Sharon Harvey

Foreign language teachers’ language proficiency and their language teaching practice

Teachers’ subject knowledge is recognised as an essential component of effective teaching. In the foreign language context, teachers’ subject knowledge includes language proficiency. In New Zealand high schools, foreign languages (e.g. Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish) have recently been offered to learners earlier in their schooling, prompting a demand for more foreign language teachers. A nationwide professional development programme for language teachers is building language teacher capacity to meet the demand. Participants on the programme have a range of language teaching subject knowledge. While some have extensive knowledge of their target teaching language but lack formal language teaching qualifications, others are generalist teachers with an interest in teaching a foreign language who are just beginning to develop their subject knowledge. This paper considers teachers’ subject knowledge, that is, their language proficiency. We report on the differences in the classroom practice of teachers with limited subject knowledge, compared with teachers with more extensive subject knowledge. The data were analysed against key aspects of teaching based on the work of Farrell and Richards. The analysis revealed a variance in the number of key aspects the teachers could manage and differences in their level of effectiveness in managing the key aspects. We highlight the importance for teachers with limited levels of target language proficiency of continuing to develop their subject knowledge in order to maximise the language-learning experience for their students.

Teacher Provision of Opportunities for Learners to Develop Language Knowledge and Cultural Knowledge.

This paper examines a language teacher education professional development programme in New Zealand that draws on the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum. At the heart of the Learning Languages area in the curriculum is communicative competence, with the understanding that communication involves language knowledge and cultural knowledge. The New Zealand Ministry of Education expects that schools will be able to offer all Years 7–10 students the opportunity to learn an additional language in order for them to participate effectively in multicultural settings, both in New Zealand and internationally. To deliver this, language teachers and generalist teachers are being encouraged to undertake professional development. This paper reports on a research evaluation of a Ministry-sponsored language teacher professional development programme. The findings reveal success in increasing teacher understanding of how to develop learners’ language knowledge, because this part of the programme was underpinned by a deep principled knowledge base, and teachers had opportunities to acquire knowledge and participate in a language teaching community. However, teacher understanding of how to increase learners’ cultural knowledge was less successful, because of a lack of a principled knowledge base of intercultural language teaching. We argue that effective professional development programmes need both to be based on deep principled knowledge and to offer learning that involves acquisition and participation.

‘To improve language, you have to mix’: teachers' perceptions of language learning in an overseas immersion environment

The overseas immersion environment has long been considered a superior context for language learning, supposedly providing unlimited exposure to target language (TL) input and countless opportunities for authentic interaction with expert users. This article focuses on immersion programmes (IPs) for in-service language teachers – a relatively unexplored cohort – and contributes to the rather sparse research base on IPs as professional development for language teachers. It investigates perceptions teachers had of changes in their TL proficiency, the interaction opportunities encountered and how these were seen to contribute to their language learning. Findings highlighted the importance of interaction with two key factors identified by teachers as having facilitated gains in their proficiency: ‘opportunities to interact with native speakers’ and ‘being immersed in the language’. Interaction opportunities identified by teachers were primarily those offered by homestay families but also contact with teachers in host schools, a hitherto unreported source of interaction. Teachers also identified factors they perceived as enhancing or limiting opportunities for linguistic gain and these included both external and interpersonal factors. Programmes of short duration and speaking English instead of the TL were identified as key factors having negative impact on TL progress. Insights from this study, in particular the value of connecting teachers with host schools, can usefully inform the design of future IPs for teachers. To this end, the article concludes with suggestions that seek to ensure increased and more focused interaction opportunities, thus optimising benefits such programmes can have for language teachers and ultimately, for their students.

Discourses of (non)Western Subjectivity and Philosophical Recovery

This commentary addresses the lead paper by Narcisa Paredes-Canilao, an intriguing account of discussions in the University of the Philippines over differing knowledge claims. This is a local debate that has global ramifications for the status of indigenous knowledges and discourses and their levels of interactivity with theoretical positions emanating from the West. The argument put forward here by Narcisa Paredes-Canilao is that certain strains of postcolonial theory are at best irrelevant and at worst destructive to the work of postcolonial resistance in the Philippines and other previously colonised countries. She proposes that it is the recovery of indigenous/traditional non-Western discourses that will support and facilitate a decolonisation of the subject. This paper argues that the two positions need not constitute a differend. Both can work towards productive resistance. While there is an urgent need to remember and reconfigure the past through non-Western lenses, there are also current contemporary forms of colonisation that must be deconstructed and talked back to. Postcolonial theory offers rich philosophical resources with which to think, talk and write outside the story of the West, as do indigenous and other non-Western knowledge forms. The paper ends with a brief consideration of indigenous research discourses in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

What teachers say about addressing culture in their EFL teaching practices: the Vietnamese context

This paper examines Vietnamese EFL teachers’ beliefs about the role of culture in language teaching. It also considers how they address culture in their teaching practices in a Vietnamese university. Ethnographic data collected from semi-structured interviews indicated that opportunities for culture to find its way into EFL classroom activities were still limited. Priority was given to teaching language knowledge and skills, while culture played a minor role only.

Language Teachers on Study Abroad Programmes: The Characteristics and Strategies of Those Most Likely to Increase Their Intercultural Communicative Competence

Intercultural communicative language learning and teaching requires teachers to be reasonably interculturally competent. Research indicates the potential of study/residence abroad programmes for the development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). However, the research focusses largely on students rather than on teachers. This chapter analyses data from a New Zealand (NZ) Ministry of Education–commissioned study into language teachers’ gains from language and culture immersion programmes and the characteristics and strategies likely to increase ICC. Case studies of three NZ teachers’ sojourns between 2008 and 2011 in China, France, and Germany for three weeks, one year, and one month, respectively, are used for in-depth interpretative exploration. Findings indicate a complex interplay of personal and professional identities, worldviews, life experience, psychological and emotional factors, and their implications for professional development.

‘Japanese and the major are incompatible’: institutional reasons for dropping Japanese at the transition from secondary to tertiary education

With anglophone countries now experiencing unprecedented levels of ethnic and linguistic diversity, it is considered increasingly important that young people learn to communicate in ways which are effective for the multilingual and intercultural contexts they live in, will work in and will travel to. One of the key vehicles for promoting and engendering this capability is the learning of languages additional to English. However, just as language learning is being called upon to deliver education for citizenship in super-diverse contexts, many countries are experiencing a decline in the numbers of students studying languages. A particularly important time for decision-making and reassessment of whether to continue with language learning is the transition point between secondary and tertiary education. This paper takes Japanese learning in New Zealand as a case study to illustrate the issues languages students struggle with as they negotiate this transition. Japanese is an important additional language of education, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, where Japan has been seen as a major political and economic power through much of the post-Second World War period. In a previous study, we analysed the mainly affective reasons why erstwhile successful students of Japanese may drop the language when they move on to tertiary study. In the current paper, we examine the other core category emerging from our research: the view that ‘Japanese and the major are incompatible’. This category considers the academic, institutional and organisational reasons why students feel they are unable to continue with Japanese when they move to tertiary education.

Going it alone: New Zealand company- sponsored language, literacy and numeracy (LLN) training in an era of government funding

In this paper, we examine the nature of and reasons for employer-funded literacy, language and numeracy (LLN) workplace training in New Zealand, during a period where government funding has been available. To place these programmes in context, we give a historically nuanced account of employer-funded programmes in New Zealand and then look at the drivers for introducing government funding for LLN workplace training in New Zealand in the 2000s. Within this more recent policy framework, we consider empirical evidence gauging the views of employers who are running non-government-funded programmes and choosing not to access government resources or are not aware of them. Finally, we discuss how government/non-government partnerships and policies might be reframed in order to meet the needs the employers in this research identify. In particular, we signal a mismatch between more recent government requirements for eligibility for funding and the size, structure and workplace practices of New Zealand companies.