware of
the fact that things may change later on.

(7)
Int: Ti parla mai in inglese la più grande?
Giulia: Sì. Ha cominciato a parlarmi in inglese la più grande io
rispondo sempre comunque in italiano.
Int: E quindi lei cosa fa? Cambia o continua?
Giulia: E c- io spesso ci dico non ho capito, oppure ci dico io voglio
che tu parli in italiano con me. Altrimenti lo dimentichi. E::: e a volte
si scoccia ti dirò gnnnhhh ((miming the child's complaints)) Non lo
vuole fare a volte [lo fa
Int: [Ti ricordi qualche episodio in cui avete bisticciato per questo?
Giulia: Ah ma bisticciamo ogni giorno. ((laughs))

(Int: does the elder child ever speak to you in English?
Giulia: yes, she started to speak to me in English but I always reply to
her in Italian.
Int: And what does she do? Does she change or does she continue?
Giulia: I often tell her that I don't understand or I say I want you to
speak Italian with me. Otherwise you will forget it. And sometimes she
gets annoyed, you know gnnnhhhh ((miming the child's complaints))
she doesn't want to sometimes she does

Language Maintenance Strategies 215

Int: do you remember an episode where you have argued about this?
G: Ah but we argue every day ((laughs))

(8)
Paola: E [xxx] al momento gli parla solo in italiano, forse perché la
maggior parte del tempo la passiamo noi tre, e quindi::: ovviamente
lei parlando italiano con me tende a parlare italiano con lui
Int: Quindi tu vorresti che lei [parlasse italiano
Paola: [A me piacerebbe, però non è che posso imporglielo.

(Paola: And [xxx] at present only speaks to him in Italian, perhaps
because the three of us spend most of the time together, therefore as
she speaks with me in Italian she also tends to speak in Italian with him
Int: So you would like her to speak Italian
Paola: [I would like it, but I cannot impose it on her)

Overall, then, these women acknowledge the fact that language
maintenance in families with young children requires much commitment
and effort, and that the outcomes may not necessarily be what they are
hoping for.

6. Language attitudes
Participants' attitudes towards language use emerge throughout the
interviews either implicitly, through their language choice and the
interaction with the interviewer, or explicitly, through comments about the
perceived decline in their own competence in Italian and about the
linguistic practices of earlier migrants.
With its focus on language issues, the interview stimulated in the
participants a process of self-reflection on, and self-monitoring of their
own linguistic practices. With regard to language choice, as Italian is
obviously perceived to be the unmarked language of the interview,
transfers from English and/or code switching to English are avoided or are
clearly intentional and marked to the interviewer, as in (9) and (10).

(9) Barbara: ah: ma le persone mi sono piaciute tantissimo, perché
proprio questa maniera ah semplice di vivere questa maniera come
dicono EASYGOING.

216 Chapter Twelve

(I liked [Australian] people very much because of this simple way of
living, this manner as they say easygoing)

(10) Graziella: Lui lavora per il:: è un come lo dici in italiano, è un
impiegato statale. Te lo dico in inglese lavora per il:: GOVERNMENT
JOB.

(he works for the how do you say it in Italian? State employee. I will
say it in English he works for a government job)

Furthermore, spontaneous comments about their own language
performance occur quite frequently throughout the interview, especially
whenever a particular linguistic difficulty arises. In (11), for example,
Giovanna complains about not finding the right word and after a long
pause ends up by embarrassingly appealing to the interviewer (notice the
laughter at the end); in (12) Barbara is unsure of the correct verb form; and
in (13) Graziella asks for help to check whether "intimidita" is an Italian
word or a transfer.

(11)
Giovanna: e::: e lui ha sempre uhm::: ha sempre fatto di-diversi tipi
di consulenza soprattuto nella::: nella::: adesso mi sfugge la parola in
italiano (0.3) FOOD INDUSTRY
Int: [nell'industria alimentare
Giovanna: [aiutami::: nell'industria alimentare ((laughs))

(Giovanna: and he has always done different types of consultancy jobs
especially in the now I can't think of the word in Italian (0.3) food
industry
Int: [in the food industry
Giovanna: [help me in the food industry ((laughs))

(12) Barbara: Ehm::: la vita::: qui differente, di poter sederti su sul
prato in Italia una ragazza non si siederebbe (.) ehm:::: ehm::: orca,
non riesco neanche più a dirlo ((giggles)) non si sedrebbe [sic] mai (.)

(life here is different, you can sit on a lawn, in Italy a girl wouldn't sit
[searches for correct verb form] well I cannot even say it ((giggles))
would never sit [says an incorrect verb form])

Language Maintenance Strategies 217

(13) Graziella: molti australiani (.) hanno una passione per gli
italiani, e tante persone si sentono intimidite. Intimidite ora è italiano
o è inglese? Perché io faccio fatica.
Int: Mi sembra che sia italiano.
Graziella: INTIMIDATED, intimiditi da, e quindi magari ero io

(Graziella: many Australians have a passion for Italians and many
people feel intimidated. Intimidated is it Italian or English? Because
it's hard for me
Int: I think that it's Italian
Graziella: Intimidated, intimidated by, and therefore perhaps it was
me)

As well as spontaneously, comments about their own speech also occur in
response to specific questions by the interviewer, as in Stefania's reply in
(14).

(14)
Int: È cambiato il vostro italiano in questi anni?
Stefania: Sì. Hai visto quanti inceppi che ho fatto io adesso parlando?
Int: Mah, neanche tanti.
Stefania: Eh ma viene. Viene, viene. L'inglese è rapido. (…) L'inglese è
rapido.

(Int: Has your Italian changed in these years?
Stefania: Yes. Did you see how many mistakes I made while speaking?
Int: Well, not that many.
Stefania: Well, but it does come to you. It comes to you, it does.
English is quick. English is quick)

When asked in broad terms whether they have developed friendships
and/or other types of relationship with earlier migrants, the participants
spontaneously and frequently volunteer observations on the formers'
linguistic practices. In particular, they comment on the changes that have
occurred in their Italian speech, and on their language mixing, as in (15).

(15) Angela: c'accorgiamo che anche loro che stanno qui da
quarant'anni (.) hanno piacere di parlarla, anche se diciamo il
linguaggio è cambiato, perché l'hanno italo-australianizzato la la loro
lingua è normale che sia così no?

218 Chapter Twelve

(we can see that also the people who have been here forty years take
pleasure in speaking it [Italian] even though the language has changed,
because they have made their language Italo-Australian, this is normal
isn't it?)

Comments about the speech of earlier migrants are often co-constructed by
the interviewer and the interviewee. If in (15) Angela is appealing to the
interviewer for a confirmation that these linguistic processes fall within the
norm, in (16), it is the interviewer herself who provides her with a label for
the dialect/English mixing ("dialettese").

(16)
Angela: Anche se ora nella loro terminologia::: dialettale c'è molto di
inglese italianizzato.
Int: Certo il dialettese
Angela: Lo cominciamo già a fare noi ((laughs))

(Angela: Even though in their dialect terminology there is a lot of
italianised English
Int: Of course the "dialectese"
Angela: We are starting to do it ourselves ((laughs))

As seen in Angela's last comment and in Stefania's observation in (14) that
"English is quick", for some of these women language mixing is viewed as
a normal process resulting from the bilingual circumstances in which they
live. Nonetheless, their comments point to the view that language
alternation but especially language mixing are bad habits to be censored
and that need to be closely monitored and resisted. In some cases such
negative attitudes to mixing, especially dialect/English mixing, are
expressed in very strong terms, as in Rina's case below:

(17) Rina: Ma quello [il dialetto] mischiato con l'inglese io lo odio (.)
quello proprio (.) fra i due è meglio parlare il tuo dialetto (.) secondo
me ((giggling))

(but the dialect mixed with English I really hate it, between the two it's
better to speak your own dialect in my opinion) ((giggling))

This negative attitude is manifested across most participants, and is
exemplified very clearly in the comments in (18), which, once again, are
jointly constructed by the interviewer and the interviewee. Giulia talks

Language Maintenance Strategies 219

about her newly developed habit of language alternation, and ascribes it to
momentary lexical gaps. When she is about to outline the possible
negative consequences of such a practice, it is the interviewer who
concludes the utterance for her and her intervention receives Giulia's full
approval. Notice also how Giulia is careful about distinguishing her
current practice of Italian/English alternation from language mixing as it
occurs amongst earlier Italian migrants.

(18)
Giulia: Ah::: ho notato una cosa però, che (.) tendi e a volte lo fai
senza accorgertene, passi dall'inglese all'italiano. Quando non ti
ricordi una parola la dici in inglese e viceversa. Se stai parlando in
inglese non ti viene la parola passi all'italiano, quello l'ho notato. E
quello è::: da stare attenti perché rischi di
Int: [Non vuoi finire a parlare anche tu l'italianese.
Giulia: ((laughs)) Brava. ((laughs)) Brava. Solo che la differenza è che
la dico o in inglese o in italiano, non faccio la mescolanza ((laughs)).

(Giulia: I have noticed something though, that sometimes, without
even realising it, one switches from English to Italian. When you don't
remember a word you say it in English and the other way around. If
you are speaking in English and you can't think of the word you switch
to Italian. I have noticed this. And one has to be careful about this
because you run the risk of
Int: You don't want to also end up speaking "italianese".
Giulia: ((laughs)) Bravo. ((laughs)) Bravo. The only thing is that I say
something either in English or in Italian, I don't make that mix
((laughs)).

7. Discussion and conclusion
As a result of changed pre- and post-migration circumstances, the Italian
women participating in this study, who recently migrated to Australia,
appear to have better opportunities to be bilinguals (or multilinguals) than
was the case with earlier migrants. In terms of pre-migration experiences,
factors of their linguistic and socio-cultural background that contribute to
this process are, amongst others: their use of Italian as a first language; a
broader linguistic experience (e.g., exposure to other languages before
migration and related enhanced awareness of linguistic issues); and higher

220 Chapter Twelve

levels of education. With regard to their post-migration experience, first
and foremost to be considered is their transnational profile, through
intense contacts with Italy, both indirectly (e.g., through their use of
technology) and directly (i.e., frequent visits to Italy), and the resulting
strong motivation for maintaining and trasmitting Italian to their
children 16. In the Australian context, the majority of these women say they
use Italian extensively, particularly at home, are actively involved in
bringing up their children bilingually, and maintain contacts with other
recently arrived Italians through friendship and in some cases also through
work.
Nonetheless, in spite of this intensive use of, and exposure to Italian,
the analysis has shown that throughout the interview these women often
construct – or co-construct – themselves as 'vulnerable' speakers of Italian,
in need of strictly self-monitoring their speech and of steering away from
such linguistic practices as transfers, code switching and especially
language mixing, practices that they associate closely with the speech of
earlier migrants. Hence, their encounter with Italians of earlier vintages
impacts upon their linguistic behaviour in at least the following ways: (i) it
enhances the saliency of, and the reflection on their own linguistic
practices; and (ii) it promotes puristic attitudes about the linguistic norm to
be adopted in a multilingual setting. Similar attitudes of censorship –
including self-censorship – towards language mixing have long been
attested in the literature amongst migrants, including previous waves of
Italian migrants (e.g., Bettoni and Gibbons 1988). What is different here,
however, is that for these women, distancing themselves from such
linguistic practices becomes a way of also distinguishing themselves from
earlier migrants, in that the latter are viewed as the speakers that in the
long term they could potentially become, but that they wish not to be or
become. This concern appears to act as a stimulus to exercise control over
their language use and to put in place appropriate strategies to this effect 17.
In this way the interaction with the established migrant community
emerges as a factor which does play a role in language maintenance
amongst more recent arrivals.
A second consideration concerns the role of the broader Australian
context. As noted above, for the women in this study the host country is a

16
Cf. Borland's (2006, 32) distinction between facilitative factors, i.e., related to
the social and political context, and motivating factors, i.e., those that trigger
decisions regarding language transmission at the individual and/or familial level.
17
Although this is an issue outside the scope of this paper, it is interesting to note
that this deep gap with earlier migrants is not only linguistic but more broadly
cultural, and emerges very clearly throughout the interviews.

Language Maintenance Strategies 221

place where languages can be used freely but at the same time are not
actively promoted. For example, one thing that is notably absent from all
interviews is any reference to Australia as a multicultural or a multilingual
country. For these women who have arrived to Australia after 1993,
therefore, the discourse of multiculturalism is not relevant or present in
Australia. This could be the compounded effect of two factors; on the one
hand, the general climate of non promotion of languages which has been
quite widespread in Australia throughout the late 1990s (cf. Clyne 2005,
170); on the other, the expectations of these women, who are used also to
the Italian context, where language learning and/or bilingual issues would
be viewed mainly as individual concerns rather than the concerns of public
policy that affect the broader community. In this sense my results are
different from, for example, those of Borland (2006, 38), who found that
her recently arrived women migrants from Malta considered Australian
government policies as a facilitating factor for their language maintenance
efforts, in that they contributed to creating a supportive environment.
A further factor that could be taken into account to explain the
linguistic attitudes of this group of women is gender, given the debate
regarding the role of this factor in the transmission of languages in migrant
contexts and more broadly in language contact situations (Pauwels 1997;
Winter and Pauwels 2000). The next step in this project therefore is to
verify whether similar attitudes also occur amongst the men in the sample.

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263-269. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bettoni, Camilla and John Gibbons. 1988. Linguistic purism and language
shift: A guise-voice study of the Italian community in Sydney. In The
future of ethnic languages in Australia (International Journal of the
Sociology of Language 72), ed. Anne Pauwels, 15-35. Amsterdam:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Bettoni, Camilla and Antonia Rubino. 1996. Emigrazione e
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dei veneti in Australia. Galatina: Congedo.

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Borland, Helen. 2006. Intergenerational language transmission in an
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Castles, Stephen, Caroline Alcorso, Gaetano Rando, and Ellie Vasta. 1992.
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PART III
LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LEARNING TO BECOME SCHOOL-LITERATE
PARENTS OF ESL CHILDREN
HONGLIN CHEN & PAULINE HARRIS

1. Introduction
As more children enter schools from families in which English is not the
language spoken at home, literacy teachers face the challenge of building
effective home and school partnerships that would foster ESL (English as
a Second Language) children's literacy development. In Australia, many
urban schools have a high population of non-English speaking background
students. For example in New South Wales, enrolments of students of
language background other than English (LBOTE) in 2007 represent 27.9
percent of primary enrolments (see
This reality presents significant challenges for the learning of English
and particularly for literacy learning in the early years. Literature relating
to literacy development focuses, in part, on the benefits of a print enriched
literacy environment (Cambourne 1988). In particular, it emphasises that
children should be immersed in a rich literacy environment both at school
and home and be engaged in activities that model literacy practices.
Another body of literature investigating parental involvement in children's
literacy learning suggests that children with highly involved parents
demonstrate higher literacy attainment (e.g. Bailie, Sylva, and Evans 2000;
Dearing et al. 2006; Jeynes 2005). The studies to date, however, have
focused on intervention programs as a strategy to increase parents'
participation in their children's literacy learning (e.g. Axford 2007; Bailie,
Sylva, and Evans 2000; Woolley and Hay 2007). There are few studies
that inform schools of how parents, in particular ESL parents, come to
learn their role as facilitators for their children's literacy learning and
development.
Discourses of expectations of a home literacy environment often
portray school-literate parents who understand the literacy demands placed
on their children at school; and who provide meaningful learning
experiences that are congruent with school literacy practices and

Learning to Become School-Literate Parents of ESL Children 227

expectations. However, ESL parents have been engaged in and are still
engaging in discourses that have different print conventions and
representations. They bring with them a different set of cultural resources
with which they make sense of the language demands of school literacies
and appropriate ways of supporting their children's literacy learning. These
resources may not coincide with that which is expected of parents with
English-speaking literacy backgrounds. The issue of how these ESL
parents negotiate and reconstruct their understandings of what it means to
be school-literate is therefore pivotal to their participation in their
children's school literacy learning.
This study took place in a primary school in southern Sydney in New
South Wales. 98% of the children were from 45 LBOTEs at the time the
data were collected. 55% of this group was Chinese speaking and most of
these children entered kindergarten with little or no English. Chinese was
their home language and the language used in the community. Data
collected in this study include observations of parents working with
children in class, interviews with parents about their beliefs about school
literacy practices, interviews with the class teacher about her view on
building home and school partnerships. In this paper we draw on a case
study of a parent, Mary, and explore factors that have contributed to her
negotiation of understandings of school literacy practices. This case study
was chosen because of Mary's unique experience in learning her role as a
facilitator as she was engaged in her three children's literacy learning. The
case study highlights significant events which have helped Mary grow in
her role as a learning partner with each of her three children. The analysis
shows that Mary's negotiation of a school-literate identity allowed her
access to school literacy practices and thereby participation in her
children's school literacy learning. This case study provides useful
information on how parents of ESL children may be introduced into or
excluded from school literacy practices.

2. Becoming literate – a sociocultural perspective
This paper views literacy as social practice that is shaped by sociocultural
settings in which literacy is used (Freebody 1992; Freebody and Luke
1990). This view portrays literacy as socially, educationally, economically
and politically significant for an individual's learning success and life
chances. As social practice, literacy is situated in the day-to-day lives of
people and

228 Chapter Thirteen

• takes various forms and serves various functions in sociocultural
contexts, such as recreation, information, organisation, relating to
others and getting on with the practicalities of life
• emerges and is shaped by children's home and community
contexts, which provide much input to this process – learning [to
be literate] is not the sole province of educational settings
• is shaped by family circumstances and sociocultural contexts …
• involves multiple modes and media in and out of books and
across various [information], communication and entertainment
technologies.' (Harris 2007, 154).

A sociocultural view of literacy acknowledges diverse literacy practices
that arise in diverse settings. Therefore, becoming literate is seen to be a
process that neither begins nor ends in the early school years. As children
find themselves in different settings in their school and out-of-school lives,
they find new literacy demands and different ways of doing literacy. Jones
Diaz and Harvey (2007, 212) have argued for the

need to extend beyond narrow literacy approaches that catalogue
literacy actions and dispositions into singular and linear developmental
phases. Models of languages learning and literacies which follow a
normative, English-only, Western developmental pathway, fail to
recognise the multiple language and knowledge systems of
multilingual and multicultural communities.

Sociocultural studies of literacy have documented literacy across diverse
sociocultural settings (e.g. Cassity and Harris 2000; Heath 1983; Kennedy-
Williams 2004). This research has been significant for identifying the
various forms and functions that literacy takes across different social,
cultural and linguistic settings; and the various literacy identities and
practices that evolve in these diverse contexts. This body of work has been
equally important for challenging literacy stereotypes such as the notion
that all children are read to, that literacy only involves print-based written
language, or that story reading is the only means by which children learn
to be literate before schooling. Such findings have important implications
for how educators view relationships between home and school literacy
experiences.
Clearly, then, teachers need to acknowledge and build upon children's
literacy experiences in order to maximise children's literacy success at
school (Kennedy and Surman 2007; McNaughton 2002; Thomson 2000).
In making this argument, a sociocultural perspective draws on the notion

Learning to Become School-Literate Parents of ESL Children 229

of cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990) – that is, the knowledge
an individual has that helps them succeed in a particular setting. Related to
literacy, teachers need to recognise the cultural capital children bring to
school with respect to literacy; and build on these funds of knowledge
(Moll and Gonzalez 1994) about literacy to enable them to succeed at
school.
In so doing, building home-school relationships is critical. Research
has shown that parents play a key role in framing the home-school
relationship (Cassity and Harris 2000). Their unique understanding of their
children and beliefs about literacy practices have a significant influence on
children's literacy learning (Kim and Kwon 2002).
Further, individuals' past literacy experiences shape their views of what
it means to be literate – diverse sociocultural settings give rise to diverse
views (Graue et al. 2001). For example, parents who were brought up in
literacy practices that focus on mechanics and rote learning may interpret
English literacy as isolated skills that are reinforced by drill and practice
(Carson 1992). The ideas and practices these parents may have brought
with them therefore tend to affect their interpretations of school literacy
practices and their provision of the sort of literacy environment children
are exposed to in the home.
Finding congruence and recognising difference are significant to
children's participation in school literacy practices (McCarthey 2000).
Parents/caregivers and teachers need to work together and negotiate their
respective literacy experiences and perspectives, so that they can learn
from one another to the benefit of the child (McNaughton 2002). Such
negotiation involves authentic dialogue that develops shared
understanding; encourages exchange of ideas; provides give and take
between all participants; assists active and reflective participation; and
acknowledges and validates participants' contributions (Louden et al.
2005). Through this kind of dialogue, a basis is provided for validating
and incorporating children's out-of-school literacy identities and practices
in class literacy programs (Kennedy and Surman 2007).
Such negotiation also acknowledges that, when children and by
association their parents enter school, they move into a new community of
practices. For ESL children and parents, this community may be
unfamiliar territory. Entry requires negotiation of relationships as well as
literacy practices and dispositions. As such, this negotiation entails
identity work. Ideally, this work is reciprocal, invoking principles of
"empowerment and validation of children's languages, cultures and
literacies central to children's formation of identities as members

230 Chapter Thirteen

simultaneously of several communities" (Jones Diaz and Harvey 2007,
212).
However, there is little information on how parents may be supported
and how the school-literate identities of parents and children are
negotiated in this complex process. Such knowledge may provide
suggestions for enhancing home-school relationships. Below, identity
theory provides a framework for understanding the complexities of
nurturing home-school relationships.

3. Identity, becoming and learning
Identity is a concept drawn on cross-disciplinary scholarship and has
become an emerging area of interest in studies of language (Joseph 2004),
language learning (Norton 1997; Pavlenko and Lantolf 2000), academic
literacies (e.g. Ivanic 1998; Ivanic and Camps 2001; Chen 2001) and
recently teacher professional development (e.g. Varghese et al. 2005; Tsui
2007). The central premise underlying these studies is that our
understanding of language, learning and teaching cannot be derived
without a consideration of how identity is constructed. In a similar vein,
we argue that the decisions ESL parents make about what types of
activities to provide at home to promote literacy development are mediated
by their understanding of school literacy demands and practice.
From a social perspective, the term identity concerns our
identifications within a community. It suggests memberships and social
categories to which we belong. At issue in the social conception of identity
is the discursive formation of identity. According to Bernstein (1996), our
identities are constituted in and shaped by discourse and social practices.
As such, they allow and constrain our participation in a community.
Learning to speak, write and teach means coming to understand new
practices in a specific community. While identities are the key means
through which we respond to new situations, they also suggest privileges
and disempowerment, and inclusion and exclusion (Ball and Freedman
2004). The social working of identity enables us to critically examine who
is privileged and who is disempowered, and who is included or who is not
included in the discourses about home literacy environments. As argued
earlier, discourses about parental involvement are ideologically charged in
that they imply knowledge of what should be read/written, and what
literacy events are supposed to provide a meaning-rich environment for
literacy development. For ESL parents who bring with them a different set

Learning to Become School-Literate Parents of ESL Children 231

of cultural resources, tuning into what constitutes school literacy identities
is critical to their learning to become a school-literate parent.
Our concept of identity moves away from a structurally deterministic
view to a more situated and dynamic view of identity formation drawing
on a Bakhtinian social historical perspective of identity (Bakhtin 1981;
Holland et al. 2001). While acknowledging that we derive our identities
from social practices, this perspective also gives prominence to human
agency as one of the mediating factors in shaping our identities. For
Bakthin (1981, 341), the "ideological becoming" of individuals is marked
by a process of assimilating the ideological points of others through the
agent's active engagement. We argue that the process of reconfiguring
previous cultural capital and reconstructing a new identity is equally
important to ESL parents becoming school-literate parents. This dialogic
view of identity offers a dynamic view of the parents' school-literate
identities, seeing them not as fixed and stable, but changing as they learn
their role as facilitator for their children's literacy learning.
The relationship between the social and the individual is further
foregrounded by Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998). Their
seminal work on situated learning and community of practice provides us
with a framework for identifying sources that may lead to the shift and
negotiation of parents' school-literate identities. In this work, learning is
likened to a process of identification. To become a member of a
community, one needs to have access to community practices and be
actively engaged in community activities. Central to this process of
identity formation is negotiation of meanings, which is characterised as
one's effort to come to understand, modify and appropriate community
practices required for competent participation.
Together, access, negotiation and participation are considered three
powerful sources underlying the change and growth of a learner (Wenger
1998). This conception of identity formation provides a useful framework
for capturing issues and processes that learners may face when they come
to learn new practices. This paper argues that these issues and processes
have equally critical importance for parents of ESL children, who may
face the same transition process with their children and need to be engaged
in a process of discovering appropriate ways to participate competently in
supporting children's literacy learning. The following section describes the
identification process of a non-English speaking background parent, Mary,
as she learned her role in supporting the literacy learning of her children.

232 Chapter Thirteen

4. Becoming a school-literate parent
This case study draws on interviews with Mary, a parent of an ESL child,
Cathy, in a kindergarten class in a southern Sydney primary school. Mary
was a stay-at-home mum and her husband ran a Chinese restaurant and
worked long hours. She has three daughters, all of whom attended the
same primary school. Cathy is the youngest of the three children. She was
five years old and in the last term of her kindergarten at the time of the
data collection. Through classroom observations, and interviews with
Cathy and her class teacher, she was identified as a fluent reader who
demonstrated superior emergent literacy knowledge. The family speaks
Cantonese at home and all three children were sent to a community
language school to learn Mandarin on Saturdays. While it would be
interesting to see how Mary learned to support her children's biliteracy
development, it is an issue for future research as it goes beyond the scope
of this paper. The interviews with Mary were conducted in Mandarin and
translated into English. In the following section, we explore the factors
that contributed to Mary's becoming a school-literate parent.

4.1. Negotiation of meanings: what it means to be literate

As discussed earlier, one's engagement in making sense of community
practices is fundamental to identity formation. Reconstructing
understanding of what it means to be literate was central to Mary's
formation of a school-literate parent identity. When talking about her
involvement in her first child's literacy learning, Mary identified herself as
a parent struggling with her child's school literacy practices and
expectations. Mary's sense of struggle was disempowering as she felt
incapable of providing support for her eldest daughter:

It was hard to provide any parental input to your first child's literacy
learning as an immigrant. It is extremely difficult. You don't know
where to start and how you can help (Interview 1 with Mary).

Mary responded to the challenge of supporting her first child's literacy
learning in a different language by resorting to her past beliefs about
literacy practices developed through her previous participation in Chinese-
mediated literacy events. Our cultural identities are grounded in the
specific worlds of which we are a part (Holland et al. 2001) – Mary's
beliefs about literacy learning were based on her own experiences as a

Learning to Become School-Literate Parents of ESL Children 233

beginning reader in Chinese and learner of English. Mary told us in an
informal conversation that she had learned English through the traditional
grammar translation method in her secondary and university studies in
China. Her interpretation of what it means to be literate was reminiscent of
this experience. She interpreted literacy as the ability to read and write
alphabetic letters, simple sentences and paragraphs. This belief diverged
from the goal of reading for meaning, a literacy practice espoused by
Australian schools. Not knowing school literacy demands and
expectations, Mary felt excluded from participating in her eldest
daughter's literacy learning:

I have three children. When my eldest daughter went to kindergarten, I
did not know how I could support her school work … I taught my
eldest daughter the basic numerical numbers such as one, two, three,
… I thought children at kindergarten were expected to learn how to
read and write the simple alphabetic letters such as a, b, c. Once she
(the eldest daughter) could read some sentences and worked out simple
multiplication, and that's it. … I didn't know what was expected at
kinder and ignored a lot of things. It was not till the third term that we
realised my daughter was not coping with school very well. I began to
help her with her schoolwork. I was not brought up here. I didn't know
what was expected (of literacy learning). They adopt different teaching
methods and I wanted to help (her), but didn't know how (Interview 1
with Mary).

Access to literacy practices is an important part of ESL parents' becoming
school-literate parents. Mary had limited exposure to literacy practices that
many English speaking parents have had from childhood: she was a stay-
at-home mum; she did not attend school to further improve her English in
Australia; and there was no perceived need to learn the language as the
community was densely populated with Cantonese and Mandarin speaking
Chinese.
It was through engaging in her first child's schoolwork that Mary
gained access to English literacy practices. Bringing schoolwork home
provided her with a better understanding of what was expected at school
and allowed her to develop the competence required for participating in
her children's literacy learning. When talking about her experience with
her second child, she positioned herself as a school-literate parent with
more knowledge: "It was when my second child entered kindergarten that
I realised there were a lot of things that parents could do to support a
child" (Interview 1 with Mary).

234 Chapter Thirteen

Mary's knowledge of school literacy practices and her experience with
her first child helped reshape her beliefs about school literacy learning. For
Mary, reading was no longer mere completion of homework assignments
and requirements established by teachers, which were seen as the main
literacy activities that were practiced in home and school in China (Carson
1992). Neither was her role restricted to helping with her children's
homework. She took an active role, providing a meaningful environment
for her children's literacy learning. Storytelling in English, an important
literacy activity children encounter in school, gained its place as a literacy
event in Mary's home:

When we were in China or Hong Kong, our parents would follow us
around and help with our homework. I wanted to develop my children's
independence … Here in Australia, they expect their children to be
independent and to be creative. … I am much more experienced but I
felt I owed much to my eldest daughter because I failed to give her
what a parent could at the early stage of her schooling… When my
second daughter went to school, we realised the importance of reading
stories to children. That is, I should read one bedtime story to her every
day. I found that children's imaginative ability could be developed
through listening to stories. Gradually she can do "talking news" or
write journals on weekends. In addition, I found bedtime is a prime
time for memorising things. Children remember things better at
bedtime. While I was reading the story, she (her second daughter) kept
asking me how such and such happened … I feel I am much more
experienced now in supporting Cathy's literacy development
(Interview 1 with Mary).

When talking about helping her third child Cathy, Mary positioned herself
as a more confident and competent mother, who developed an intimate
knowledge of what she could do to help her children's literacy learning. It
became apparent that access, participation and negotiation were three
powerful sources of this change in Mary's identities as a school-literate
parent. By participating in her children's literacy activities, she discovered
school-appropriate ways of supporting them. Mary's engagement in
negotiation of meanings was evident in her willingness to redefine her
previous beliefs about literacy practices and form new understandings
such as functions and social uses of literacy and text genres. Observing
literacy events in class gave Mary access to how texts were used for
various purposes in the socially important literacy events such as writing a

Learning to Become School-Literate Parents of ESL Children 235

note and a request letter (as did her participation in the volunteer reading
program, as will be seen later):

We have been lucky to have Mrs Price as the class teacher (for Cathy).
She tries her best to teach children; this is very important. There are a
few classes (6) in kindergarten. Most of them haven't been taught letter
writing yet. She (Mrs Price) has already taught the class three types of
letters. My child (Cathy) would copy the format of the letter on a piece
of paper for fear that she might forget it. So I knew she had been taught
how to write a letter. For example, once a mother in the volunteer
program, her husband was seriously ill, Mrs Price told the kids "XX
can't be here to help us today. We miss her very much." She showed
the class the letter format and my daughter wrote something like this
"Dear Mrs XX, I miss you very much. How is your husband? Is he
getting better?" and "Thank you for helping us with", ah "home
reading, and painting, and cooking", something like this. She also
wrote "I hope you can come to help us soon" ... (Interview 2 with
Mary)

Learning to be a school-literate parent saw Mary confront her recent and
past experiences and her previous and emerging beliefs via her access to
and participation in literacy activities. In Wenger's (1998) theory,
engagement in negotiation of meanings is manifested in one's effort to
produce and appropriate new meanings and practices. With this new
identity, Mary now used her understandings and beliefs to reassess what
she and other Chinese parents held to be true about literacy learning.
Where previously she had resorted to her daughter's homework for
clarifying expectations of school literacy and considered helping with
homework assignments as the only way to support children's learning,
Mary now engaged her children in a range of literacy events to support
their learning. Through this engagement, she came to understand that
children can learn literacy through everyday events:

Some Chinese parents thought children have not got much homework
to do at home. There was only one book (home reading) to read each
day. In fact they (teachers) don't want to give them (children) much
homework. They want them to internalise knowledge in class and be
able to use it. Homework puts pressure on kids. It is important that
children can learn and internalise things in class. Children can also
learn from daily experiences. … For example, we go to the beach: we
tell children about fish in the sea; we go to the zoo: we tell them about

236 Chapter Thirteen

the "mammal" family; tell them about the bill of the "platypus"; tell
them about "dinosaurs". We go to the library and find books and show
children the pictures (of those animals). They (children) don't have to
remember everything. Later on when a similar topic was touched on in
class, she (Cathy) would say, "I know this, I know this". So home
literacy experience helped her to form the concepts (Interview 2 with
Mary).

Mary's shift of identity was also evident in her re-evaluation of her
relationship with her children. Mary was educated in classrooms where
teachers were seen as authority figures that should be respected and not
challenged. Based on her observations in her children's classrooms, Mary
was able to form a new learning partnership with her children that saw re-
articulation of social relations:

In this way she (Mrs Price) motivated the children to write. Sometimes
a child may not know how to spell a word. She would say to them "It is
OK. Come and write the word first and I will help you if you get it
wrong." If the child ever made a mistake, the teacher never said "you
are wrong"; instead she said to the kids "Good try, good girl". She
always encourages the students to do things, motivates them to do
things. The whole class are not afraid of making mistakes. They
always put their hands up and wanted to come to the front and have a
go (Interview 2 with Mary).

Mary took advantage of reading events that focused on meaning making
and that went beyond those she was trained in when learning Chinese such
as correct word identification and isolated word sound correspondence.
She replicated literacy events that she observed in class and engaged her
children in a range of activities that were integrated into the fabric of their
daily lives. Her home literacy activities included weekend trips, story
reading and reading labels in the grocery store. These activities provided
opportunities for her children to explore literacy concepts through their
construction of meaning:

We get the girls engaged in all sorts of activities on weekends: we take
them shopping; we take them to see new things. Hopefully what they
have learned will be imprinted in their memory …
While shopping, I'd ask the children to look at prices, price tags. They
then understand why there is a dot after "one dollar". … I also get the
girls to look at the names of vegetables and fruits. We don't know

Learning to Become School-Literate Parents of ESL Children 237

much about the names of the vegetables here. I will ask them to teach
me. For example, here in Australia they call "coriander" differently.
What do they call it? "Parsley"? We've got a different variety of
vegetables, Chinese lettuce for example is different from the Aussie
one. I ask them to identify differences and tell me what they have
observed.
… We can't help them (the girls) much with science concepts because
we don't have space for them to grow flowers or plants. But they can
read about them from books. On weekends, you can also take them to
"farms" and to nature. They can't really experience all the things
personally, like the process of how worms turn into butterflies. But you
should buy books and they could read to discover the process
themselves (Interview 2 with Mary).

Becoming a school-literate parent is complex for parents of ESL children
as it requires them to question and redefine their previous beliefs about
literacy practices and formulate new understandings of English literacy
practices through their participation in literacy activities their children
encounter at school. The following section identifies three sources that
contributed to Mary's reformulation of a strong school-literate parent
identity.

4.2. Sources of identification

Access, participation and negotiation provide three sources of
identification. Initially Mary's access to literacy practices was mediated
through the schoolwork brought home by her older children. Mary's own
engagement in school literacy activities such as monthly meetings for ESL
parents and her participation in a volunteer reading program assisted new
understanding of the demands and expectations of literacy learning at
school, and enabled her to find appropriate ways of supporting her
children.
Mary affirmed that the monthly meetings held by the school for
Chinese ESL parents allowed her to understand school literacy practices.
The information she gained about these practices enhanced her
involvement in her children's literacy learning. She recollected that the
assistance of a bilingual support officer at the meetings facilitated the
communication between parents and school.
Mary also attributed her growing confidence to her involvement in a
school volunteer reading program designed for parents to help the class

238 Chapter Thirteen

teacher with in-class reading groups. As discussed earlier, Mary did not
have access to literacy practices that many English speaking parents were
exposed to since their childhood. Observing literacy lessons and activities
in the classroom allowed her to gain insights into school beliefs and how
they are translated into classroom practices. The insights and strategies she
gained and developed provided her with tools/resources for supporting her
children:

The class teacher would ask the students what's on top of a banana and
then get them to draw three circles. Sometimes she asked them to draw
wings on the right and left sides of an airplane and a triangle in front of
a car door. The teacher said that these (activities) were used to develop
children's general abilities. Students need to learn to follow the
instructions and complete the tasks by themselves. Completing these
tasks requires children's concentration, observation and action. While
students were doing their tasks, the teacher would walk around and see
how they were going with their tasks and mark their work when they
had finished. I think this is a holistic assessment as the tasks assess
children's ability, their attention and memory. … This is something
children can't learn in the schools in Hong Kong or Mainland China. I
think cognitive development is very important. Children's cognitive
development can be fostered by doing these tasks (Interview 2 with
Mary).

Parental involvement can be enacted in different ways according to
parents' personal experiences and motivations. Mary's willingness to find
out how she could participate in children's literacy learning constituted a
strong inner resource. Throughout the interview Mary identified herself as
an active learner: willing to learn and find appropriate ways to support her
children's literacy learning. Mary's observations of the class teacher taught
her some strategies for capitalising on children's knowledge as a powerful
way of connecting home and school and increasing their motivation to
read:

I wanted my children to tell me what they have learned in school. But
children cannot be forced to do things they don't want to. You have to
motivate them. I would say to my children "Mummy would like to
learn what you've learned in school, can you teach me?" Children are
often eager to show off their skills in front of adults. Once you ask the
question, they will tell you everything they have done in school. I
found this strategy very useful (Interview 2 with Mary).

Learning to Become School-Literate Parents of ESL Children 239

Exploring the strategies, beliefs and insights underlying school literacy
practices was for Mary a collective growth process through which both her
children's and her own language developed. Mary's children were a
valuable resource for facilitating her own language learning:

My English improves with my daughters' "spelling tests" and "reading
study". My eldest daughter's got to learn twenty new words for one
unit and the second daughter another twenty words. I've learned a lot
of words in economics, in industry … They taught me pronunciation as
well (Interview 2 with Mary).

Mary's dual identities as a parent of ESL children and learner of the
English language are an important issue in becoming a school-literate
parent. Mary revealed that as her children reach higher grades, her role as
facilitator is challenged because of her lack of language competence,
particularly in pronunciation. It seems then that to be sufficiently
proficient to be a school-literate parent is critical to her involvement in her
children's literacy learning. Mary is sure to go through a process of re-
identification as she confronts new challenges posed by new demands of
her children's literacy learning:

When my eldest daughter entered Year 1, she started to correct my
pronunciation. When she was in Year 2, she would say to me "Mum,
you got it wrong. It is not pronounced like that." I would say, "Oh, I
see, let's learn from each other." I still keep our daily story reading. I
don't read them much now, only a chapter, about six pages (Interview 1
with Mary).

While Mary benefited from participating in the class volunteer reading
program, there did not appear to be much evidence of the school tuning
into children's home literacy practices. This will be an important part in
building home and school partnerships as not all parents can participate in
the reading program and have the opportunity to learn about literacy
practices through participation in a volunteer reading program.

5. Conclusion
Identity theories offer a theoretical framework to understand what it means
to become a school-literate parent and how identities can be constructed

240 Chapter Thirteen

from the tensions between a parent's prior beliefs and experiences and
those in a different context such as literacy practices of English language
at school. For ESL parents, becoming a school-literate parent in this sense
means renegotiating a new identity in a new and different context (school).
This case study, using a socio-cultural perspective of identity, explored
how a parent of an ESL child came to develop a school-literate identity
and what factors played a significant role in this development.
A critical component of this parent's involvement was her access to
school literacy practices. This access was made possible through the
parent's participation in school meetings, close interactions with the class
teacher, and most importantly, participation in the volunteer reading
program and observations of the class teacher in action. These forms of
"peripheral participation" (Lave and Wenger 1991) helped reshape Mary's
beliefs about literacy learning and offered her some strategies she could
use to extend the learning of her children.
Given the importance of fostering home/school partnerships, the case
study also illustrates how communication between teachers and parents
can provide mutual access to the cultural practices of home and school.
Language, as a mediational tool, is critical in connecting home and school.
It is also clear from this study that bilingual support should be put in place
to build the home-school link.
A further implication arising from this study concerns careful
examination of processes of access, participation and negotiation in terms
of reciprocity. To what extent are these processes reciprocal between
parents and schools? While identity theory has provided us with tools for
exploring these processes, what are these processes like from a teacher's
point of view?
Considering the issues of becoming a school-literate parent compels us
to ask questions about what kinds of learning are required and what kinds
of support need to be provided to facilitate the parent's negotiation of
identities. In particular, we need to consider carefully what it is that we are
asking parents of ESL children to do.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHILDREN'S EXPERIENCES OF MULTIPLE
SCRIPT LITERACY
MICHELE DE COURCY & HANA YUE

1. Aims and Background
Two key principles in bilingual education are that we learn to read only
once and that literacy skills acquired in the first language can be
transferred to English. While these principles are widely accepted (see, for
example, Gerbault 1997), little is known about how this transfer occurs.
Using classroom observation, individual and group interviews, and
collections of written work, this paper aims to illuminate the issue of
transfer by examining ESL children's development of literacy in their two
languages, some of whom are in programs which teach school content
through English and a language other than English. The study is unusual
because most research on this issue to date has been either in the context
of multicultural classrooms in the UK, where children's cultures but not
languages are supported explicitly (e.g. Datta 2000, Kenner 2004), or else
in Spanish-English bilingual contexts in the USA (Angelova,
Gunarwardena and Volk 2006; Lindholm-Leary 2001).
The dominant discourse around language in Australian and US early
primary education settings in recent years has been that of "literacy", and
literacy in English (Lo Bianco 1998; Wiley 2005). However, in Australian
classrooms at present there are large numbers of children who are
acquiring oral competence and literacy in English while maintaining their
home language. These children have been identified as needing special
initiatives to bring their literacy levels up to an adequate level (Masters
and Forster 1997).
There is a large amount of research evidence (see below) that first
language competence aids the acquisition of English as a second language,
rather than interfering with it, but not much evidence of why or how.
Additionally, little research has been conducted into the kinds of bilingual
education settings dealt with in this paper.
The field of bilingual education has many paradoxes and
counterintuitive notions. For example, the principle of developmental

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 245

interdependence (Cummins 1978, 2000) holds that a child's achievement
in a second language is associated with his or her level of competence in
the first language. Thus, if children are to achieve highly in ESL, they
need to maintain or improve their competence in their first language while
learning English. There is a large amount of strong research evidence for
this principle, and the key studies are summarized in Cummins (2000,
182-192).
However, even today, in spite of the strong research support for
language interdependence, in Australia as in the United States (for
example, Hamers and Blanc 2000, 86), one hears of "teachers who counsel
immigrant parents to abandon their mother tongue in favour of" English,
in the mistaken belief this will help the children to acquire English, when
the research evidence clearly points to the importance of maintaining
proficiency in the home language (Bialystock 1987; Cummins 2000; de
Courcy 2006, 2007; Ricciardelli 1992; Souto-Manning 2006).
This paper describes the achievement and experiences of children in
three schools in Victoria, Australia, who receive part of their school
curriculum in their first language (L1), and part in their second language,
English. Even though, in most cases, these programs have been set up to
provide additive bilingualism to majority language children, that is, to
enable English speaking children to acquire a second language, studies of
these programs have revealed a number of first language speakers
participating in them (e.g. de Courcy, Burston and Warren 2002).
Sometimes these children are seen by teachers or administrators as a
hindrance to the effective operation of the programs, but they are precisely
the children whose language learning we were interested in investigating.
The question explored in this paper is:
What is the interaction between children's literacy in their first
language and literacy in English in school settings where both languages
are an integral part of the school curriculum?
The specific issue to be investigated in this paper is: What is it that
enables children to transfer their knowledge of literacy in one language to
the other?

2. Background Literature
There are a number of key issues with regard to the development of
bilingual literacy. Firstly, a particularly important role has been found for
literacy in the first language, even when the second language "does not
share the same writing features, grammar, graphic conventions or even the

246 Chapter Fourteen

same type of writing conventions" with the first (Arefi 1997, iii). Concepts
of print, directionality of script, sound-grapheme correspondence (if
applicable), and strategies for getting meaning from print - using semantic,
grapho-phonic and syntactic cueing systems - once learnt in one language
can be transferred to the other (Cummins and Swain 1989)
Transfer of literacy skills can be positive, as in Arefi's (1997) study, or
negative, as in Hayes-Harb's (2006) study, where students transferred their
habit, acquired in Arabic, of focusing on the consonants to work out the
meaning of a word, to English, where the vowels are more important. This
highlights the point, signaled by Cummins (2000, 194) that " 'Automatic'
transfer of academic skills across languages will not happen unless
students are given opportunities to read and write extensively in English in
addition to the minority language" and that formal instruction in the
features of both languages is necessary to aid transfer. He further notes
(2000, 184) that where the two languages are quite distant, it may be more
underlying strategies to do with literacy (see above) that are transferred,
rather than knowledge of surface features.
A second key idea is that there are two "thresholds" that bilingual
children need to cross in their language development (Cummins 2000;
Skutnabb-Kangas 1979). To cross the first threshold, children need to have
developed age-appropriate competence in one of their languages, and to
cross the second, children need to have developed age appropriate
competence in both their languages. If children can cross the first
"threshold" they will avoid any possible negative effects of bilingualism.
Then, if they manage to cross the second threshold, they will be able to
experience the benefits of bilingualism - greater cognitive flexibility,
higher metalinguistic awareness, greater communicative sensitivity etc.
(See Baker 2001, 135-160; Cummins 2000, 173-200).
Research by Ricciardelli (1992) with Italian-English bilingual children
and English monolingual children highlighted the benefits of maintaining
and developing bilingualism. Those who had age-appropriate ability in
both languages performed better in English than the monolingual children.
In addition, other research by Cummins (1984) indicates that it is more
than just oral or everyday competence that is needed to pass the second
threshold, but a more "school like" literacy-based, context-independent
competence. He has described these two types of competence as BICS
(Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills) and CALP (Cognitive
Academic Language Proficiency).
All of the above studies note that knowledge of one language transfers
to another, and that ability in a child's two languages is interdependent.
What is still lacking is knowledge of how this happens.

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 247

The best-known research on this issue to date has been either in the
context of multicultural classrooms, where children's cultures but not
languages are supported explicitly (e.g. Toohey 2000), or else in Spanish-
English bilingual contexts (Lindholm-Leary 2001; Angelova,
Gunarwardena and Volk 2006). Research in England (Datta 2000; Kenner
2004; Wallace 2005) has mainly explored children's literacy experiences
in English and the languages of the Indian sub-continent, which are
important immigrant languages in the UK context, but not so significant in
Australia. These children were studied in multilingual classrooms, where
the teaching is in English, and where children's languages are respected,
but not used for instruction. Other research from England and the US (Hu
and Commeyras 2008; Li Wei 1993) has explored literacy in Chinese and
English with children involved in community language schools or
individual tuition, outside of regular school hours. All found that positive
experiences with the home language correlated with positive experiences
of acquisition of literacy in English.
The research dealing with ESL children in bilingual immersion
programs in Australia is very sparse (de Courcy, Warren and Burston
2002). Bilingual immersion programs are not common here, and the
dominant mode of instructing ESL children in Australia is via ESL
programs in language centres, or else via education in mainstream classes
with or without ESL support.

3. Approach and Methodology
In the program of research reported on in this paper we investigated
children's acquisition of literacy in their first and second languages,
focussing on children in Year 3 in two Victorian bilingual schools and one
Saturday school. In a bilingual school, part of the Victorian curriculum is
delivered via English, and part via a Language Other Than English
(LOTE). The proportion of time spent in the two languages varies, but is
usually around 60% in English. Saturday schools are a separate program,
outside regular school hours, for the support of a heritage language.
The three studies which supplied the data for this paper are part of a
program of research led by the first author. All investigated similar
questions, but in different settings, and with slightly different
methodologies. In order to link together the three different studies, to
explore the questions posed in this paper, the framework of Horberger's
continua of biliteracy was applied to the data. This framework will be
explained in more detail accompanying the presentation of results.

248 Chapter Fourteen

The first study whose data is used for this paper is that of Furusawa
(2007), who investigated the attitudes of children in Year 7 who had
completed their primary school education at a school which runs an
English-Japanese bilingual program. This program is designed to teach
Japanese to the English speaking majority, and Furusawa explored
students' bilingual education experiences. She conducted semi-structured
interviews with four children for her study, two of whom were from a
Japanese background. Only the data from these two children has been
included in this paper.
The second study in the program, by Yue (2008), studied the reading
and writing strategies in Korean and in English of four Year 3 children
who were being educated in their first language, Korean, in Saturday
school. She conducted running records of the children reading aloud in
Korean and in English, and think aloud protocols of the children writing in
both their languages. For the writing task, Yue used the wordless picture
story book The Present as a stimulus for the children's writing.
The third study used was de Courcy's (2006) study of the interaction
between literacy in Hebrew and literacy in English of four Year 3 children
in a Hebrew-English bilingual program. The children were observed
working in their Hebrew and in their English classes, with the researcher
discussing their work with them. Later, interviews were conducted with
the Hebrew and the English teacher, about their reading and writing
behaviours in their two languages.
The children from whom the data come are listed in the table found in
the Appendix.. Note that all names used are pseudonyms.

3. The continua of biliteracy

Hornberger (1989) developed the continua of biliteracy as a framework
that could be used to investigate biliteracy. She notes the importance of
"both ends of the continuum and all points in between" (Hornberger and
Skilton-Sylvester 2000, 98). Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester state that
"the advantage of the model is that it allows us to focus for pedagogical,
analytical, activist or policy purposes on one or more selected continua
and their dimensions without ignoring the importance of the others."
(2000, 98)
Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester (2000) expanded on Hornberger's
original 1989 conception of the continua of biliteracy (contexts, media and
development of biliteracy), with the addition of the idea of the content of
biliteracy. Each of the continua is represented as a cube, with three

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 249

dimensions intersecting. Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester's (2000, 97)
figure, reproduced below as Figure 1, shows the four continua as nested:

Figure 1. Nested relationships among the continua of biliteracy

The results from the three studies will now be presented, using the
continua of biliteracy as the framework.

4. Results
In the presentation of the results, first, the relevant dimension of the
continua of biliteracy will be explained and defined. Then, the dimension
will be illustrated with examples from the data.

4.1. Contexts of biliteracy

For decades it has been argued that we cannot understand language in use,
or literacy, devoid of its social and political context (Graddol, Maybin and

250 Chapter Fourteen

Stierer 1994; Fairclough 1989; Freebody and Welch 1993). This is doubly
true in the case of biliteracy. Hornberger's (1989) diagram for contexts,
seen below in Figure 2, shows the intersecting dimensions. We will
examine each dimension in turn.

monolingual macro

oral literate

micro

bilingual

Figure 2. The continua of biliterate contexts

4.2. Micro – macro

Micro-micro involves looking at a particular feature – cohesion, rhythm, a
phoneme – in a piece of text or discourse. "Child using an L1-L2
dictionary to learn her L2 at the micro end" (Hornberger 1989, 277). This
can be seen with Emiko, one of the students from the Japanese study:

Emiko: "when I had homework, my mum and I used a dictionary and
translated the worksheet from English to Japanese at first and wrote the
answers in Japanese. Then we translated from Japanese to English. It
took so much time and energy. Sometimes I couldn't finish homework
and spent all night trying to finish it."

Micro-macro looks at patterns of language use in a speech event or
situation. The children in the Japanese study provided many examples of
micro-macro patterns of language use. They particularly commented on

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 251

how the small school set up particular patterns of friendship and language
use, as in these examples below:

Fizz: "BS is not the ideal school for studying English … as all the kids
with a Japanese background always stick together and don't have as
much chance to speak English."

Emiko: "due to the language barrier, my classmates couldn't help me
even when they were willing to." "at BS, there is a system called buddy
program and I was often asked to become a buddy for new students
just arrived from Japan. Once there was a year 2 student … who
climbed up the school fence and tried to escape from school. He was
scared of his classmates and teachers as he couldn't understand what
they were saying."

Fizz: "because the school is small, all the teachers, parents and students
know each other. The school was a homelike atmosphere." "but
sometimes felt it was a bit boring – the school is too small and I knew
everybody too well."

Emiko: "BS is a very small school and I had to see my friends even
when I didn't want to … sometimes I wanted to be alone or didn't want
to talk to anyone … There was no chance to have my own time and
space in BS. Moreover, I had to hang around with the same people all
the time. I felt there was no choice about friends."

Emiko: "Mum told me that after I got used to English, I could go to
another school where Japanese wasn't taught, as Japanese classes at BS
were too easy for me. Actually, when my mum asked me if I wanted to
transfer to another school, I said 'no' as I had got used to studying there
and I had good friends at BS."

Macro-micro examines a feature of language in the context of a society. It
is important in a bilingual program to allow the students to realize that the
language they are studying is not just a school language, but one that is
used in the wider community and that is associated with cultural practices.
Fizz spoke about this in his interview:

Fizz: "the school sometimes invited people from outside to introduce
Japanese culture" "Although I was not that interested in Japanese
language, I am very interested in Japanese culture, events, customs and

252 Chapter Fourteen

Japanese things. I eat Japanese food at home almost every day and I go
to Japan every year to visit my grandparents."

Macro-macro is about patterns of language use across societies or
nations. Hardly any examples of this dimension were found in the data –
possibly as most of the students did not have the experience of seeing how
different people who speak their languages use those languages in the
country of origin. Fizz provided one small example of this awareness of
how things can be 'normal' in the country of origin:

Fizz: school trip to Japan. "I enjoyed discovering how my friends and
teachers were surprised by things that are not special for me" eg
vending machines, warm toilet seat, "etiquette music"

4.3. Oral - literate

Literacy practices are embedded in oral uses – are features of spoken
language found in the children's written work? Here we also examine
"contexts in which speakers choose between written and oral media."
(Hornberger 1989, 279) The first example comes from Emiko, who
showed an awareness of the links between oral and written uses of the
language, in particular, of how much time she needed to put into the
writing and design stage in order to do an effective oral presentation:

Emiko: "it's more relaxed in my present school. In BS we had
presentations, reports, computer and craft work in one topic and
everyone had to do all the four tasks. But in my present school, we can
select, for example, making a poster of Power Point presentation and
do it in more detail which allows me to spend more time on the one
task."

Some of these features of oral language in written work will also be
examined below in the discussion of writing strategies.

4.4. Monolingual - bilingual

The continuum assumes that competence is variable within individuals,
across individuals and across speech communities.

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 253

Code switching behaviour. In the Hebrew study, very little evidence of
code mixing of Hebrew and English was found in the classroom
observations, but the English teacher noticed that "they also use their own
language as a crutch on it. If they cannot think of a word in their writing,
just in, pops into their head their own language, so they will use that
word."
Yue found in the Korean study that although Korean and English have
different writing systems, there was no confusion of languages for the
three children. For instance, none of them mixed the two when reading and
writing in Korean or English. The children did not show the errors that
might be expected due to the different Korean word order (S-O-V)
compared with English word order (S-V-O). The strategy of spelling
phonetically worked positively for English writing, as Korean is also very
phonetic. Indeed, the children knew that different conventional ways of
writing Korean and English exist and such language specific knowledge
did not confuse them. This finding is reinforced by the interviews in that
all children said Korean and English do not make them confused when
reading and writing.

Specialization of functions for languages and varieties at the macro
level. Emiko found "it was really tiring when I had to switch from English
to Japanese and Japanese to English quite often…. it's good I use only
English in secondary school and only Japanese at home. I can stay in
English mode all the time at secondary school and don't feel tired of
switching between English and Japanese."
Fizz seems to have identified more with his Australian peers, in the
Japanese Immersion Language Learning Centre multi-age class. He also
had experience of going to school in Japan for one month and did not like
it – "as everybody sat at tables and all students studied the same things".

5. Development of biliteracy
Hornberger (1989, 286) states that "development occurs along all three
continua simultaneously and in relation with each other".

254 Chapter Fourteen

L1 production

oral written

reception

L2

Figure 3. The continua of biliterate development in the individual

5.1. Reception - production

"Receptive and productive development occurs along a continuum,
beginning at any point, and proceeding, cumulatively or in spurts, in either
direction." (Hornberger 1989, 281) Progress in comprehension may lead to
progress in production and vice versa. In the first two examples below,
Emiko describes how she needed to spend time just listening to the sounds
of English, before she could begin to produce English:

Emiko: "I came to Australia as my mother asked me to come with her
for three months … I knew only about 20 English words when we
arrived in Australia". "My mum heard from her Japanese friend that it
takes at least two years to become fluent in English and so she decided
to let me stay in Australia for at least two years."

Emiko: "On the first day at BS, the principal asked me some questions
in English. … Although I couldn't answer in complete sentence, she
understood what I said." "in the beginning, I couldn't understand all the
classes at all, except Japanese class. Many students stared at me and
said things. I felt they were saying things about me, but I couldn't
understand. There were some students who tried to communicate with
me in Japanese, but I couldn't understand them as their Japanese wasn't
fluent either."

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 255

Fizz, from the Japanese program, also was aware of the difference
between reception and production, but he concentrated on the written
mode and noted how he could comprehend more characters than he could
write, and that the syllabaries (Hiragana and Katakana), were easier to
understand than the Chinese-based characters (Kanji).

Fizz: "my understanding of Kanji was not good, although I can read
and write Hiragana and Katakana perfectly." . "My Kanji level is still
Japanese year 1 level. I think it would have been better to have one
program continue for a long period and if it was structured to ensure
we made progress." The Kanji learning program "only continued for a
couple of months and then resumed the next year." "my grandparents
sometimes send me Japanese books and cartoon books. I can't read the
books with a lot of Kanji but I read them if they are written with
Hiragana and Katakana. I also like reading English books."

Conversely, some of the bilingual children seemed to be able to produce
language without comprehension, as discussed below.
The English teacher in the Hebrew study said: "I think with Matthew
from his physical reading is fantastic. But he reads something he just
doesn't understand. He does not pay any attention to the meaning of his
reading. So often he would come to me, then I would read the activity to
him. I read instructions, read the text and he turned. 'Oh! I know what to
do.' He'd go off and do it. So he himself reading it, he was not taking any
meaning."
She went on to add: "Matthew's attitude is interesting. He would do
what he wants. He will spell the way he wants. He will use the grammar
that he wants. And it's a very peculiar situation. And it's difficult to move
Matthew that step further to show him that they are rules you need to use
in everyday life and also in literacy …" De Courcy noticed that when
reading aloud, he would have one attempt at pronouncing the word and
say "doesn't matter" if the hearer corrected him.
From the Hebrew study we also found that Miciah "goes very quickly
with reading. Listening to his reading is very difficult because of his
speech difficulties. He just zooms through". The teacher reminds him:
"You need to think of your audience, you know".
We also found the same attitude with Woo, in the Korean study. Woo
carried out the reading task well overall. Words in quotation marks were
orally performed as if he was acting out the story, and the other words
were spoken in a comfortable narrating tone and pitch. However, it was

256 Chapter Fourteen

not easy to draw upon Woo's desire and efforts to understand what he was
reading. Woo was the most word-centric reader among the three children.
He did not pay much attention to the meaning of the story that he was
reading, so he was encouraged by the researcher to think and talk about the
content of the story. When given a comprehension talk, he constantly said
"I don't know". During the interview talk, Woo interestingly remarked that
he prefers to read out words without making mistakes rather than
comprehending the story.

Reading out the words making mistakes…(That's more important for
you …umm why?)… 그래야지 선생님이 더 레벨을
올려주니까…(Then my teacher can put me on a higher level…).

The data from these fluent readers resonate with what Datta (2000) has
written about multilingual classes in the U.K., namely, that ESL children
are over-reliant on decoding words phonetically when reading. She
explains that "operating between two languages makes it easier to learn
abstract rules but in concentrating too hard on phonemic decoding they fail
to interact fluently between the local and global meaning of text." (Datta
2000, 29)

5.2. Oral language - written language

Reading. "Children learn to read and write through heavy reliance on
spoken language" (Hornberger 1989, 282). Oral miscues can show what is
happening, and we have several examples from Yue's data.
Min is very much meaning-focused in reading. Most of his errors in
Korean and English reading seem to result from skipping words that he
thinks are not important to comprehend the story. In all the examples
below, what the child reads aloud bears a closer resemblance to oral
language than to written.
In this first example, Min leaves out the word "had":

L2 Her aunt --- put her Sunday coat on
√ √ had √√ √ √√ √√ √

Here, Min leaves out the word "that", and still retains the meaning of the
sentence:

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 257

L2 It was eee-easy to see ---- Heidi's grandfather wanted him
√ √ √ easy √ √ that √ √ √ √
gone.

The same pattern of behaviour was seen in his reading in Korean, where
Min left out the shaded characters/words, but managed to maintain the
essential meaning of what he was reading:

L1 때 마치 하늘에 방금 내려온 선녀가 날씬하고 아름다운
√ √ 하늘에서 √ √ 선녀처럼 √ √
/Then, like a beautiful fairy who just came from heaven/

L1 기다란 속눈썹 밑에 간절한 홍-소망의 /SC 빛을 내고
√ √ 밑에서 √ 소망의 √ √
있었지 요.
/The fairy had a yearning desire underneath her long eyelashes/

Se Hee pointed to the words while reading both Korean and English texts
the entire time, and identified word boundaries correctly. Se Hee used
picture clues for reading texts in both languages. Se Hee was very much
visual-oriented and her reading processes were quite word-centred. Se Hee
seems to try to read words visually at first and then sometimes self-
corrects when the words do not sound correct or make sense. In the four
examples below, we see her self-correct (SC) and replace the incorrect
words with the correct ones.

L1 왜 회/ SC 를 안내는거지 ?
√ 화 √ √
/why doesn't he get angry?/

L1 도리어 화가 난 악마가 이반의 낫을 힘엇/ SC 잡았어요.
√ √ √ √ √ √ 힘껏 √
/The angry devil held Ivan's sickle really tightly/

L2 William wore it in the bark /SC yard whil he walked his bike.
√ √ √ √ √ back √ while √ √ √ √

258 Chapter Fourteen

L2 His mum and dad give him a gold bike hi/hilmil/SC
√ √ √ √ gave √ √ √ √ helmet

Se Hee had a low rate of self-correction in both languages.
Writing. Invented spellings show use of the phonetic system. The
incorrect spellings that the children produce show us examples of how the
students think their languages work. We found a tendency for children
whose first language is very phonetic to think that English works that way
too. For example, the English teacher in the Hebrew study noted that
"Hebrew is very phonetic as well. So those children tend to spell
predominantly phonetically for a longer period of time (I think) than the
children who are English nationals." Examples collected in class were:

Matthew: "basket ball match"
Miciah: "He sent it off so it ran back"

In the Korean study it was often found that Se Hee wrote spellings relying
on the phonetic sound. Korean is a phonetic language, and influence from
her first language was found in her English writing. She tended to spell
phonetically, with her spellings reflecting her pronunciation, for example
'finesd' (finished), and 'colurs' (colours). There were a few English words
that she could not spell properly. The researcher had to show her how to
spell but tried to let her spell first in her own way. After listening to 'check'
the sound, Se Hee attempted to spell based on the phonetic sound and got
it right.
Woo was the child who exploited this strategy the most. His writing
competency is not yet settled in either of his languages and there were
many words that he spelt incorrectly. Woo asked the researcher many
times for the correct spellings in his first language but he also tried out the
spellings relying on phonetic sounds. This strategy was used in both
compositions, and examples are shown below, with the incorrect spellings
in bold:

L1 거울을 바요[ 봐요]/ 털을 씰고[씯고]/ 누구한태 조요[줘요].

L2 looking at the mira[mirror] / His wosing[washing] hisself/ driing
[drying] his wool.

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 259

5.3. L1 - L2 transfer

On this continuum we examine to what extent knowledge of one language
transfers to the other and aids learning or interferes and impedes learning.
In Yue's study, she noted that Woo's pronunciation is more or less clear
but there were some words articulated less accurately in his English
reading. It is generally agreed that first language background greatly
influences second language pronunciation and accents. It is likely that
Woo's first language, Korean, sometimes affected the precise English
pronunciation quite adversely. For example, Woo struggled to distinguish
/v/ and /b/, /r/ and /l/, /δ/ and /d/. He easily skipped plural 's' and regular
past participle 'ed' (e.g. sideways, legs, noticed'). All these items that
appeared in Woo's pronunciation are classified as typical problems that
Korean learners of English might experience in the pronunciation of
certain consonants and vowels (Lee 2001).
The English teacher of the Hebrew children also noticed that "with
Miciah, his, his tenses were particular mixed and the structure of his
writing … So he has this interesting way of formulating English in his
own mind and speaking". She also noticed that Lizzie and Matthew are
"still using some capital letters in the middle of the words". She also found
that she could "notice that they make direct transfer … from their known
language into English, so if for example, they would say 'go to shop now'
instead, instead, instead of English [which] would be 'We are going to the
shop.' "
In the classroom observations in the Hebrew study we found that
Matthew did not distinguish between some words when reading aloud.
Examples found were: slim/slime, were/where, on/one or her/here.
Is there a global transfer of skills as argued by some studies in the
literature review? In the Korean study, the think aloud protocols revealed
that the children used very similar strategies to write in both their
languages.
Min demonstrated a good talent for writing in both languages. He
seemed to write without much effort and made only a few minor mistakes.
His writings in Korean and English were coherent and very concise, and
focused on delivering the meaning of the story. Despite the fact that the
writing process was rather unnatural due to the think aloud composing, he
performed very well in both written pieces.
Min was a good planner and organiser in general. He was the only
child among the three children who gave a title to what he was going to
write ('양의 선물' – 'present from sheep'). His protocols also demonstrate
that he rehearsed before he wrote both in Korean and English to a greater

260 Chapter Fourteen

extent than any of the others. It seemed to help him to depict the fairly
long series of events elaborately. His rehearsing activity, however,
occurred more in Korean than in English. This is because he chose to write
a story in Korean first, and then writing in English might have been easier
as he was transfering his ideas to the English writing.
Se Hee was the child demonstrating the most equivalent bilingual
literacy ability in both languages. Her written samples were both soundly
written and age-appropriate. They display good command of complex
structure and represent elaborate descriptions of individual events. Se
Hee's production time was slightly delayed for each sentence, as she
thought a lot during the writing activity and her rehearsing perhaps
appears in her head, not by talk. So, the researcher asked many times what
she was thinking during her silences and she always said that she was
thinking of what she would write.
It appeared that the three children's literacy behaviours such as habits,
cognitive functions, and many reading and writing readiness skills were
similar in both Korean and English. For instance, Se Hee read the texts
word by word by pointing with her right finger and used picture clues to
get some ideas about meanings of unknown words. Min did not attend to
detail in the middle of a word and recognized whole words quite often
when reading both Korean and English. Furthermore, Woo's physical
reading and rapid writing occurred both in Korean and English.
It appears that native language discourse patterns have an impact. Is
there more positive transfer if L1 is highly developed? It was interesting to
discover that Se Hee, who displays the most equivalent bilingualism,
utilized the largest variety of strategies in both reading and writing. It can
be interpreted that Se Hee, who has a good command of both Korean and
English, possesses the advantage of employing strategies that make the
processes of reading and writing easier, and these strategies transfer from
one language to another.
In regards to Woo, he actually adopted more strategies, such as
prediction and repetition, for his Korean reading. However, he could not
make use of these strategies when reading in English. There could be
differing reasons to explain this fact but Morrison (2004) points out that
unsuccessful L2 readers do not possess good L1 skills, or if they do, fail to
transfer. Accordingly, it is suggested that unproductive reading of the
challenging English text or his passive reading attitude probably decreased
the possibility of transferring the strategies employed in Korean to
English.

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 261

6. Media of biliteracy

convergent
successive exposure

similar dissimilar
structures
simultaneous

divergent scripts
Figure 4. The continua of biliterate media

6.1. Simultaneous exposure - successive exposure

Some people become bilingual simultaneously – acquiring both of their
languages together, usually before school. Others have exposure to their
second language after they have acquired their first – successive exposure.
Two children from the Japanese program describe here what it was like to
experience this successive exposure.
Emiko found it beneficial to have her first language supported while she
was successively acquiring English:

Emiko: "although I felt Japanese classes were very boring at BS, it
certainly helped to reduce my pressure in the beginning. If there were
no Japanese classes at school all the subjects would have been really
difficult to me and it was good I attended Japanese class even though it
didn't help me to study Japanese. When I heard Japanese at BS, I felt
'I'm all right, I'm all right'… I think I adapted to the Australian
education system better because I was at BS."

262 Chapter Fourteen

Fizz from the Japanese program:

Fizz: "Because Japanese is my mother's language [interesting choice of
words] I'm happy to learn Japanese and I'm proud of myself that I can
speak two languages." "Although Japanese classes were challenging, I
enjoyed studying at BS and always got A plus in my results." "I don't
think I was disadvantaged because I studied in a bilingual primary
school. I naturally learnt a lot of English from my dad at home, friends
at school and television." "in secondary school, the Japanese class is
too easy and really boring." "I just want to learn a little more
Japanese." "I'm forgetting Japanese and each year as the school
increase the level year to year, my classmates' level will be closer to
my Japanese level. One day, their Japanese might become the same
level as my Japanese unless I study hard." "I prefer bilingual methods.
If there was a bilingual secondary school in Japanese and English, I
would consider going there."

However, in contrast to this comment about how his level of Japanese
seemed to be dropping now that he was in high school, Fizz also
commented on how, when he was considered as a 'mother tongue speaker'
of Japanese, he felt disadvantaged and found the classes too hard. Finding
just the right level for a diverse group of students will always be a
challenge for bilingual schools.

Fizz: "learning Japanese was all right at BS when it was easy, but the
extension classes were too hard for me." "My classroom teacher told
me that I should be challenging myself more because my mum is
Japanese and he sent me to study at the extension classes. But I wasn't
happy and always thought 'Why do I need to study with the students
who went to school in Japan for several years and who go to Saturday
school?' There was a very big gap in the level between the extension
class and the other classes I attended with my other class mates."

6.2. Dissimilar structures - similar structures

Hornberger states that "Learning to read in a second language that has no
linguistic relation to the first language will be 'quite different'."
(Hornberger 1989, 287) All of the languages being learnt by the children
in this study used scripts that are very different from English. What was

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 263

their experience of learning to read and write in a totally different script?
Emiko from the Japanese program:

Emiko: "For my first one and half year at BS, I was often saying, 'I
can't do it, I can't do it' and often cried. I really didn't want to study in
English. It was too difficult for me. When I just entered BS in the
middle of year 3, the classroom teacher prepared special materials for
me to learn English. But when I entered year 4, the new classroom
teacher treated me the same as the other students. Only once a week,
when a Korean classmate entered BS in the middle of year 4, two of us
were pulled out from the English class and learnt English grammar and
spelling. I enjoyed making and reading stories in these classes."

We examined this issue in the Korean data, by looking at the writing
produced by the children, to see whether their writing in English exhibited
similar use of structures to their writing in Korean. It was very interesting
to observe that both Se Hee's Korean and English written samples exhibit
similar patterns, in particular, the use of tense is very similar. She was
describing pictures by using present continuous and suddenly changed to
past tense to narrate the events of a story.
Our first impression of Woo's writing was that his composition time
was very short. He preferred to write in Korean first and finished in a very
short time. There was not much difference in his ability to write in both
languages but he needed some help to spell some difficult English words
properly. He cannot be categorized as a fully developed narrator but he did
construct a well-organized story.
Most of Woo's think aloud is confined to speaking while writing. In his
writing in both languages, rehearsing seldom appears. It is envisaged that
he prefers to think while writing rather than before writing. Therefore, the
frequency of editing is greater than anyone else's. He sometimes changed
his plan to write. For instance, where a sentence was finished, he deleted
the full stop and continued writing by connecting two sentences.
His editing mostly belongs to the mechanical category, namely,
correcting spellings. It, however, did not seem to occur at the level of
monitoring how to write better. As he wrote every sentence rapidly most
of the time, without rehearsing, this might have led to a considerable
number of misspellings. As a result, it seemed, of immediate self-
correction, the frequency of editing was relatively high in both languages.

264 Chapter Fourteen

6.3. Divergent scripts - convergent scripts

In her description of this dimension, Hornberger (1989, 288) states that
"convergence or divergence between the biliterates' two writing systems
seems to have little influence on the reading and writing of either."
This contention was borne out in the Hebrew study, where we found
that there was no confusion of languages. The English teacher stated:

"One interesting thing I notice is that Hebrew was a back to front
language; maybe English is a back to front language? Whatever, but it
doesn't seem to be a problem at all. Seems if children learn from the
beginning, 'this is how with English books and this is how with
Hebrew books' there is very little confusion. And even with their
writing, they don't start from this side with English [gesturing to the
right]. They go back - they seem to be able to definitely distinguish
between these two languages. 'This is English, this is Hebrew.' "

Similarly, in the Korean study, we found that Min did not display
confusion between Korean and English writing. He was able to discern
that there are different ways of writing in Korean and English. For
example, in Korean writing, repeating the subject should be avoided, and
null subjects sometimes enhance connectivity. Min seemed to know this
and avoided repeating the subject in Korean but not in English.

7. Conclusions
All three studies from which the data were drawn supported the notion that
strategies that crucially affect literacy development can transfer from a
first to a second language, even though the languages have different
writing systems. It was seen that such a transfer, in fact, strengthened the
positive literacy experience in L2. Additionally, it is likely that early
exposure to first language literacy has served as a foundation for literacy
development in English for all the children.
We conclude that there are positive interactions between first language
and English literacy development. Reading and writing in English is
greatly helped by a firm basis of reading and writing in L1. The research
found that by transferring strategies, skills and knowledge from L1 to

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 265

English, the children were able to develop their English literacy readily
and quickly. Therefore, it can be said that L1 and English literacy develop
interdependently, namely English literacy development depends a great
deal on the amount and type of language that children acquire as a first
language.
Not only does literacy in L1 interact positively with L2, but our study
has found that it does not matter what the L1 is – all the children in the
study, regardless of their L1, were able to transfer their skills acquired in
that language to English. In fact, through examining literate behaviour in
both their languages, we were able to conclude that the bilingual children
in these studies have the same approach to Korean, Hebrew and English
reading and writing. We conclude that positive literacy experiences in the
first language facilitate positive transfer and accordingly, English literacy
development.

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268 Chapter Fourteen

Appendix A: Information about the child participants

Name: Matthew Age/Year 8
Languages Israeli family Parents' Hebrew
spoken at languages:
home:
Background The Hebrew teacher said, 'His father said to me I am
information not interested in his school work. All I want him to
do is to have fun.' The English teacher said, 'Matthew
is interesting. He is an excellent musician.'

Name: Miciah Age/Year 8
Languages He had some Parents'
spoken at home: schooling in languages:
Hebrew in
Israel
Background is very bright with a speech disability...
information His English teacher said, 'He is a very fast little boy'

Name: Ivan Age/Year 7
Languages Israeli Parents'
spoken at home: languages:
Background is a steady worker, quite young for his year (just
information turned seven), has fine-motor skill difficulties with
writing.

Name: Lizzie Age/Year 8

Languages Israeli Parents'
spoken at home: languages:
Background is bright, 'girly' and loves reading.
information

Children's Experiences of Multiple Script Literacy 269

Name: Fizz Age/Year 12/Year 7.
Languages English 80% Parents' F- Australian
spoken at Japanese 20% languages: M – Japanese
home:
Background Born in Japan, went to kindergarten there for one
information year. Moved to Oz when 5. Likes playing guitar,
creative writing and reading fantasy books. Family
moved to be in the BS zone.

Name: Emiko Age/Year 12/Year 7.
Languages Japanese Parents' M - Japanese
spoken at languages:
home:
Background Siblings and father are still in Japan. Was at bilingual
information school since late yr 3. Came there by accident, as
share house mother found was near there. Wants to
speak only 'perfect' Japanese. Keeps up w popular
culture via web.

Name: Min Age/Year 8
Languages Korean Parents'
spoken at home: languages:
Background Min was born in Korea, in a family of people whose
information first language was Korean. His family migrated to
Australia for the purpose of business and has been in
Melbourne for about two years. Min is eight years
old now and recently advanced to the third grade.
Min loves to read and goes through books very
quickly. He is also an active language learner. Of
Min's reading, his mother said, 'when he thinks of a
word in Korean, he looks for many similar words in
English'. He likes reading both Korean and English
books but he said that he feels a little easier reading
and writing in English than in Korean at present.
Hana p 37

270 Chapter Fourteen

Name: Woo Age/Year 8/year 3
Languages Korean Parents'
spoken at languages:
home:
Background Woo came to Melbourne when he was six.
information According to his mother, he is very introverted and
was not able to adjust to a different life in Australia.
At first, his English development was slightly slower
than other children. However, his parents happily
comment that Woo is currently more relaxed and
showing steady improvement in literacy. Woo
always uses Korean for family communication. It
was seen that he has acquired a reasonable command
of Korean. When asked in which language he usually
likes to speak, he said that he still prefers to speak,
read and write in Korean.

Name: Se Hee Age/Year 8
Languages Korean Parents'
spoken at languages:
home:

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
READING L2 TEXT: HOW MORE AND LESS
SKILLED LEARNERS READ L2 TEXT
SAYUKI MACHIDA

1. Introduction
Comprehension or understanding is the basis of reading, and of learning to
read, (Smith 1994). Reading is a thinking process, constrained by text
(visual information) and prior knowledge (non-visual information), and
comprehension occurs in the interaction of a reader and a text. Thus, it
involves complex processing of many factors such as structures of text,
readers' linguistic knowledge, their prior knowledge, their intentions/goals
for reading and their emotions.
Though there are a number of reading models proposed, the consensus
among researchers is that reading is a cognitive process (e.g., Day and
Bamford 1998) and that comprehension of written text includes processing
stimuli (visual information) through the eyes and conveyed to the brain,
where the brain understands the stimuli with its prior knowledge (non-
visual information) (e.g., Smith 1994). This has been explained as visual
stimuli going into working memory/short term memory (WM/STM) to be
recognised as meaningful units (e.g., in Huckin and Bloch, 1993 (L2);
Levelt 1993 (L1)). In the working memory, those stimuli are built into
words which are gathered and given meaning to make propositions. The
readers assign meaning to each word using knowledge stored in their long
term memory, in which many nodes containing ideational meaning are
networked with each other. The networks contain linguistic, semantic,
pragmatic, social and cultural relationships between the nodes. The
propositions will be further structured into sentences and paragraphs to
comprehend the meaning of the text. Therefore, comprehension does not
only rely on the readers' linguistic and literal knowledge, but also on their
past experiences and social and cultural backgrounds.
Thus, reading is a cognitive process where, in a broad sense, automated
word recognition allows the reader to process knowledge and reasoning,
and to construct meaning from the text (e.g., Perfetti 2008). Unlike long
term memory (LTM), the capacity of WM is constrained in time and

272 Chapter Fifteen

space. If the reader lacks vocabulary knowledge or prior
experience/knowledge of the topic, he/she may not be able to comprehend
some parts of the text due to running out of time and space in WM to
synthesise the meaning of the text. In the case of second/foreign language
comprehension, where the learners are in the process of building their
vocabulary and grammar knowledge, the cognitive processing of
comprehension is unlikely to involve autonomous processes of
perception/understanding, but rather problem solving and thinking "under
conscious control and resource demanding" (Kintsch 1998, 3). Research
shows, for example, text comprehension is controlled by memory, both
WM and LTM (e.g., Doughty 2001; Ellis 2001; Macaro 2003).
Reading comprehension, word recognition and integration into text,
was once seen in a strong top-down schema theory (e.g., Bartlett 1932;
Schank and Abelson 1977). However, more recently, the activity has been
regarded as cognitive activity involving both bottom-up and top-down
processes (e.g., Perfetti 1999, 2008; Rumelhart 1977). Kintsch (1998)
explains in his construction-integration (CI) model that vocabulary is
assigned a context particular meaning not by a schema based
discrimination process, but through a more sentence by sentence local
process aided by knowledge in LTM. According to Perfetti and Hart's
(2001) Lexical Quality Hypothesis (LQH), word representation may
depend on three constituents: orthographic, phonetic and semantic.
According to LQH, skilled readers have 1) a higher number of high quality
word representations and 2) more resources to repair or improve poor
word representation. The consensus is that usually poor word
representation results in inferior reading comprehension (e.g., Perfetti
1985: Verhoeven and Van Leeuwe 2008). However, research also shows
some readers can have poor comprehension with sufficient vocabulary and
word decoding skills (Cain 1996: Shankweiller et al. 1999).
According to Kintsch (1998), text comprehension involves surface
code, "textbase", and "situated model" (Kintsch and Van Dijk 1978). First
of all, there is a written text (surface code). Readers need to recognise each
word in the text and assign a meaning to it. To do so, they are constantly
using the text and context before and after to determine the meanings of
the words (e.g., CI model: Kintsch 1998; resonance process: Perfetti and
Schmalhofer 2007). The text consists of propositions both in micro- and
macrostructures. Propositions in microstructure can be obtained from
sentence-by-sentence information. Macrostructure is a hierarchical
structure built with propositions in rhetorical relations. These micro-and
macrostructures make the textbase. In other words, the textbase is the ideal
semantic and rhetorical interpretation of the text. On the other hand, actual

How More And Less Skilled Learners Read L2 Text 273

interpretation by a reader includes his/her situational model (i.e., his/her
knowledge of topic, schema, emotion, etc).
Let us place L2 learners' reading process in the above model.
Insufficient vocabulary knowledge may not allow them to automate
vocabulary processing. They may rely on syntactic knowledge or the
content of the rest of the sentence to guess the meaning of the vocabulary
or assign temporary meaning (CI model). Thus, more WM capacity is used
to 'decode' the text and consequently, less capacity and time can be
allocated to 'synthesise' the decoded vocabulary, phrases and sentences to
propositions to capture the meaning of the L2 text (WM theory). When
their syntactic knowledge is not sufficient to handle phrases and sentences,
they rely more on vocabulary knowledge to 'build a temporary network'
between the known vocabulary. Eventually, this less automated bottom-up
process (interlanguage development) may force the learners to depend on
their top-down process more heavily (schema: situation model). They need
to rely more on their prior knowledge (common sense, logic) or use some
strategies to 'get by' to continue reading the text. Depending heavily on
their prior knowledge can mislead the learners completely, where their
prior knowledge is based more on their developed L1 language and culture
than on experience in their developing L2 language and culture.
This is a small-scale research project to examine how advanced
learners of Japanese read an expository text in their L2. It studies the
reading comprehension in L2 of a group of English speaking advanced
learners of Japanese. The objective of this project is to examine the
differences in those advanced learners' comprehension, and what causes
the differences. The differences are sought by comparing 1) their
vocabulary comprehension prior to reading the text, 2) the amount of
information (idea units) of the Japanese text they retrieved after reading
the text and 3) the depth of their text comprehension, i.e., integration of
the ideas into the theme by each learner. Research questions to be asked
are: a) to what extent did knowledge of vocabulary in the text affect text
comprehension? and b) what relationship holds between the quantity of
ideas retrieved and the depth of comprehension? Findings indicate that
vocabulary on a particular topic might not be sufficient to promote reader
comprehension. Whereas good readers efficiently reconstructed the
content of the expository text in their recall, poor readers tended to retrieve
more ideas but could not manage to integrate them to recapture the content
of the text.

274 Chapter Fifteen

2. Methods

2.1. Subject, test design and data collection

The subjects of this study were fourteen English speaking learners who
were enrolled in an advanced Japanese language course at tertiary level.
They responded to an advertisement recruiting voluntary participation in
classroom based research. Their experiences regarding Japanese language
learning varied widely and none had a similar profile. They had
studied/used Japanese for five to twenty-one years. Most of them wished
to use Japanese in their career. They were mostly satisfied with their
achievement in Japanese (average 3.5 on a 5 degree scale varying 2.5 to
4). They thought script including kanji (75%) and grammar (50%)
generally present problems in their reading Japanese. They also indicated
sentence level and beyond (paragraphs and ideas) (25%) caused difficulty
in text comprehension in the past.
The purpose of the testing and the test procedures were explained to
them both in writing and orally. The subjects were also asked to sign the
consent form and further explanation was provided for those subjects who
needed further clarification. The reading test included 1) a vocabulary quiz
(10 items from the text) and 2) a Japanese written text (661 characters in
the Japanese original text and 331 words in English translation). An
expository Japanese text was chosen from among text materials for
advanced learners (from Japanese society update). Both vocabulary and
reading tests were self-paced. The subjects were asked to answer the
vocabulary quiz just before reading the text. The quiz consisted of 10 kanji
vocabulary items taken from the texts (they vary in importance in the text:
see Table 1). The subjects were asked to provide the pronunciation (in
hiragana) and meaning (in English). They were also requested to indicated
the degree of confidence in their understanding of each item by ticking a) I
know the word, b) I think I know the word or c) I don't know the word.
For the reading test, a recall protocol (e.g., Davis 1989; Kim 1995) was
used. Prior to reading the text, the subjects were told that they were to
recall the text in writing in L1 afterwards. The subjects were allowed to
read the text at their own pace. The subjects were asked to recall the
content of the text in English immediately after reading the text. No
particular instruction was given for recall except that the subjects were
requested to write down everything they recalled including their
inferences.

How More And Less Skilled Learners Read L2 Text 275

This study intended to obtain the following information about the
students' vocabulary knowledge of the topic/text, and their reading
comprehension ability:

1) Stand-alone vocabulary knowledge
 pronunciation: if they have phonological access to the kanji
vocabulary
 meaning: if they have semantic access to the kanji vocabulary
 certainty about or familiarity with the vocabulary: if they are
confident in their phonological and semantic knowledge of the
vocabulary

2) Recall protocols immediately after reading the text were examined in
terms of
 Quantity of the text they retained in their memory after reading
the text: how many ideas (units of thought) from the text they
recalled
 Organisation of their recalled content: how well those ideas are
synthesised into cohesive prose units and a hierarchical structure
in their recall

This research examined the differences among the participants' vocabulary
knowledge, idea retrieval and comprehension of the text, in relation to
their text comprehension rates. Therefore, the author judged it better to
allow the participants to read the L2 text in their own way and at their own
pace rather than in an imposed way in limited time.

2.2. Data analysis

2.2.1. Vocabulary comprehension

The quiz included ten vocabulary items and the subjects were requested to
provide for each item 1) meaning (in English) and 2) pronunciation (in
Japanese), and to indicate 3) their confidence with their answers for each
item by ticking one of a) I know the word, b) I think I know the word and
c) I don't know the word. Two types of scores were given to the correct
answers. Firstly, each vocabulary item was marked by assigning even
weight: one point for correct answers; and nil for others. Secondly, points
for each item were weighted accordingly to their importance in the text.
Most of the vocabulary items in the quiz were nouns (see Table 1). The

276 Chapter Fifteen

importance of these words in the text was judged by two native speakers.
Their judgements were based on the following criteria: it is difficult for a
reader to comprehend the text without knowing the item (3 points); it is
harder for him/her to comprehend clearly without knowing the item (2
points); and the reader will comprehend the text reasonably well without
knowing the item (1 point). For their confidence measurement, the choice
was weighted as 2 points for a) I know the word, 1 point for b) I think I
know the word and zero for c) I don't know the word.

Vocabulary Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10

Importance
In text 3 3 1 1 2 3 3 3 2 2
Types of
noun noun noun noun noun noun noun noun noun Adv
Item
NB> Q10 item is an adverbial use of noun (noun + 'ni').

Table 1: Importance of the vocabulary in text

2.2.2. Text comprehension

In this study, each subject's reading comprehension was measured as rate
of recall. The subjects' L1 was used as a tool to obtain mental
representations of their understanding from their reading of the text. Prior
to the study, the Japanese text for the test was translated into English for
the later analysis of the subjects' recall in English. For that purpose, the
English translation reflected as closely as possible the original sentence
structures and paragraphs of the Japanese text. The Japanese text was
translated into English by two bilinguals, one Japanese and one English
native speaker, and any differences in their translation were resolved by
discussion. Then the translated text was analysed into 1) idea units
(propositional thought units) and 2) rhetorical units in a hierarchical
structure according to the rhetorical relationships among the units (prose
analysis: Meyer 1975, 1985).
The concept of idea units applied here is the most general one, 'units
which contain ideas'. The resultant units are mostly propositions in the
sense of case grammar (one verb and agents: e.g., Bovair and Kieras 1985;
Cook, 1989). However, due to the nature of Japanese, topic change is also
treated as one idea unit.

How More And Less Skilled Learners Read L2 Text 277

Topic words (nouns): in Japanese, the topic can be changed very easily
by indicating with the additional particle "wa" (as seen in the example) or
replacing the existent particle with "wa".

Example:
1-a) 庭に木がたくさんあります。
Niwa-ni ki-ga takusan arimasu
1-aE) There are many trees in the garden.

1-b) 庭には木がたくさんあります。
Niwa-niwa ki-ga takusan arimasu
1-bE) The garden has many trees.

The subjects were given one point for each idea unit in their written recall.
The text was also organised into a hierarchical structure by using
Meyer's four rhetorical relationships i.e., Description, Causation, Response
(problem/solution), and Comparison (Carrell 1984; Meyer 1975, 1985).
The text included three types of rhetorical relationship, except
problem/solution, and seven levels were found among the rhetorical units
in a hierarchical structure. The units were weighted from seven points (for
the highest level in the hierarchy) to one (for the lowest level).
The following are examples of the three types of rhetorical relationship
included in the text:

1) Collection of description (description: evidence: equivalents)
• Salaries are automatically paid into bank account
• shopping is done by cards, and
• monthly expenses are directly debited from our account.

2) Causation (covariance: antecedent & consequent)
• When money was left over (covariance-antecedent),
• it became 'saving in drawer'(hesokuri) (covariance-
consequent: equivalent), and
• provided housewives with pleasure of having secret (stash
of) money (covariance-consequent: equivalent).

3) Comparison (adversative/time)
• These days we don't carry cash.
• It was some twenty years ago that …

278 Chapter Fifteen

The subjects' written recall was scored twice by two raters: firstly for the
amount of recall (how many idea units of the text they could recall) and
secondly for the depth of their comprehension (how well they recalled the
rhetorical relationships of the text). Any disagreements between the raters
were either resolved by discussion or referred to a third rater to finalise the
scores.

3. Results
The following are the results of the subjects' vocabulary knowledge tested
on ten selected vocabulary items from the L2 text. The scores were given
for a) Judgement: I know (2), I think I know (1), I don't know (0); b)
Meaning: correct (1) or not (0); and c) Pronunciation: correct (1) or not
(0).

Vocabulary item A B C D E F G H I J K L M N
Judgement 8 2 9 17 5 2 4 9 10 14 1 1 1 13
Meaning 0 5 3 9 1 1 3 1 1 5 0 0 3 6
Pronunciation 1 3 3 7 4 2 6 3 2 4 3 0 2 9
Time* 5 7 7 6 6 7 6 7 3 5 3 5 5 5
NB The subjects were told to answer the quiz in their own time so the times shown
above were the lengths of time subjects wished to spend, and not necessarily the
time they needed to answer.

Table 2: Results of vocabulary quiz (1)

The subjects' judgement, meaning and pronunciation scores varied widely
(see Table 3).

Vocabulary No Minimum Maximum Mean St. Deviation
item
Judgement 14 1 17 6.86 5.36
Meaning 14 0 9 2.71 2.70
Pronunciation 14 0 9 3.50 2.41

NB Judgement scores were out of 20, meaning and pronunciation scores were out
of 10.

Table 3: Results of vocabulary quiz (2)

How More And Less Skilled Learners Read L2 Text 279

The correlation between meaning and pronunciation scores was
r = .744**: significant at the 0.01 level; 2-tailed. When scores for each
vocabulary item were weighted according to importance in the text (Table
4), and given points for meaning and pronunciation, the correlation went
up slightly to r = .781**: significant at the 0.01 level; 2-tailed. However,
their judgement (how well they think they know each word) correlated
with the meaning score (what exactly they know about each word) only
weakly (r = .576 ~ .585*: significant at the 0.05 level; 2-tailed).
The time they spent on answering the quiz also varied from 3 to 7
minutes, with an average of 5.5 minutes. The relation between the time
and scores was negative: the subjects who scored better spent less time to
answer.

Vocab A B C D E F G H I J K L M N
Judge 16 4 21 39 10 4 10 23 19 33 3 2 3 34
Meaning 0 14 7 20 1 2 7 3 1 12 0 0 7 16
Pronun 2 9 7 14 8 4 14 7 3 8 7 0 5 21

Table 4: Weighted results of vocabulary quiz

For the text comprehension, the subjects' recollections were typed out and
scored according to the number of 1) recalled idea units and 2) rhetorical
structures of the text. Each idea unit was given one point, and each
rhetorical structure was given one point plus from one to seven points
according to its level in the hierarchical structure of the text. The
following shows the spread of the scores (inter-rater reliability: Cronbach's
α = .94).
The text consisted of 74 idea units, and the rate the subjects recalled
each unit varied from 33.8 % to 68.9% with the mean recall rate of 48.6%.
The text included seven hierarchical levels from top to bottom of the
structure, and 33 rhetorical units were recognised. The percentage of units
recalled by the subjects ranged from 15.2% to 93.9% with the mean recall
rate of 55.4%. Finally, the subjects' text comprehension, measured by
weighted rhetorical unit comprehension, was from 17.1% to 88.6% with
the mean rate of 50.7%. Thus, overall the results show the subjects as a
group were rather efficient at comprehension: text comprehension (55.4%)
> rhetorical units (50.7%) > propositions (48.6%).

280 Chapter Fifteen

(weighte
Idea Text Rhetoric Text
R- units d
Text units recall al units compre
(%) R-units)
(74) (%) (33) (%)
(140)
A ? ? 5 15.2 24 17.1
B 27 36. 5 16 48.5 61 43.6
C 37 50 20 60.6 87 62.1
D 46 62.2 25 75.8 102 72.9
E 25 33.8 11 33.3 36 25.7
F 37 50 22 66.7 84 60.0
G 51 68.9 31 93.9 124 88.6
H 43 58.1 24 72.7 93 66.4
I 40 54.0 14 42.4 41 29.3
J 38 51.4 20 60.6 76 54.3
K 27 36.5 14 42.4 59 42.1
L 27 36.5 11 33.3 39 27.9
M 37 50 22 66.7 81 57.9
N 33 44.6 21 63.6 87 62.1
NB Since Subject A reported her judgement of the text or her conjectures rather
than what the text was about, her recall is excluded from this study.

Table 5: Idea units and rhetorical units

The four factors shown in Tables 2 and 5, a) the recalled amount of the
whole text (measured by the number of idea units), b) the identified
rhetorical units in their recall (measured by the number of rhetorical units),
c) their comprehension of the text (measured by weighting the identified
rhetorical units), and d) vocabulary knowledge (on ten words from the
text) were correlated as follows:

1) The more rhetorical units the subjects understood and
remembered, the more they tended to gain in comprehension of
the text (r =.980**).
2) However, less correlation was found between the amount of
recall and identified rhetorical units (r =.867**), or the amount of
recall and text comprehension (r =.796**).
3) Text comprehension and vocabulary knowledge showed a weak
correlation (r = .554*). Text comprehension had a higher
correlation with vocabulary pronunciation scores (r = .625*).
4) Vocabulary meaning and pronunciation scores correlated not
strongly but significantly (r = .744**).

How More And Less Skilled Learners Read L2 Text 281

When subjects' (A ~ N) text comprehension was examined closely,
according to their comprehension rate measured by this study, the
following characteristics of the readers were revealed.

Text text recall R-units Text Vocab Time
(%) (%) Compr (meaning)
(%)
A ? 15.2 17.1 0 10
E 33.8 33.3 25.7 1 44
L 36.5 33.3 27.9 0 10
I 54.0 42.4 29.3 1 9
K 36.5 42.4 42.1 0 6
B 36.5 48.5 43.6 5 7
J 51.4 60.6 54.3 5 5
M 50 66.7 57.9 3 6
F 50 66.7 60.0 1 18
N 44.6 63.6 62.1 6 6
C 50 60.6 62.1 3 10
H 58.1 72.7 66.4 1 10
D 62.2 75.8 72.9 9 9
G 68.9 93.9 88.6 3 10
See Table 5 for information on Subject A's recall.

Table 6: Subjects' reading comprehension

The group consisted of two sub-groups. The bottom ten of the subjects
comprehended text efficiently (text recallfour understood the text poorly (text recall>text comprehension). The gap
between the recall and comprehension rates tended to be larger when the
efficient readers comprehended better.
The efficient sub-group can be further separated according to their text
comprehension rate: Excellent, Good, Fair and Weak readers (text
recalltext
comprehension) as Poor readers.

282 Chapter Fifteen

Sub-groups Demarcation Subjects
Excellent reader • Recall demonstrated nearly 90% of G
the text was comprehended
appropriately
Good readers • Recall demonstrated above 70% of D
the text was comprehended
appropriately
Fair readers • Recall demonstrated above 60% of H, C, N, F
the text was comprehended
appropriately
• Recall demonstrated 50 % of the M, J
text was comprehended
appropriately
Weak readers • Recall demonstrated less than 50 % B, K
of the text was comprehended
appropriately
Poor readers • Recall demonstrated less than 30 % I, L, E, A
of the text was comprehended
appropriately

Table 7: Subgroups of the subjects

Both the top and bottom three readers were more consistent with the rates
of recall (idea units) and comprehension: the more they recalled, the more
they understood the text. However, the readers between (most of Fair to
the top of Poor) were not so consistent with the two measures. For
example, Reader I recalled more text (54%) without rhetorical
relationships among them (29.3%) while Reader N comprehended the text
efficiently (62.1%) in relation to a comparatively small amount of recall
(44.6%).

4. Discussion
In this study, the subjects were asked to do a vocabulary quiz consisting of
ten words from the text they were to read immediately after the quiz. The
quiz results showed a not-strong correlation between their scores for
meaning and pronunciation (r = .744**). In other words, the subjects did
not always need the pronunciation to understand the words, gaining direct
access to meaning from sighting the words. This may separate English

How More And Less Skilled Learners Read L2 Text 283

speaking advanced learners from the lower levels, e.g., English speaking
intermediate learners, who rely more on phonological access (Machida
2001).
Only weak correlation was found between text comprehension,
measured by weighting the identified rhetorical units in each subject's
recall, and vocabulary knowledge (r = .554* to vocabulary meaning, and r
= .609* to vocabulary pronunciation). Even when the effects of semantics
(meaning), phonology (pronunciation) and learner confidence on
vocabulary recognition were considered, no strong correlation was found
between the vocabulary knowledge measured by the quiz and text
comprehension.
The results also indicated that the subjects who had better knowledge
of the vocabulary spent less time but still worked out more of the meaning
or pronunciation of the words than the subjects with weaker knowledge. It
is generally considered that the more vocabulary learners know, the better
they comprehend text (e.g., Perfetti 1985). However, as in this study,
where a small amount of vocabulary from the text was tested by a self-
paced quiz, the vocabulary test may not predict the subjects' text
comprehension. It could be the case that the quiz did not reflect the
subjects' word knowledge and/or other vocabulary related skills (LQH). Or
it could be due to the complexity of L2 acquisition and learner variables.
All subjects had learnt Japanese in the classroom for some time, but their
experience outside the classroom varied substantially. (Some learnt much
of their Japanese 'picking it up' from native speakers in Japan. Some had a
Japanese friend but had never been to Japan.) Consequently they were
very different from each other in their vocabulary knowledge, linguistic
knowledge and pragmatic ability. As a result, even if they had similar
overall Japanese proficiency, the composition of that proficiency varied
greatly. Thus some subjects could comprehend text better with skills other
than vocabulary, while some with more vocabulary knowledge failed to
understand the text (Cain 1996; Shankweiller et al. 1999).
The subjects' text comprehension differed widely. Overall, the subjects
as a group demonstrated that the better the learners were, the more text
parts they recalled and the better they comprehended the text (correlation
between: r =.796**;.recall rate for idea units ranged from 33.8 % to 68.9%
whereas their comprehension rates were 17.1% to 88.6%). In other words,
the better readers managed to allocate more WM to integrate what they
had read (propositions) into cohesive rhetorical relationships. Poor readers
used up much of their WM to grasp and retain the text parts (propositions:
ideas), leaving insufficient resources to establish a rhetorical hierarchy
among them. However, when one examines individual performances

284 Chapter Fifteen

measured by amount of text recalled and text comprehension, there were
subjects who comprehended the text more efficiently (Reader N) and less
efficiently (Reader I) than the above tendency predicted. This suggests that
to confirm or reject the above general tendency in the relationship between
the amount of text recalled and depth of comprehension this study needs to
be duplicated on a larger scale.
The results also indicated that 1) the fewer ideas (propositions) grasped
by L2 readers, the less comprehension of the text occurs, 2) they then
develop their comprehension skills moving through different pathways,
and 3) eventually they become good readers by grasping more ideas in the
text, and achieve good mental representation of text resulting from
interaction of the textbase and their situational models (non-visual
information). It is obvious that when learners cannot grasp sufficient ideas
from text, it will be impossible for them to construct enough textbase to
work with. Either they will give up, or they will rely heavily on their
situational model if they have to do something with the text. This strongly
schema based approach is risky. Learners may guess correctly but more
likely they will misread the text (Poor readers in Table 7). When learners
are able to grasp enough ideas, they start gathering them into rhetorical
units and into a hierarchical structure to build textbase, negotiating with
their situational model (Fair to Weak readers in Table 7). Some readers
efficiently comprehend the text aided by vocabulary and linguistic
knowledge, pragmatic skills, and prior knowledge (Reader H), some do
not (Reader J). Once they reach a certain level, learners become able to
both grasp more ideas and comprehend text well (Excellent reader in
Table 7).
This study did not single out any crucial element which prevented
learners from constructing a mental representation of text. However it
provided a window to observe the learners' reading comprehension
process. It observed that not being able to grasp ideas (propositions) is the
first hurdle in comprehending the text. Thus, word recognition is crucial to
access vocabulary and syntactic knowledge (see Poor readers' vocabulary
scores in Table 6). Retrieving ideas/propositions in the text does not
guarantee understanding the text. In order to combine propositions into
rhetorical units, the learners also need both linguistic and pragmatic
discourse level knowledge. In addition, they must be good at lower level
processing – retrieving propositions quickly enough so that they can
allocate more WM resources to connecting ideas and building a rhetorical
structure of the text. Further investigation of the variation in patterns
among the subjects in the middle range (Readers I to C in Table 6) would
provide more insight into this stage of the development of reading

How More And Less Skilled Learners Read L2 Text 285

comprehension. Learners who are good at comprehending text should have
good vocabulary (LQH: Perfetti and Hart 2001), good grammar
knowledge and command, discourse skills and enough prior knowledge
and experience to interpret from the textbase. However, the composition of
good (advanced) learners' L2 skills may vary (see Excellent and Good
readers in Table 7).
In short, the results from this study firstly confirmed the findings from
psychological laboratory research currently available. Secondly, they
provided another picture of how advanced learners comprehend L2 text.
The focus of this study was the relationship between amount of
information retrieved from the text and actual text comprehension. In this
study, a stronger correlation between information retrieved and actual
comprehension was found among the subjects with best and worst
comprehension, a weaker correlation among the other subjects, but overall
there was not-so-strong correlation across the subjects. In this study,
vocabulary knowledge did not help much to predict text comprehension. It
is probable the amount of vocabulary tested (ten words from a 661 letter
Japanese essay translated into 331 words in English) was too small, or
knowledge other than vocabulary, grammar, pragmatic or background
knowledge played a more crucial role in this non-laboratory research. For
further study, the author suggests that text comprehension needs to be
investigated on a larger scale. Once comprehension data by a statistically
satisfactory number of subjects has been analysed, the inter-relationships
among the above-mentioned types of knowledge can be explored to obtain
a clearer picture of progress in text comprehension among advanced
learners.

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288 Chapter Fifteen

日本社会再考 : コミュニカティブ・アプローチを使った中上級用日本語教科書.
佐々木瑞枝, 門倉正美共著, 東京 : 北星堂書店, 1991. (2.キャッシュレス時代 pp8-9)

Nihon shakai saikō : komyunikatibu apurōchi o tsukatta chūjōkyūyō
Nihongo kyōkasho (Japanese society, an update) / Sasaki Mizue,
Kadokura Masami kyōcho. Tōkyō : Hokuseidō Shoten, 1991.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PRONUNCIATION AS CATEGORISATION: THE
ROLE OF CONTRAST IN TEACHING ENGLISH
/R/ AND /L/ 1
HELEN FRASER

1. Introduction and literature review
For many years, the difficulty adults have in learning second language
pronunciation was explained with reference to the Critical Period
Hypothesis—the belief that adults cannot learn new phonological
contrasts, perhaps due to physiological changes in the brain around
puberty (Lenneberg 1967). This idea was in line with the contemporary
theory of Generative Linguistics (Chomsky 1965), which took the view
that language learning is achieved by an innate Language Acquisition
Device which operates below the level of consciousness so is inaccessible
to explicit teaching. It was also supported not just by the individual
experience of many teachers (Macdonald 2002), but also by studies which
appeared to demonstrate that explicit instruction in pronunciation was
ineffective (Macdonald, Yule, and Powers 1994). For these reasons,
pronunciation was given little attention in English language teaching
during these years (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin 1996), and the
belief that new contrasts could not be learned became a self-fulfilling
prophecy, challenged only by a few dedicated teachers (Baker 1981;
Rogerson and Gilbert 1990).
Since then, the Critical Period Hypothesis has come under scrutiny
from various angles (Gass and Selinker 2001). In relation to pronunciation,
it was found that the age at which a language is learned is not necessarily
the best predictor of the degree of foreign accent (Flege, Munro, and
Mackay 1995). As well, experiments by Pisoni, Bradlow and colleagues

Special thanks to John Peak and to teachers and students on the University of
Canberra ELICOS program for their help with this project. Thanks also to Graeme
Couper, Murray Munro and Tracey Derwing for encouragement and advice on this
paper.

290 Chapter Sixteen

(discussed below), by successfully training monolingual Japanese adults to
discriminate the notoriously difficult English r/l contrast (as in "rice" vs
"lice"), demonstrated that at least one new phonological contrast could be
learned. Since then, several classroom studies have also demonstrated that
second language learners' pronunciation can be improved through explicit
teaching (Couper 2006; Munro 1998). These studies provide a sharp
contrast with earlier evidence, mentioned above, for the ineffectiveness of
teaching pronunciation, suggesting that it is not the fact of teaching that
matters, but the kind of teaching.
The question is, then, if it is not 'Critical Period' that holds learners
back in pronunciation, what is it? Currently, progressive language teaching
favours communicative, task-based and socio-cultural approaches (Ellis
2003; Lantolf 2000). However, pronunciation is still given relatively little
explicit attention (Levis 2005). Perhaps learners would benefit if there
were a way to bring explicit pronunciation teaching into more central
focus, within a generally communicative style of teaching.
An important question to be explored then is: "What are the principles
governing the effectiveness or otherwise of second language pronunciation
teaching?" The present research seeks to investigate one such principle,
the use of contrast in teaching pronunciation, through consideration of
results of a study modelled after the experiments by Pisoni, Bradlow and
colleagues.

2. Research Questions
In seeking to challenge the Critical Period Hypothesis, described above,
Pisoni, Bradlow and colleagues conducted a series of experiments using
computer-based training to demonstrate that adults can learn new
phonological contrasts. The experiment of present interest (Lively et al.
1994) used recordings of 68 minimal pairs with r/l in 5 different
phonological environments, produced by 5 English speakers (their
previous experiments having shown use of real voices to be more effective
than synthetic speech, and multiple speakers more effective than just one).
These recordings were incorporated into a program which cycled through
the minimal pairs four times, for a total of 272 randomised trials per
session over three weeks of daily sessions. Participants were 19 randomly
selected monolingual Japanese adults with minimal exposure to English.
On each trial, they heard one word from a minimal pair (e.g.
"belly/berry"), while simultaneously seeing both words on the computer
screen. Their task was to indicate with a keystroke which of the two words

Pronunciation As Categorization 291

they thought they had heard. If they were right, their score incremented
and they were automatically moved on to the next trial. If they were
wrong, they heard the word again with the correct answer highlighted,
then were moved on with no score increment.
This rather gruelling practice produced statistically significant
improvement in participants' discrimination of /r/ and /l/, with scores
(averaged over five sessions) improving from 71% in Week 1, to 79% in
Week 2, to 82% in Week 3 (see Figure 1 in the Appendix). Subsequently,
follow-up experiments using similar methodology (Bradlow et al. 1995)
produced similar improvements in perception, and further reported
statistically significant improvements in production—scores rising from
67% to 73% (see Figure 2 in the Appendix), with the improvement
transferring to new r/l words, and retained after 3-6 months. Since
production had not been directly trained, this was an important result,
confirming a controversial link between production and perception
(Strange 1995).
These results from the Pisoni/Bradlow teams (henceforth P/B) were
good, and certainly made the point intended—new phonological categories
can be learned by adults. But is this the best that can be done for language
learners? Even after three weeks of intensive training, participants still
made around 20-30% errors in both perception and production of this
simple contrast. This may be partly explained by the fact that the r/l
contrast was being trained in isolation, rather than being taught as part of
the language as a whole. However it may be worth considering another
factor.
Many people who have experienced second language pronunciation as
either a teacher or a learner would see an important limitation in the
feedback given to participants in the P/B experiments: when they made a
mistake, they were presented with the correct answer but were not able to
explore the contrast between correct and incorrect answers, or even to hear
the correct answer more than once.
The present experiment, run as a precursor to a larger project, speaks to
the hypothesis that learners would improve more if allowed to play the two
members of each minimal pair several times after their response was
scored.
The method is modelled closely on P/B, but the experiment was
conducted under very different circumstances. Whereas P/B used a
rigorous experimental process with financial reward as an incentive to
participants, the current experiment was run in a lively, sometimes noisy,
Independent Learning Centre at an Australian ELICOS centre, with a
group incentive of a dinner party for all those who completed the training.

292 Chapter Sixteen

3. Methodology

3.1. Procedure

Participants were first tested on their production of r/l, then asked to work
through the computer-based training each day for three weeks, and finally
tested again on their production. At each computer session they were
asked to fill in a form recording their feelings about the training that day.
At the end of the three weeks they were given their pre- and post-test
production scores, shown a graph of their daily scores, and interviewed
about their experience of the training.
Three conditions were run. Condition 1 used a training package very
similar to that of P/B. When participants made a mistake they heard the
same word played again, once, with the correct answer highlighted on the
screen, and were then automatically moved on to the next trial. Condition
2 made just one small change. After responding and receiving the correct
answer, participants were able to listen to each word in the minimal pair
(e.g. 'crime/climb') as many times as they liked, under their own keyboard
control, before moving on voluntarily to the next trial. Condition 3 made
one further small change. If the participant scored correctly on all trials of
a particular minimal pair in four consecutive sessions, that pair was
dropped from the bank of trials (but given an automatic correct score so as
to keep overall scores commensurate with Conditions 1 and 2), enabling
students to concentrate on pairs they found challenging. Condition 3 was
not fully completed, but is included for statistical reasons. Note that no
control group is reported, as P/B had already demonstrated with a control
group that the method of Condition 1 was more effective than no
intervention, and the focus of this experiment is on the relative
effectiveness of the three conditions, rather than on absolute improvement.

3.2. Materials

The 68 minimal pairs were recorded by 5 native speakers of Australian
English (3 female and 2 male). The speaking test used half the minimal
pairs in the set (balanced for phonological environment), with 10 pairs
differing between the pre-test and post-test. Participants were recorded
reading words from a randomised list, repeating each word twice. The
recordings were scored by a teacher-linguist not associated with the
project and unaware of whether the recordings came from the pre-test or

Pronunciation As Categorization 293

the post-test. A mark was given only if the student produced r/l correctly
on both repetitions (other aspects of pronunciation were ignored).

3.3. Participants

Participants in the present experiment were English language students
from a variety of language backgrounds (Japanese, Korean, Chinese and
Thai), self-selected on the basis of a desire to overcome their persistent
problems with r/l. Different groups were used for the different conditions,
and unfortunately it was not possible to control the mix of language
backgrounds in each group. Numbers were as follows: Condition 1: 15 (10
female, 5 male; 6 Thai, 5 Chinese, 4 Korean); Condition 2: 27 (15 female,
12 male; 4 Thai, 8 Chinese, 15 Japanese); Condition 3: 7 (6 female, 1
male; 1 Thai, 2 Chinese, 3 Japanese, 1 Korean).

4. Results

4.1. Listening

Figure 1 shows the scores recorded by the computer program for each of
the three Conditions—effectively a measure of listening discrimination—
in comparison with the equivalent results from Lively et al. (1994). In all
cases, scores are averaged over the 5 sessions in each week, to reduce the
effects of particularly good or bad performance on any one day.
The starting scores in each Condition were statistically similar, and
somewhat higher than the starting scores of P/B's monolinguals,
presumably due to the current students' much greater exposure to
English—though it is interesting to note how small the difference is, given
that students in the present experiment had been learning English for 6-
10+ years.
Each Condition produced a statistically significant improvement in
scores in each week of training (in all cases p < .002). The important
question is to compare the degrees of improvement in the different
conditions. In Condition 1, equivalent to P/B's method, students, though
starting from a higher base, improved less than P/B's participants, perhaps
due to the different circumstances under which the training was
undertaken. In Condition 2, improvement was greater, up to about the
same level as P/B. The difference between Week 3 in Condition 2 and

294 Chapter Sixteen

Week 3 in Condition 1 is statistically significant [t (10) = 2.75, p = .02]
though the overall difference between Conditions 1 and 2 is not. In
Condition 3, improvement was greater still, with the overall difference
between Conditions 3 and 1 being statistically significant (p = .003),
though the difference between Conditions 3 and 2 is not (p = .041).

4.2 Speaking

Figure 2 shows the results of the speaking tests before and after Conditions
1 and 2 (unfortunately no speaking test scores are available for Condition
3)—again in comparison with equivalent results from P/B. The initially
surprising result that P/B's participants had higher starting scores is
accounted for by the different style of test used. P/B's less proficient
participants were asked to repeat both members of the minimal pair after a
model and were scored by native speakers listening to each word
individually and making a forced choice as to whether the speaker had said
the pair-member with /r/ or with /l/ (e.g. 'ram' or 'lamb'). The current
experiment, as described above, required students to read individual words
from a list and to pronounce r/l correctly in each of two repetitions.
In both Conditions 1 and 2, students' pronunciation of r/l showed
statistically significant improvement (p < .005). Again the important
question is the relative improvement in the two conditions. It is evident
that improvement was greater in Condition 2 than in Condition 1, though
this is not statistically significant (p = .071). It is also evident that in both
Conditions, students' pronunciation of r/l improved more than in the P/B
experiment, despite the more rigorous testing and scoring. This may be
related to the fact that the training took place in the context of their
ongoing learning of the English language as a whole. It is important to
note however that teachers at the ELICOS centre were asked not to focus
directly on r/l in their lessons during the training period (and later
confirmed that they had not done so), and that these students had
volunteered for the experiment due to long-standing problems with r/l.

4.3. Questionnaires and interviews

All students in all conditions said they found the training useful, and this is
evidenced by the fact they kept at it for the full three weeks (ethics
approval naturally required that students were clearly informed that they
could leave at any time with no penalty, but only a few dropped out). Most

Pronunciation As Categorization 295

of the students also said they found the training interesting, and expressed
gratitude for the opportunity to study in this way, which they felt helped
them to overcome their long-standing problems with r/l. This was true also
for Condition 1, though in this condition almost all students, without
prompting, called for the program to be modified so as to allow them to
hear both words several times.
Scores varied considerably from day to day, and students' daily notes
showed these fluctuations tallied well with varying levels of distraction,
tiredness, noise or computer/headphone problems during the sessions. It
may be worth noting that these factors influenced Condition 2, which was
run at a busier time of the term, more than Condition 1.
The data is not robust enough to analyse the degree to which factors
such as language background affected student performance. The
interviews suggested, however, that one important factor in how much
they improved may have been metacognitive skill. Some students were
able to use the materials to really focus on the difference between /r/ and
/l/ in its different phonological contexts, noting the words that caused them
most difficulty, actively trying to improve their score each day, and
seeking opportunities to practise r/l in daily life. Other students were more
prone to boredom or distraction, had less ability to reflect on their learning
process, and spent less time playing the contrasting members of each pair.

5. Discussion

5.1. Findings

This experiment clearly supports P/B's findings that new phonological
contrasts can be trained, and that perceptual training carries over to
production. It also provides evidence in favour of the hypothesis that
allowing students to explore the contrast between members of a minimal
pair is more useful to them in learning to perceive and produce the contrast
than simply telling them whether their response was correct or incorrect.
This evidence is not statistically strong, due to practical difficulties in
running an experiment like this under real-life circumstances. However,
the weakness of the statistics is perhaps mitigated to some extent by the
very obviousness of the hypothesis. Many adults who have learned a
second language would confirm the experience of needing to explore the
differences between words rather than just being told the correct
pronunciation.

296 Chapter Sixteen

The question that really needs to be addressed, then, is not whether
learners do better when they can hear both words, but why they do.
Understanding the reason could help in developing principles for effective
teaching of second language pronunciation. The remainder of this paper
explores a possible answer to this question, drawing on insights from
Cognitive Linguistics (Langacker 1967; Taylor 2002), a theory that has
already been applied successfully in relation to other aspects of language
teaching (Putz, Niemeier, and Dirven 2001; Tyler et al. 2005), and can
also provide a useful framework for understanding pronunciation (Fraser
2006).

5.2. Pronunciation as cognitive skill

Difficulties in pronunciation are often attributed to difficulties with the
physical production of sounds, with many teaching materials featuring
diagrams or animations to help learners visualise articulation. Of course
pronunciation does have a physical dimension, to a much greater extent
than the other macro-skills. However articulation is not the whole story.
This is seen particularly clearly in the case of r/l. Most learners can easily
produce perfectly acceptable versions of both /r/ and /l/; they just can't do
it 'on demand'. Their difficulty, then, is not so much in producing the
sounds as in controlling their production in a way appropriate to the
pronunciation of English words. This was very evident in the speaking
tests for the current experiment, in which students were asked to produce
each word twice. Frequently they produced what sounded to a native
speaker like two different words (e.g. "rock, lock") rather than a repetition
of a single word. However the students themselves were unaware of this
difference, believing themselves to have said the same word twice.
Of course this difficulty in discriminating the sounds is readily
explained with reference to the differing phonological structure of English
and the learners' L1s. In English, /r/ and /l/ are separate phonemes, while
in other languages they are allophones of a single phoneme. This,
however, is a rather limited account of the situation. It can even give the
misleading impression that the single phoneme of the student's L1 has two
allophones [r] and [l], each equivalent to one of the English phonemes /r/
or /l/. This is far from true (Riney, Takada, and Ota 2000). The single
phoneme in each of the students' L1s covers a wide range of allophones,
some of which are somewhat similar to English /r/ and /l/, while others are
very different. Indeed English /r/ and /l/ themselves each cover a wide
range of allophones. Consider, for example, how different the two

Pronunciation As Categorization 297

phonemes sound when produced in sets of words such as "rain, train,
drain, through", or "leak, look, clue, milk".
One advantage of Cognitive Linguistics is that it explicitly focuses on
the idea that each phoneme groups together a category of different sounds
(Taylor 2003). Categories of sounds are much like any other categories
(Rosch 1973). They have a central member or prototype, surrounded by a
cluster of slightly different members, some close to the prototype and
others shading gradually into adjacent categories. Colours provide a good
example of how categories work. We speak of "blue", "red", "orange" and
so on as if each referred to a specific colour, but actually each colour term
covers a prototypical colour ('blue blue'), and a wide range of different
colours ("sky blue", "royal blue", "baby blue", "aqua", etc), with the
boundaries between one such 'allocolour' and another tending to be
somewhat 'fuzzy', and context-dependant (e.g. is "aqua" an 'allocolour' of
"blue" or "green"?).
It is very much the same with phonemes. A very important difference
between colours and phonemes, however, is that with colours, most people
are aware of the 'allocolours' (though they may differ in the degree to
which they can name each one with a specific colour term, like "tangerine"
or "ivory"), whereas with speech, people are generally unaware of
allophones, and assume that a phoneme is pronounced identically each
time it is produced. This is quite untrue—in fact, it is more accurate to say
that any given phoneme is pronounced differently every time it is
produced (Ladefoged 2005). However speakers generally ignore these
sometimes considerable pronunciation differences, focusing instead on
those pronunciation differences that serve to contrast meanings. For
example, most English speakers need some coaching before they notice
any difference in pronunciation of /r/ in "rain" and "train", even though
phonetically this difference is of similar magnitude to the difference
between the first sounds of "tin" and "chin", which English speakers
consider to be very obvious indeed.
An important feature of categories is that it is rather rare for the
members of a category to be definable purely in terms of their physical
characteristics. Consider the category "chair" for example. Chairs come in
a huge variety of shapes, sizes, materials and other physical features—we
could say the 'chaireme' has many 'allochairs'. It is hard to think of any set
of purely physical features possessed by all chairs and by no non-chairs
that could be used as the basis of a purely physical definition of "chair".
Rather, chairs must be defined with reference to what people know about
them, for example, their function, and the contexts in which they occur.

298 Chapter Sixteen

This reference to 'what people know' brings the discussion into the
domain of cognition (the science of what people know and how they
acquire and use knowledge). The suggestion is that the thing that unites
the category of chairs is the fact that (some) people have a concept, CHAIR,
in their minds. It is this concept that allows all the physically different
chairs to be categorised as 'the same kind of thing'. Memory, reasoning
and many other cognitive processes operate with respect to concepts
(Murphy 2002). For example, after leaving a room, one may remember
that it had a chair in it, but have little memory of the physical details of
that chair, and even that little memory will fade rapidly with time. Speech
sounds can be seen in exactly the same way (Fraser 2001, 2004b). On this
view, it is not physical similarities that allow all the allophones of /r/ to be
categorised as 'the same phoneme'—as we have seen, the allophones can
be radically different. Rather it is the fact that (some) speakers have a
concept of /r/ which unites all those physically different sounds and makes
them seem the same.
Concepts, of course, must be learned. Concepts such as chair are
usually learned in childhood, through well-known processes involving
errors such as over-generalisation and under-extension (Berko Gleason
2005). Concepts such as /r/ are also learned in childhood as part of the
process of language and, especially, literacy acquisition. Speakers from
different language and literacy backgrounds learn different concepts that
encourage them to categorise speech sounds in ways quite different from
those that seem obvious to English speakers. Learning to speak a new
language means learning new phonological concepts—through processes
involving errors such as over-generalisation and under-extension, very
much like those that characterise the learning of any other concepts (Fraser
2004a, in press). One crucial difference however is that, like English
speakers, speakers of other languages have little awareness of allophonic
variation in their own pronunciation of the phonemes of their L1. In fact,
speakers from non-alphabetic literacy backgrounds often have little
awareness even of phonemes (Olson 1994)—though these seem so
obvious to English speakers they find it hard to imagine anyone not
hearing "cat" as "c-a-t" (Fraser 2004b). These observations suggest that
concepts of allophones are formed after concepts of phonemes, and
concepts of phonemes after concepts of words. Elaboration of this idea
here would take us too far from current concerns, but further discussion
can be found in Fraser (2004a), and see also Vihman and Croft (2007).
This change of perspective from sounds as such, to speakers' concepts
of sounds, is valuable because rather than merely providing an explanation
for why learners have problems with /r/ and /l/, it suggests a direction in

Pronunciation As Categorization 299

which to seek a solution. If the difficulty is primarily conceptual rather
than physical, it can be approached through methods of concept formation
(Jaeger 1986; Mompeán 2004). Since helping students with concept
formation is a task familiar to most teachers (Woolfolk 1998), this opens
up methods for teaching pronunciation which are not only more productive
than focusing on articulation, but also more congenial to teachers, as they
do not require detailed knowledge of phonetics (Fraser 2006a). In
particular, since concepts are best learned in conducive sociocultural
contexts, it bridges the gap that has unfortunately opened up between those
approaches to language acquisition which focus on sociocultural context
and those which focus on individual psychology (Zuengler and Miller
2006). Confusingly, the latter are currently often referred to as 'cognitive',
due to the Chomskyan analogy between the human mind and a computer
(Leiber 1991; Fraser 2007). Unlike the Chomskyan view of language as a
system of computational processes inaccessible to consciousness,
however, the concept-formation approach sees pronunciation as being
learned, like other aspects of language, by a conscious, socially-situated
agent. On this view, pronunciation can be taught communicatively, like
'higher' levels of language, by taking into account of a few special
characteristics of pronunciation (Fraser 2001, 2006b, in press).
Interestingly, some of the activities developed by successful pronunciation
teachers (e.g. Kenworthy 1987) can be seen as incorporating concept-
formation principles. Setting successful activities within a concept-
formation framework may enable them to be understood and extended in
productive ways.
One very important principle of concept formation is the need for
contrast. As Wittgenstein (1958/1974) famously pointed out, concepts are
not learned through positive examples alone, but require negative
examples as well, to allow the learner to become aware not just of the
prototype but also of the boundaries of the category. For example, to teach
a newly-arrived Martian the concept of CHAIR it would surely be necessary
to provide examples not just of chairs, but also of things which, while
similar to chairs, are not chairs: sofas, stools, tables, etc.
Bearing in mind then, that recognising phonemes requires categorising
sounds according to concepts, and, that concepts are learned through
processes that depend on contrast, consider again the design of the present
experiment. Condition 1 shares the (unstated) assumption of P/B that
participants have clear, though subconscious, concepts of the allophones
[r] and [l], but need practice in assigning individual allophones to the
appropriate phoneme /r/ or /l/. Condition 2 takes a quite different view. It
recognises that the reason participants cannot readily identify /r/ and /l/ in

300 Chapter Sixteen

English words is that they do not yet have clear concepts of these
phonemes, much less of the individual allophones categorised by those
concepts. They therefore find it difficult not just to recognise which
phoneme occurs in a particular word, but even to remember the sound they
have just heard long enough to compare it with the correct response when
it is given.
What they need, then, is help in learning the new concepts of English
/r/ and /l/. They can be helped in this by contrasting examples which,
though they sound 'the same' to the learners, are categorised as 'different'
by native speakers, and vice versa. This helps them to learn the English
prototype, and to understand how the category boundaries relate to the
prototype in different contexts. This is an inherently interesting task for
most motivated mature learners, which they undertake naturally and
fruitfully if suitable materials are provided to them. Unfortunately suitable
materials are often not provided when pronunciation is taught only
'implicitly' through communicative or task-based approaches.

6. Conclusion
This experiment has provided evidence of the value of using contrast to
help improve perception and production of /r/ and /l/ by learners of
English with L1s which lack this distinction. Recognising that the results
need to be confirmed and amplified by follow-up studies, discussion has
interpreted the findings within a Cognitive Linguistics framework,
suggesting that the concept-formation approach is a fruitful one for
teachers, and worthy of further development. In closing, a few remarks on
the relationship between the experimental method tested here, and
classroom teaching, are appropriate.
The training method used here is very much a psycholinguistic
experiment. Its intention is to isolate one principle of teaching which, once
its effectiveness has been demonstrated, can be integrated into a
communicative and culturally sensitive style of teaching that suits the
circumstances of particular classrooms. While such teaching might
profitably include opportunities for students to practise with computer-
based materials similar to the ones used here, these should be supported by
appropriate pre-teaching, including guidance on the metacognitive skills
needed for effective use of the materials. Also, the training should be
refined to provide more interesting exercises graded into sets reflecting the
stages through which the relevant phonological concepts are learned.
Ongoing research in the current project is seeking to establish those stages

Pronunciation As Categorization 301

of phonological concept formation, which may differ for learners from
different language backgrounds, to enable more specific recommendations
to be made.
The focus on minimal pairs in the current experiment was determined
by the need to compare the results with those of P/B. Minimal pairs have a
long and chequered history in pronunciation teaching (Celce-Murcia,
Brinton, and Goodwin 1996). The concept-formation approach certainly
encourages the use of minimal pairs in appropriate circumstances, for
example, where students frequently confuse members of a pair in spoken
communication. Rather than old-fashioned 'drilling', however, the aim is to
assist learners with guided exploration of the contrast, to help them
establish an appropriate phonological concept in perception, and allow it
to become embodied via production practice (these two stages need not be
as strictly separated as in the current experiment). It is notable that in the
present experiment production scores showed a greater percentage
increase than perception—even though it was perception that was directly
trained (cf. similar observations by Couper 2006). This could be because
the prototype is learned before the category boundaries (cf. McCandliss et
al. 2002), but again, a great deal more research is needed to fully establish
the incremental stages of phonological concept formation.
Minimal pairs are only one type of contrast, however—albeit one
which appears very salient to native speakers. Indeed, segmental contrasts,
even those, like r/l, with a high functional load (Brown 1988), are not the
most important aspect of English pronunciation for intelligibility (Fraser
2003; Hahn 2004). The general principle of using contrast for concept
formation is not restricted to minimal pairs, however. The concept
formation approach focuses more on the contrast between a correct (or
appropriate) pronunciation versus an incorrect (or inappropriate)
pronunciation within a particular communicative act. This is called Critical
Listening, discussed further in Fraser (2000, 2001) and Couper
(forthcoming), and extends readily to suprasegmental aspects of
pronunciation (Fraser 2001, 2006a).
Even the best of the three conditions in the current experiment
achieved a mean accuracy of only 88% after three weeks of work.
Although this is a significant improvement by the students, informal
experimentation suggests that even better results can be obtained by
incorporating the explicit use of contrast, along with other concept-
formation strategies, into communicative and culturally sensitive teaching.
Further research is under way to confirm this observation formally. Recent
models from the teaching of grammar (e.g. Mochizuki and Ortega 2008)
may prove valuable in guiding this research.

302 Chapter Sixteen

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Zuengler, Jane, and Elizabeth R. Miller. 2006. Cognitive and Sociocultural
Perspectives: Two Parallel SLA Worlds? TESOL Quarterly 40 (1):
35-58.

306 Chapter Sixteen

Appendix A: Figures

100

80

60 Week1
Week2
40
Week3
20

Lively et al COND 1 COND 2 COND 3

Figure 1. Comparison of results of Pisoni/Bradlow discrimination training
with the Conditions described in the text.

100
79
76
73

80
67

62

56

60 Pretest
40 Posttest

20

Bradlow et al COND 1 COND 2

Figure 2. Comparison of the effect of discrimination training on speaking
in Pisoni/Bradlow with the Conditions described in the text

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EFL LEARNERS' USE OF ORAL
COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
HSIN-FEI VICTORIA WU
& CHRISTINA GITSAKI

1. Introduction
Language learners in general are concerned about how they can learn
another language and what they could do to make it easier (Bialystok and
Hakuta 1994). According to Stevick (1984, 32), second language
acquisition (SLA) research has shown that success in second language
learning correlates with what he termed "well-integrated contexts", but
language learners often acquire a second language in "poorly integrated
contexts". EFL learners in Taiwan are a group of students who face the
same problem of spending much time and energy learning and trying to
use English in their poorly integrated environment, but often attain little
achievement and progress. Besides the environmental factors, different
individual affective variables and situational input also limit learners'
learning speed, performance quality and strategy use.
English competence consists of the development of all language skills.
Oral communication competence is often undervalued or taken for
granted; however, speaking is often used as the preliminary judgment of
one's English ability rather than other language skills (McDonough and
Shaw 2003). The undervaluing of oral communication competence is also
reflected in the quantity of academic literature devoted to this topic. There
is more research on language learning strategies (LLSs) than on
communication strategies (CSs) or oral communication strategies (OCSs).
To fill in this gap in the literature, the present study was designed to
address two research questions:

308 Chapter Seventeen

1. What is the relationship between language proficiency and oral
communication strategy use?
2. Are there significant differences in gender, age, the frequency of
using English in and out of school, and motivation in terms of the
EFL learners' overall oral communication strategy use?

2. Background
Many variables and elements can influence the performance of second
language learning; however, unlike other language learning variables,
learning strategies are readily teachable (Oxford and Nyikos, 1989).
Learning strategies have been defined as "operations used by learners to
aid the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of information" (Oxford and
Nyikos 1989, 291). Numerous research studies have been conducted to
show the importance of teaching and learning strategies for second and
foreign language learning (e.g., Bialystok 1978, 1979; Cohen and Macaro
2007; Cohen and Weaver 2006; Davies and Elder 2004; Dörnyei 1995,
2005; Grabe and Kaplan 1992; McDonough 1995; Nakatani 2006;
Savignon 1972; Tarone 1977). CS researchers used divergent definitions
and inventories, while many LLS researchers in the 1990s assessed their
subjects mostly with Oxford's (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language
Learning. The earliest researchers of CSs, such as Savignon (1972),
Selinker (1972) and Váradi (1973, 1980), did not go into detail about the
nature of communication strategies (Dörnyei and Scott 1997). It was not
until the work of Tarone and her associates (Tarone 1977; Tarone, Cohen
and Dumans 1976) that the first systematic category and definition of CSs
occurred (Bongaerts and Poulisse 1989). After Tarone (1977), a number of
research designs and strategy taxonomies were introduced.
In the second half of the 1980s, a group of Dutch researchers, the
Nijmegen Group (including researchers like Bongaerts, Kellerman and
Poulisse), became influential in the study of CSs. They divided
communication strategies into two principal categories, "conceptual" and
"linguistic". Some specific strategies they categorized (e.g.,
approximation, circumlocution or word coinage of the conceptual
category; literal translation, code-switching or foreignizing in the
linguistic category) later became essential components, and were often
included in other researchers' taxonomies.
CSs were also defined by two other dimensions: psycholinguistic and
sociolinguistic perspectives (Faerch and Kasper 1980; Kasper and

EFL Learners’ Use of Oral Communication Strategies 309

Kellerman 1997). From a psycholinguistic perspective, CSs are conceived
as mental plans implemented by non-native speakers as problem-solving
or self-help strategies in order to achieve greater linguistic clarity (Faerch
and Kasper 1983; Kellerman and Bialystok 1997; Poulisse 1987). A
sociolinguistic perspective emphasizes the interactional view of CSs,
namely, "the interaction between interlocutors and negotiation of
meaning" (Nakatani 2006, 151).
During the last four decades, the emphasis has shifted from looking for
a perfect inventory (e.g., Bialystok and Frohlich 1980; Paribakht 1985) to
comprehending CS issues in detail, particularly with regard to learners'
inherent divergence and a posteriori knowledge and ability (e.g.,
Bongaerts and Poulisse 1989; Cohen and Weaver 2006; Gao 2000; Huang
and van Naerssen 1987; Nakatani 2006). Another shift has been to
conducting research in EFL instead of ESL settings.
A number of studies on language learning strategies have investigated
links between strategies on the one hand and language proficiency, gender,
and learners' motivation, attitudes and beliefs on the other, using Oxford's
(1990) Strategy Inventory of Language Learning (SILL). Yet, little
attention has been paid specifically to how EFL learners perceive and use
OCSs. Since studies about EFL learners' strategic competence in oral
communication is still in its infancy (Nakatani 2006), using an appropriate
inventory for OCS research is essential.
The present study explores junior college learners' strategic
competence in English oral communication and how their strategic
competence correlates with their language proficiency and other variables,
namely, gender, age, motivation and frequency of using English in oral
communication. The focus on oral communication skills made the use of
Oxford's SILL inappropriate for the present study. Although the validity
and reliability of the SILL has been widely confirmed in research
conducted in different countries and cultures, Oxford (1996) admitted that
the SILL might not be well adapted to identify task-specific strategies.
Thus, Nakatani's Oral Communication Strategy Inventory (OCSI), a newly
developed scale for OCSs, was adapted for the present study.
Nakatani's OCSI is a synthesized inventory on a 5-point scale, in which
EFL learners' perspectives and communication problems are taken into
account. "5" on the scale means "Always or almost always true of me" and
"1" represents "Never or almost never true of me". Unlike the SILL, which
refers to LLSs in a broad sense, the OCSI focuses only on OCSs in EFL
contexts. The Pearson correlation has been used to compare the OCSI to
the SILL, and the concurrent validity of the OCSI has been proved (see

310 Chapter Seventeen

Nakatani 2006). Another reason that made the OCSI suitable for the
present study was that Nakatani's research was designed for and conducted
with Japanese EFL students, who are similar to the Taiwanese EFL
students that this study examined. Like most Japanese EFL learners,
Taiwanese EFL learners tend to be quiet and shy in their foreign language
communication. This is because the dominant educational style in many
Asian countries is didactic and teacher- or authority-centred. If Nakatani
(2006) was able to apply the OCSI instrument to his Japanese participants
and obtain significant results, it was expected that the use of the OCSI
would be applicable to the Taiwanese subjects as well.

3. The Study
The objectives of this study were to investigate EFL students' OCS use
and to explore the relationship of certain variables or factors that might
influence students' OCS use. The literature review suggested that a mixed
methods research design would probably best serve the purposes of this
study. Therefore, in order to elicit self-reported data on the learners' OCS
use, both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used.

3.1. Subjects

The subjects for this study were 94 students of a five-year junior college in
Southern Taiwan. 32 participants had high language proficiency and 62
had low language proficiency. Most of the students in this junior college
had a low academic performance in the National entrance exams. As there
were more female than male students enrolled in the Applied Foreign
Languages Department of the college, there were more female (n=80) than
male (n=14) participants in this study. Most of the students had at least
three to four years of formal English instruction in their elementary and
junior high schools before entering this junior college. Their ages ranged
from 16 to 21. Two interviewees, one from each language proficiency
group (high and low), were randomly chosen for interviewing.

EFL Learners’ Use of Oral Communication Strategies 311

3.2. Instruments

Questionnaire

Part 1
A small-scale demographic questionnaire was used comprising six
questions asking subjects to provide their gender, age, English proficiency
level according to their result on the General English Proficiency Test
(GEPT) (an English language proficiency test used in Taiwan), frequency
of using English in and out of school and their motivation to communicate
well in English.

Part 2
Nakatani's OCSI was slightly modified and edited for this study, so that
the inventory would suit Taiwanese EFL learners' language proficiency
and their EFL learning context (i.e., simpler vocabulary, shorter sentences
and more examples to specify some of the questions). In addition, two
other important strategies, "foreignizing" and "word-coinage" from
Dörnyei's CS inventory, were added to the OCSI. Both parts of the
questionnaire were bilingual (English-Chinese).

Interview
The semi-structured interviews were used to collect more in-depth data
about the research questions. The two 30-minute interviews concerned
students' use of OCSs.

4. Results

4.1. Demographic Questionnaire

Among the 94 subjects, 34% of them belonged to the high language
proficiency group and 66% were in the low language proficiency group.
The youngest subject was aged 16 and the oldest 21, with a mean age of
18.21.
In the question about how frequently the subjects used English in
school, 4% reported they used English all the time while 35% said they
used it a few times a day. However, in the question about how frequently
the subjects used English out of school, 35% reported they "seldom" used
English out of school. Finally, with regard to the subjects' motivation for

312 Chapter Seventeen

trying to communicate well in English, 63% reported that the main reason
for them to communicate well in English was to get a good job.

OCSI: Descriptive Analyses

The OCSI contained two subgroups of strategies: speaking and listening.
The mean for the overall OCSI was 3.62, with a standard deviation (SD)
of .38. The mean of the speaking subgroup was 3.50, with an SD of .41;
the mean of the listening subgroup was 3.78, with an SD of .29.
The speaking strategies subgroup consisted of eight categories with a
total of 34 strategies. The name of each category of strategies, the means
and the standard deviations are listed in Table 1. The message reduction
and alteration strategies had the highest mean, whereas the message
abandonment strategies had the lowest mean.

Mean SD
Message reduction and alteration 4.12 .43
Nonverbal strategies while speaking 3.85 .28
Attempt to think in English 3.63 .13
Negotiation for meaning while speaking 3.55 .35
Social affective 3.49 .32
Fluency-oriented 3.39 .31
Accuracy-oriented 3.36 .28
Message abandonment 3.16 .59

Note: 5=Always or almost always true of me, 4=Generally true of me,
3=Somewhat true of me, 2=Generally not true of me, 1=Never or almost never true
of me

Table 1: Means and Standard Deviations for the 8 Individual Categories of
the Speaking Strategies Subgroup

The listening subgroup consisted of seven categories. There were 26
listening strategies in total. The name of each category of strategies, the
means and the standard deviations are listed in Table 2. While the word-
oriented strategies received the highest mean among all the categories of
the listening strategies, the category of the less active listener strategies
received the lowest mean.

EFL Learners’ Use of Oral Communication Strategies 313

Mean SD
Word-oriented 3.96 .26
Nonverbal strategies While listening 3.90 .16
Negotiation for meaning while listening 3.89 .15
Scanning 3.76 .49
Fluency-maintaining 3.72 .14
Getting the gist 3.69 .35
Less active listener 3.37 .89

Note: 5=Always or almost always true of me, 4=Generally true of me,
3=Somewhat true of me, 2=Generally not true of me, 1=Never or almost never true
of me

Table 2. Means and Standard Deviations for the 7 Individual Categories of
the Listening Strategies Subgroup

OCSI: Inferential Analyses

Gender and Strategy Use
Independent t-tests were used to compare the males' and the females'
frequency of use of each of the speaking and listening categories of
strategies. There were no significant differences found, indicating that
there was no significant effect of gender on strategy use in this study.

Age
A one-way between-subjects ANOVA was used to examine if age had any
effect on the use of strategies. There was no statistically significant
difference (p=.48) in the use of strategies by any age group. However, the
16- year-old group used OCSs more frequently than the rest of the age
groups (M=3.90). The order of the age groups from the highest frequency
use to the lowest was: 16, 19, 21, 18, 17 and 20.

Use of English in and out of school
A one-way between-subjects ANOVA was used to examine the effect of
using English in and out of school on strategy use. It was found that how
often the students use English in and out of school significantly correlates
with how frequently they use OCSs. Results showed that students who
used English "all the time" in school and "at least once a day" outside
school employed most OCSs.

314 Chapter Seventeen

Motivation and strategy use
There was no significant effect shown by the ANOVA for the students'
motivation on their use of strategies (p=.64).

Use of OCSI by proficiency levels: MANOVA results
A MANOVA was performed using the 15 categories of strategies (8
categories of speaking and 7 categories of listening strategies) as the
dependent variables and the two proficiency levels as the independent
variables (see Tables 3 and 4).

Speaking strategies
The mean use of the speaking strategies for the high-proficiency group
was 3.67, and for the low-proficiency group was 3.50. The MANOVA
results showed significant effects on the social affective (p=.007),
negotiation for meaning while speaking (p=.039) and accuracy-oriented
(p=.000) strategies for the two proficiency levels. Namely, the high-
proficiency subjects reported using more of these three types of strategies
than the low-proficiency subjects. To be more specific, the Eta Squared
showed that the high-proficiency subjects used the accuracy-oriented
strategies more than the social affective and negotiation for meaning while
speaking strategies. For both the message reduction and alteration and
nonverbal strategies while speaking categories, the means of the low-
proficiency group were higher than that of the high-proficiency group. For
the attempt to think in English strategy, the means of both proficiency
groups appeared to be very close (see Table 3).

EFL Learners’ Use of Oral Communication Strategies 315

High proficiency Low F p Eta
proficiency Squared
n=32 n=62
OCSI category M SD M SD
Strategies for coping with speaking problems
Social affective 3.68 .48 3.39 .48 7.66 .007* .077
Fluency-oriented 3.51 .65 3.33 .60 .183 .18 .019
Negotiation for 3.76 .64 3.44 .73 4.37 .039* .045
meaning while
speaking
Accuracy-oriented 3.68 .59 3.19 .59 14.37 .000** .135
Message reduction 4.08 .60 4.14 .63 0.18 .68 .002
and alteration
Nonverbal strategies 3.67 .86 3.78 .76 1.16 .29 .012
while speaking
Message abandonment 3.29 .86 3.09 .54 2.70 .10 .029
Attempt to think in 3.66 .78 3.61 .75 2.7 .79 .001
Total Strategy Use 3.67 .22 3.50 .34
*p < .05. **p <.006.
Eta Squared >.14
Note: 5= Always or almost always true of me, 4=Generally true of me,
3=Somewhat true of me, 2=Generally not true of me, 1=Never or almost never true
of me

Table 3. MANOVA Results Regarding Significant Variation in Use of
Speaking Strategies by Proficiency Level

Listening strategies
The means for the use of listening strategies for the high-and low-
proficiency groups were 3.86 and 3.70 respectively. The fluency-
maintaining category of strategies was the only one which significantly
related to the different proficiency levels (p=.006) in the listening part.
The higher the subjects' proficiency, the more fluency-maintaining
strategies they used. With regard to the less active listening strategies, the
means of both the high (M=3.38) and low (M=3.36) proficiency groups
were almost the same. The high-proficiency group had higher means in the
rest of the listening strategies than the low-proficiency group (see Table
4).

316 Chapter Seventeen

4.2. Interviews

High- and low-proficiency subjects expressed similar hopes to acquire
fluency in oral communication. Suggested means to this end included
more help from native English speaking teachers and an appropriate
learning environment, reducing pressure from peers, increasing limited
word-banks, and using more body language and simple expressions.
However, they also reported divergent opinions and attitudes on issues like
self-image, complexity of speech, carrying on a conversation, using
English in class, seeking help, asking for repetition and "pretending to
know" while engaging in a conversation. Generally speaking, the high-
proficiency subject revealed a positive and interactive approach to oral
communication in English while the low-proficiency subject took a more
passive stance.

High proficiency Low proficiency F p Eta
n=32 n=62 Squared
OCSI category M SD M SD
Strategies for coping with listening problems
Negotiation for 3.99 .65 3.83 .73 1.11 .30 .012
meaning while
listening
Fluency-maintaining 3.99 .69 3.59 .65 7.94 .006* .079
Scanning 3.83 .62 3.72 .59 .66 .42 .007
Getting the gist 3.75 .52 3.66 .53 .66 .42 .007
Nonverbal Strategies 3.98 .73 3.85 .81 .65 .007 .007
while Listening
Less active listener 3.38 .68 3.36 .74 .006 .94 .000
Word Listener 4.07 .63 3.90 .63 1.63 .21 .017
Total Strategy Use 3.86 .24 3.70 .19
**p <.007.
Eta Squared >.14
Note: 5= Always or almost always true of me, 4=Generally true of me,
3=Somewhat true of me, 2=Generally not true of me, 1=Never or almost never true
of me

Table 4. MANOVA Results Regarding Significant Variation in Use of
Listening Strategies by Proficiency Level

EFL Learners’ Use of Oral Communication Strategies 317

5. Discussion
The comparative means generated from the overall frequency of use of
both speaking and listening OCSs revealed that the subjects in this study
applied more listening than speaking strategies although there was no
statistically significant difference for this result. The same picture emerged
through the interviews, where the low-proficiency student reported that
she was less willing to engage in conversation due to her low English
proficiency, and admitted to even "pretending" to understand what she
hears so as not to appear "special" among her group of peers. In contrast,
the high-proficiency interviewee, talking about her past English
communication experience, reported how listening can actually enhance
speaking. The students' tendency to use more listening strategies could be
due to the fact that listening gives EFL learners more time to respond than
speaking (Gao 2000). Furthermore, there are more opportunities for
listening than speaking in an EFL setting (Gao 2000; Khalil 2005). EFL
students may become shy and passive learners because of a teacher-
centred and test-centred learning environment like Taiwan's (Aoki 1999;
Lin 1999; Nunan 1996; Savignon and Wang 2003; Tsui 2001). Speaking
usually requires instant interactions between two people (Tsang and Wong
2002). As Chafe (1986, 16) argues, a conversation requires the speaker to
"face temporal constraints and the social pressures of face-to-face
interaction". Therefore, by engaging less in speaking, low-proficiency
learners anticipate making fewer mistakes and saving face.
From the MANOVA results of the speaking strategies, it was shown
that high-proficiency subjects use significantly more of the social
affective, negotiation for meaning while speaking and accuracy-oriented
strategies than low-proficiency subjects. The interview data from the high-
proficiency subject about the social affective and negotiation for meaning
while speaking strategies provided the following remark: "I would seize
opportunities to have English conversations with people I am acquainted
with in school. . . I don't mind making mistakes." In contrast, the low-
proficiency subject talked about her passive attitude toward an English
interaction:

I usually would let other people lead a conversation. . . I am a passive
and shy speaker and listener. . . Enhancing English ability all depends
on me. I think people can enhance their English ability by listening to
textbook articles and practising dictating more. . . To save face, I
would probably ask close friends about my confusion privately after a

318 Chapter Seventeen
group of people is dismissed. . . I would only ask the interlocutor to
explain confusion to me when I am really dying to know or really
interested in that topic and if it's a two-people conversation.

It is apparent from the data examined in this study that high-proficiency
learners take an active role in enhancing their oral communication ability,
and enjoy learning from making mistakes, but this is not the case for low-
proficiency learners.
As mentioned above, high-proficiency learners showed significantly
higher use of the accuracy-oriented strategies than low-proficiency
learners. The high-proficiency interviewee reported:

I wish I could speak English as fluently as a native speaker or an
"ABC" (American Born Chinese) does. . . Therefore, I will target
American accents or pronunciation first and then British ones. I would
pay attention to the fluency as well as grammar. I perform better on
grammar. I talk slowly, almost word by word, to ensure that every
sentence I say is grammatically correct. I expect that the fluency can be
increased based on correct grammatical forms.

The low-proficiency interviewee instead emphasized the importance of
fluency: "I hope to speak like a native speaker, who can keep
conversations going on and on. As long as a person could keep talking in
English, I would think it is a good communication." It becomes apparent
that both learners would like to speak as fluently as a native speaker;
however, the level of attention paid to accuracy diverged.
With regard to the issue of fluency in communication, the fluency-
maintaining strategies for coping with listening problems was the only
category from the listening strategy subgroups which showed a significant
difference among subjects from different proficiency levels. The high-
proficiency subject commented in the interview:

I pay most attention to English pronunciation. One with good
pronunciation will gain respect from others. [...] I would ask the
interlocutor directly what she or he means, or I would ask her or him to
express in simpler or different ways. [...] If I don't understand others
clearly, I would probably stand there and keep smiling to her or him as
a sign showing that "I don't get you".

However, the low-proficiency interviewee reported that she would pretend
that she understands what the others are saying: "In order to save my own

EFL Learners’ Use of Oral Communication Strategies 319

face and not to make myself look "special" among a group of people, I
would pretend I have understood what others have talked". In
circumstances like that, the low-proficiency interviewee's conversation
with others may seem to go on, but the fact is the interviewee might have
stopped communicating his or her real messages some time ago. In
addition, the low-proficiency learner did not pay attention to details like
rhythm, intonation or pronunciation, but only fluency. She would not
actively ask for more explanation or examples but pretend that
conversations were flowing well without any communication gaps. This
way, she expected to be mocked less by others, and save face.
With regard to the variable of gender, although there was no significant
difference shown between the two sexes for the use of each subgroup of
the OCSI in the independent t-test, there was a tendency for the male
subjects to use more strategies than the females. This result is different
from many other studies (Green and Oxford 1995; Khalil 2005; Lan and
Oxford 2003; Oxford and Nyikos 1989; Sheorey 1999; Wang 2002; Wen
and Johnson 1997; Zoubir-Shaw and Oxford 1994), but it is also not
unusual for studies to generate no significance on this issue (Luo 1998;
Nisbet Tindall and Arroyo 2005; Peng 2001). A possible reason for this
phenomenon is that the sample of the male subjects in this study was
relatively small (Female=80; Male=14).
Another interesting observation was that the seven 16-year-old subjects
from the low-proficiency level used strategies most frequently. This
indicates that an increase in age does not guarantee a higher frequency of
strategy use. Some students have learned what strategies to use and how to
use them in the beginning years of junior college, and some have not, even
though they have been studying in the college for several years. This result
can be regarded as evidence for the teachability of strategies.
The results of this study also provided some clues as to the subjects'
motivations for using the OCSI strategies. Most of the subjects in this
study reported "getting a good job" as their main reason for
communicating well in English; however, it was the group whose reason
for learning English was "making more friends" that reported the highest
frequency of use of the overall OCSI strategies. Such a result may be
explained by psychological factors in the case of teenage learners
(Bialystok and Fröhlich 1980). Although the subjects were studying in a
vocational training-oriented college, and getting a good job was the prior
goal and motivation for their learning, the results still showed that the
motivation of getting an active social life affected their oral
communication performance more strongly than other motives.

320 Chapter Seventeen
The two other major reasons for communicating well in English
reported in the quantitative research were for traveling abroad and for
one's own interest and benefits (e.g., broaden knowledge, raise confidence,
learn better.). These two reasons also matched the teenage subjects' social
and affective needs as well as their need for self-esteem. The option "for
academic reasons" had the lowest mean, a result which could suggest that
students are not motivated by academic reasons as often as teachers
expect. This result might partially explain why the subjects in the present
study were generally low in their academic performance. Finally, both
interviewees reported having a limited word-bank. According to Ellis
(1995), it is common that beginners usually pay more attention to words or
lexical issues. Without adequate linguistic competence, oral
communication competence would be hard to achieve.

6. Conclusion
This study found that on the whole, the higher the EFL learner's language
proficiency level was, the higher the frequency of use of OCSs, except for
two passive strategy categories, namely message reduction and alteration
strategies and nonverbal strategies while speaking. The high-proficiency
subjects were identified as using the following strategies significantly
more than the low-proficiency subjects: social affective, negotiation for
meaning while speaking, accuracy-oriented and fluency-maintaining
strategies. Other than that, independent t-tests for the variable of gender
and one-way between subjects ANOVA for variables of age, the frequency
of using English in and out of school, and motivation were used to
examine the relationships with the overall frequency of use of OCSs. The
results showed that only the variables of the frequency of using English in
and out of school had significant effects.
Some of the quantitative results of this study were different from those
of other studies. For example, the males reported using more strategies
than the females, and the younger learners used more strategies than the
older ones. These differences might be due to these EFL teenage learners'
unique psychological, social and educational environment. Thus, this
research sheds light for both students and teachers to explore EFL teenage
learners' attitudes towards their use of OCSs. How teenage learners are
prepared or trained in Taiwan's junior colleges to use strategies to
overcome their language or psychological barriers deserves much
attention. The present study has highlighted a number of issues associated

EFL Learners’ Use of Oral Communication Strategies 321

with EFL students' OCS use, a topic for which there is still much room for
further investigation.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF NATIVE ENGLISH
TEACHERS AND LOCAL ENGLISH TEACHERS
LAI PING FLORENCE MA

1. Introduction
Phillipson (1992) introduced the concept of "linguistic imperialism" and
suggested that one of the "native speaker fallacies" was the belief that "the
ideal teacher is a native speaker" (Phillipson 1992, 185). In response to
this fallacy, Medgyes (1994) discussed the notion of non-native English
speaking teachers (NNESTs) and highlighted the positive and negative
characteristics of being a NNEST. Ever since Medgyes's pioneer work,
there has been growing interest in the native and non-native speaker
debate, and three full-length books have been devoted to this discussion
(Braine 1999; Kamhi-Stein 2004; Llurda 2005).
Empirical research was also conducted into various areas such as
NNESTs' self-perceptions (Amin 1997; Llurda and Huguet 2003;
Mahboob et al. 2002; Reves and Medgyes 1994; Tang 1997), the teaching
behaviour of NNESTs and native English speaking teachers (NESTs)
(Ávra and Medgyes 2000; Benke and Medgyes 2005), student perceptions
of NNESTs (Benke and Medgyes 2005; Cheung 2002; Lasagabaster and
Sierra 2005; Liang 2002; Mahboob 2003; Moussu 2002; Pacek 2005) and
teacher education (Garvey and Murray 2004; Kamhi-Stein et al. 1999;
Kamhi-Stein 1999; Liu 1999). Braine (1999) and Moussu and Llurda
(2008) provided a detailed overview of the history and research into the
issues of NNESTs.
Coming from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, NESTs and
NNESTs exhibit distinctive characteristics. Widdowson (1992, 338) best
highlighted the differences in their different characteristics and values:

For although native speakers obviously have the more extensive
experience as English language users, the non-native speakers have
had experience as English learners. They have been through the
process of coming to terms with English as another language.

326 Chapter Eighteen

Inspired by this quotation, this paper reports a study which investigated
secondary student perceptions of native English teachers (NETs) and local
English teachers (LETs) in Hong Kong. It specifically focuses on two
main themes: student preferences for English teachers and their views on
the advantages and disadvantages of learning English from NETs and
LETs. This study is part of a PhD research project which also examined
the teaching behaviour and teacher perceptions of NETs and LETs.
"NETs" refers to all English teachers recruited under the Native English
Teachers Scheme (NET Scheme) in Hong Kong. Although it is stated in
the recruitment criteria that a NET can be any person who possesses
native-speaker English competence, NETs are generally NESTs. "LETs"
refers to those English teachers who are employed under local terms. They
are usually raised locally in Hong Kong, bilingual in English and Chinese,
and are NNESTs. In fact, LETs represent teachers of different
qualifications, ranging from holders of master's degrees in TESOL and
English-major graduates from universities and colleges to those who are
not English subject-trained.
In Hong Kong, the NET Scheme was first introduced in secondary
schools in 1987 to alleviate the perceived declining English standards of
secondary students and was extended to all primary schools in 2002. Most
of the NETs are from Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the
United States and Canada (Lung 1999), the "inner circle" countries
described by Kachru and Nelson (2001), and about 800 NETs are
currently serving in over 400 secondary schools. The scheme was not
well-received by LETs when it was first implemented (Boyle 1997; Luk
2001) because some LETs' interpreted the recruitment of NETs as a lack
of confidence in their English competence (Luk and Lin 2007). In fact,
LETs' English competence was greatly challenged when the Language
Benchmark Assessment was launched by the government in 2001 to test
their proficiency in the four skills and classroom language. All English
teachers had to possess the minimum requirement (level three out of five
levels). In the first test in 2001, only 33 % of the candidates passed the
writing paper and about half of them passed the speaking test. Although
the validity of the tests was in doubt, the general public's faith in LETs
was shaken (Lee 2003). Apart from this problem, LETs have always faced
many deep-rooted problems in teaching, such as heavy workloads and
large class sizes. Various educational reforms introduced in the last few
years and the recent introduction of English Literature into the senior
secondary curriculum put them under further pressure.
Although the NET Scheme was aimed at alleviating the problem of the
perceived declining English standards and has been in place for about

Student Perceptions of NETs and LETs 327

twenty years, research has not been adequately evaluated its effectiveness
or investigated student attitudes toward NETs' teaching. The two official
reports on the NET Scheme commissioned in 1989 and 1990 were not
released (Boyle 1997). Even if these reports had been published, students'
views might not have been reflected. Student perspectives are worth
investigating for the following reasons: student views are probably very
different from official views; students' perceptions, especially secondary
students', are not well-represented in the literature; and students'
perceptions of their teacher have a great impact on their responses to the
teacher's instructions, which in turn influence teaching and learning
effectiveness.

2. Previous studies in student perceptions of NESTs and
NNESTs
Student perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of NESTs and
NNESTs have been discussed in the literature but most of the studies have
been conducted at university level. Mahboob (2004) adopted the
"discourse-analytic" technique to analyse thirty-two essays written by ESL
students enrolled in an intensive English program at an American
university. Results showed that learners did not favour NESTs or
NNESTs, and NESTs were seen as good at teaching oral skills, whereas
NNESTs excelled in teaching literacy skills and grammar. Also at
university level, Lasagabaster and Sierra (2005) investigated seventy-six
students' attitudes toward NESTs and NNESTs, using a 42-item
questionnaire and open responses in the form of small group discussion.
The results showed that students generally preferred NESTs if they had
not experienced learning English from both NESTs and NNESTs.
Students were in favour of NESTs for their pronunciation and cultural
knowledge, and valued NNESTs for their strategies in the learning process
and bilingualism. Regarding the negative aspects, NESTs were criticised
for their unintelligibility and monolingualism, whereas NNESTs were
perceived to have poor pronunciation.
At both secondary and university levels, Benke and Medgyes (2005)
conducted a large scale study on a total of 422 Hungarian learners, using a
five-part questionnaire. They identified various advantages and
disadvantages of NESTs and NNESTs from the open responses section.
The results showed that NESTs excelled in teaching conversation classes,
providing perfect models, getting learners to speak and being friendly.
However, they were difficult to understand and provided little

328 Chapter Eighteen

grammatical explanation. In contrast, NNESTs were strong in teaching
grammar, preparing students for examinations, promoting more effective
learning and supplying first language (L1) equivalents; but their
disadvantages were incorrect pronunciation, overuse of L1 and use of
outdated language. Although the results provided a useful list of strengths
and weaknesses, the total number of these open responses was not
reported and the generalisability of the results was in doubt. With the
exception of Benke and Medgyes (2005), all the studies mentioned were
conducted at post-secondary levels, and thus the present study, which
explored students' attitudes in secondary level in the context of Hong
Kong, may add a different dimension and perspective to the existing
literature.

3. Previous studies in Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, empirical studies on NETs and LETs have focused on
several areas: the concept of English teaching (Man 2002), grammar
teaching (Wong 2003), team teaching (Carless and Walker 2006),
classroom interactions (Luk and Lin 2007; Tsang 1994) and student
attitudes (Cheung 2002; Cheung and Braine 2007; Law 1999; Wong
1998). Regarding student attitudes, in a questionnaire-based study, Wong
(1998) examined 162 students' attitudes toward NETs from four secondary
schools, and concluded that psychological factors were linked with
attitudes. Law (1999) adopted the case study method to examine student
perceptions of NETs from two classes of Form 4 students in a low-
banding school, and found that students preferred NETs to LETs for the
differences in their teaching methodology, teaching materials and
classroom atmosphere.
In a larger scale study, Cheung and Braine (2007) analysed the
attitudes of 420 university students toward their NNESTs in seven
universities in Hong Kong. They used a thirteen-item questionnaire to
examine student perceptions of non-native English instructors at university
English centers, and the results showed that students adopted a positive
attitude towards NNESTs. The interview data, collected from ten students,
suggested that the strengths of NNESTs were concerned with their ability
to use students' L1 in teaching, effective pedagogical skills, knowledge of
English and positive personality traits, whereas their shortcomings were
concerned with their examination-oriented teaching approach and over-
correction of students' work. However, it is noteworthy that the teachers
discussed in the interview data in this study included both English

Student Perceptions of NETs and LETs 329

instructors at university and LETs at secondary schools, who probably
have very different characteristics in terms of teaching qualifications and
experience, use of students' L1 in lessons and teaching goals.

The three research questions examined in this paper are:
1. Do Hong Kong secondary students prefer NETs or LETs?
2. What are the reasons for their preference?
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being taught by NETs
and LETs as perceived by students?

These questions merit investigation for three reasons. Firstly, research into
secondary student preferences for English teachers has not been
systematically conducted. Secondly, a careful investigation into the
advantages and disadvantages of NETs and LETs helps identify their
strengths and weaknesses, provides some insight into the different roles
they play in teaching, sheds light on how improvements could be made to
effective classroom teaching, and explores their specific contributions in
the ELT industry. Finally, as English is an international language for inter-
cultural communication, the number of ESL and EFL learners and the
number of NNESTs are increasing rapidly, and therefore the questions of
how learners perceive NNESTs and how NESTs and NNESTs contribute
differently to the ELT industry are worth investigating.

4. Research setting and participants
The research setting of this study was four secondary schools in Hong
Kong with pseudonyms: Schools A, B, C and D. Schools B and C used
English as the medium of instruction (EMI) and were Band 1 schools 1,
whereas Schools A and D were Band 2 schools adopting Chinese as the
medium of instruction (CMI). Sixty-five percent of the participants were
Band 1 students and the remaining belonged to Band 2. These schools
were selected because in each of them the serving NET was assigned to
co-teach classes with their local counterparts; and exploring students'
views on NETs and LETs in such a learning context is fruitful since
comparisons can be made more easily.
The participants were 196 students in the age range of thirteen to
seventeen. They were from six different classes at various secondary

Secondary schools in Hong Kong are classified into three bandings, Band 1, 2
and 3, according to their academic levels, with Band 1 as the highest level.

330 Chapter Eighteen

levels, with 48% from junior secondary school (Forms 2-3 or Years 8-9)
and 52% from senior secondary school (Forms 4-6 or Years 10-12). The
selection of classes was determined by the fact that students were co-
taught by a NET and a LET in the academic year when the research was
conducted. Except for one class where the NET was the main teacher, all
the NETs in this study co-taught with their local counterparts during
speaking lessons when the class was split into two groups.
Among the participants, 45% were males and 55% were females. The
average number of years taught by NETs was 3.5 and the average number
of NETs that participants had as English teachers in the past was 4.3. The
participants' previous experiences with NETs and exposure to the teaching
of both types of teachers in the same class help raise their credibility in
making a valid evaluation.

5. Materials
A group-administered anonymous questionnaire, based on similar
questionnaires used by Benke and Medgyes (2005), was the research
instrument. The three-part questionnaire was presented in both English
and Chinese so that respondents were not limited by their English
language proficiency in understanding and responding to the questions.
The translated version was checked by a lecturer in translation to ensure
accuracy.
There were seven questions in Part A. Questions 1-4 collected
background information on the respondents: their grade, gender, the
number of years taught by NETs and the number of NETs that they had
had as English teachers in the past. Questions 5-7 were open-ended
questions in which respondents were asked to show their preferences for
NETs or LETs, state the reasons for their choice and list the advantages
and disadvantages of being taught by NETs and LETs. Open responses
allowed respondents to express their views freely although more effort
was required from respondents to answer such questions. The low
percentage of missing answers (2.3% on average per question) in this
survey indicated the participants' willingness to express their views. Parts
B and C prompted respondents to respond to twenty-one statements on a
five–point Likert Scale but they are not within the scope of this paper and
therefore will not be reported. The questionnaire is shown in the Appendix
A. Apart from the questionnaires, data were also collected through group
interviews with thirty students and individual interviews with three pairs
of NETs and LETs, and classroom observations of thirteen lessons to

Student Perceptions of NETs and LETs 331

collect data for the other parts of the research project as well as to gain an
understanding of the participants' learning backgrounds.

6. Procedures and data analysis
The questionnaire had been piloted and modified. In the present study, the
participants were contacted through their English teachers, took part in the
study voluntarily and could withdraw by quoting their own four-digit
password on the questionnaire. The questionnaire was administered
anonymously during a regular English class period in November 2007,
with an 87% response rate. The high return rate was possibly due to the
flexibility given to the teacher participants to arrange in-class
administration that suited their tight teaching schedule.
Questions 1-4 were analysed through descriptive statistics while the
open-ended items in Questions 5-8 were analysed thematically. To raise
the level of reliability, ten percent of the open responses were randomly
selected and coded independently by a second coder, an experienced LET,
achieving an inter-coder agreement of 95%.

7. Results
The results were analysed in terms of student preferences for NETs and
LETs as English teachers, the reasons for their preferences, the advantages
(N=262) and disadvantages (N=216) of being taught by NETs, and finally
the advantages (N=232) and disadvantages (N=214) of learning English
from LETs. Students produced relatively more responses in favour of
NETs than LETs but almost equal total numbers of negative comments on
both groups.

8. Student preferences: NETs or LETs?
Participants indicated their preferences for English teachers by selecting
one of the three given options: a) LETs only, b) NETs only, and c) both
LETs and NETs. Their choices are shown in Table 1.

332 Chapter Eighteen

Categories Percentage
a) LETs only 6.2%
b) NETs only 17.0%
c) Both NETs and LETs 76.8%
Total 100.0%

Table 1: Students' preferences for English teachers

Only 6.2 % of the respondents chose LETs as their preferred English
teachers while 17.0% chose NETs. A vast majority of surveyed students
(76.8%) indicated a preference for a combination of both LETs and NETs.
Those who selected options a) and b) generally provided the advantages of
one single category of teacher as reasons; whereas those who chose option
c) tended to provide a combination of advantages of both NETs and LETs
as their rationales. Owing to the relatively small percentage of respondents
choosing options a) and b), and the fact that the reasons suggested by these
respondents overlapped with those given by respondents who selected
option c), only the reasons for option c) are presented below in Table 2.

Reasons Percentage
Each group has its own advantages 71.4%
Different teaching styles / methods 8.9%
Other 19.7%
Total 100.0%

Table 2: Reasons for choosing both NETs and LETs

The main reason why students chose to learn English from both NETs and
LETs was that they realised that each group of teachers had their own
positive charateristics (71.4 %) and by learning English from both groups
rather than just one particular group, they could maximise the benefits of
each group. A typical reason given was a combined positive statement
about both NETs and LETs as shown below:

NETs' pronunciation is more accurate but LETs can use Cantonese for
explanation. (B235, translated) 2
Local teachers can understand more about students. Native teachers
can speak English more fluent(ly) so they can teach speaking and
listening skills more effective(ly). (B404)

The first letter of the coded label represents the school, the first digit refers to the
form, and the last two digits are the identification number of the questionnaire.

Student Perceptions of NETs and LETs 333

In addition, some respondents suggested that the reasons for favouring
both NETs and LETs lay in the differences in their teaching methods
(8.9%).

Local and native English teachers have their own method teaching
students. (D607)

9. Advantages of NETs
Table 3 presents the respondents' opinions about the advantages of being
taught by NETs. The responses were classified into the categories shown
in the table.

Advantages Percentage
Facilitating learning
in general 26.5%
pronunciation 17.7%
speaking skills 15.0%
listening skills 7.7%
culture 5.4%
Sub-total 72.3%
Good English language proficiency 22.3%
Other 5.4%
Total 100.0%

Table 3: Advantages of NETs

NETs' ability to facilitate student learning was the most cited advantage
(72.3%). Some surveyed students found that NETs could generally
facilitate their learning and assist them in improving their English levels
(26.5%). The following statements illustrate this.

Native English teachers can improve my English standard. (C201,
translated)
(NETs) can enhance English levels more efficiently. (A311, translated)

Students also responded that NETs could facilitate learning because they
could help students to learn pronunciation (17.7%):

334 Chapter Eighteen

Native English teachers can teach us the correct pronunciation of
English. (B425)
Can learn more accurate pronunciation. (D618, translated)

Facilitating learning speaking (15%) and listening skills (7.7%) were also
advantages ascribed to NETs. While some respondents revealed that more
opportunities to speak English in a NET's class resulted in enhancing their
English speaking and communication skills, others stated that they could
improve their listening skills just by listening more to NETs during the
lessons. Example statements follow:

Improve my speaking skills. Increase my ability to communicate in
English. (D620)
I can have more chance to speak English during the lessons. (B228)
Train our listening and oral skills in a compulsive way. (B412)
Listen more. (C507)

It is noteworthy that NETs' ability to facilitate learning the target culture
(5.4%) was only mentioned by a few respondents as a positive aspect, and
therefore it seems that it was not perceived by the surveyed students as a
very important contribution of NETs.

I can learn … different cultures of western countries from them
(NETs). (B228)
Can also learn western culture. (B416)

An important positive comment mentioned was NETs' good English
language proficiency (22.3%). Their accuracy in the target language,
correct pronunciation and grammar, and fluency in English were all
considered clear advantages. The following sample responses illustrate
this:

Their (NETs') English is more accurate. (B211)
Their (NETs') pronunciation is accurate. (C505, translated)
Accurate grammar and pronunciation. (A315, translated)
They speak more fluent and accurate English. Their English is better
than most non-native English teachers. (B232)

The data revealed that students were especially concerned about
"pronunciation" and "accuracy". It was found that 41% of all the
advantages mentioned were linked to "pronunciation" and 32% to

Student Perceptions of NETs and LETs 335

"accuracy", which suggested that students also regarded these as NETs'
two main strengths. Students highly valued NETs' good English
proficiency, especially their accuracy and native speaker pronunciation,
and noted that the teacher's language competence facilitates their learning
of the target language and enhances their English standards.

10. Disadvantages of NETs
However, the surveyed students also critically acknowledged the
disadvantages of NETs, which were classified into the categories shown in
Table 4.

Disadvantages Percentage
Difficulty in understanding 42.1%
Difficulty in communication 22.0%
Lack of proficiency in students' L1 12.4%
Lack of understanding students' needs / difficulties 5.3%
Other 18.2%
Total 100.0%

Table 4: Disadvantages of NETs

The major criticism of NETs concerned the difficulty in understanding
them, accounting for almost half of all disadvantages cited (42.1%). Some
students expressed difficulties in following native English teachers' speech
and suggested that this might be attributed to the fast pace of their speech.

Sometimes they speak too fast and I may not catch what they are
saying. (B214)
Maybe can't understand what he (or she) is talking about. (A307,
translated)
Speak too fast. Can't follow. (C514, translated)

Apart from not being able to understand the teacher completely, the
surveyed students also noted communication problems with NETs
(22.0%). Such difficulties might have been overcome if both teachers and
students shared the same first language. In fact, the teachers' lack of
proficiency in students' first language (12.4%) was mentioned as another
shortcoming since NETs could not explain difficult words in Cantonese
and students could not ask questions in Cantonese when in doubt. Sample
responses for these two categories are as follows:

336 Chapter Eighteen

(NETs) misunderstand about my English. (C519)
There are some difficulties in communication. (A302, translated)
When facing some problems, (I) can't ask and answer questions in
Chinese. (A316, translated)
Some native teachers could not speak Cantonese. (C510)

Interestingly, although many respondents perceived NETs' lack of
proficiency in Cantonese as a weakness, a few respondents viewed it as a
positive aspect in learning English.

Since he (/she) (NET) doesn't know Chinese, I will force myself to
communicate with him (/her) in English. (B231)

The final group of disadvantages concerned NETs' lack of understanding
of students' needs or difficulties (5.3%). Since NETs acquired English as
their first language, they did not experience the same learning processes as
their students, who learn English as a second language. Many NETs did
not go through the local education system and hence they had a lack of
understanding of the learning needs, language ability and problems of
Hong Kong students.

They may not be familiar with the difficulties in learning English as
well as the ability of local Hong Kong teens. (B406)
They do not know our progress and ability well. (C532)

11. Advantages of LETs
It is interesting to note that a number of advantages of LETs were in fact
the opposite of the disadvantages of NETs. The advantages and
disadvantages of NETs and LETs were complementary to each other.
Table 5 below shows the categories classified as LETs' advantages.

Student Perceptions of NETs and LETs 337

Advantages Percentage
Use of students' L1 28.1%
Easy understanding 27.6%
Understanding of students' needs / difficulties 11.8%
Easy communication 11.4%
Teaching styles / methods 9.6%
Other 11.5%
Total 100.0%

Table 5: Advantages of LETs

The two most frequently cited advantages were "Use of students' first
language" (28.1%) and "Easy understanding" (27.6%). LETs' ability to use
students' home language in teaching was considered an advantage.
Students appreciated that LETs could use Cantonese, their first language,
to explain difficult vocabulary and they could ask questions in Cantonese.
Interestingly, as mentioned before, NETs' lack of proficiency in students'
L1 was regarded as a disadvantage. Similarly, while students found it hard
to understand NETs, they noted that it was relatively easy to understand
LETs. Some students linked the advantages of L1 use and easy
understanding together:

When you don't understand, s/he will use Chinese to explain it to you.
(C213, translated)
We don't know some words, they can use Cantonese to explain to us.
(C207)
Can sometimes ask questions in Chinese. (C212, translated)
Easier to understand what they (LETs) are talking about. (D619)

It is noteworthy that the perceptions of the respondents did not always
match with the reality in classrooms. Although some respondents
perceived using students' first language as an advantage of LETs, in
reality, no LETs code-switched to Cantonese in any of the lessons
observed by the researcher in this study. Apart from "Easy understanding",
a category closely linked with teachers' L1 use is "Easy communication"
(11.4%). While students had difficulties in communicating with NETs,
they expressed ease in communicating with LETs.

Easy to communicate with them (LETs). (C533)
Besides English, can use Cantonese to communicate. (A319,
translated)

338 Chapter Eighteen

While the lack of understanding of students' learning problems was a
disadvantage of NETs, LETs' familiarity with students' learning
difficulties or learning needs (11.8%) was regarded as an advantage. LETs
could understand students' learning difficulties because they were once
English learners and had experienced similar learning processes to their
students'.

They (LETs) know our difficulties better, as they should have it when
they're learning English. (B429)
As they are Chinese also, they will clearly understand the difficulties
of learning English and teach us to avoid it. (C515)

Finally, "Teaching styles or methods" (9.6%) was the last advantage
revealed by some respondents who appreciated LETs' teaching methods
for grammar, vocabulary and spelling, and their teaching styles.

They (LETs) teach us a lot of useful grammar knowledge and
vocabulary. (B228)
The gramma(r) will be clearly taught. (B232)
(LETs) focus on spelling, build foundation. (B208)
Lessons more interesting. (C512, translated)

12. Disadvantages of LETs
The disadvantages of LETs were classified into six categories as shown in
Table 6 below:

Disadvantages Percentage
Pronunciation problems 30.1%
Inadequacy in English proficiency 27.1%
Less opportunity to practise English 17.1%
Over-reliance on L1 9.6%
Teaching styles / methods 4.0%
Other 12.1%
Total 100.0%

Table 6: Disadvantages of LETs

Criticism was mainly for LETs' pronunciation problems (30.1%) and
English proficiency (27.1%). Many respondents doubted the accuracy of

Student Perceptions of NETs and LETs 339

LETs' pronunciation, which they felt may adversely affect their learning.
LETs were regarded as less proficient and less fluent than their native
counterparts.

(LETs') pronunciation may not be correct. (A319, translated)
They may not speak English as fluent as native teachers. (B404)
The English of the local teacher isn't as good as the native speakers.
(B205)

Some respondents also suggested that they had less opportunity to practise
English when learning English with LETs and one of the reasons was the
over-reliance on their first language.

Won't try to speak English, less learning. (A317, translated)
Don't have too much time to speak and listen (to) English in class.
(A322)
Get used to explanation in Cantonese. It's like using Cantonese to teach
English, this will adversely effect on our English listening ability.
(A340, translated)

13. Discussion
The results of this study showed that the majority of students had a strong
preference for learning English from both NETs and LETs as they
recognised that they could gain the maximum benefits if the advantages
from both categories of teachers were combined. Similar to the
respondents in previous studies (Benke and Medgyes 2005; Lasagabaster
and Sierra 2005), students valued the contributions of both NETs and
LETs and believed that together they could provide an ideal learning
environment. However, for those who favoured native teachers, there was
a higher percentage of respondents in this study (17%) than the one
reported previously (5.9%) in Benke and Medgyes (2005), and about 70%
of the respondents in the present study were from an elite class in their
form under the streaming system of Schools A and B. One speculation is
that students of higher academic achievement tend to prefer NETs.
The results also indicated that the surveyed students recognised both
the positive and negative aspects of learning English from NETs and
LETs, and provided quite a balanced view of both groups of teachers.
NETs and LETs had complementary strengths and weaknesses; the
advantages of NETs were the relative weaknesses of LETs and vice versa.

340 Chapter Eighteen

For example, "easy understanding" of teachers was perceived as an
advantage of LETs but as a disadvantage of NETs. However, such mirror
effects may be due to the design of the questionnaire, which required the
respondents to compare the two categories of teachers.
In addition, respondents' comments were mainly about language -
English competence, language proficiency in students' L1, level of
communication - and pedagogy - level of understanding, teacher's
facilitation of learning and knowledge of learner difficulties. On the
whole, students perceived that NETs had higher proficiency in English
than LETs but they felt that it was easier to understand and communicate
with the latter. Moreover, students felt that LETs had the ability to
understand their learning needs and difficulties more than NETs. One
reason for this is that LETs have experienced difficulties and challenges
which are similar to those faced by their students, in their own English
learning path. Finally, students were ambivalent about the use of their first
language during English lessons. While they thought that the shared home
language assisted them in understanding and communication and provided
them with another tool to ask questions; they also realised that over-
reliance on L1 would limit their opportunities to use and practise the target
language. Similarly, while many students thought NETs' lack of Cantonese
proficiency was a disadvantage, some saw this as an advantage since they
had no other options but to communicate in English, which maximised
their chances to practise English.
Regarding NETs' advantage of high English proficiency, similar
findings were found in previous studies (Cheung and Braine 2007;
Lasagabaster and Sierra 2005; Luk 2001; Mahboob 2004), which reported
that NESTs were perceived as more skilful in English competence and
more accurate language users. NETs' other clear advantages in
pronunciation and speaking skills found in this survey were also supported
by findings in previous studies (Barratt and Kontra 2000; Lasagabaster
and Sierra 2005). However, their ability to facilitate learning, highly
regarded by the respondents in this study, has not been reported in the
literature. The respondents in the present study probably attempted to link
the positive aspects with their own learning, and the contributions of NETs
in their learning appeared to be more related to speaking and listening
skills rather than reading and writing skills. In addition, previous findings
which showed that NESTs' knowledge of the target culture was a benefit
did not appear to be students' main concerns in the present study. This may
be attributed to the position of English as an academic language and an
important gate-keeper for further studies and work in Hong Kong.
Students' motivation to learn English may be driven by pragmatic reasons

Student Perceptions of NETs and LETs 341

such as being successful at study and work rather than their desire to
integrate into the English-speaking cultures. In addition, learning about the
target culture may not be considered important by them because of the
heavily examination-oriented curriculum in the education system in Hong
Kong,
With regard to NETs' shortcomings, the results revealed that students
had serious problems in understanding NETs since about half of the
shortcomings were related to their difficulties in understanding. These
findings are consistent with previous findings (Benke and Medgyes 2005;
Lasagabaster and Sierra 2005). Such problems are probably due to the
teachers' unfamiliar accents, the perceived fast speed of their speech and
the choice of vocabulary outside students' word power, and should be
addressed. Another shortcoming, the communication difficulties
experienced by students in this study, due to the different cultural and
linguistics backgrounds of teachers and students, was reported in other
studies (Benke and Medgyes 2005; Luk 2001). However, the negative
comments on NESTs' qualifications and teaching ability reported in Barrat
and Kontra's (2000) study were not found in this study. This might be due
to the fact that post-graduate experience in teaching English as a second or
foreign language is a preferred qualification of NETs as stated by the
Education Bureau (2008).
The importance attached to LETs' knowledge of students' first
language raised by the respondents in this study was in agreement with
previous studies (Cheung and Braine 2007; Lasagabaster and Sierra 2005;
Samimy and Brutt-Griffler 1999). Being bilingual in English and Chinese,
LETs can capitalise on the language resources they bring to the classroom.
Going through a similar educational system and sharing the same
linguistic and cultural backgrounds with students, LETs have the ability to
anticipate students' learning problems and understand their needs. These
results concur with a number of studies in the literature (Benke and
Medgyes 2005; Cheung and Braine 2007; Lasagabaster and Sierra 2005;
Lung 1999). Surprisingly, while Benke and Medgyes (2005), Cheung
(2002) and Mahboob (2004) reported that NNESTs possessed strengths in
teaching grammar, this was not considered a clear advantage by
respondents in this study, and therefore more research is needed to explore
this area.
Finally, from the point of view of the students surveyed, inaccurate
pronunciation remained the main stumbling block for LETs. In Ávra and
Medgyes's (2000) study, some teachers admitted having problems with
pronunciation, while Benke and Medgyes (2005) and Lasagabaster and

342 Chapter Eighteen

Sierra (2005) reported pronunciation as one of the main weaknesses of
NNESTs.
One of the limitations of the present study is that Band 3 students, who
made up about one-third of the total student population, were not
represented due to the difficulties in getting consent from teacher
participants. Future research which includes Band 3 students as
participants will yield results that can be generalised to the population of
all secondary students in Hong Kong.

14. Conclusions
This study has implications for both classroom practice and teacher
education. Regarding classroom practice, the results of this study indicate
that many respondents, even though they were Band 1 and 2 students,
have experienced difficulties in understanding a native speaking teacher's
speech. It is highly likely that Band 3 students would encounter even more
difficulties in this area. It is therefore recommended that NETs should be
more alert to students' responses and reactions in class and check for
understanding constantly. Alternatively, they could consider slowing their
speech and selecting vocabulary that is appropriate for their students'
levels.
This study has also found that students regarded LETs' possession of a
shared L1 as an advantage. Despite this, local teachers are generally
reluctant to switch to Cantonese, which is probably due to the "English-
only" policy advocated by the Education Bureau. The debate of whether to
use L1 in the second language classroom and how much L1 should be
used is still inconclusive (Varshney and Rolin-Ianziti 2006). Further
research into evaluating the "English-only" policy and the optimal use of
L1 in the English classroom is worth pursuing. This study has also shown
that the lack of proficiency in students' L1 is a clear disadvantage of NETs
and therefore they should be encouraged to learn the local language.
Learning another language will provide them with the opportunity to
experience similar learning processes as their students and may assist them
in understanding the difficulties of learning a second language and the
strategies required to overcome these difficulties.
With regard to teacher education, most of the TESOL teacher
education programs world-wide offer the same curriculum for both NESTs
and NNESTs (England and Roberts 1989; Liu 1999) and so could not
address natives'/non-natives' specific needs. Appropriate curricula that
cater for the different needs of native and non-native speaking English

Student Perceptions of NETs and LETs 343

teachers could be beneficial and fruitful. As inaccurate pronunciation is
one of the NNESTs' main weaknesses, modules which focus on improving
pronunciation may solve the problem. Support systems for NETs such as
pre-service and in-service seminars which assist them in understanding the
specific learning needs and difficulties of Cantonese-speaking English
learners would be useful.
This research has found that the majority of the sampled Hong Kong
secondary school students prefer to learn English from both NETs and
LETs. However, at the moment a maximum of two NETs are serving
about one thousand students per school and so the availability of NETs
cannot satisfy the demand of students. Should more NETs be employed?
Although this suggestion echoes the voices of many respondents in Luk's
(2001) study who were in favour of employing more NETs at schools, the
difficulties of recruiting NETs should not be overlooked. NETs are on a
two-year contract and the turnover rate has been high 3, which may be
attributed to the difficulties they face in adapting to the local education
system. Future research is needed into the ways to help NETs adapt to the
working environment and students' most-favoured type of NETs and LETs
collaborations. Would they prefer to be taught by NETs in higher forms
when they have a better command of English or would they favour the
team teaching format? More research is needed to explore practices of
effective team teaching and collaboration which may yield useful
strategies to harness strengths and minimise weaknesses. In short, both
NESTs and NNESTs should further develop their strengths and focus on
improving their weak areas. This would enable them to make equally
valuable contributions to English language teaching, and on their own
terms.

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Acknowledgements
This study was part of a larger research project which was supported by a
Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship. I am grateful to
my supervisors Stephen Moore and Denise Murray for their valuable and
helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I would also like to
thank the anonymous reviewer for his/her feedback and suggestions. All
errors are, of course, my own.

Appendix A: Questionnaire

Native English Teachers and local English Teachers

Student questionnaire 學生問卷
Password密碼: _ _ _ _
(4 digits 位數)

Part A 甲部 :
1. Form 班別 : _______ 2. Gender 姓別: Male 男 / Female 女

3. How many native English teachers have you ever had? ________
你一共跟多少位以英語為母語的英語老師學習過英語?

4. How long have you been taught by native English teachers? ______
year (s) / 年
你跟以英語為母語的英語老師學習英語有多長時間了?

5. Do you prefer to be taught by......? (Circle your answer and provide
reason(s).)
你希望… ? (請把你的答案圈上, 並填寫原因。)

348 Chapter Eighteen

a. local English teachers only 只跟本地英語老師學習英語
b. native English teachers only
只跟以英語為母語的英語老師學習英語
c. both local and native English teachers
既跟本地英語老師,也跟以英語為母語的老師學習英語

Reason(s) 原因:
____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________

6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being taught by native
speaking English teachers?
跟以英語為母語的老師學習英語有什麼好處及壞處?
Adv. 好處:
____________________________________________________________

Disadv. 壞處:
____________________________________________________________

7. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being taught by local
speaking English teachers? 跟本地老師學習英語有什麼好處及壞處?
Adv. 好處:
____________________________________________________________

Disadv. 壞處:
____________________________________________________________

Enter a 4-digit password. Please remember it as this is for retrieving your
questionnaire in case you would like to withdraw later.
請填寫及緊記四位數字密碼, 方便日后如退出時作提取問卷用。

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Dana Anders has a teaching background in ESL, TESOL and LOTE and
was previously a Language and Learning Adviser at James Cook
University in Cairns.

Honglin Chen is Senior Lecturer in TESOL in the Faculty of Education
at the University of Wollongong. Her research interests span language
education, discourse analysis, second language writing development, and
English for Academic Purposes. She has published in Australian Review
of Applied Linguistics, English in Australia, and is co-editor of the book
Making a difference: Challenges for Applied Linguistics published by
Cambridge Scholar Press. Correspondence to:
[email protected]
Maria Chisari is currently undertaking doctoral research at UTS. Her
research is on ethnographic study that explores how recently arrived
migrants and refugees from non-English speaking backgrounds negotiate
and contest political and media discourses about citizenship, Australian
values and national identity.

Timothy Jowan Curnow is a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the
Research Centre for Languages and Cultures at the University of South
Australia. His recent research focuses on languages in education, Spanish
discourse, and the Barbacoan languages of South America.

Michele de Courcy is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the
University of Melbourne, Australia where she coordinates the
postgraduate programs in TESOL. She is currently the President of the
Victorian Association of TESOL and Multicultural Education. Michèle's
current interests are in bilingual education and language acquisition
(especially the acquisition of literacy in two languages), and in the
education or formation of second language educators. Recent research
projects include a longitudinal investigation of English language
acquisition and cultural adaptation of Iraqi refugees living in a Victorian
regional setting, investigations of multiple script literacy, and the
development of an ESL continuum for Victorian schools.

Sowmya Devaraj is completing a Masters of Clinical Psychology. Her
research interests include forensic psychology, particularly perceptions of
Indigenous Australians in the legal system.

350 Studies in Applied Linguistics and Language Learning

Paul Dwyer is currently Chair of the Department of Performance Studies
at the University of Sydney. In addition to researching restorative justice
practices in the NSW juvenile justice system (together with Jim Martin
and Michele Zappavigna), he has carried out fieldwork study of
reconciliation ceremonies in Bougainville (PNG) and has published
widely on the use of drama in health, education and welfare settings
(particularly the methods associated with Brazilian director Augusto
Boal).

Helen Fraser studied linguistics and phonetics at Macquarie University
and University of Edinburgh, and taught at University of New England
from 1990 to 2008. She is now an independent researcher specialising in
applied phonetics and phonology, especially in relation to pronunciation
teaching, literacy education, and forensic transcription.

Christina Gitsaki, Ph.D., is a Lecturer at the School of Education, The
University of Queensland and the Executive Secretary of the Applied
Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA). She has extensive teaching
experience in the areas of ESL/EFL and CALL. Her main research
interests include second language acquisition and TESOL, the use of ICTs
and the Internet for teaching English, Learning Objects design and CALL
applications.

Jane Goodman-Delahunty, JD, PhD, is Professor in Forensic Psychology
at Charles Sturt University in Manly, New South Wales. Her research
fosters evidence-based decision making and policy development to
promote social, relational, procedural and distributive justice within
organisations and the community. She is a Member of the Advisory Board
for the UNSW Centre for Gender Related Violence Studies, a Member of
the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal Community Services
Division, a Mediator for the NSW Office of Fair Trading Mediation
Services Unit, and a Commissioner of the NSW Law Reform Commission
(part time).

Pauline Harris is Associate Professor of Language and Literacy and
Early Childhood Education in the Faculty of Education at the University
of Wollongong. She is Coordinator of the Literacies Research Initiative
and Project Leader of the ARC Discovery 'Literacy Nexus' Project. Dr
Harris has published her early school years literacy research in key
national and international journals, including Research in the Teaching of

About the Contributors 351

English, for which she won an international research award.
Correspondence to:
[email protected]
Alan Jones is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at
Macquarie University. He currently convenes postgraduate programs in
professional and organisational communication. He has taught and
researched academic English for some twenty years and has carried out
collaborative research and co-published with subject area specialists from
physics, accounting and law. His broader research interests include the
intersection of grammar, personal meaning and informational content, and
the implications of social theory for social linguistics. He is also
investigating topics in the cultural anthropology of Papua New Guinea and
the Solomon Islands.

Anthony J. Liddicoat is Professor in Applied Linguistics at the Research
Centre for Languages and Cultures at the University of South Australia.
His research interests include language and intercultural issues in
education, conversation analysis, and language policy and planning.
Recently he has focussed on the teaching and learning of culture through
language study, and his work has contributed to the development of
Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning.

Caroline Lipovsky is a Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures
at the University of Sydney. Her major research interest is in self-
presentation and impression management in job interviews, analysing the
linguistic resources whereby candidates demonstrate their expertise,
construct their professional identity, and build co-membership with their
interviewers. Her most recent project sets out to identify and analyse the
key linguistic features of résumés, exploring how job applicants write
about their expertise, and share their professional identity with potential
employers. She is also investigating, with Ahmar Mahboob, students'
evaluations of their native and non-native speaking teachers in TESOL.

Lai Ping Florence Ma is a PhD candidate in the Department of
Linguistics at Macquarie University. She has had over 20 years of English
teaching experience in Hong Kong and Australia. Her research interests
include the issues of NNESTs, adult migrant English learning,
bilingualism, and teacher education.

Sayuki Machida is a Senior Lecturer at the Asia Institute, the University
of Melbourne. Her research interest lies in Second Language acquisition

352 Studies in Applied Linguistics and Language Learning

and Language and Culture. Her publication encompasses test anxiety,
interlanguage development, reading comprehension, and teaching
methodologies in SL. Current research includes text comprehension,
translation, and collaborative learning.

Ahmar Mahboob teaches linguistics at the University of Sydney,
Australia. He earned his PhD at Indiana University, Bloomington, in 2003,
with a dissertation on Status of nonnative English speakers as ESL
teachers in the United States. Ahmar has worked in the areas of language
policy development, pidgin and creole languages, NNEST studies, English
language acquisition, English language teaching and teacher education,
World Englishes, pragmatics, and issues surrounding minority languages
in South Asia. His recent work has focused on Pakistani English and on
languages of Pakistan. Ahmar is the Past President of Indiana TESOL and
the Past Chair of the NNEST Caucus in TESOL International.

J R Martin is Professor of Linguistics (Personal Chair) at the University
of Sydney. His research interests include systemic theory, functional
grammar, discourse semantics, register, genre, multimodality and critical
discourse analysis, focussing on English and Tagalog - with special
reference to the transdisciplinary fields of educational linguistics and
social semiotics. Recent publications include The Language of Evaluation
(with Peter White) Palgrave 2005; Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy
(Edited with Fran Christie) Continuum 2007; and with David Rose, a
second edition of Working with Discourse (Continuum 2007) and a book
on genre (Genre relations: mapping culture, Equinox 2008). He has also
recently completed a 2nd edition of the 1997 functional grammar
workbook, with Clare Painter and Christian Matthiessen, Deploying
Functional Grammar (in press with Commercial Press, Beijing) and an
edited collection (with Monika Bednarek), New Discourse on Language
(in press with Continuum). Professor Martin was elected a fellow the
Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1998, and awarded a Centenary
Medal for his services to Linguistics and Philology in 2003.

Graham McKay is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Edith Cowan
University in Perth, Western Australia. Previously he worked in research
for bilingual education at Maningrida in Australia's Northern Territory,
and then in teaching Aboriginal students at the School of Australian
Linguistics at Batchelor Northern Territory. His research covers the
grammar of two Arnhem Land (Northern Territory) Aboriginal languages,
Rembarrnga and Ndjébbana, Indigenous language maintenance and

About the Contributors 353

Indigenous languages policy in Australia. His major published works to
date are a grammar of Ndjébbana in the series Handbook of Australian
Languages (Oxford UP) and a national review of Indigenous language
maintenance entitled The Land Still Speaks.

Karen Moni, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland.
She is Director of Secondary Education Programs and co-ordinates
English curriculum and pedagogy courses in undergraduate and post-
graduate programs. Her research interests include literacy and young
adults with intellectual disabilities, and teaching and learning in higher
education. Karen is the current Editor of English in Australia.

Hiroyuki Nemoto is an Associate Professor of EFL and sociolinguistics at
Kanazawa University, Japan. His research interests lie in the area of
sociolinguistics, including intercultural academic interaction at the
individual and institutional levels, language planning, language
management, and ESL academic writing.

Antonia Rubino is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Italian Studies at
the University of Sydney, Australia. Her main research interests and
publications are in multilingualism and contact linguistics, with a focus on
changes occurring in the Italian language and dialects in the Australian
context. She is co-author, with Camilla Bettoni, of Emigrazione e
comportamento linguistico: un'indagine sul trilinguismo dei siciliani e dei
veneti in Australia (1996), and editor of Using and Learning Italian in
Australia (2004) and Lingua, identità e comunicazione in contesti
anglofoni e italiani (2007).

Gabriele Schmidt has been since 1996 a lecturer in the German Studies
Program at the Australian National University. Her research interests are
language teaching and learning in higher education, and curriculum
development. Two of her recent publications are:
Schmidt, Gabriele and Wiebke Schweer. 2008. Researching and writing
about Swiss culture. BABEL 42,3: 4-9.
Schmidt, Gabriele. 2006. 150 Jahre Deutsch an australischen
Universitäten: Von der Germanistik über DaF zu German Studies.
Zielsprache Deutsch 33,3: 79-98.

Hsin-Fei Victoria Wu is a Lecturer at the Shu Zen College of Medicine
and Management, Taiwan, with a Master degree on Educational Studies
from The University of Queensland, Australia and a MA degree on

354 Studies in Applied Linguistics and Language Learning

Theatre Art from Portland State University, U.S.A.. She is currently
undertaking a PhD at the School of Education and Professional Studies of
Griffith University, Australia. Her PhD research is in the area of Oral-
Communication Strategy use especially with process drama pedagogy in
EFL contexts. Correspondence to:
[email protected]
Hana Yue trained in German teaching in South Korea, and in English
teaching in South Korea and Australia, where she wrote her Master's thesis
on bilingual literacy. She is currently working as a new arrivals teacher at
Blackburn English Language School in Melbourne

Michele Zappavigna is an ARC Research Fellow in the Department of
Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Her major research interest is
electronic discourse, and she is currently working on a project exploring
Twitter discourse. She also has an ongoing fascination with Text
Visualisation. Michele's ARC fellowship involves a project with James
Martin and Paul Dwyer on the discourse of Youth Justice Conferencing, a
form of restorative justice. The work investigates conferencing from a
multimodal perspective (using Systemic Functional Linguistics) and
together with Chris Cleirigh, she is developing a systemic functional
model of gesture. She completed her PhD on language and tacit
knowledge in the School of Information Technologies and is interested in
how technology can support the work of Applied Linguists.
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Because German is an international language. 2.47
Because I want to study in a German-speaking country. 2.52
Because I want to read German literature. 2.68
Because German is an important business language. 2.70
Because I want to communicate with German-speaking people in Australia.
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January 17, 2021
Ahmar Mahboob
The University of Sydney, Faculty Member
Caroline Lipovsky
The University of Sydney, Faculty Member
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Warriner, D. S. (2010). Communicative competence revisited: An ethnopoetic analysis of narrative performances of identity. In F. Hult (Ed.), Directions and Prospects for Educational Linguistics (pp. 63-77). New York: Springer.
Doris Warriner
Directions and Prospects for Educational Linguistics, 2010
Educational linguistics is known for examining phenomena that are situated on the boundaries between two distinct but related areas of intellectual inquiry (applied linguistics and education), or investigating "those parts of linguistics directly relevant to educational matters as well as those parts of education concerned with language" (Spolsky 2008, p. 2). While pursuing questions and concerns that are informed by the situated challenges and constraints of practical ("real life") problems, educational linguists marshal the theoretical and methodological tools that they need to address the issues at hand and recommend new directions forward. In this way, the researcher "starts with a problem (or theme) related to language and education and then synthesizes the research tools in her/his intellectual repertoire to investigate or explore it" (Hornberger and Hult 2006, p. 78). Because such problems and themes often come out of a particular learning or teaching situation, this "problem-oriented discipline… focuses on the needs of practice and draws from available theories and principles of many relevant fields" (Spolsky 1975, p. 347). Within this large-scale endeavor, questions about language learning and language teaching have often taken priority: "in educational linguistics, the starting point is always the practice of education and the focus is squarely on (the role of) language (in) learning and teaching" (Hornberger 2001, p. 288). The relationship that exists between the language issues identified by teachers, researchers, and/or teacherresearchers and the various theoretical and methodological approaches used to investigate them has inspired research that is theoretical but applied, situated in specific contexts but influenced by larger (institutional, ideological, structural) processes, and reflective of the nested nature of local-global processes.
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Languages and Linguistics
Teacher Education
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