To ensure smooth communication and collaboration, here are some troubleshooting tips to address common issues:
Check Internet Connection: Verify that you have a stable and reliable internet connection. Use a wired connection when possible, as it tends to be more stable than Wi-Fi. If using Wi-Fi, make sure you have a strong signal.
Update the Browser or App: Ensure that you are using the latest version of the web browser. Developers frequently release updates to address bugs and improve performance.
Clear Browser Cache: Sometimes, cached data can cause conflicts or issues. Clear the browser cache and cookies before joining the meeting.
Test Audio and Video: Before the meeting, check your microphone and camera to ensure they are working correctly. If you are a speaker, you can click on "Start Practice Session" button test to ensure audio and video devices are functioning.
Close Other Applications: Running multiple applications in the background can consume system resources and lead to performance issues. Close unnecessary apps to free up resources for the Dryfta meeting platform.
Restart Your Device: If you encounter persistent issues, try restarting your computer or mobile device. This can help resolve various software-related problems.
Use Supported Browsers: Ensure you are using a browser supported by the meeting platform. Recommended browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave.
Allow Necessary Permissions: Make sure the Dryfta meeting platform has the required permissions to access your microphone, camera, and other necessary features.
Disable VPN or Firewall: Sometimes, VPNs or firewalls can interfere with the connection to the meeting platform. Temporarily disable them and see if the issue persists.
Switch Devices: If possible, try joining the meeting from a different device to see if the problem is specific to one device.
Reduce Bandwidth Usage: In cases of slow or unstable internet connections, ask participants to disable video or share video selectively to reduce bandwidth consumption.
Update Drivers and Software: Ensure your operating system, audio drivers, and video drivers are up to date. Outdated drivers can cause compatibility issues with the Dryfta meeting platform.
Contact Support: If none of the above steps resolve the issue, reach out to the platform's support team. They can provide personalized assistance and troubleshoot specific problems.
By following these troubleshooting tips, you can tackle many common problems encountered on Dryfta meeting platform and have a more productive and seamless meeting experience.
20230719T101520230719T1800Europe/Amsterdam[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibilityHybrid Session (onsite/online)AILA 2023 - 20th Anniversary Congress Lyon Editioncellule.congres@ens-lyon.fr
Media, diversity and social inclusion: The semiotics of youth radio station imaging
Oral Presentation[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibility10:15 AM - 10:40 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 08:40:00 UTC
Against the background of complex flows of migration, socio-economic inequities and urbanisation, the mass media have an important function in society. They are information providers and evaluative voices of the public, and the way they portray diversity shapes young people's encounters with difference and their perception of society and identity (Schorb, 2009; Theunert, 2009). Especially youth radio stations that broadcast in large cities provide a platform for social exchange for young people struggling to fit in and find their place in increasingly diverse sociocultural environments. The mass media, however, have been frequently criticised for their negative portrayal and insufficient coverage of ethnic diversity (Gabrielatos & Baker, 2008; Geißler, 2010; Van Dijk, 2000). While the focus in such studies is mostly on media coverage, little is known about the journalistic practices that underly representations of ethnic diversity in media messages and about how radio stations wish to present themselves to their audiences. My paper is based on the pilot component of a larger ethnographic project which investigates radio journalists' work in relation to encountering difference and sheds light on possible issues that lead to an unbalanced and negative portrayal of ethnic and linguistic diversity on youth radio. The project contributes to current debates in critical sociolinguistics and applied linguistics on a critical reconceptualisation of language and culture to overcome issues of social divide in view of increasing mobility and displacement of people (Canagarajah, 2013). For the pilot, which enables me to test and refine my research instruments for long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I will examine how journalists working at a German youth radio station try to reach an ethnically diverse audience through their station imaging. The self-advertisement of radio stations is so to speak the semiotic fingerprint of these media outlets and therefore essential for a station's success in attracting their listenership. In my presentation, I will outline the results of my fieldwork, which is based on observation, semi-structured interviews with journalists producing station imaging content for both on-air and online promotion and a multimodal critical discourse analysis of the produced self-advertisements. My results will foster a more meaningful engagement of journalists with their station image in relation to ethnic diversity and social inclusion.
References Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual practice: Global Englishes and cosmopolitan relations. Routledge. Gabrielatos, C., & Baker, P. (2008). Fleeing, sneaking, flooding: A corpus analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press, 1996-2005. Journal of English Linguistics, 36(1), 5–38. Geißler, R. (2010). Mediale Integration von ethnischen Minderheiten: Der Beitrag der Massenmedien zur interkulturellen Integration. In Zur Rolle der Medien in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft (pp. 8–22). Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Schorb, B. (2009). Mediale Identitätsarbeit. Zwischen Realität, Experiment und Provokation. In H. Theunert (Ed.), Jugend-Medien-Identität: Identitätsarbeit Jugendlicher mit und in Medien (pp. 81–93). kopaed. Theunert, H. (Ed.). (2009). Jugend - Medien - Identität: Identitätsarbeit Jugendlicher mit und in Medien. kopaed. Van Dijk, T. A. (2000). New(s) racism: A discourse analytical approach. In S. Cottle (Ed.), Ethnic minorities and the media (pp. 33–49). Open University Press.
Inclusive French on the internet: a quantitative study of tweets and Reddit comments
Oral Presentation[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibility10:40 AM - 11:05 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 08:40:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 09:05:00 UTC
Recent studies in psycholinguistics (Brauer and Landry, 2008; Gygax and al., 2021) show that masculine grammatical forms with generic value generate representations of male referents, thus invisibilising women and non-binary individuals. Numerous proposals have emerged in the French-speaking world to make women more visible or to neutralize gender identity in language: neologisms, such as feminized names of professions (autrice) and the gender-neutral pronoun iel, but also pairs (les étudiants et les étudiantes) and abbreviated pairs (étudiant·es, étudiant.es). Language authorities in France and Canada have not welcomed these forms in the same way: inclusive language has been promoted by the Office Québecois de la Langue Française since the late 1970s, whereas in France it remains controversial. Even if inclusive French has been discussed extensively in the media, not much is known about its actual use. A few corpus studies have been carried out (Diaz and Heap, 2020; Vanhal, 2021). However, to our knowledge, no large-scale study of inclusive French has been conducted. This proposal addresses the research gap by examining inclusive linguistic strategies used online by women and men, in France and in Canada, on two platforms: Twitter and Reddit. We hypothesize that 1. the types of inclusive strategies favored by internet users vary depending on their country; 2. women use inclusive language more frequently than men; and 3. both women and men use inclusive language more frequently on Twitter than on Reddit, since Reddit forums tend to be male-centric communities (Flesch, 2022). We base our study on a 70-million word corpus of Reddit data, collected from the subreddits r/france and r/Quebec, and on a 50-million word corpus of tweets geolocalized in France and in Québec. Gender identity of internet users was obtained by searching for declarations such as Je suis une femme/un homme and for grammatical markers of gender. Several inclusive variables including neologisms, pairs and abbreviated pairs were taken into account. Our research will help to understand which forms of inclusive French are the most frequently used and in what context, in order to help teachers of French as a foreign language to sort out the competing micro-norms: they will be better equipped to enable learners to communicate with French speakers, especially on social media. The collected data could also be used to provide materials for corpus-based learning.
References Brauer, M., & Landry, M. 2008. Un ministre peut-il tomber enceinte ? L'impact du générique masculin sur les représentations mentales. L'Année psychologique, 108, 243–272. Diaz, Y., & Heap, D. 2020. Variation dans les accords du français inclusif. Proceedings of the 2020 Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association. Flesch, M. 2022. Pratiques langagières informelles des femmes et des hommes en ligne : étude quantitative d'un corpus de commentaires publiés sur le site internet Reddit. Proceedings of the 8ème Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française. Gygax, P., Sato, S., Öttl, A., & Gabriel, U. 2021. The masculine form in grammatically gendered languages and its multiple interpretations: a challenge for our cognitive system. Language Sciences, 83.
A public staircase for Marielle Franco: Memory, montage and spectrality in a semiotic landscape
Oral Presentation[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibility11:05 AM - 11:30 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 09:05:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 09:30:00 UTC
In 2018, following the murder of Marielle Franco, a Black councilwoman from Complexo da Maré favelas in Rio de Janeiro, a public staircase in São Paulo city dawned with one of its walls covered by a large portrait of her. Since then, further iconic and verbal inscriptions have been collectively added to it, referencing this yet unsolved crime. Our proposal is to interpret semiotic practices of appropriating this public space as emplacing (Scollon & Scollon 2003) the periphery in the urban center through mourning and hope. We draw from our project "Peripheral life trajectories: Violence between the ordinary and the extraordinary in (auto)biographical narratives and poetics" (grant 2021/02618-8, São Paulo Research Foundation/FAPESP). Methodologically, we turn to a collection of pictures taken by activists and by ourselves documenting the stairs as a landscape in the making. We also draw from social and institutional media materials. Analytically, we first look to the poetics of memory-space. The memory-space fusion is framed using the concept of landscape (Zukin, 1991), understood as a product of society in a non-reified way. As a grassroots monument for Marielle, the stairway is a vernacular practice of memory that partakes in producing urban landscapes. Appropriation, uses, and symbolic disputes over the staircase are treated as biographical practices providing narrative frameworks not only for Marielle's trajectory, but also for multiple stories. We look to the poetics of these practices, alongside performers' reflexivity and dynamics of (de/re)contextualization (Bauman & Briggs, 1990). Memory "in place" will be thought of in terms of recognizing its semiotic and social complexity, rather than a sense of plurality per se. We study the stairs as semiotic landscape (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010), paying attention to their compositional arrangement and entextualization. We consider the "pragmatic montage" through assembling, juxtaposing and layering different modalities of visual languages (photographs, painting, verbal utterances) and street art (poster, graffiti, stencil). The paratax regime of montage (Pignatari & Mundy, 1981) makes possible ever-changing arrangements: the vernacular monument is alive through social uses and frequent erasures and additions. We conclude that the montage potentiates political performances of hope and worship but also of "assault" (e.g., aggressive tagging over her portrait). Our analysis leads to an understanding of the production of spectral presences (Derrida, 1993): Marielle's face on the stairs is an appearance, indexing that "the world is out of joint." Through her "absent presence" in the city center, Marielle is a reminder that, like a specter, the periphery returns and emplaces its denial of invisibility.
Bauman, R., & Briggs, C. (1990) Poetics and Performances as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life. Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59-88. Derrida, J. (1993) Specters of Marx. London: Routledge. Jaworski, A., & Thurlow, C. (2010) Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London: Continuum. Pignatari, D., & Mundy, K. (1981) Montage, Collage, Bricolage Or: Mixture is the Spirit. Dispositio 6:41-44. Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. (2003) Discourse in place: Language in the material world. London: Routledge. Zukin, S. (1991) Landscapes of power. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Presenters Daniela Palma Professor Dr., Universidade Estadual De Campinas
The Ibero-American Association of Applied Linguists (AIALA) AILA regional organization: Inclusive multilingual research initiatives for increasing diversity, equity, inclusion, and access
Oral Presentation[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibility11:30 AM - 11:55 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 09:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 09:55:00 UTC
The Ibero-American Association of Applied Linguists (AIALA, by its abbreviations in both Spanish and Portuguese), a regional organization of AILA launched in 2020, exists to support and amplify Spanish, Portuguese, and affiliated minoritized and indigenous languages, both in supporting applied linguistics research foci, as well as the applied linguists who speak these languages worldwide. Our presentation will spotlight ongoing efforts by the AIALA collaborative community, including but not limited to our creation of a membership and resource database, commitments to present at each World Congress and all national organization, as well as a social media presence. These ongoing efforts will be contextualized by our motivation to form this AILA regional organization based on shared languages, rather than geopolitical boundaries. Finally, while officially endorsed by founding national organizations AAAL (North America), ALAB (Brazil), AMLA (Mexico), and AESLA (Spain), all members of AILA are invited to join and participate actively in AIALA. We will end the talk with a call to action for all colleagues to join us in our efforts to make AILA and our applied linguistics work to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and access.
The Ibero-American Association of Applied Linguists (AIALA, by its abbreviations in both Spanish and Portuguese) is a regional organization of AILA. Launched in 2020, AIALA exists to support and amplify Spanish, Portuguese, and affiliated minoritized and indigenous languages, both in supporting applied linguistics research foci, as well as the applied linguists who speak these languages worldwide. Our presentation at the 2023 AILA World Congress in Lyon will spotlight ongoing efforts by the AIALA collaborative community, including but not limited to our creation of a membership and resource database, commitments to present at each World Congress and all national organization, as well as a social media presence. These ongoing efforts will be contextualized by our motivation to form this AILA regional organization based on shared languages, rather than geopolitical boundaries. Finally, while officially endorsed by founding national organizations AAAL (North America), ALAB (Brazil), AMLA (Mexico), and AESLA (Spain), all members of AILA are invited to join and participate actively in AIALA. We will end the talk with a call to action for all colleagues to join us in our efforts to make AILA and our applied linguistics work to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. Specifically, we will challenge our audience to adopt at least one practice of AIALA in their own applied linguistics research, whether it be examining a reference section of their latest paper and intentionally making it more diverse and inclusive, translating an abstract into another language, or more ideas, we will have concrete, tangible suggestions that can be implemented immediately to impact positive change. We will also discuss our ongoing collaborations with the Multilingual Abstract and Open Applied Linguistics initiatives.
Laura Gurzynski-Weiss Professor Of Second Language Acquisition, Indiana University Co-authors Kyria Finardi Associate Professor, Federal University Of Espirito Santo - UFES
“Every translation affects us in some way”: the social relevance and the feminist language of Nossos Corpos por Nós Mesmas
Oral Presentation[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibility11:55 AM - 12:20 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 09:55:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 10:20:00 UTC
This paper focuses on analyzing aspects of the collective and voluntary translation and adaptation of the book Our Bodies, Ourselves (The Boston Women's Health Book Collective, 2011) to Brazilian Portuguese, Nossos corpos por nós mesmas. The widely known book about women's health and sexuality, which discusses sensitive topics, such as abortion, violence against women, sexual health, reproductive rights, and social activism, has been adapted and translated into several languages for 50 years. The book offers practical and empowering information that goes beyond simply understanding how our bodies work, with great inclusiveness. Through a partnership with two Brazilian universities and an NGO, the project establishes a dialogue with recent research on feminist translation theories (Castro and Ergun, 2017) and studies about inclusive language (Schwindt, 2020). We will contextualize the book and present the theoretical decisions that guided our collaborative project, such as the use of markedly non-sexist and inclusive language combined with the inclusion of paratexts, supplementation and intervention techniques. We will also present the translation project objectives, especially the translator's activism (Baker, 2013), and the methodology, focusing on the division of teams, the adoption of translation software, and the review process. Two points were discussed more thoroughly: first, the importance of inclusive language use, considering that the masculine form is the standard in Portuguese, while the translation project concerns a feminist book. Second, the analysis of authentic narratives provided by the students involved in the project about the emotions they experienced translating the texts ((Rojo López 2017; Hubscher-Davidson 2018; Lehr, 2021). We will present a few translation examples to illustrate a more inclusive language and a few translation narratives to illustrate the emotional impact on the translator's academic and personal lives. We conclude that our translation reflects the perspective and voices of a wide range of women, and our unique cultural needs, including information about our public medical system and Brazilian abortion laws. The project also enabled the interaction of teaching, research, and community outreach, helping students reflect on the power of language and translation in society, and point out some challenges and discussions still ongoing in Brazil. Baker, Mona. 2013. Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action, Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest, 12:1, 23-47 Boston Women's Health Book Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Castro, Olga; Ergun, Emek. 2017. Feminist Translation Studies. Local and Transnational Perspectives. London/New York: Routledge. Hubscher-Davidson, Severine. 2018. Translation and Emotion. A Psychological Perspective. New York: Routledge. Lehr, C. Translation, emotion and cognition. 2021. In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Cognition. ed. Fabio Alves; A. L. Jakobsen, 294-309. New York and London: Taylor & Francis Group. Rojo, Ana. 2017. The Role of Emotions. In The Handbook of Translation and Cognition, First Edition. ed J. W. Schwieter and A. Ferreira. 369-385, John Wiley & Sons. Schwindt, Luiz Carlos Sobre gênero neutro em português brasileiro e os limites do sistema linguístico. Revista da ABRALIN, vol. 19, n. 1, 2020, p. 1-23.
Presenters Erica Lima Professor, University Of Campinas
Gender, power and the shaping of research narratives : the case of a social movement in Rio de Janeiro
Oral Presentation[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibility12:20 PM - 12:45 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 10:20:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 10:45:00 UTC
In an increasingly polarised world, where scientific knowledge is at once revered, repackaged and rejected, the act of sharing stories has the potential to bring opposing groups into a state of mutuality. Narrative analysis - as a theoretical-methodological tool (Biar, Orton & Bastos, 2021) is thus capable of stretching both disciplinary boundaries and "boundaries of meaning" (Gergen & Gergen, 2006, p.117), creating possibilities for dialogue. An ethical commitment to the reduction of social exclusion and human suffering further requires placing stories produced by oft-silenced tellers at the centre of research, so that issues long side-lined may be afforded greater visibility. Yet in so doing, research practitioners engage in storytelling practices themselves, since isolated elements such as recorded data, and field notes are woven together to form a coherent whole. It is therefore vital that such meaning making processes are subject to scrutiny. Grounded in a perspective of narrative as performance, I suggest that the sharing of research narratives - be this with participants, peers, or the general public - may be seen as narrative events (Bauman, 1986), crucial junctures at which these metanarratives may be reworked (Orton, 2021). This paper thus aims to reflect on the potential for new meanings to emerge during these events, as well as the ways in which these processes are inflected with relations of power. Taking a recently completed (auto)ethnographic investigation into the gender dynamics of a social movement in Rio de Janeiro as a case study (Orton & Biar, 2020, 2021), I argue that the active involvement of participants has the potential to yield fresh meanings, which might otherwise be overlooked. That said, participants may underestimate the power of representation harnessed by researchers, thereby failing to take full advantage of opportunities to redress this asymmetry. This can be attributed to the shifting terrain of power relations in which a myriad of social roles may be foregrounded, and traditionally recognised positions of practitioner/participant readjusted. Nevertheless, discussions post publication may enable further reflections on practice as analyses are (re)evaluated from new angles. Such findings suggest that researchers should continue to seek out such opportunities, both throughout and beyond publication. This could enable more complete research narratives to be shaped as participants and practitioners move closer to a state of mutuality. Bauman, Richard. (1986). Story, performance and event: contextual studies of oral narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Biar, Liana, Orton, Naomi & Bastos, Liliana Cabral. (2021). Tales from South: Doing narrative analysis in a "post-truth" Brazil. Narrative Inquiry 31(1):126-146. Gergen, Mary & Gergen, Kenneth. (2006). Narratives in action. Narrative Inquiry 16(1):112-121. Orton, Naomi & Biar, Liana. (2020). Horizontality and gender in contemporary social movements: Narrative practice as a means of resistance. Narrative Inquiry 30(2):236-270. Orton, Naomi & Biar, Liana. (2021). Putting gender on the agenda in Rio de Janeiro: subtly switching gears in discussions of bicycle advocacy. Gender & Language 15(4): 447-475. Orton, Naomi. (2021). "Myths", "truths" and the role of Applied Linguistics in contemporary society. Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada 60(2):455-466.
Narrative as a tool of contemporary social movements to fight for their demands: a comparative study of Brazil and the U.S.A.
Oral Presentation[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibility12:45 PM - 01:10 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 10:45:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 11:10:00 UTC
Every year thousands of people are killed by the police in Brazil – mostly black people. Rio de Janeiro is the city with the highest number. Against this, some of these victims' mothers have been engaged in social movements as the Rede de Comunidades e Movimentos contra a Violência to fight for justice. Similarly, in the U.S., black people are often the target of police brutality. Movements as the Mothers Against Police Brutality and Black Lives Matter have been fighting structural racism and State violence. Social Movements in general demand changes and denounce problems on the public sphere making use of different repertoires of contention (Tarrow, 2009). I argue that movements such as these have more in common than the struggle for justice in a context of racialized police brutality – storytelling is one of the most important repertoires of them. In this sense, narrative can be understood as a powerful tool mobilized by social movements to claim for their demands (De Fina, 2020). The purpose of this qualitative interpretative paper is to identify the emergence of a specific type of narrative in contemporary social movements carrying out a comparative analysis of the performance of black Brazilian and Afro-American mothers in social movements to fight for justice. To do so, I observe how the narratives told by these mothers in different contexts of production speak to wider issues of structural and structuring racism in their respective countries, as well as the banalization of violence against black communities. There are several types of comparative research focused on the colonial history and race relations of Brazil and the U.S. However, this proposal is novel since there is a lack of comparative studies on this subject from a discursive theoretical approach. The study's corpus includes narratives told by both black Brazilian and Afro-American mothers at events and demonstrations available on websites (e.g.Youtube); ethnography of demonstrations in Brazil and the U.S. in 2018/2020. Understanding narrative as an organizing device of human experience (Linde, 1993; Bruner, 1997) and as a productive discursive lens by which to examine social life (Bastos; Biar, 2015), initial findings suggest the existence of a prototype narrative which organizes the suffering of losing a child. The parallelism that is seen, when all the narratives of both Afro-Brazilian and Afro-American mothers are taken together, emphasizes the repetition of the same tragedies and the collectivization of these women's pain. A comparative study such as this may enhance the understanding of how far the Brazilian and American organizations that fight for justice may be perceived as transnational networks fighting against the same problem, as well as how far they relate to more specific socio-historical demands.
BASTOS, L.C.; BIAR, L.2015. Análise de narrativa e práticas de entendimento da vida social. DELTA,vol.31. BRUNER, J.1997.Atos de significação. Porto Alegre:Artes Médicas. DE FINA, A.2020. Biography as Political Tool: The Case of the Dreamers.In: RHEINDORF,M.; WODAK. R. Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Migration Control.Multilingual Matters: Bristol. TARROW, S.2009.O poder em movimento: movimentos sociais e confronto político. Petrópolis:Vozes.
Agency in the teaching of English language in higher education in Bangladesh: A justification for multilingual TESOL in Bangladeshi higher education
Oral Presentation[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibility03:00 PM - 03:30 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 13:30:00 UTC
Higher education offered by the private sector in Bangladesh is heavily based on English medium instruction (World Bank, 2019; Sultana, 2014) in which the use of the mother tongue is discouraged and only English is encouraged to impart education. At private universities in Bangladesh, the emphasis on English as the only medium of instruction is still prevailing despite the inflow of more students with English as a Foreign Language (EFL) backgrounds. The English-only policy and learning experiences of students of the private universities in Bangladesh have been found as "not so rewarding for all the students" (Sultana, 2014, p. 14). Agency has been conceptualized as a social as well as a cognitive construct in language policy and planning research (Canagarajah, 1999; Liddicoat & Baldauf, 2008; Hamid & Nguyen, 2016). Teng (2019, p. 78), however, considers "agency" as a "system of socially mediated autonomy". In bi-/multilingual education and policy research, the concept of agency of major individual actors such as teachers and learners is crucial in the understanding of macro-micro relationships in policymaking. There are, however, gaps in areas of research that require studies on how teachers and learners activate their agentive roles in bilingual pedagogical practices which facilitate or hinder learning in specific contexts such as English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Broadly, drawing on Teng's (2019) model of agency and based on the qualitative case studies of 5 teachers and 5 students of EAP writing courses at a Bangladeshi private university, this presentation will shed light on the significance of the agencies of individual local actors to opt for or reject bilingual practices in the enactment of the institutional language policy in a particular sociocultural context of English language learning. The purpose of this presentation is to show how teachers and EFL learners struggle to enact an English-only policy in EAP writing courses at a private university in Bangladesh and how they face such challenges through their bilingual practices in classrooms. The goal of the presentation is to propose a balanced bilingual policy for English Language Teaching in higher education in Bangladesh based on the reasoning why it is high time to implement the multilingual TESOL in practice in English language teaching contexts in higher education in Bangladesh.
References Canagarajah, A. S. (1999). Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hamid, M. O., & Nguyen, H. T. M. (2016). Globalization, English language policy and teacher agency: Focus on Asia. International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 15(1), 26–44. Liddicoat, A. J., & Baldauf, R. B., Jr. (Eds.). (2008). Language planning in local contexts. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Sultana, S. (2014). English as a Medium of Instruction in Bangladesh's Higher Education: Empowering or Disadvantaging Students? The Asian EFL Journal Quarterly, 16(1), 11-52. Teng, M. F. (2019). Autonomy, Agency, and Identity in Teaching and Learning English as a Foreign Language. Singapore: Springer. World Bank. (2019). Bangladesh Tertiary Education Sector Review: Skills and Innovation for Growth. Washington DC: The World Bank.
Presenters Tania Rahman Senior Lecturer, North South University
Using language learning strategies for developing speaking skills
Oral Presentation[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibility03:30 PM - 04:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 14:00:00 UTC
In India, students enrolled in a skill-based educational programme such as engineering and management, usually get hired by companies while they are in the final year of their degree. To test their knowledge and ability, in addition to interviewing them, potential employers make the students participate in a round of group discussions. Although most students have the required technical know-how, organisations choose not to hire them as they perform rather poorly in the assigned task- both in terms of their language skills and in their ability to provide interesting arguments and counter-arguments during the group discussion. To address this problem, a long-term solution needs to be arrived at that can equip learners for life. The area of language learning strategies offers one such viable option; research suggests that it has the potential for making learners autonomous. This study will highlight one such research conducted at a private engineering college for developing the speaking skills of the students.
Research conducted in the area of foreign and second language education suggests that metacognitive language learning strategies should become an integral component in all language learning/teaching programmes. They argue that students who are trained to use these strategies to consciously monitor their learning, fare better than those who are not as they have a storehouse of strategies to fall back on when learning becomes difficult. Although the benefits of metacognitive strategies are well documented, several studies suggest that most learners and teachers are unaware of their importance, and those that are, employ them infrequently. Studies that compare the more efficient language student with the less efficient suggest that the differences between them include not only the frequency of use of metacognitive strategies, but also the manner in which the strategies are utilized. Therefore, raising awareness about metacognitive strategies will result in students becoming efficient language learners. Keeping this in mind, the present study aims to explore the understanding and use of ten metacognitive language learning strategies among prospective group discussants. Sixteen (M-10 and F-6) first year electrical engineering students, formed the participants of the study. An awareness-raising programme was conducted where they were taught the use of ten strategies ('setting goals', 'visualization', 'activating background knowledge', 'self-talk', 'prediction', 'self-monitoring', 'self-evaluation', 'brainstorming', 'using resources', and 'selective attention') meant to help them develop and hone their group discussion skills. Data was collected using four rounds of semi-structured interviews over the three-month period followed by a delayed recall after a five-month gap. It was qualitatively analysed to understand the changes in the participants' use of the strategies over time. The group discussion performance of each participant was analysed in terms of the total time spoken, the number of turns taken, and the words per minute count. Thereafter, the understanding and use of the strategies and the group discussion performance was corroborated to determine the link between strategy use and improvement in group discussion performance among the discussants. The group discussion performance and strategy use were compared and led to the conclusion that the greater the frequency and variety of strategies used, the better the performance of the discussants in the group discussions. The study echoed the findings of existing studies that metacognitive strategies are a) teachable, and that b) learner-participants use them in chains or clusters rather than in isolation. The data showed that the understanding of the strategies improves, and invariably learners adapt their understanding to suit the needs of the group discussion task. This is retained even after the passage of a sizeable time.
Selected Reference Cohen, A. D. (2011). Strategies in learning and using a second language. Abingdon: Routlegde/Pearson Education. Griffiths, C. (2008). Strategies and good language learners. In C. Griffiths (Ed.), Lessons from good language learners (pp. 83-98). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oxford, R. L. (1990). Language learning strategies. Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers. Oxford, R. L. (2017). Teaching and researching language learning strategies: Selfregulation in context (2nd Ed.). New York: Routledge.
Mobilising social responsibility in English language education through collaborative materials development and implementation
Oral Presentation[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibility04:00 PM - 04:30 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 14:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 14:30:00 UTC
This paper is part of a larger study at the intersection of social justice, culturally-responsive pedagogies, and teacher research engagement for professional development. The main aim is to raise learners', student-teachers', and teachers' social responsibility through a collaborative action research study grounded in culturally-responsive, socially just English language education and materials. Previous studies have found that L2 English language teachers may struggle with imbuing a social responsibility perspective in their practice due to the lack of support with social justice approaches (Barahona & Ibaceta, 2022) and the perpetuation of unequal and stereotypical representations of races, genders, class, and social practices in global coursbooks (Gray, 2013). Contextualised in L2 English language teaching (ELT), this paper seeks to answer two research questions: (1) In what ways can secondary school learners improve their social responsibility and academic performance in English as a foreign language lessons when learning is supported with culturally-responsive, social justice-oriented materials?, and (2) How can student-teachers' and teachers' engagement in materials development and research support their social justice-orientated professional development? Lamb et al. (2019) suggest that a language pedagogy for social justice and responsibility can be based on learners and be best channelled through collaborative action research as this form of inquiry shares the same goals sought through social justice. The engagement of learners, teachers, and student-teachers in materials development can recognise local knowledge and experience, and help learners and educators see themselves as active agents of change and knowledge co-creators of culturally-responsive pedagogies for social responsibility in L2 education (Bouckaert, 2019). In line with acknowledging the central role that communities and participants, particularly students, play in collaborative projects, materials development can embody collective work, recognition of local knowledge, and direct benefits for the community to increase educational equality, agency and participation. In this paper we report findings based on an action research cycle carried out with a group of English language teacher educators, student-teachers, secondary school teachers, and secondary school students in state schools in one Argentinian province. In this cycle, the teenage students selected topics within the remit of social justice and inclusion and created input materials which their teachers and student-teachers used to design and deliver English language learning lessons with a focus on social responsibility. Data were collected through interviews, focus groups, arts-based instruments, and journals. Implications for research and pedagogy will be discussed.
References Barahona, M., & Ibaceta-Quijanes, X. (2022). Chilean EFL student teachers and social justice: ambiguity and uncertainties in understanding their professional pedagogical responsibility. Teachers and Teaching, DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2022.2062726 Bouckaert, M. (2019). Current perspectives on teachers as materials developers: Why, what, and how? RELC Journal, 50(3), 439–456. Gray, J. (Ed.). (2013). Critical perspectives on language teaching materials. Palgrave. Lamb, T., Hatoss, A., & O'Neill, S. (2019). Challenging social injustice in superdiverse contexts through activist languages education. In R. Papa (Ed.), Handbook on promoting social justice in education (pp. 1-38). Palgrave.
Presenters Dario Luis Banegas Lecturer In Language Education, The University Of EdinburghMaria Gimena San Martin Tenured Lecturer In ELT, Universidad Nacional De CordobaFabiana Sacchi Assistant Professor, Universidad Nacional De Rio Cuarto
“Here we speak in English”: A multilayer Analysis of Language Ideologies, Program Structures, & Linguistic Practices in a Dual Language Immersion Program
Oral Presentation[SYMP58] OPEN CALL - Social responsibility05:00 PM - 05:30 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 15:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 15:30:00 UTC
The current era of globalization has brought with it a significant increase in human mobility and the ways in which communication takes place in different spaces. In the particular case of the United States, a nation "built" on immigration, modern demographics shifts have created unique socioeconomic, political, and linguistic dynamics that have impacted traditionally homogenous communities. With the rise in the number of culturally and linguistically diverse populations in these regions, school communities have looked for educational alternatives, such as dual language immersion (DLI) programs, to address the needs of their multilingual and multicultural students. These programs focus on the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students, while also constructing spaces where students of two different language groups can develop bilingualism, biliteracy, and socio-cultural competence (Howard et al., 2018). DLI programs are widely acknowledged in the U.S., as an effective model for schooling emergent bilinguals. However, despite the substantial support given to these programs, scholars have also simultaneously criticized this educational model for its restricted views of language use and concomitant linguistic ideologies (Garcia, 2017; Hawkins & Cannon, 2017). With this in mind, this presentation examines the language ideologies underpinning the structures of one DLI program and how these manifest in the linguistic perspectives articulated and embodied by teachers and students in a focal DLI program. Employing qualitative data, from a year-long ethnographic case study conducted in a DLI program, and drawing from the field of linguistic anthropology, this presentation examines the processes related to the conception and regulation of language use in multilingual spaces. The presentation explores two main questions : 1) How do different dimensions of language ideologies manifest and operate in the focal DLI program ? 2) How do language ideologies influence individuals and linguistic considerations in the focal program ? This work demonstrates how language ideologies function at dissimilar, but sometimes overlapping, levels of significance in DLI programs impacting social agents and linguistic considerations. In addition, the presentation highlights demonstrated implications of the enactment of language ideologies for policy and practice.
Bibliography García, O. (2017). Translanguaging in Schools- Subiendo y Bajando, Bajando y Subiendo as Afterword, Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 16:4, pp. 256-263. Howard, E., Lindholm-Leary, K., Rogers, D., Olague, N., Medina, J., Kennedy, B., Christian, D. (2018). Guiding principles for dual language education (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Hawkins, M. R. & Cannon, A. (2017). Mobility, language & schooling. In Canagarajah, A.S. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language. Routledge Press.
Sarah Josefine Schaefer
Marie Flesch
Daniela Palma
Kyria Finardi
Erica Lima
Etyelle Pinheiro De Araujo
Tania Rahman
Shravasti Chakravarty
Dario Luis Banegas
Maria Gimena San Martin
Fabiana Sacchi
GISELLE MARTINEZ NEGRETTE