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CONTENTS
SAAL Quarterly is under the editorship of Dr T. Ruanni F. Tupas and Beatriz P. Lorente. 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. CHILD LANGUAGE RESEARCH IN SINGAPORE
Call for Participation
3 September 2005 (Saturday)
Panelists Abstract The purpose of this talk is threefold. First, to introduce the SAAL Special Interest Group (SIG) on Child Language, constituted by today's four speakers. This is also the first SAAL SIG. Its long-term goal is to act as a task-force to gather and spread information about child language research in Singapore and in the remaining South-East Asian region, including Australia and New Zealand. The SIG will also promote cooperation with international bodies dedicated to child language, such as the IASCL (International Association for the Study of Child Language) and CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System), and seek integration with them. Second, to present an overview of current research in child language, starting with the core of research done in Singapore and/or concerning the languages used in Singapore. Two things are striking here, a) the amount and diversity of research topics, from descriptive studies on particular languages, to educational and pedagogical issues, through to atypical language development and remediation; and b) the apparently widespread ignorance, among child language researchers, of each others' work. Third, and most importantly, to glean interests and generalise discussion about child language among our audience. Our goals with this first SIG convening are to consolidate preliminary findings, gaps and pointers in child language research, raise awareness about the worldwide expanding interest in this topic, and launch concerted research efforts that may truly serve researchers in the SE Asian region. Important: Please signal your interest by emailing Dr Chng Huang Hoon (ellchh@nus.edu.sg) by 30 June 2005. ↑ Top | ← Publications
The Cultural Basis of Teaching English as an International Language That the topic of Professor Sandra McKay's lecture is centred on the role of culture in language teaching should not come as a surprise. As someone who has visited 80 countries and has served as a teacher educator in TESOL in at least 50 of them, SAAL could not have chosen a more appropriate person than Professor McKay to address the topic, not least because of her own cultural sensitivity, displayed in her numerous encounters with students, teachers and researchers from various cultures. For her, intercultural understanding is therefore not some new slogan to be paid lip-service to, but a personal truth to be lived. The unprecedented spread of English as an international language (EIL) in recent times has brought about demographic changes that have had wide-ranging repercussions for who owns English today. If because of its geographical spread and distribution, English speakers in the Outer and Expanding Circles have already outnumbered the traditionally privileged Inner Circle speakers of English, the obvious question to ask is: Is it still plausible to look to the Inner Circle speakers for target norms? Even within the Inner Circle, the trend is for the number of bilinguals to exceed the number of monolingual speakers. It is against this backdrop of the shift in the ownership of English in the world today that Professor McKay stressed the need to re-evaluate and re-think a number of important issues relating to both the content and methodology of teaching EIL. In view of the fact that an international language belongs to all of its users and not exclusively to speakers of the Inner Circle, Professor McKay contended that there is no longer a need for speakers of EIL to internalize native speaker norms. Particularly so, if we consider that most learners of English in the Outer and Expanding Circles are learning the language in order to facilitate communication with other bilingual speakers about their own ideas and culture, rather than to communicate with monolingual native speakers of the language. In these countries, because English serves a wide range of functions in the local educational, administrative and legal systems, the use of the language has become institutionalized, resulting in the development of new norms. In this sense, EIL has not only undergone de-nationalization, de-linking it from its restricted, and restrictive, association with Inner Circle countries, but is currently going through an inevitable process of "re-nationalization", in that it has taken on both the cultural and linguistic features of the various contexts in which it has been transplanted and the various functions for which it is being used in these new cultural settings. Referring to research on English as an international language conducted by Graddol (1997), Crystal (1997), Smith (1976), and Brutt-Griffler (2002), Professor McKay pointed out how in many countries of the world the demand for English is currently being driven by strong economic considerations. As a product of a world econo-cultural system, the status of English, already boosted by historical factors such as colonialism, migration, and technological advancement, has in more recent times been enhanced by its powerful role as an economic resource. Whereas in the past access to English was restricted to an elite minority, the socio-political changes that have occurred in the post-colonial era have produced concomitant changes in the language situation as well. Today the pervasiveness of English is underlined by its role as a storehouse of knowledge, among other things, which is an additional motivating factor for learners the world over. Due to these changing circumstances, English is now being spread not so much by mass migration as primarily by macroacquisition. How then should these factors feed into re-thinking the pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning EIL? Professor McKay touched upon three important points: Firstly, given that increasingly the target learners belong to a bilingual community, continuing to look to the Inner Circle for models of description for EIL may not only be inappropriate but futile. The new cultural contexts in which English is being taught and learnt today have given rise to variation at all the linguistic levels. Particularly important for these language learners are the semantic, pragmatic and discourse-level changes. The coining of new words, lexical phrases and collocations as well as differing patterns of cross-cultural pragmatics and rhetorical patterns in written discourse, all warrant greater attention because cultural misunderstandings due to pragmatic differences are likely to cause stereotyping. Therefore, instead of attempting to adopt Inner Circle norms in these areas, what is needed is more research to identify the linguistic changes that have evolved in these situations and how they function. Her second point has direct implications for the cultural content of the course books and instructional materials used in teaching EIL in the Outer and Expanding Circles. Invoking Cortazzi and Jin's (1999) distinction between three kinds of course materials -- those representing the source culture, target culture and international target culture -- Professor McKay contended that it cannot be assumed that the culture of any one country, especially an Inner Circle country, should provide the basis of the cultural content for teaching EIL. Pointing out the advantages in using each kind, she highlighted three principles that should inform how cultural content should be handled in an EIL classroom. First, students should be encouraged to use the material to reflect on their own culture in relation to others. Second, the diversity that exists in all cultures should be emphasized. And finally, cultural content should be critically examined so that the students consider what assumptions are present in the text. She further emphasized the importance of establishing a sphere of interculturality so that students gain insights into their own culture. Professor McKay's third point was that adopting Inner Circle pedagogies in teaching EIL in the Outer and Expanding Circles may prove to be incompatible with the cultures and learning styles of the students learning English in these contexts. Given that each country is characterized by its own culture of learning, she maintained that imposing Western methodologies may prove to be counter-productive, in addition to resulting in ideas of otherness and alienating both teachers and students in the Outer and Expanding Circles. She observed that this is what has happened in the case of Communicative language teaching, which has been upheld as an ideal methodology for English language teaching in the world, but whose failure to produce the required results in several Asian contexts was explained away on grounds that the local culture of learning tended to promote mechanical learning and a lack of creative thinking. Rather than impose a methodology which is insensitive to the local culture, Professor McKay suggested the creation of an appropriate methodology for EIL, one that is closer to that developed by Kramsch and Sullivan (1996), who sensitive to the local culture, adapted their teaching to the specific culture of learning in Vietnam, where the classroom functions as a family, the teacher as mentor and language learning is play. Thus Professor McKay's main message is for approaches to the teaching of EIL to be culturally sensitive to the diversity of contexts in which English is being increasingly taught and used. To sum up, Professor McKay stressed the following as being crucial to redefining the cultural basis of teaching EIL:
Forty-five members attended the talk, which was given on 10 March 2005. References
Reviewed by Rani Rubdy ↑ Top | ← Publications
The Status and Intelligibility of Abstract The NIECSSE corpus consists of high-quality recordings of educated Singapore English available on a CD-ROM. We sent the data to researchers in various other countries, and many of them either played some of it to their students or listened to it themselves before reporting their findings in our new book (Deterding, Brown & Low, eds. 2005). This presentation will provide an overview of these findings, discussing which features of Singapore English cause problems in other countries, and furthermore evaluating which features (particularly with regard to vowels) contribute to an emergent style of Singapore pronunciation that cannot easily be mapped on to any external standard but do not necessarily cause difficulties for intelligibility (Deterding, forthcoming, a) The paper will also briefly compare the intelligibility of Singapore English with that of Estuary English (Deterding, forthcoming, b), and it will finally consider the relationship of Singapore English to the English lingua franca that seems to be emerging in the Asean region (Deterding & Kirkpatrick, 2005), to evaluate whether Singapore English may form the basis for a regional variety of English. References
About the Speaker David Deterding is an Associate Professor at the English Language & Literature Academic Group at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. He teaches courses in Phonetics, Grammar, Translation and Introductory Linguistics. He has published widely on the phonetics of Singapore English and does extensive research on the vowels of Singapore English. REPORT ON SAAL TALK
The Status and Intelligibility of by Associate Professor David Deterding
Jointly organised by the Centre for English Language Communication (CELC) David Deterding is the new Henry Higgins and his students at NIE are the new Eliza Doolittles -- with a difference. Henry Higgins in GB Shaw¡¯s Pygmalion was at pains to teach Eliza Doolittle how to stop being cockneyed and unintelligible and how to speak like a lady with proper RP) Received Pronunciation. However David Deterding is at pains to show the world how speakers with a Singapore English accent may be intelligible to other speakers of English. What a difference in attitudes to what makes a "pukka" accent a century makes, eh what old chap? The sound of Singapore English Professor Deterding showed that Singapore English sounds different by playing a variety of sound clips collected from his students. These are teachers in training hence the way they speak may have some impact on the way English is learnt in the schools they are posted to. The utterances were sometimes artificial as the students were asked to read sentences that had been specially composed to contain problem sounds such as closed and open vowels e.g. in egg versus beg. The lack of authentic speech as in candid speech is a result of ethical considerations of not taping people without their prior consent. The tapes showed that by and large the sound of Singapore English is characterised by vowel sounds such as those found in /pure/ versus /poor/ are not as "pure" as those in British English -- although if Estuary English is now the bench mark of British English as opposed to the Queen¡¯s English then I for one, think that purity is highly subjective! Other characteristics of Singapore English phonology are:
The intelligibility of Singapore English Professor Deterding sent his tapes to his compatriot and fellow academic Anthea Fraser Gupta in Leeds. She played this tape to her students and asked how much they understood. Her students had little trouble understanding Singapore English from its phonology but they had some difficulty understanding some of the content, viz. a conversation about church planting in India. Given the state of religious apathy in England (see for instance the social commentary on p55 of The Firm a popular history of the monarchy in Britain, in which Penny Juror asserts that the state religion in the UK has been falling into decline since the 1950s), I am not surprised that the students did not understand the vocabulary of evangelism. In another study by a Japanese professor -- Tamikazu Date (2005), Singapore English was found to be unintelligible because of the above mentioned characteristics. Indeed based on personal anecdotal evidence with PRC learners of English in Singapore, Professor Deterding asserts that Singapore English is hard to comprehend by other Asian learners of English even while native speakers of English in Britain and Australia find it less incomprehensible. In a modern twist to the Pygmalion story, Professor Deterding suggests that if Singapore wishes to be an international business and educational hub then our English teachers might need to address the issue of the intelligibility of Singapore English when dealing with Asian students, such as those from PRC and Japan who are learning English or even who are studying in Singapore. Hence, the characteristic sounds of Singapore English may well be part of the English syllabus when designing courses for Asian students.
Reviewed by Lee Gek Ling ↑ Top | ← Publications CURRENT RESEARCH BY SAAL MEMBERS A Question of Choice: Thirty Years After Roe v. Wade (1973), Chng Huang Hoon, Department of English Language & Literature, NUS It has been more than three decades since Justice Harry Blackmun delivered the United States Supreme Court opinion on the landmark abortion rights case, Roe v. Wade. In spite of this passage of time, the subject of abortion rights continues to generate strong emotional reactions and heated debates among laypersons, special interest groups, politicians, and analysts. There have indeed been dozens of legal, social and political challenges to Roe, and although Roe continues to be the law of the land with respect to abortion, in many people's minds, the right of choice made possible by Roe has now been severely eroded. This paper aims to provide a quick review of some of the highlights of the 32-year-story of abortion rights development in the United States, including some of the key reactions and responses as well as the challenges that have been inspired by the Court's 1973 decision. I will also attempt an assessment of the current status of Roe. My own argument in favour of a pro-choice stance is framed within the language of citizenship. In my view, the right of (female) citizenship should guarantee a woman's right of choice and access to abortion. (Invited Lecture delivered at the University of Sydney, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, 18 May 2005). "A Question of Choice" is the title of Sarah Weddington's book (1992/1993). Weddington was the lawyer who represented Jane Roe at the Supreme Court in 1972. Problem Solving -- A dynamic approach to teaching thinking, Chan Peck Kei, Peggie, Centre for English Language Communication, NUS Seeing problem solving as "a situation ... that confronts an individual ... that requires resolution, and for which the individual has no obvious means nor path to obtaining a solution" (Krulick & Rudnick, 1987), this paper analyses a course taught to university engineering students, which imparts knowledge and skills that require of them to solve critical problems. This paper shows how though discipline-neutral, the course in question requires learners to grapple with issues of the environment and sustainability, public safety, issues of ethics, etc. The paper describes the CT skills that this course develops in its learners: analysis, synthesis and evaluation. This paper hopes to share the thinking behind the course: as learners today are confronted by information from all quarters, the skill of solving an ill-defined problem using sieved information to use as support in an argument, is indeed a skill no learner can afford NOT to be taught! (Conference paper to be delivered during the 12th International Conference on Thinking, 4-8 July 2005, Melbourne) ↑ Top | ← Publications With more than 3,000 members, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research is the world's largest interdisciplinary network for students and professionals working in the field of intercultural communication. The main purpose of SIETAR is to encourage and support the development and application of values, knowledge and skills that promote and reinforce beneficial and long-lasting intercultural and inter-ethnic relations at the individual, group, organization and community levels. SIETAR members view the world as a set of interdependent people and cultures which are equal in value and offer a variety of perspectives and approaches to living and working in a global community. The main purpose is to increase acceptance and respect among and within cultural groups, thereby paving the way for world peace. SIETAR is affiliated with the Council of Europe and holds Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status with the United Nations¡ Members can attend the annual UN-NGO conference taking place each fall in New York City and voice their opinion on the international scene. Click here to visit the SIETAR website! ↑ Top | ← Publications I am the new co-editor of LANGUAGE TEACHING (Cambridge University Press). This prestigious publication brings together in one journal the latest findings in language teaching and learning. Each four-part volume contains some 700 abstracts reporting research in over 200 multilingual periodicals from around the world. Each issue also features one or more specially commissioned state-of-the-art review articles, ranging across topics as important and diverse as language assessment, task-based learning and teaching, intercultural competence, pronunciation teaching, and language policy. I am now charged with the commissioning and editing of the State-of-the-Art articles and, as part of a new series I myself started with work on Spain some time back, we are currently looking for contributors from specific countries who would be able to write such a paid paper selecting significant research in Applied Linguistics/Foreign Language Teaching which has been carried out in Singapore and published in local NATIONAL journals and conferences. We hope in this way to bring to the attention of our wide readership local research and journals that otherwise might not reach a wider audience. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who could deliver such a paper in English and would be willing to provide more details about requirements and fees to interested parties.
Graeme Porte ↑ Top | ← Publications RESEARCH IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS To serve SAAL members and the larger applied linguistics community in Singapore and the region, the SAAL Quarterly will be publishing brief notes and bibliographies on specific research areas within applied linguistics and related fields. The purpose of this section is to present an overview of past or current research on particular topics which may be of interest to many of us. The scope of each topic may be determined by, for example, a specific research area, a period of research, or a geographical location. We are inviting all of you to suggest topics which you wish us to consider for this new section. We hope that this small initiative will expand into larger research programmes and/or collaborative work among us and the applied linguistics community in the region.
A Bibliography of Child Language Research in Singapore Presentation The following is a preliminary bibliography of research in child language in Singapore. This bibliography spans the past two decades up to ongoing studies on monolingual or multilingual English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil as used in Singapore, by and to typically and atypically developing children, at home or elsewhere, written in English, and includes research on educational and pedagogical issues, as well as on developmental norming and remediation. The present scope of the bibliography stems from several limitations. Self-imposed limitations concern, for example, the age-limit assumed for the label "child", which excludes teenagers; the omission of references, whether published or academic research pieces, whose titles I found vague and whose abstracts are unavailable to resolve this vagueness; and the inclusion of studies dealing with the language used to the child, on my assumption that analyses of child language can only make sense with clear information about linguistic targets surrounding the child. One more inherent limitation concerns my illiteracy in three of the four languages used in Singapore, which explains the absence of references written in Chinese, Malay and Tamil. This is, in other words, a 'Beta' version of a bibliographical database whose long-term goal is to provide a regularly updated source of information on child language research in the broader South-East Asian region, searchable online from the SAAL site by different search-fields and in different languages. It is my hope that researchers in child language, in Singapore as elsewhere in the SE Asian region, will want to come back to me with information and suggestions that may turn this bibliography into a research tool that can truly serve its users. Putting together a usable bibliography is not a one-person assignment. The following colleagues (this includes current and past students) generously contributed contacts and details on their own research, as well as their time: Chen Ee San, Joseph A. Foley, Anthea Fraser Gupta, Ng Bee Chin, Tomasina Oh, Susan Rickard-Liow, Hazel See Lei Chia, Rita E. Silver, Tan Liang Hui, and Linda Thompson. Thank you for making this undertaking possible. Bibliography (Part I)
Abbreviations Academic research pieces are given by their standard abbreviations (PhD, D.Phil, MA, MSc, MEd, HT), and all are unpublished. Other abbreviations are:
↑ Top | ← Publications |
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