[e-mail]

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Beverly Trayner btrayner_at_esce.ips.pt

• Escola Superior de Ciências Empresariais
• Setúbal, Portugal
• Institute of Education, University of London
  

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The impact of global changes on the English
language

• And the teaching of English for Specific Purposes

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Introduction

• "The English language ceased to be the sole
  possession of the English some time ago"
• (Salmon Rushdie published in Imaginary Homelands)

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Teaching English in Higher Education in Portugal

• Our students are neither immersed in, nor do they
  necessarily aspire to become part of, the
  academic or professional communities based in
  English speaking countries.

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Main themes

• The impact of global changes on the English
  language
• Discourse communities
• Communities of Practice
• Teachers role as gate-keeper
• Constructive alignment
• Course design framework

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The impact of global changes on the English
language

• Within 10 years, there will be more L2 speakers
  than L1 speakers and within 50 years there could
  be up to 50 more.
• 
  (Crystal, 1997130)

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The three circles of English
Expanding circle
Inner circle
Outer circle
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Three circles

• Inner circle e.g. USA, UK
• 320 380 million
• Outer circle e.g. Singapore
• 150 - 300 million
• Expanding circle e.g. China, Russia
• 100 1,000 million

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Englishes

• Global English (Crystal, 1997)
• English as an International and Intranational
  Language (Truchot, 1997)
• English as a company language (ibid.)
• English as an International Language
• (Pennycook,
  1994)

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Lingua franca

• transglossic
• standardisation
• adaptation
• non-adaptation
• a mix of strategies (inter-lingual)

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Reasons for learning English

• Join expert communities
• Communicate with other members of those
  communities from different linguistic and
  cultural backgrounds
• Cooperate as members in international modes of
  communication

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Global changes and the teaching of English

• Discourse communities
• Communities of practice
• Genre

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Discourse communities

• Discourse communities share
• common purposes for using language
• methods for exchanging information
• membership of a group
• (Applied linguistics, Swales, 1990, Johns,
  1997)

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Entry into a discourse community

• Members must create their (oral and written)
  texts in the same way as other members of that
  community do. In order to do so, "they have to
  adopt the cognitive patterns of the community
  members".
  (Pogner, 1997)

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Communities of practice

• shared practice includes the explicit
• ...the language, the tools, the documents, the
  images, the symbols ...
• and the tacit
• ...the implicit relations, the tacit
  conventions, the subtle cues ... the embodied
  understandings, the underlying assumptions, the
  shared worldviews
  
• (Sociology of
  Work, Wenger, 1998)

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Genres

• a class of communicative events, the members of
  which share some set of communicative purposes.
  These purposes are recognised by the expert
  members of the parent discourse community, and
  thereby constitute the rationale of the genre.
  This rationale shapes the schematic structure of
  the discourse and influences and constrains
  choice of content and style
  (Swales 1990)

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Genre/discourse/rationale

• The rationale of the genre shapes and is shaped
  by the discourse, content and style of the
  discourse community or community of practice.
• Members of these communities come from different
  linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
• Rationale is mostly expressed in English

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• We are moving away from the
• "overarching dominance of anglophone
  native-speakerism, from consuming attention to
  the ritualistic surfaces of their texts, from an
  authoritative and received world view of academic
  and technical text.
• (Swales, 1997)

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Global changes in Higher Education

• Economic and managerial considerations
• Students from different social and economic
  backgrounds
• Students expect value for money/teachers more
  accountable
• Courses expected to respond to needs of the
  workplace

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Deep and surface learning

• Surface learning low cognitive activities
• Deep learning a need to engage in the task
  appropriately and meaningfully, so the student
  tries to use the most appropriate cognitive
  activities for handling it."
• (Biggs, 1999)

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Constructive alignment

• "If students are to learn desired outcomes in a
  reasonably effective manner, then the teacher's
  fundamental task is to get student to engage in
  learning activities that are likely to result in
  their achieving those outcomes."
  (Shuell, cited in Biggs, 1999)

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Desired outcome

• Our desired outcome is that students are prepared
  to participate in the social, cultural and
  cognitive aspects of discourse communities and
  communities of practice (which for most students
  in the professional world will be mostly
  transglossic)

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The GAP framework

• Genre-Aligned Practices
• (Mavor and Trayner, 1999)

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GAP step one

• Inquire into the conceptual structure
  underpinning the community of practice

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Gap step two

• Identify and choose representative practice and
  genres as the course objective and final assessed
  of practice (FAP)

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GAP step three

• Align communicative micro-tasks and activities,
  relevant specific lexis and grammatical
  structures, reading texts and appropriate tasks
  and learning strategies to the FAP.

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Conclusion DIGA!

• Dynamic Discourse
• Interdisciplinary Inquiry
• Gatekeeping Genre
• Aligned and Active pedagogy!