Torn between Prescription and Innovation
Corpora and World Englishes in Language Teacher Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/slte.25928Keywords:
World Englishes, Global Englishes language teaching, ELT, language variation/varieties, norms, prescription, error, innovationAbstract
This paper reports on the affordances of corpora in the context of a teaching model that aims to highlight and strengthen the relevance and applicability of (socio-)linguistic content knowledge of World Englishes for university-based teacher education and the ELT classroom. We use large electronic corpora as one resource for the student teachers to explore the spread and extent of use of innovative and variable linguistic structures in Englishes around the world, and to critically examine the fuzzy boundary between errors and variety-specific, innovative linguistic structures. To examine the potential impact that a specific teaching intervention on World Englishes and corpora may have on student teachers’ judgments of the intelligibility and formal correctness of several features of World Englishes, a rating task was administered to an experimental and a control group. Additionally, students of the experimental group were interviewed about their experiences with the corpus intervention and their opinions and attitudes toward the use of corpora for teaching English and, specifically, linguistic variation and innovations in English. The findings suggest that the teaching intervention seems to initiate an increased awareness of the variability of linguistic structures in World Englishes, and supports future teachers in questioning traditional prescriptive norms.
References
Bamgbose, A. (1998). Torn between the norms: Innovations in world Englishes. World Englishes, 17(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-971X.00078
Bieswanger, M. (2022). Global Englishes in ELT and teacher education in Bavaria: Progress and missed opportunities. In M. Callies, S. Hehner, P. Meer, & M. Westphal (Eds.), Glocalising teaching English as an international language: New perspectives for teaching and teacher education in Germany (pp. 104–120). Routledge.
Buschfeld, S., & Weidle, E. R. (2023). World Englishes and the second language classroom: Why introducing varieties of English is important and how corpora can help. In K. Harrington & P. Ronan (Eds.), Demystifying corpus linguistics for English language teaching (pp. 185–206). Palgrave Macmillan.
Callies, M. (2019). Integrating corpus literacy into language teacher education. Learner Corpora and Language Teaching, 92, 245–264.
Callies, M. (2023a). Errors and innovations in L2 varieties of English: Towards resolving a contradictory practice. In K. Knopf, G. Febel, & M. Nonhoff (Eds.), Contradiction studies: Exploring the field (pp. 199–212). Springer.
Callies, M. (2023b). Current perspectives on learner corpus research. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanisitk, 48(1), 37–51. https://doi.org/10.24053/AAA-2023-0002
Callies, M. (submitted). Corpora and global Englishes in language teacher education: Identifying features of world Englishes between prescription and innovation. In V. Viana (Ed.), International perspectives on corpus approaches in ELT. Palgrave MacMillan.
Callies, M., Haase, H., & Hehner, S. (2022). An integrated approach to introducing TEIL in language teacher education at the interface of linguistics, language education and teaching practice. In M. Callies, S. Hehner, P. Meer, & M. Westphal (Eds.), Glocalising teaching English as an international language: New perspectives for teaching and teacher education in Germany (pp. 9–27). Routledge.
Callies, M., & Hehner, S. (2023). Pluricentric languages in university teacher education: Towards increased curricular coherence. In M. Callies & S. Hehner (Eds.), Pluricentric languages and language education: Pedagogical implications and innovative approaches to language teaching (pp. 202–216). Routledge.
Callies, M., Hehner, S., Meer, P. & Westphal, M. (Eds.). (2022). Glocalising teaching English as an international language: New perspectives for teaching and teacher education in Germany. Routledge.
Corder, S. P. (1967). The significance of learner’s errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 5, 161–170. https://doi.org/10.1515/iral.1967.5.1-4.161
Davies, M. (n.d.). Corpus of global web-based English (GloWbE). Retrieved December 21, 2023, from https://english-corpora.org/glowbe/
Farr, F., & Lenko-Szymanska, A. (2023). Corpora in English language teacher education: Research, integration, and resources. TESOL Quarterly, online first. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.3281
Farrell, A. (2019). Corpus perspectives on the spoken models used by EFL teachers. Routledge.
Finlayson, N. (2022). Using corpora to explore varieties of English. In V. Viana (Ed.), Teaching English with corpora: A resource book (pp. 114–117). Routledge.
Gilquin, G. (2022). One norm to rule them all? Corpus-derived norms in learner corpus research and foreign language teaching. Language Teaching, 55(1), 87–99. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444821000094
Götz, S. & Laporte, S. (Eds.). (2016). Linguistic innovations: Rethinking linguistic creativity in non-native Englishes. Thematic issue of the International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, 2(2).
Harrington, K., & Ronan, P. (Eds.). (2023). Demystifying corpus linguistics for English language teaching. Palgrave Macmillan.
Jablonkai, R. R., & Csomay, E. (Eds.). (2022). The Routledge handbook of corpora and English language teaching and learning. Routledge.
Kachru, B. B. (1997). World Englishes 2000: Resources for research and teaching. In L. E. Smith & M. L. Forman (Eds.), World Englishes 2000 (pp. 209–251). University of Hawai’i Press.
Kortmann, B., Lunkenheimer, K., & Ehret, K. (Eds.). (2020). The electronic world atlas of varieties of English. Zenodo.
Lenko-Szymanska, A. (2017). Training teachers in data-driven learning: Tackling the challenge. Language Learning & Technology, 21(3), 217–241. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/44628
Li, D. C. S. (2010). When does an unconventional form become an innovation? In A. Kirkpatrick (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of world Englishes (pp. 617–633). Routledge.
Meer, P. (2022). The role of Global Englishes in the curriculum in Germany: A comparative analysis of secondary school English language curricula of all federal states. In M. Callies, S. Hehner, P. Meer, & M. Westphal (Eds.), Glocalising teaching English as an international language: New perspectives for teaching and teacher education in Germany (pp. 85–103). Routledge.
Mering, A. (2022). Mid-Atlantic English in the EFL context: A large-scale sociolinguistic study. Tectum.
Nicaise, E. (2021). Native and non-native teacher talk in the EFL classroom: A corpus-informed study. Routledge.
O’Keeffe, A., & Farr, F. (2003). Using language corpora in initial teacher education: Pedagogic issues and practical applications. TESOL Quarterly, 37(3), 389–418. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588397
Rose, H., Syrbe, M., Montakantiwong, A., & Funada, N. (2020). Global TESOL for the 21st century: Teaching English in a changing world. Multilingual Matters.
Rose, H., & Galloway, N. (2019). Global Englishes for language teaching. Cambridge University Press.
Salazar, D. (2021). Documenting world Englishes in the Oxford English dictionary: Past perspectives, present developments, and future directions. In A. Onysko (Ed.), Research developments in world Englishes (pp. 271–294). Bloomsbury Academic.
Selvi, A. F., & Yazan, B. (Eds.). (2021). Language teacher education for global Englishes: A practical resource book. Routledge.
Syrbe, M., & Rose, H. (2018). An evaluation of the global orientation of English textbooks in Germany. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 12(2), 152–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2015.1120736
Van Rooy, B. (2011). A principled distinction between error and conventionalized innovation in African Englishes. In J. Mukherjee & M. Hundt (Eds.), Exploring second-language varieties of English and learner Englishes: Bridging a paradigm gap (pp. 189–208). John Benjamins.
Viana, V. (Ed.). (2022). Teaching English with corpora: A resource book. Routledge.
