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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.
PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS
A/P Anne Pakir Dr Ho Wah Kam, SAAL Adviser, SAAL members and friends, On behalf of the SAAL Executive Committee (2002-2004), I bid a warm welcome to you at this AGM, following our successful SAAL 2004 Forum on "The Mother Tongue Issue in Multilingual Countries". Here is a brief summary of our past year's activities. Membership The membership of SAAL on 30th June 2004 was 81. Executive Committee Meetings The ExCo met 6 times from 1 July 2003 to 30 June 2004, completing the 166th meeting of the EXCO since SAAL's inception in 1985. Dr Ho Wah Kam continued to be SAAL's Honorary Advisor. The SAAL Quarterly was co-edited by Aileen Bong and T. Ruanni F. Tupas (August issue), and later by Ruanni alone. The auditors of the SAAL accounts for 2002-2004 were Goh Yeng Seng and Jenny Gan. Academic Programme The academic programme for SAAL from 2002-2004 was focused on the STU-SAAL Colloquium on the English Language in Singapore: Changing Perspectives on Grammar in the Classroom, held at the RELC, 27-28 November 2003. There were 200 participants and 18 workshops. The two plenary speakers were Tom McArthur and Tony Hung. SAAL Talks We held three SAAL talks. The first in the series was by Dr Lim Beng Soon (NIE) on "Malay Sayings and Politeness Strategies" held on 18th July 2003. The second talk was by Mrs Lakshmy Bhaskar (NTU) on "Research principles and thesis writing perceptions and expectations in the engineering disciplines" held on 31st October 2003. The third talk was by visiting Professor Erich Berendt (Seisen University, Japan) on "Doing conversation: Dominant exchange structure patterns and implications for robust interaction", held on 16th January 2004. The highlight for 2004 was the SAAL lecture delivered by Professor Allan Luke, Dean of the Centre for Research Pedagogy and Practice, NIE on 27th February 2004. His topic, "Bids to redefine literacy education in globalised economies and cultures: New technologies, new identities, new knowledges" drew an enthusiastic and appreciative audience of close to 80. SAAL Publications The SAAL Quarterly was published as scheduled. Regular features of the SAAL Quarterly include feature articles, book reviews, abstracts of papers presented by SAAL members at local and international conferences, and reports of SAAL academic activities. In 2003-2004, the following SAAL publication was produced: Ho Wah Kam and Ruth Wong Y. L. (eds. 2003) Language Policies and Language Education in East Asia: An Annotated Bibliography. Singapore: SAAL (with funding from Collegeworks and support from SAAL). Although not directly published by SAAL, several other books published by our active SAAL colleagues include:
I urge all of you to submit your recently published books for review in the SAAL Quarterly. AOB and Akan Datang As I am finally stepping down from office after having served as President of SAAL from 1990-2004 (a good 14 years), perhaps I should take a few minutes to say a special word of thanks to four key members of the Association for their immense contributions to the highlight of my Presidency, the hosting of the prestigious AILA 2002 13th World Congress of Applied Linguistics in Singapore which attracted close to 1300 participants. Ever since 1996 when we won the bid in Finland to host AILA 2002 in Singapore, these key ex-co members were determined to see SAAL through the project successfully and to help me as AILA 2002 Chair. For staying the course throughout the six years of blood, sweat and toil, I owe a debt of gratitude to: Dr Ho Wah Kam (Adviser), Dr Teng Su Ching (SAAL Vice-President till 2003 and Vice-Chair of the AILA 2002 Organising Committee), Dr Chng Huang Hoon (Honorary Secretary and Chair of Congress Programming), and Dr Low Ee Ling (Assistant Honorary Secretary, and Chair of PR and Marketing). I also express heartfelt thanks to the other core members who all contributed in no small way: Lionel Wee, Rohini Rajagopalan, Alvin Leong, Lim Beng Soon, Rosemary Khoo, Phyllis Chew, Shirley Lim, and Goh Yeng Seng, who were all AILA2002 committee chairs. Their immediate crew and avid supporters included Yogeswari Appapillai, Lakshmy Bhaskar, Chong Siew Fong, Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, Jenny Gan, Happy Goh, Ho Chee Lick, Anneliese Kramer-Dahl, Lee Kooi Cheng, Beatriz P. Lorente, Christianty Nur, Ismail Talib, Jackie Teo, Teoh Boon Seong, Ruanni Tupas, Chitra Varaprasad, Ruth Wong, and Yuan Yi, to name a few. There were certainly many more helpers and supporters whose contributions were just as sterling, and I thank them all for their invaluable contributions to making AILA 2002 a success. Now that a new and vibrant team is taking over at the helm, I might indulge myself by articulating SAAL's 'VITAL' existence. The younger team I hope will carry with distinction the SAAL name forward with V- for Vision, I- for Innovation, T- for Talent and L- for Leadership. Essential to the making of SAAL's VITAL statistics, are the strategizing elements of home-and-abroad resources and outreach:
Note of Thanks On behalf of the Committee, I would like to thank our auditors, Goh Yeng Seng and Jenny Gan for their work on approving our SAAL accounts. SAAL's committee is now to be individually thanked. Dr Ho Wah Kam, our Adviser, to you we owe a great debt of gratitude for being a key figure and strong supporter of every one of our meetings and activities. From policy advising, to planning and execution, Dr Ho has been instrumental in academic collaborations especially with STU in preparing for the STU-SAAL Colloquium in November 2003. Next, our Vice-President: Dr. Ben Lin. Thank you for being an able V-P helping out with the STU-SAAL colloquium. Thanks are due to SAAL Hon. Secretary, Dr Chng Huang Hoon, who carried the SAAL secretarial work most reliably. She is known for her promptness, quick efficiency, and constant attention to matters at hand. Extremely well organized, she often goes beyond the call of duty and keeps all our SAAL members well connected -- via email and personal calls. Also due for similar acknowledgement is our Hon. Asst. Secretary: Low Ee Ling whose crucial work as de facto chair of the sub-committee working on the STU-SAAL Colloquium with Dr Ho is much appreciated. Hon. Treasurer Lim Beng Soon has demonstrated that he can be a fine treasurer: systematic, dependable, and accountable. Hon. Asst. Treasurer: Alvin Leong has assisted him willingly, and has played a dual role in setting up for us in the past year, a very fine website, http://www.saal.org.sg. For this, we are eternally grateful. SAAL now has a web presence and is more readily accessible. Yuan Yi kept a meticulous record of membership -- an important duty in the light of our limited but much in demand copies of the AILA Review. I must thank Dr Teng Su Ching, SAAL Executive Committee member and Vice-Chair of AILA 2002 for the final wrap up of the AILA2002 accounts which she managed most admirably. Su Ching has done a most admirable piece of work in respect of AILA 2002 and I am eternally grateful for that. The remaining committee members: Ao Ran, Chris Nur, and Lakshmy, thank you for your collaborative and cooperative effort to ensure that SAAL activities are kept apace. These are all exemplars: they give of themselves and their time in the effective performance of duties as SAAL members and SAAL supporters. Their unstinting contributions have been remarkable. Before closing, it gives me great pleasure to announce the following new appointments: Dr Teng Su Ching as Vice-Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and Dr Low Ee Ling as Sub-Dean of Degree Programmes, Foundation Programmes Office, National Institute of Education. Heartiest congratulations to both. ↑ Top | ← Publications
Theme and Rheme: An Alternative Account There are two basic approaches to the division of a clause into theme and rheme: Halliday proposes that the theme is always the first part of the clause, while linguists from the Prague School, particularly Firbas, contend that the theme is not always at the start, and its identification depends on communicative dynamism (CD), or the degree of new information a constituent contributes to the clause. In this book, Alvin Leong carefully outlines both these positions, examining their strengths and weaknesses, before concluding that Firbas' approach is just too indeterminate, as evaluating the degree of CD of each constituent simply does not provide sufficient objectivity for the analyst who is attempting to identify the theme of each clause in a real text. Consequently, Leong opts for the concept of theme as the start of the clause, though he does not accept all aspects of Halliday's analysis wholesale. Instead, he proposes a somewhat modified model, particularly by taking into consideration the interaction between theme and rheme in helping to determine where the theme ends. Leong's inference-boundary (IB) model crucially considers the cognitive processing of a clause, suggesting that the identification of the theme-rheme boundary be based on potential violations of the principle of acceptable message development (AMD). Thus, under the IB model, if a theme is to have a well-grounded role as the cognitive starting point for the development of the message, it must allow for the possibility of an anomalous continuation of the clause. A sentence that illustrates the differences between Halliday's analysis and the IB model is an existential clause such as [1].
According to Halliday, the theme of [1] consists of just the first word, There, but Leong contends that this analysis is flawed, for if the theme really is the peg on which the rest of the clause is hung, as Halliday asserts, then it is hard to see how the semantically empty word There can constitute such a peg. And when an investigation was conducted in which volunteers at NUS were asked to try to provide nonsense continuations for a range of sentence openings, Leong reports that they did indeed find it difficult to come up with anomalous continuations of sentences beginning with semantically empty words such as There or Is. In consequence, the IB model proposes that the theme in [1] is There is a man, for an anomalous development of this start to the clause is perfectly possible, as in [2].
Of course, although this proposal seems to make good sense for the analysis of [1] and indeed for most existential sentences, Leong acknowledges that it does not necessarily provide a straightforward solution for all sentences, as we should consider what the theme is in [3].
The IB model proposes that the theme of [3] consists of the whole clause, so in this case there is no rheme, but this solution is far from ideal. Leong is critical of Halliday for allowing the possibility of clauses with no theme, on the basis that, if there is no anchor point for the cognitive development of a clause, how can there be any such development? But it is not entirely clear that clauses with no rheme are any better than clauses with no theme. If [3] indeed has a theme but no rheme, does that mean it consists entirely of a starting point but no development of the message? One other kind of clause for which the analysis is not completely straightforward involves imperatives, such as [4].
It is proposed that the theme in [4] is the discontinuous phrase Let ... come. At this point, it would perhaps have been useful if the book had discussed in rather more detail the possibility of discontinuous verbal groups, something which is certainly envisaged by most analysts, including Halliday. Indeed, from the presentation in the book, it is not entirely clear whether the proposed theme of [4] is the whole sentence or the discontinuous verbal group. Furthermore, note that we now have the possibility of themes which do not belong only at the start of the clause but which instead exist both at the start and at the end, and this is certainly rather different from the idea that the theme is always at the start of the clause. Of course, we should not be surprised to find that not all the problems of textual analysis have been solved, or that some of the solutions proposed by the IB model are not totally straightforward, for the grammar of every language is messy, and it is inevitable that many issues concerning the analysis of various types of clause remain uncertain and open to substantial further debate. Furthermore, this book does not gloss over such problems, but honestly discusses them while at all times presenting constructive ideas for innovative ways of looking at the structure of a clause. And these fresh perspectives on the analysis of clause structure will certainly be highly valued by many linguists working in the field of text analysis. In the final chapters of the book, Leong considers the overall structure of complete texts, on the assumption that macro text structure generally reflects the structure of individual clauses, and indeed he proposes that violation of the principle of AMD can be extended to help identify the macro theme of a complete text, presumably by constructing anomalous texts and thereby testing the possibility of deriving meaningless continuations of the theme. It is perhaps a pity that this idea is not developed further, with concrete examples, for instance, of the possibility of anomalous developments after each individual sentence at the start of a text and how this can help to identify where the macro theme ends and its rheme begins. Maybe such an investigation would be just too unwieldy and indeterminate, but in its absence, it is hard to be confident that violation of the AMD principle really can contribute to identification of the macro theme of a text. In conclusion, this book provides a thoughtful analysis of the separation of a clause into theme and rheme, and the IB model offers an original and insightful contribution to our understanding of this issue. Even if there remain some places where the model could be developed further, or a few instances where the analysis might be clarified a bit, this does not undermine this book's exceptionally valuable contribution to the literature on functional grammar, and it is certain that the overall care and clarity with which the issues are presented and discussed will be greatly appreciated by many linguists.
Reviewed by David Deterding RESPONSE TO DETERDING'S BOOK REVIEW I thank David Deterding for his review of my book. I would like to respond to his comments on the IB analysis of bare existentials, and hope that this will serve as a springboard to further discussion. Deterding notes that "it is not entirely clear that clauses with no rheme are any better than clauses with no theme." While themeless constructions strike one as decidedly odd on definitional grounds, my view is that we do not have this same problem with rhemeless constructions. It is, in fact, entirely possible for a construction to have no message development. Deterding enquires if the bare existential in (3) "consists entirely of a starting point but no development of the message." My answer is yes, and this can be illustrated quite simply. A declarative can be converted to an existential using a simple formula (cf. p. 114 of book):
A man is outside. Given a bare existential such as (3), the declarative form would therefore be:
There is a problem. Clearly, our attention here is drawn simply to the existence of a problem and nothing else. The clausal message, that is to say, does not develop further from this point. By definition, this means that the bare existential is rhemeless. To be sure, rhemeless constructions cannot be over-used in a text (unless they are there to create a certain effect). Otherwise, the text will be filled with undeveloped clauses, giving it a disjointed feel. It is well known that existentials -- particularly bare existentials -- are used only sparingly to introduce new topics, which are themselves taken up over the next few clauses. The IB model is, I acknowledge, an unconventional way of approaching the theme-rheme structure of the clause and text. I remarked in the foreword to the book (p. 14) that it is likely to stir debate and, to this end, I am grateful to Deterding for raising several points that certainly merit further discussion and more careful thought.
Leong Ping, Alvin ↑ Top | ← Publications
Mother Tongue Issues in Multilingual Communities Summary of the Presentations Dr. Lionel Wee's interest in the topic of the SAAL forum is from the macro-policy perspective. He cited how Singapore's current language policy seems to be an ideal one as it addresses the country's need for economic development (through English, the "ethnically-neutral" language) while maintaining the role of the mother tongues (Mandarin, Tamil and Malay) as heritage markers for the country's ethnically diverse population. This, however, becomes destabilized when, in keeping with the rise of China, the government recognizes Mandarin as having economic potential. What happens then to the two other mother tongues? According to Dr. Wee, this conundrum is not unique to Singapore but is evident worldwide as languages become valuable commodities disconnected from ethnicity, etc. A/P Lubna Alsagoff's paper was entitled, "Malay: The Trading in Futures". Her paper focused on the geo-political value of the Malay language as drawn from and situated in Singapore's history. She noted how Malay was singled out by Singapore because of its desired merger with Malaysia in the late 1950s. In this regard, Malay was supposed to be valuable for two reasons: 1) for fostering unity and 2) for expressing a unique and distinctive national identity. First, Malay was historically valuable as a common language for national unity. Malay was advocated because of its Otherness from English, the colonizer's language. It was also supposed to defuse racial rivalries, in a manner similar to what English is supposed to be doing now. Second, Malay was valuable in forging a distinctive and unique national identity. In this regard, Malay was the national language of the proposed merger state. Also, at that time, the Malay language made Singapore distinct from Britain and from China (ie. Singapore was not a "third" China.). However, the statute containing the provision that Malay is Singapore's national language no longer appears in the constitution. So while Malay may still be Singapore's de facto national language, it is no longer the de jure national language. A/P Goh Yeng Seng's talk focused on the pedagogical challenges of teaching and learning Mandarin in Singapore. He argued that Mandarin-language textbooks in Singapore address only Chinese-speaking pupils even as there are two types of Mandarin-language pupils in Singapore, those from English-speaking homes and those from Chinese-speaking homes. He presented some of the recommendations of a committee set up by the MOE to study Chinese language pedagogy in Singapore (he was a member). Most of the committee members agree that attention must be given to the home language backgrounds of the pupils and that English is the "master language" in Singapore. The challenge now is in determining which standard of Chinese proficiency is attainable. Dr. Goh proposed the need for Chinese to be a "life language", otherwise no one will want to learn it. He also emphasized the need to develop a pool of bilingual and bicultural elites (who are fluent in Chinese) given the rise of China. Dr Seetha Lakshmi's talk was about Tamil varieties in Singapore and Tamil in Singapore. She pointed out that Tamil is a diglossic language. In the 1960s and 70s, spoken Tamil was absolutely left out in the media and written Tamil was used in informal situations and phone-in conversations; colloquial Tamil or "rickshaw man" Tamil was not used. In the 1980s and 90s, informal media programs started using spoken Tamil with standard criteria. Nowadays, one can sometimes hear colloquial Tamil being used. Currently though, children in Tamil-speaking homes are forced to speak in written Tamil instead of spoken Tamil. The parents see this as a way of helping the children in their mother tongue examinations. It is also possible that the parents do not see the importance of communicating in spoken Tamil because they can communicate in English. Dr. Lakshmi emphasized the need for an awareness of spoken Tamil. As youngsters seem to enjoy spoken Tamil, the standard spoken variety could then be used as a resource for teaching. Dr. T. Ruanni F. Tupas' paper was entitled "Anatomies of linguistic commodification: The case of English in the Philippines vis-à-vis other languages in the multilingual marketplace". He argued that linguistic commodification reveals various views of globalization and demonstrates the non-uniform development of globalization. He pointed out that in the Philippines, the only language that could be considered to be 'commodified' is English. This commodification of English in the country needs to be understood vis-à-vis the commodification of labour in the country. This was especially marked in the 1970s when the Philippine government embarked on a policy to "commodify" English to be competitive in the international labour market. Consequently, local languages have been marginalized. Filipino, the national language, has challenged English but only on nationalist-symbolist grounds and not on the same instrumentalist grounds as English. Dr. Tupas ended his paper by saying that for Filipino (the national language) to really challenge English, the domains of Filipino must be expanded. However, the expansion of domains cannot be decreed by policies alone as local languages are located at the intersection of socio-political phenomena and the roles that they play may depend on the amount of power or lack of, of the people who speak them. Dr. Ng Bee Chin presented the results of an initial study she had conducted with the families of low English proficiency students. Of the 21 families she surveyed (parents could not switch between colloquial and standard English but had very good proficiency in Mandarin), more than 60% chose a mixture of Chinese and English as a home language despite their lack of fluency in standard English. The foremost reason the parents cited for not using Mandarin despite their fluency in it was that they were afraid that their children will not be competent in English when they go to school. Citing language maintenance strategies (e.g. one parent-one language system; dual parent-minority language system), Dr. Ng recommended that parents be advised to use the language they are most comfortable in when interacting with their children. She also pointed out how various instrumental pressures exert pressure on home language choice and that this may be relevant in discussions regarding linguistic commodification. Summary of the Open Forum The open forum started with Dr. Chng Huang Hoon asking Dr. Tupas to clarify his statement that "commodifying a language may not necessarily be a good thing". Dr. Tupas reiterated that he was looking at linguistic commodification as being reflective of the ways in which people respond to globalization. In the Philippines where the commodification of language relates to the commodification of labor, one is looking at disadvantageous positions from which one is commodifying language and responding to globalization. A/P Pakir added that one could reflect on "commodification" as being "commodi-fiction". She also emphasized how it is the speakers that we are looking at when we talk about the commodification of languages. There was a lively discussion on how linguistic commodification leads to people being culturally disassociated or culturally disembedded from the language (e.g. English) they are speaking. A main bone of contention seemed to be the concept of language and the transmission of cultures or the relationship between language and culture. Some questions from the audience included: Did "doing English" mean "identifying" with the British "culture"? Were English speakers becoming detached from English culture? Does the assumption that the mother tongue carries one culture still hold? Were culture and language becoming increasingly divorced (given linguistic commodification)? Dr. Ng commented that she did not think it was generally a bad thing that a syllabus would be focused on English culture and that English speakers would not be detached from English culture. A/P Alsagoff underlined the fundamental role of "mother tongues" in literacy. A member of the audience commented that it was not language that made people move away from culture (e.g. Indian writers in English) but that it may be a process of evolution. Another member of the audience raised the possibility of looking at the languages in Singapore as part of social capital. Dr. Ho commented that he hoped that the Chinese language report cited by Dr. Goh would not be a "one-size-fits-all" concept. He cautioned that terms like "L1" and "L2" should be used with care. He also noted that with the exception of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, the ASEAN countries do not have a "national language" in their constitution. Dr. Wee commented on how one of the problems of commodification is interlanguage issues (ie. Which variety gets valorized? ). He noted that linguistic realities can be "erased" by policies. Dr. Tupas reiterated his plea to look at linguistic commodification within contexts of issues of power. A/P Anne Pakir closed the colloquium with a poem from Jason Leow, a Singaporean poet.
Reported by Beatriz P. Lorente ↑ Top | ← Publications CURRENT RESEARCH BY SAAL MEMBERS
Bilingualism: An Advanced Resource Book on the Book Notice Language is a complex phenomenon which is an intricate interplay of cognitive and individual factors interacting with social and cultural norms. The complexity of all the factors which interact to make up the rich tapestry of language use in a monolingual individual means that when the additional variable of another language is added, the complexity multiplies exponentially. In this book (to be published by Routledge), we will explore how bilinguals negotiate their world by focusing specifically on the ways in which bilingualism impacts on the cognitive resources of the individual, at the same time emphasizing the ways in which these are moderated by social factors in the context in which the bilingual person is situated. We have organized this book around two interlocking themes: the bilingual as an individual, and the bilingual as a social being living in a social world. Throughout this book we demonstrate how these two themes are inextricably bound. The organization of this book allows one to go beyond basic and evaluative discussion of the concepts to more challenging reviews and extensions of current research ideas. As any meaningful interpretation of research is constrained by the research methodology adopted, there is a strong focus on critically analyzing research methodology adopted in the field. There are 10 units in this book. They are: 1. Defining the Bilingual Experience 2. Measuring Bilingualism 3. Bilingual Acquisition 4. Bilingualism and Cognition 5. Bilingual Memory and Processing 6. Bilingualism and Biliteracy 7. Models of Bilingual Education 8. Bilingual Acquisition in Special Population 9.Language Attrition in Bilinguals 10. Language Attitude, Identity and Maintenance (Book Notice).
Collocation Awareness and Language Production Conference Paper There has been much discussion recently about the value of lexical collocations in second/foreign language learning (Bahns, 1993; Michael Lewis, 1998, Hill, 1999; Michael Lewis 2000; Morgan Lewis, 2001). The need for developing EF/SL learners' "collocational competence" has been established, as "the way words combine in collocations is fundamental to all language use" (Hill, 2000). However, due to the huge size of lexical collocations in English, the learning of them poses immense challenges to learners of English as a foreign language. To cope with the selection problem on what collocations to teach, it is proposed that teachers could enhance learners' awareness of collocations in preparation for their language production tasks. The present study is conducted on a group of adult foreign language learners to examine the relationship between participants' collocation awareness, language production and the sustenance of collocations they become aware of. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses will be performed to understand to what extent collocations that are noticed, recorded and used can be retained and whether a heightened awareness of collocation contributes to the quality of learners' language production.
Examining the perspectives of a group of undergraduate students and the processes involved as they undertake group work: An interpretivist study Ed.D. Thesis Proposal This study examines the experiential knowledge of a selected group of undergraduates in one university about group work that culminates in one piece of academic writing. The study aims to examine the potentials of group work in providing opportunities for students to think and write critically, an essential skill in tertiary education. To this end, students' perspectives of what constitutes effective group work and whether these perspectives are reflected in their behaviour and interaction during group discussions are observed and analyzed. Additionally, students' actual writing resulting from the group work is also analyzed for evidence of reflection on key issues pertaining to their group-writing assignment. The study seeks to show that when a group-writing task at university level is well-structured, it could provide opportunities for students to engage in critical thinking that could, in turn, be reflected in their writing. ↑ Top | ← Publications
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