Keynote Sessions

The world has changed since I published my early work on identity, investment, and language learning. Because of advancements in digital technology, there are new relations of power at micro and macro levels, and digital literacy has become essential in claiming the right to speak. As English language learners navigate these changing times, they need to negotiate new identities, investments, and imagined futures. Working with Ron Darvin, I have responded to new linguistic landscapes by developing an expanded model of investment that integrates identity, ideology, and linguistic capital in a comprehensive framework. Included in the model is Bourdieu's notion of sens pratique, or feel for the game, which comes with knowing the various rules, genres, and discourses that inform agents practices, and help them formulate strategic decisions. I argue that while there are structures that may limit a learner's investment, the model seeks to illustrate the ways in which learners may both reproduce but also resist practices that limit possibility. Drawing on recent research with English language learners in both wealthy and poorly resourced global communities, I will discuss the ways in which the model can help inform theory, research, and practice in the faces of English internationally.

Bonny Norton is Professor and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Canada. Her primary research interests are identity and language learning, critical literacy, and international development. The 2013 second edition of Identity and Language Learning: Extending the Conversation has been published by Multilingual Matters. In 2010, she was the inaugural recipient of the "Senior Researcher Award" by the Second Language Research SIG of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and in 2012 was inducted as an AERA Fellow. Her website can be found here.

The two contexts for language learning and use are inside the classroom and outside the classroom. Until comparatively recently, the classroom world was where language was learned, and the world beyond the classroom was where language was used. This bifurcation between language learning and use began to break down with the advent of communicative language teaching which brought with it experiential learning and the notion that one could actually acquire a language by using it productively and communicatively inside the classroom.

However, until relatively recently, opportunities for activating classroom learning in the world outside the classroom were limited in many parts of the world. All that has changed with technology, particularly the Internet, which provides learners with access to an astonishing variety of authentic and output. The proliferation of social networking sites provide learners with opportunities to communicate in speech and writing with other users of their chosen target language around the globe.

In this presentation, I will argue that learning through using language in authentic as well as pedagogically structured contexts outside the classroom can significantly enhance the language learning process. Practical illustrations and examples in the form of case studies will be presented to illustrate the rich variety of opportunities that exist for language learning and use outside the classroom.

David Nunan is Professor Emeritus of Applied Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong, President Emeritus at Anaheim University, and Professor in Education at the University of NSW. He has held substantive positions at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, the University of South Australia, the Regional Language Centre, Singapore, and Macquarie University in Sydney as well as visiting positions at many universities around the world. He has published over 100 scholarly books and articles on teacher education, curriculum development, classroom-based research and the teaching of grammar in the communicative classroom. His most recent books are Learner-Centred English Language Education: Selected Works of David Nunan and Learning Beyond the Language Classroom, both published by Routledge.

One face of English, or Englishes, is that used to publish in international journals. Indeed, writing in English is now more than a choice of language; with globalization and growing managerialism in Higher Education, it has come to designate research of a high quality worthy of a place in peer-reviewed journals. Accompanying this dominance of English, however, are questions of communicative inequality and the possible disadvantages or even prejudice inflicted on non-Anglophone academics. In this paper I critically examine the evidence for linguistic disadvantage by a review of global publishing patterns, author attitudes, case studies and research into linguistic advantage together with my own interviews with EAL scholars in HK and analysis of journal peer reviews. I show that while there is plenty of anecdotal evidence for disadvantage, framing this in terms of a coarse native/non-native distinction has serious problems and may serve to discourage non-Anglophone authors and perpetuate a deficit view of their writing. The disciplinary conventions of disciplinary writing in English make serious demands on all academic writers, but these are less important than a lack of resources and research writing expertise. So while a hindering factor in getting published, language is not a terminally decisive one.

Ken Hyland is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Centre for Applied English Studies at the University of Hong Kong. He was previously a professor at the Institute of Education, University of London and has taught in Africa, Asia and Europe. He is best known for his research into writing and academic discourse, having published over 190 articles and 20 books on these topics. His most recent books include Academic Publishing (Oxford University Press, 2015), Disciplinary Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Innovation and Change in English Language Education (Routledge, 2013). He was founding co-editor of the Journal of English for Academic Purposes and was co-editor of Applied Linguistics.

Production-oriented approach (POA) challenges text-centered and input-based English teaching prevalent in Mainland China.  Meanwhile, in contrast to the student-centered learning promoted by the western scholars, POA adopts the principle of learning centered with the teacher’s careful guidance based on the Chinese pedagogy.  Classroom teaching time being always limited, POA emphasizes the efficient use of every minute of class time to make sure learning takes place.  It is designed based on two assumptions.  The first assumption derived from an analysis of language use in the workplace is that professional or business communication in real life is primarily carried out through productive activities (i.e. speaking, writing, interpreting and translating) with receptive activities (i.e. listening and reading) as mediators rather than through receptive activities alone. Therefore, the ultimate objective of adult English learning should aim at developing learners’ productive skills with receptive skills as enablers. The second assumption based on Swain’s output hypothesis and adult learning psychology is that productive activities as driving force can yield better learning outcomes than receptive activities.

Wen Qiufang works at Beijing Foreign Studies University as Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of the National Research Center for Foreign Language Education. She is also President of China English Language Education Association, and editor of <em>Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics</em> (in English) and of <em>Foreign Language Education in China</em> (in Chinese). She has obtained three national and four provincial awards for excellence in teaching. She is also an experienced researcher and writer, having published more than 130 papers and 17 books, and has finished/is conducting more than 30 research projects. Her research interests include second language teaching and learning, teacher professional development and national language capacity.

Teaching, however, defined, involves ‘input’. No matter which approach or method is adopted, learners are exposed to the input provided by the teacher, other students and in the instructional materials. Input can be oral or written. In this talk, I will treat input as providing learners with the data that, potentially, they can process for learning. The key question, then, becomes what kinds of input under what conditions are most likely to foster learning? I will begin by discussing some common pedagogic positions, drawing on how ‘input’ is handled in popular teaching guides. This will involve an examination of commonly held positions about authentic teaching materials, teacher talk and extensive reading. I will then examine what SLA has to say about the role of input in L2 learning by considering four key hypotheses – the Incidental Learning Hypothesis, the Frequency Hypothesis, the Input Hypothesis and the Noticing Hypothesis. At the end of the talk I will return to pedagogic issues and evaluate them in the light of the SLA findings.

Rod Ellis is Distinguished Professor of Applied Language Studies in the University of Auckland, and also Cheung Kong Scholar Chair Professor at Shanghai International Studies University. His published works include numerous articles and books on second language acquisition and language teaching. His most recent book is Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (with Natsuko Shintani) published by Routledge. He is currently editor of the journal Language Teaching Research.