Spring Journal 2013 - English Teachers Association of Switzerland

More documents

Recommendations

Info

InsightsOn Modern Linguistics and dialect studies:an interview with Dr David BritainDr David Britain has held the Chair ofModern English Linguistics at the Universityof Bern since January 2010 and is theco-author of Linguistics: an introduction (CUP,second edition, 2009). Prior to UNIBE, hewas a Senior Lecturer at the University ofEssex in Colchester, England, where he alsoearned his PhD in Sociolinguistics. Dr Britaincompleted a Postdoc in New Zealand wherehe was part of a research team thatundertook the first large-scale social dialectanalysis of New Zealand English. Currently,Dr Britain is an Associate Editor of theJournal of Sociolinguistics, and is on theeditorial board of the Journal of LinguisticGeography, the International Journal ofEnglish Studies, Babel, and the FrenchReview of English Linguistics.We are pleased and honoured to be able tointerview him for this issue.Julie: Let’s start off with your work at theUniversity of Bern. What does the Chair ofModern English Linguistics do?Dave: My job has three main roles: (1) tocoordinate the Linguistics teaching in theEnglish Department and, despite theLinguistics section being very small, toorganise a full and coherent studyprogramme right from the early years ofthe BA to the more specialist andresearch-oriented stages of the MA; (2)to conduct research in my field ofspecialisation, and support the scholars ofthe future to do so too, by supervising MAand PhD theses; (3) as a co-director of theEnglish Department, to supervise andadminister the activities of the Departmentas a whole. From February 2011 to January2013, I was Head of Department.Julie: What is Modern English Linguistics?What does the term encompass?Dave: I like to think of Linguistics in arather broad sense as the study of language.Consequently it encompasses very manytopics. Most fundamentally it considers thebuilding blocks of the language – the soundsand how they are combined together; thewords; how these words are combined toform utterances; and how these utterancesare combined together to form discourse, sothe study of phonetics and phonology, lexis,morphology and syntax, and discourse.Additionally, it includes meaning and howthat meaning is applied in everyday talk.It includes how English has emerged andchanged over time and the many influencesfrom other languages that have shaped itover the years, as well as the influence ithas had on other languages. Important toois how English is acquired both by childrenand adults as well as the structure ofEnglish used by people with a languagedisorder. For me, an especially importantpart of English Linguistics is looking at thedifferent Englishes spoken around the worldand thinking about how they got that way.And as a sociolinguist, I am also interestedin how people’s language use can bothmanifest as well as shape aspects of theirsocial identity. Also important is themechanics of conversation – for example,how we so seamlessly take turns whentalking, how and for what purpose wetell stories, how we begin and endconversations. And this is just a smallset of the topics that could be describedas English Linguistics.Julie: Can you describe your program at theUniversity of Bern?Dave: The BA in our Department is inEnglish in general – Literature and CulturalStudies as well as Linguistics, and we aimhere to provide a solid foundation in thesetopics, whilst ensuring students gaintheoretical knowledge, analytical skills, anda breadth of exposure to work in these fieldsfrom different places and different timeperiods. I like to think of the MA, wherestudents can specialise in either Literatureor Linguistics, as a research orientationdegree – they gain advanced theoreticalinsights, but in addition learn in a muchmore hands-on way how to do linguisticsthemselves, how to collect relevant languagedata, how to analyse it, how then to dosomething with it. I place great emphasistherefore on courses which introducestudents to the joys and difficulties offieldwork, as well as of language dataanalysis. So MA students with a Linguisticsmajor will get their hands dirty, doingLinguistics and not just reading about it.We also work with the Faculty’s Centerfor the Study of Language and Societywhich has an MA in Sociolinguistics. ThisMA brings together many linguists acrossthe faculty to produce a multilingual,interdisciplinary programme on languagein society.Julie: Who is the program for? How mightthe program benefit an English teacherin Switzerland?Dave: Most of our students are of courseat the BA level, and many of them want tobecome teachers of English. We’re veryconscious then of this special audienceand try to ensure that there are regularlinguistics courses which will be of specificinterest to future teachers – courses onsecond language acquisition, for example,or on bilingualism, as well as the basiccourses on the structure and mechanicsof the language. At the MA level, studentsoften examine these issues in more detail.I have supervised MA theses on theacquisition of specific parts of Englishgrammar that are often said to be especiallyproblematic for Bernese students, such asthe past tense.Julie: Let’s talk a little about your researchinterests. One common theme connectsdialect variation and mobility. Why is thisimportant? What are some implications?Dave: A lot of the dialect research inAnglophone countries has explicitly avoidedmobile people or mobile communities.The first dialect studies in Britain, forexample, deliberately sought out ‘NORMs’(‘Non-mobile Old Rural Men’) because itwas thought they spoke the purest dialect,least influenced by external influences.When sociolinguistic approaches todialectology arrived in the 1960s, the studyof dialect moved to some of the largestcities in the world, but again mobile people,people not brought up in that community,were still shunned. In the past 20 yearsor so we’ve been learning that mobilepeople are in fact extremely influentialtriggers of language and dialect change incommunities, so we can’t really adequatelyinvestigate dialect change withoutconsidering them. My early research beganby looking at dialects that had been formedby acts of migration – in England, and thenlater in New Zealand. More recently I’vebeen interested in the more mundane andeveryday mobilities (e.g. commuting) andhow they can affect dialect. Given its effecton language change, and given that we areliving in an increasingly mobile world, I don’tthink we can adequately study dialect andignore the effects of mobility. I also think itwould be fascinating to see if there are anydifferences in the nature of our dialectswhen we are talking on the phone, or, forexample, talking to passengers while drivinga car, contexts where normal face-to-faceinteraction is disrupted in some way. Inthese contexts the speakers are either notdirectly looking at each other (and so can’tuse facial expression and gesture in thesame way) or are not even in the sameplace as each other at all. I’m surprisedthat very little research has examined this.Julie: In 2009 you co-edited a special issueof the International Journal of the Sociologyof Language on dialect death in Europe.Can you share some highlights or insightswith us?56 ETAS Journal 30/2 Spring 2013
The Techy CornerHere comes the blog lady… .Illya Arnet-ClarkL Tech SIG Coordinatorlearning-tech@e-tas.chAnyone who knows something about mealso knows that I love blogs. It happened tome as I was taking a course in OnlineEducational Technology with the Universityof London. That word BLOG came up andsomething about it fascinated me. My firsttask in the Blogging module was to findgood examples. Easier said than done!This took up hours of my time and at bestI found dusty old blogs; at worst I discoveredvoyeurism such to turn my cheeks brightpink out of embarrassment for the personwho left such intimacies out in broaddaylight (you won’t catch me hanging myundies out in the street!)I seriously questioned the use and relevanceof this online tool and when asked aboutthis, my tutor shared my doubts. Well, I didend up changing my mind, and althoughI am also guilty of letting blogs go dustyand rusty, I still love them.I have used them for my C1 classes andencouraged the participants to use thisspace to write without pressure and sharethis and that. The first time was a disaster.The second time I began guiding them andgiving them specific tasks. By the fourthtime, the blog flourished. It also becamea resource of useful links that I still goback to from time to time, even though itis no longer used for writing. Seehttp://yourcaeblog.blogspot.ch/I have used them for primary school kids.They collaborated together with others andshared something of their culture with bothadults and peers from another continent.These were short projects with littleendurance, yet the effect was astoundingin that short period of time. There wasactually a desire to write! Now this isspecial, which anyone who has ever taughtkids ages 9 - 12 will surely agree with.I have used them for my own reflectionsabout learning and teaching, and recurrentlydust them off when I take a new course soI can continue to grow in this space I havebuilt. This has been a place to connect withothers from all over the world. In theircomments my readers agree, disagree,question, or even add new ideas to myposts, allowing me to further grow.I have used them for teacher training. Thisyear I am trying out something different. Asa teacher trainer, I am requiring my studentsto blog regularly, even to the point of beinggrade-relevant. After a semester of bloggingI see the following happen: those who blogregularly about the topics we have in classshow greater depth of reflection whenrelating the topics to their own learningexperiences; these are also the studentswho are putting considerable thought intowhat has happened in their practicelessons. My next step will be to requirefewer posts, but have them work in groupsand comment on each other’s postsregularly. Looking at the effect theirreflections have had, I wonder if blogs couldbe used in a similar way for learning English.I imagine learners writing a post after eachlesson, consolidating what they remember,asking about what they did not understand,and commenting on what they especiallyenjoyed or found difficult. What would theeffect of such reflective blogging onlanguage learning be?I have set up one for ETAS to sharethoughts, links, and so on. Now, admittedly,I am not doing a good job at keeping up atit, as you might have noticed. Therefore,I have made some changes for 2013. Thefirst change has been to get an AssistantSIG Coordinator, so let’s give Anel Auberta warm welcome! She’s doing a great jobat helping out.Which takes us to the second change: nowyou can read new posts regularly – expectone to two posts monthly, including postsfrom guest writers. The topic? Anything thatmoves you and is in some way related to theinterests of ETAS. Of course, I need guestwriters, so if any of you, dear readers, feelmoved to add to the blog, please contactme. I will send you an invitation to post onthe blog, or you can send the text to Anelor me by email (learning-tech@e-tas.ch).Now, readers are also needed to make ablog successful. How do you know if youare being read if nobody leaves a message?Well, you can look at the statistics, butyou don’t know how your readers feel afterreading your post. Do they find the topicinteresting? Do they agree or disagree?Are they touched? So I’m also encouragingyou, dear ETAS members, to help keep theblog alive and the discussion going. If youdo go to the blog and read a post, leave acomment. Then go back and see if anyoneelse has left a comment on your comment.This is a simple way to network outside ofETAS and other educational events thathappen periodically.How do you follow the blogs? Very goodquestion! You will often find an orangeRSS feed button which will let you knowwhenever there is a new post. This can beread in your browser or other feed readers.This is particularly useful if you have writtensomething and are hoping for an answer orresponse. If you follow a number of blogs,then a reader is practical. They tend to workmuch the same as an email box. You seewhat is new because it is in bold. You canfind information on the etasblog underBlogging 101.Blogging is one way of encouragingdiscussion and learning outside of class,but there are other ways of doing this andthey are becoming more and more common.For example, an article that appeared inthe Summer 2012 edition of ETAS Journaldescribing how Skype can be used fordistance learning has prompted PatriciaDaniels to share her own experiences as a‘virtual teacher’ in this issue. In an articleappearing in this section, she gives somevaluable advice for setting up a distancecourse using different online tools.Shannon Poulsen also shares herexperience as a distance teacher tostudents in China, including a descriptionof her quite steep learning curve and aconcrete example of what such a lessoncould look like.Finally, Nasy Inthisone Pfanner gives ussome insights into the technologicaldevelopments taking place in classroomsin Austria. She especially focuses on thejoys and advantages of the electronic classbook used for management of classes inthe primary school.I wish you happy reading! If you also haveexperience to share about technology inthe classroom, then you can submit anarticle to The Techy Corner, ask to leavea post on etasblog.wordpress.com, orsimply leave a comment there. Let’s getthe discussion going!P.S. From 4th May - 1st June, JennyVerschoor and I will be giving yet anotheracross-the-borders online course. This timeit will be about digital storytelling. This canbe done with children and adults, and evenfor Business English! If you are interested,check out the ETAS website (e-tas.ch) oretasblog.wordpress.com for moreinformation about digital storytelling course.We hope to see you together with ourArgentine friends!60 ETAS Journal 30/2 Spring 2013
Page 1: V O L U M E 3 0 • N O . 2 • S P
Page 4 and 5: ETAS OrganisationThe CommitteePRESI
Page 6 and 7: Editor’s Notes(On Modern Linguist
Page 9 and 10: ETAS NewsFaces of ETAS Support“Li
Page 11 and 12: ETAS NewsAnnouncementsFeedback: wha
Page 13 and 14: Conference for English Teachers in
Page 15 and 16: ETAS NewsETAS Teacher-to-Teacher Pr
Page 17 and 18: ETAS 29th AGM and Convention Supple
Page 20 and 21: NATIONAL COORDINATORREPORTSome chan
Page 23 and 24: Yet, though the prospect of dwindli
Page 25 and 26: PlenariesPLENARYMess and Difficulty
Page 27 and 28: We identify 14 different cognitive
Page 29 and 30: expressions, and hopefully finding
Page 31 and 32: ack of the mouth (for example,/p -
Page 33 and 34: B7Oblique strategies: a powerfultoo
Page 35 and 36: C10Adding sparkle to yourprimary cl
Page 37 and 38: ETAS 2013S N A P S H O T Stheir co-
Page 39: 2. Include students in creatingrule
Page 43: The Techy CornerIllyaVirtual teachi
Page 47 and 48: From the RegionsWorkshop ReportsBAD
Page 49 and 50: ETAS Journal Book Review Guidelines
Page 51 and 52: ServicesLibrary updatesRECENT ACQUI
Page 53: ServicesLibrary order and check-out

Spring Journal 2013 - English Teachers Association of Switzerland

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?