Word Lists: Useful Pedagogical Tool, or Red Herring?

Partially in response to Nakamaru's (2010) article on lexical issues for second language writers, and partially based on my own experience as a writing center tutor working with students who sometimes struggle to find their own words, I was interested in devoting my final blog entry for this class to vocabulary building. Since I have focused heavily this semester on academic writing and the challenges second language writers may face in manipulating this highly contextualized written language to their advantage, I decided to review Hyland & Tse's (2007) examination of Coxhead's (2000) Academic Word List (AWL).

Although Hyland & Tse (2007) regard the AWL as a noble undertaking, they question its underlying theoretical assumption, which is that second language students entering an academic discourse community will be well-served by having a general, "all-purpose" academic vocabulary. To this end, the authors undertook a corpus-based study of their own in order to more objectively evaluate the AWL's coverage of words that students were likely to encounter in their studies. Although they found that the AWL had a respectable level of coverage across the board, this coverage was not equal across disciplines, and furthermore, that many of the words in Coxhead's corpus were dependent on specific context for their meaning. The authors draw the conclusion that world lists targeting "generalized" academic vocabulary such as the AWL may not be particularly useful in teaching students the discipline-specific, context-dependent lexis they need to succeed in university.

In touting lists of so-called "transition words" to my students in the writing center, I am implicitly endorsing the view that certain lists of words are generalizable to a variety of academic contexts. Although reading this article has not changed my views on this particular word list, mainly because it is small and each of its members has a rhetorical purpose as well a linguistic one, I certainly appreciate Hyland & Tse's (2007) thoughtfully critical evaluation of the AWL's underlying concept. What their results suggest, and what they make explicit in their conclusion, is that academic vocabulary learning is a highly context-dependent endeavor and is best managed within individual communities of practice. 
 

These conclusions evoke a tension I have explored in my last several blog posts: the idea that writing, like talk, may be better "locally managed" (Canagarajah, 2007). Unlike the pro- position I took last week on the codification of ELF grammar as a way of empowering L2 writers seeking publication in academic journals, I am hesitant, like Hyland & Tse (2007), to prescribe the learning of lexical items from "on high," and this for a very practical reason: as advocates of our students' success, we want to make sure any time they spend hunched over a compendious tome is well spent. It is easy to imagine our students dutifully memorizing all 570 of Coxhead's word families, only to find that their efforts have not resulted in as great a payoff as they had hoped.

ELF and World Englishes: Different dishes, or different cuisines?

This week I am reviewing Seidlhofer's (2009) article articulating her concern with the tendency among some in the academic world to separate ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) from the World Englishes (WE) paradigm discussed by Braj Kachru (1985). Some scholars, it would seem, even find the two views incompatible (Seidlhofer, 2009). However, as Seidlhofer effectively argues, the two paradigms have more in common than one might think: they are both dedicated to subverting the current monolingual paradigm which currently holds sway over much of the world and elevates "native speaker varieties" of English such as North American, British, and Australian English(es). Although WE and ELF differ in terms of which of Kachru's "circles" each is primarily concerned with (WE tends to focus on the Outer Circle while ELF is primarily concerned with the Expanding Circle), this distinction should not separate the two fields of scholarship, according to Seidlhofer.

To be sure, tensions exist between WE and ELF. Through Bamgbose (1998), Seidlhofer makes an argument for the eventual descriptive codification of ELF. Already we see a conflict with the  theoretical bent of Canagarajah (2007), who de-emphasizes standards because each NNS-NNS interaction is something made up on the spot, the particulars of which are negotiated by the participants as the interaction unfolds. Kachru (1985) himself, on the other hand, does not eschew prescriptivism or codification, even endorsing it in some contexts.

With respect to writing in the academy, I tend to agree with Kachru: I don't believe it works well to extend Canagarajah's theory, based as it is on spoken interaction, to second language writing. If we theorize, for example, the submission of an article by a non-native writer to an English language journal as such an interaction (albeit a textual one), we instantly have problems because of the power differential between writer and audience. Unlike interactions among ELF speakers, where every participant is on equal footing linguistically, the two parties in the writer-journal interaction are grossly unequal. This inequality makes the interaction less a conversation between individuals and more a form of "institutional talk" (Cameron, 2001) in which the supplicant is constrained as to what sort of interactive moves he or she is allowed to make.

To ground this theory a bit, if the journal holds all the power in determining what sort of linguistic deviation it will tolerate in submissions accepted for publication, then there can be no negotiation - prescriptivism is handed down or not, according to the whim and ideology of each individual publication. However, if there were a codified standard for written English that conformed to an ELF/WE and not a monolingual paradigm, a submission could not be rejected for deviant use of articles or omission of the singular third person marker morpheme -s, because these minor deviations do not serve as barriers to communication. In other words, while codification constrains, it also grants rights to the speaker/writer which otherwise would not be available.

Lingua Franca English and Challenges to U.S. Second Language Writing Pedagogy

The article I read this week, by Canagarajah (2007), discusses Lingua Franca English and multilingual communities as confirming the validity of, and indeed expanding, Firth & Wagner’s (1997) challenges to the dichotomies characterizing Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory. These dichotomies include native speaker (NS) versus non-native speaker (NNS), language learner versus language user, and interlanguage versus target language (p. 923). Canagarajah exposes these dichotomies as being based in a monolingual view of language acquisition, created in a Western framework where nation-states see language deviation as a “problem” to be “fixed” rather than the norm.

In revisiting Firth and Wagner’s (1997) theory, Canagarajah brings up two examples from the present day: Lingua Franca English (LFE), spoken in parts of the world where (non-native) English serves as a common language, and multilingual communities in the Global South, where multilingualism and language deviation are the norm, to the extent that speakers may be hard-pressed to identify their mother tongue. From these examples, Canagarajah derives an argument for a practice based model of second language acquisition, in which acquisition is seen as primarliy occurring outside of classroom contexts and conditioned by social interaction, and where meaning is created as a result of practice rather than communicated vis-à-vis the conduit model. Here, what is important is not shared values or experiences, but shared interests.

I found this article very interesting, although highly abstract. Although not directly related to writing in a second language, it provides some of the theoretical underpinnings for challenging the dominant paradigm for second language pedagogy. As Canagarajah points out, “Even Western communities are beginning to acknowledge the diversity, hybridity, and fluidity at the heart of language and identity” (p. 935). It is extending this awareness to the academic community in the United States that interests me in particular. Putting this article in context, I make the following conclusions for how we can change second language and writing pedagogy to meet the linguistic realities of the twenty-first century.

1) We need to acknowledge that much of language learning among multilingual communities of speakers occurs apart from (formalized) classroom contexts. The goal is not to get rid of classroom instruction, but rather to adapt it to the contexts in which language is actually acquired and practiced.

2) We need to throw out the NS/NNS model. While this will be difficult to accomplish, it will be well worth it. Arguably, multilinguals from other communities have an advantage in the global marketplace that monolinguals do not (p. 930). Therefore, it no longer makes sense to keep viewing the NS as superior.

3) We need to rethink our writing-centered pedagogy. If Canagarajah is correct, then the writing-centered culture of the U.S. academy does not facilitate second language acquisition. Further, it damages second language students’ sense of confidence and self-esteem when they are viewed by the academy as flawed writers, rather than the able communicators they are.

Neutralizing the impact of "scare words" in L1 and L2 composition studies

For my second blog post, I reviewed the article "Sidestepping Our 'Scare Words': Genre as a Possible Bridge Between L1 and L2 Compositionists" by Kimberly A. Costino and Sunny Hyon. This article provides a thought-provoking discussion of the (negative) power of certain loaded words in influencing composition pedagogy. For L2 compositionists, these "scare words" include ideology, power and critical, terms often invoked by L1 compositionists. L1 compositionists, on the other hand, are often intimidated by the words skills and practice, common terms in the TESOL lexicon. According to the authors, the negative associations these words bring to the minds of composition instructors often prevent the merging of the two sub-fields in a way that would be beneficial to students. In order to address this problem, the authors, an L1 compositionist and an L2 compositionist, respectively, design lessons for their respective classes using genre as a pedagogical tool to help each borrow teaching strategies from the other while avoiding the use of "scare words."

Despite a lack of clarity in the paper showing how the authors arrive at this idea, its application seems to come off swimmingly. Each instructor teaches a lesson in her respective composition class whose purpose is to familiarize the students with a particular genre; in this case, that of the book review. The L1 instructor borrows the L2 instructor's teaching of specific structural "moves" and calls attention to specific lexical choices endemic to the book review genre, while the L2 instructor is subtly able to co-opt the concepts of purpose and audience in order to get her students to think more about authorship, readership, and the agendas of the different parties involved in producing a book review. Both lessons are successful: in avoiding the other's "scare words," and having something central such as genre to focus on, each instructor is able to appropriate some of the other's methods, if not her terminology.

One of the interesting things about this article is the resonance it has with one of this week's course readings, "Between Theory with a Big T and Practice with a Little p" by Dwight Atkinson. Indeed, there is quite a bit of overlap between the two articles in terms of how each posits the prototypical L1 composition stance as liberal and theoretical, and the prototypical L2 composition stance as more conservative and practice-oriented. Roughly, the L2 compositionists' "scare words" evoke the dense and necessarily political theory (with a big T or a little t?) often employed by L1 compositionists in their classrooms. The L1 compositionists' "scare words," on the other hand, suggest a divorcing of theory from practice, or at the very least, letting theory lead practice, a view that many L1 compositionists are uncomfortable with.