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CONTENTS
SAAL Quarterly is under the editorship of Dr T. Ruanni F. Tupas. Please address your correspondence and contributions to: Dr T. Ruanni F. Tupas (elcttr@nus.edu.sg), Centre for English Language Communication, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260. BOOK REVIEWS
Engineering Your Report: From Start To Finish
International Communication: English Language Challenges for Malaysia. Opening Remarks: These two books reached me not long after the close of AILA2002, where they were mentioned briefly. Although the subjects of the two books are related only to the extent that both deal with the theme of communication -- technical report writing as communication in one case and international communication in the other. The first book is written by young NTU lecturers, sharing with us their experience of teaching report writing to engineering undergraduates there. It is an insider's perspective on what is happening in one subject area, an important one. The other book is by a lecturer from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (Malaysia's National University, another insider, sharing her insights with us on the language situation in Malaysia today. Both books are introduced briefly for SQ readers. Book 1 - Engineering Your Report: From Start To Finish At the general level, this book has to do with preparing undergraduates for the kind of academic literacy they should have to communicate well in their chosen discipline. At the practical level, it uses a genre-based approach to teach technical report writing in the field of engineering. Specifically the book aims to help engineering undergraduates not only master the structure of the different sections of a technical report but also write up those sections by making appropriate language choices. As the authors intended, this book should serve "as a stepping-stone" from the general type of writing expected of students in secondary schools and junior colleges to more genre-based technical report writing suitable for academic writing in tertiary education. In fact, as the first author, Lakshmy Krishnan (2001, pp 39-20) knows, even polytechnic students have not been fully prepared for the kind of academic report writing expected in universities. The four authors, as former school teachers, understand that in writing in English our students are caught between getting what they write acceptable grammatically and understanding how language works as discourse. Report writing, as the book stresses, is a kind of communication using a language pertinent to a particular discipline, in this case engineering. The book covers the following areas, with each forming a chapter.
The strength of the book lies in the examples presented, as well as the exercises and tasks provided at the end of the book. These examples are topical, having been taken from actual reports written by students, or from theses and research papers in the field of engineering, in order to familiarize students with authentic writing in the genre being taught. The step-by-step approach in the book takes the readers through the dynamics of reporting on a range of engineering activities, processes and products. Too often, students and others regard a technical report as just another finished product, without understanding that technical writing, like most forms of writing, is a social process. So, in conceptualising the "dynamics of report writing" in this book, I am sure that the authors see certain psychological, social and rhetorical principles as underpinning effective communication. In fact, these principles become quite evident in the way the book is structured. It was for this very reason, I thought, that Professor Vijay Bhatia, who wrote the Foreword to the book, remarked that "[t]he selection of various tasks (in the book) based on a detailed investigation of the genre of report writing is a testimony to the writers' deep involvement and understanding of the pedagogic complexities of professional discourses". For those of us who can recall how and why language units in our universities started in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we will note that in this book we have come a long way from what those language units in tertiary institutions were teaching then. The late Lee Kok Cheong (1983, 113-14), who was among the first to write on teaching writing to science and engineering students here, had criticized the concentration of discrete structural points (the formal aspects of language) rather than "on the interaction between and among sentences in a connected discourse ...", adding that "[w]hat is required in language teaching for science and technology is ... more than the provision of an inventory of the linguistic structures found in some types of scientific prose". Finally, integrated in this book is a concern with the international dimensions of communication in science and technology (call it the scientific method, if you wish). This is important as science and technology are becoming globalised activities, crossing boundaries. Many features of this book recommend themselves to the engineering undergraduate, the practising engineer and anyone who has to write technical reports as part of his/her job. The principles used and procedures advocated in this book, meant for engineering students, are generalisable to report writing in other disciplines as well. Book 2 - International Communication: English Language Challenges For Malaysia This second book is best read in the context of changes in language policy and language education in a post-colonial country, against a background of sociolinguistic challenges and questions about national identity vs. international intelligibility in a highly globalised world. As stated in the book, these are the "dichotomous challenges between national concerns and international needs, between the use and application of the national language and the international lingua - English - and between sub-varieties of English and standards for international communication [in English]". The country is multilingual and multiethnic Malaysia but these challenges are faced not only by Malaysia but also by other countries of a similar post-colonial tradition. That underscores the central significance of the book. Any discourse on language policy and language education should try to go beyond the descriptive in order to unravel the layers of complexity not apparent to the general reader, as an "insider", Saran Kaur Gill, teaching in the School of Language Studies and Linguistics in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (Malaysia's National University) is uniquely placed to do this. For this purpose, she adopted an approach best described as social-historical, as language policies are always socially situated and they evolve over time. For those of us familiar with Malaysia's language policy and its changes since the country's independence in 1957, this is a timely publication. For those less familiar with the language situation in Malaysia, it has to be made clear that English is, to all intents and purposes, a second language in that country although, since the early 1970s, it is only taught as a subject in the school curriculum. While the country's Education Act of 1996 reaffirmed English as "the second most important language", there was already some expectation in the early 1990s that English would return as one of the language media of instruction in schools there. For those in Malaysia looking forward to any change in the language-in-education policy, this has come about. Officially, as from this year (2003), English returns as the medium of instruction for mathematics and science at certain school grade levels (Standard One, Form One, and Lower Six) in national and vernacular schools. This decision (as reported in The Straits Times, July 2002) led to extended public discussion, with comments and disagreement from certain interest groups in the country for varying reasons. Those who were less happy with that decision were reassured that there was no necessity to teach other school subjects in English (The Straits Times, 29 Jan 2003). In all polytechnics, nonetheless, technical subjects will be taught in English by 2008 (The Straits Times, March 2003) More specifically, the book examines the English language challenges contextualised in different domains of language use, ranging from the concerns of executives and decision-makers in the workplace, copywriters in advertising to students, intellectuals and policy-makers in higher education. The book covers several aspects of international communication in Malaysia, each of which forms a separate chapter, namely,
The book begins (in Chapter 1) with a statement of the framework for the chapters that follow. This framework is critical, as the subsequent chapters originated independently as invited papers or articles for journals, etc. The author explains that there is a "common thread" for the different chapters, which is the development of English in Malaysia leading to varieties of English and the all-important question of standards of English for the purpose of international communication Since Chapters 2 to 8 were first written as invited papers for different readerships, there is always the problem of cohesion and connectedness when the stand-alone papers are put together in a single volume. The problem, though a relatively minor one, of one or two chapters overlapping (e.g. the points on page 45 in Chapter 4 and those on pages 51-53 in Chapter 5 overlap somewhat) and the repetitive use of a descriptive phrase such as "multi-racial and multi-cultural" in different chapters to identify Malaysian society (once again) could have been eliminated through careful cross-chapter editing. However, the author is more successful in the final chapter (Chapter 9: Directions for the Future) in providing this "common thread" by tracing the arguments in the various chapters in terms of a series of dichotomous relationships, as listed below. These dichotomous relationships reflect the complex nature of the language policy and the sociolinguistic development of English in multiethnic Malaysia. This chapter points to the strengths of the book.
Nationalism vs. Pragmatism What of the future, then? Future directions are stated in Chapter 9 in the form of imperative statements, such as
With respect to the last statement on multilingualism and multiculturalism, the author explains that in Malaysia the government, while focussing on both Bahasa Malaysia (or Malay) and English, is planning to introduce opportunities for students to study the main ethnic languages of the country - Chinese and Tamil -- and another language, Arabic. The author adds that this is a move to forge greater racial integration under the national education system. In much of the published work on language education in Malaysia, as far as I know, the principal concern has been with the politics of language, embedded in a historical context. This book provides a slightly different focus. In effect, it opens a new window on the language situation in Malaysia, drawing attention to the complexity of cross-lingual routines and communicative practices in the media and the workplace. The book should serve as an important new resource, as it has much to offer to policy makers in language education (on the question of maintaining standards in English) as well as postgraduate students and language researchers, showing how ideology and politics shape in subtle ways a country's language-in-education policy. Closing Remarks: Both books are strongly recommended - the first one for teachers of English preparing their students for the kind of academic writing they will be expected to do in post-secondary education, and the second for those readers interested in a text that combines macro and micro sociological perspectives on what is happening to English in Malaysia today. References
Reviewed by Ho Wah Kam ↑ Top | ← Publications
Englishes in Asia - Communication, Identity, Power & Education This book consists of 17 selected papers presented during the 5th English in Southeast Asia Conference held at Curtin University of Technology in Australia in December 2000. The papers attempt to address the linguistic, sociolinguistic, political, ideological, and cognitive dimensions of English and Englishes in Asia. Without discounting the many possibilities of overlap, after reading the book there emerge some thematic groups which will each be presented below. Emerging new grammatical systems The first group of papers assumes that the various Englishes of Asia have internal systems of their own and a major task for scholars is to describe such unique systems. Thus, Low Ee Ling and David Deterding's paper, "Recent research on the pronunciation of Singapore English," provides some criteria for the teaching of the pronunciation of Singaporean English (SgE) derived from recent work on the topic., while Tony T. N. Hung's "Languages in contact: Hong Kong English phonology and the influence of Cantonese" argues through an 'interlanguage approach' that HKE's phonology is a product of the interaction between English and Hokkien, the first language of most of its speakers. Sociolinguistic processes The second group deals with the description of the various sociolinguistic changes emerging from the interaction between English and other local languages. Thus, Hajah Rosnah Haji Ramly, Noor Azam Haji Othman and James McLellan's "Englishization and nativization processes in the context of Brunei Darussalam: evidence for and against" describes how a nativized helps construct a Bruneian identity, while an Englishized Malay establish a 'modern Malay identity'. On the other hand, Geoff Smith's "Kissing cousins? The relationship between English and Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea" demonstrates how the current contact situation between them can be best characterized as 'borrowing' (on the part of Tok Pisin), and not yet 'mixing'. In the context of Malaysia, Kow Yip Cheng's "A study of the language of pre-school Malaysian children' details a number of innovative strategies among a group of Malaysian children -- word coining, using elements from the L1 and the L2, and using loanwords from the L1 - which indicate both their creativity and the functionality of their English language use. Cultures and identities The third group focuses on show how the Englishes of Asia embody the cultures and identities of their speakers. Susan Butler's paper "Language, literature and culture - and their meeting place in the dictionary", captures the painful search for the legitimacy of the regional varieties of English which still do not have dictionaries that can help their users, especially their writers, find their authentic voices in English. Azirah Hashim's paper, "Culture and identity in the English discourses of Malaysians," demonstrates how practices of accommodation and compromise among Malaysians to form a unitary national identity may be gleaned through linguistic practices like lexical borrowing and codeswitching. Similarly, Maya Khemlani David and Janet Y. Yong's paper, "Even obituaries reflect cultural norms and values" shows how obituaries in English in Malaysia foreground a patriarchal Malaysian society, the importance of social, and differing ethnic identities. Jasmine Luk's paper, "Communication behaviors of EFL learners in a native English-speaker teacher's class: a case in Hong Kong", shows how classroom behaviors and strategies of Cantonese-speaking students reveal both the cultural distance between their expatriate teacher and their 'vernacular discourse identities'. The other two papers in this group use a cognitive framework in their work, an interesting approach that has so far been rarely employed in the study of Englishes. For example, Farzad Sharifian in "Chaos in Aboriginal English discourse" explores the complex system of Aboriginal English in Australia which non-users find incomprehensible partly because it displays a different kind of 'logic' of time and a cognitive processing of information. Similarly, Ian Malcolm's "Alternative English: vernacular oral art among Aboriginal youth" shows how different dialects - or Englishes - evoke different 'worlds of meanings' which may pose a communication problem in the classroom. Political and ideological relations The next group locates the study of English and Englishes in political and ideological contexts. Robert Phillipson's paper, "Global English and local language policies", argues that the 'conceptual haziness' of 'global English' relates to the fact that the language serves the interests of a few people in the world, thus proposing that ELT locate English in an Ecology of Languages and employ a locally appropriate pedagogy of appropriation. In a similar vein, Isabel Pefianco Martin's "Canon and pedagogy: the role of American colonial education in defining standards for Philippine literature" demonstrates how the success of American colonialism in the Philippines was aided by the perpetuation of the Anglo-American canon of writing and literature through the use of English as the sole language of education. On the other hand, David Li's "Hong Kong parents' preference for English-medium education: passive victims of imperialism or active agents of pragmatism?" explains that people's desire for English cannot be a case of linguistic imperialism and is, in fact, an 'enlightened' choice if viewed from the sociopolitics of 'benevolent' British rule in Hong Kong. Kayako Hashimoto's paper, "Implications of the recommendation that English become the second official language in Japan" explains that while English is replete with structural power, Japan's response to the language is ambiguous as it grapples with both internal and external problems of identity and economics. On the other hand, Hazita Azman's paper, "Multilingual practices in rural Malaysia and their impact on English language learning in rural education", shows how localized literacy practices of rural Malaysia make English language education 'irrelevant' to the needs of the communities whose literacy practices occur in multiple languages. Pedagogical responses This last group deals with the pedagogical implications of the sociolinguistics of Englishes in the region. What now? seems to be the question the authors in this group want to answer. For example, Andy Kirkpatrick's paper, "ASEAN and Asian cultures and models: implications for the ELT curriculum and for teacher selection" argues that learners of English in Asia must be taught with an appropriate curriculum whose main focus is 'Asian cultures', the language standard, an 'Asian standard', and the voice, a 'local' voice with which the learners can easily identify. Similarly, Zhichang Xu's paper, "From TEFL to TEIL: Changes in Perceptions: Teaching English as an International Language (EIL) in Chinese Universities in P.R. China", argues that the learning goal for a 'multi-cultured' English should be international functionability, and that the use of the mother tongue in the classroom is a positive move towards 'multi-competence'. On the other hand, David Lochmohr Prescott's paper," Reflective discourse in teacher education in Brunei Darussalam", explores a socioculturally appropriate practice of ('critical') reflection in teacher education in Brunei Darussalam where English is 'non-ideological', 'instrumental', and 'neutral'. Comments Representing Asia. Perhaps the first comment one may have of the book after reading it concerns its title, Englishes in Asia, even if India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and many more are left out. This is not to ask for all countries in the region to be represented, but simply to point out the danger of misrepresentation. A justification of why the book chooses to represent Asia through its Englishes in the manner that it does would have been in order. Cultural essentialism. A common conceptual thread that binds many papers together is the tendency to represent culture as a homogeneous entity that can represent all of its people. Thus, we speak of 'the modern Malay identity', 'the Bruneian identity' or 'the Malaysian culture' (e.g., Ramly et al., David and Yong) as if they are above people's internal struggles and conflicts which constitute such identity or culture in the first place. As we move towards legitimizing the many Englishes and many cultures in the world through our work, the pluracentric nature of each of our Englishes must also be taken into consideration (Parakrama 1995). Whose Englishes? We therefore need to ask who speak these Englishes in our communities and societies as well. Whose cultures are embodied in these Asian varieties? Based on some papers in the book, the cultures that are represented in our Englishes are those who read English newspapers (David and Yong), schoolchildren who belong to middle class families (Kow), creative writers who use English (Butler), or students whose schools can afford to have 'expatriate' English teachers (Luk). Thus, there may be a danger in essentializing culture since the constitution of such culture ignores the contribution of those who have much less access or no access at all to English discourses or their teaching. The language-culture connection. Relatedly, we may also interrogate the manner by which the study of culture is approached in our work. Simply put, what we do is to derive 'culture' from English language use. But what we make out of our 'culture' from our uses of English is itself part of the larger 'culture' of our everyday lives. How is it possible then to study culture from language when "language is itself part of what is produced and reproduced as 'culture'"? (Hau 2002: 59). The politics of pragmatism. Another ideological assumption that underpins a number of papers in the book (e.g., Li, Kirkpatrick) refers to why English in Asia is justified by invoking the voice of the people who want English to stay. While this is, indeed, true, this does not make pragmatism not a political position. Justifying English because this is what the people want - no matter how true - is ideological and political through and through because it rarely looks at the social conditioning of people's choices in the first place. Not everyone benefits from English because of unequal access to society's resources, but precisely because of this, where the needs of society are structured towards the needs of those who have greater resources than others, that everyone will rally for English. Pragmatism cannot be ignored, but we need to interrogate it in order to find its right place in our respective societies (see, e.g., Allison 1998 and Pennycook 1997). Conclusion These critical issues notwithstanding, the papers come alive as they work out and enrich various topics belonging to a group of 20 general themes identified by Kachru (1997) as informing studies in the field. The book certainly enriches the burgeoning studies on the linguistic, sociolinguistic, cultural, political and ideological dimensions of English around the world. But what makes this book even more interesting and useful to anyone interested in these issues is the fact that they emerge from varied contexts of English language use in Asia, reported by scholars and teachers who themselves grapple with the realities of everyday life in their own communities. Theirs are voices emerging from wide-ranging academic communities with unequally distributed resources for teaching and research, and with diverse historical engagements with the English language. If the book serves as a 'text' about 'Asia', then we conceive of it as a dynamic region whose identity rests on the many identities that it perpetually constructs and reconstructs. References
Reviewed by T. Ruanni F. Tupas ↑ Top | ← Publications PUBLISHING IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS JOURNALS Annual Review of Applied Linguistics
Editor: Mary McGroarty Applied Linguistics
Editors: Martin Bygate, Claire Kramsch CALICO Journal
Editor: Robert Fischer
The Canadian Modern Language Review/
Editors: Sharon Lapkin and Larry Vandergrift Language Learning
Editor: Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig Language Learning & Technology
Editors: Mark Warschauer and Dorothy Chun Language Testing
Editors: Dan Douglas and John Read The Modern Language Journal
Editor: Sally Sieloff Magnan Studies in Second Language Acquisition
Editor: Albert Valdman TESOL Quarterly
Editor: Carol A. Chapelle Text: Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse
Editor: Srikant Sarangi ↑ Top | ← Publications The Journal is now to be published by Continuum a UK/USA publisher (formerly Cassells, Pinter etc). This company publishes over 30 journals and the move to an international publisher will give the Journal a wider international readership. Editorial control will still be with RELC. Joseph Foley is the Editor of the Journal and Chris Ward the Review Editor. Local contributions are particularly welcome. Editorial Now entering its 34th year, RELC Journal published on behalf of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) Regional Language Centre (RELC), is located in Singapore. It presents information and ideas on theories, research, methods and materials related to language learning and teaching. The journal welcomes contributions that have in mind the common professional concerns of both the practitioner and the researcher, providing a bridge between theory and practice. As of 2003, the Journal is published by Continuum and will appear 3 times per year, April, August and December. This increase in frequency reflects a broadening of scope. The Journal will continue to promote an approach to research on language and language-related concerns with particular reference to education, especially, although not exclusively, in Southeast Asia. Within this framework the journal welcomes contributions in such areas of current enquiry as first and second language learning and teaching, language and culture, discourse analysis, language planning, language testing, multilingual education, stylistics and translation. The broadening of scope will be reflected in articles that will present more 'state of the art' surveys, as well as theoretical conceptualisations that contribute fresh insights into the multidisciplinary field of language in education. With the directions that are now being taken in language issues in education, reporting findings is only part of the task; there has to be a critical look at the methodologies used in these studies and the theories used to support the research. As part of our service to teachers and researchers, one section of the Journal will continue to be devoted to book reviews and a compilation of books 'received'. ↑ Top | ← Publications
↑ Top | ← Publications
PARADIGM SHIFT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING & LEARNING: Featured Speakers:
The Centre for English Language Communication, National University of Singapore invites colleagues from all over the world to participate in an international symposium for English language teachers. This symposium will provide a forum for classroom-based research paper presentations and small group discussions to give presenters and participants an enriching professional development experience. Aims:
Topic Areas:
For more information about the symposium, visit www.nus.edu.sg/celc/symposium. ↑ Top | ← Publications SAAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 2002-2004 Know more about our SAAL ExCo officers ... Dr Low Ee Ling (Asst. Hon. Secretary, PhD: Cambridge, UK): Ee Ling is trained in phonetics and her main research interest is in speech rhythm and stress. She received her PhD from Cambridge in 1998, and is now an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education (NIE). Like Huang Hoon, Ee Ling wants to see SAAL publications become a high-level platform for research publication among SAAL members. Unlike Huang Hoon, Ee Ling aspires to be an "Ah Lian"! (But this Ah Lian owns real diamonds!) Ee Ling is recently married to her "stingray", Beng Soon. She is SAAL's representative for members sited in NIE. Her contact: ellow@nie.edu.sg. Dr Lim Beng Soon (Hon. Treasurer, PhD: Singapore): Beng Soon is a newly minted PhD; he received his PhD from NUS in 2002. His scholarly interest may be pragmatics and translation, but his romantic interest is his cute "Seal", Ee Ling! When he is not fooling around with his seal, he is both an Assistant Professor at the Department of English Language and Literature in NIE and a professional translator (English-Malay). Beng Soon is new to the SAAL EXCO and he hopes to learn the ropes as he goes along. But we are assured that he will be a wonderful Treasurer, given his well-known money sense! Admirers can contact him at bslim@nie.edu.sg. Dr Alvin Leong Ping (Asst. Hon. Treasurer, PhD: Singapore): Alvin was ARM-TWISTED into joining the SAAL EXCO as Asst Treasurer for 2002-2004 because of his known talents for being a very responsible and conscientious person. Alvin's research interests lie in systemic functional linguistics. He works in the same department as Ee Ling and Beng Soon at the NIE. Alvin can be found at paleong@nie.edu.sg. ↑ Top | ← Publications |
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