November 2022 – Volume 26, Number 3
https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.26103a0
Meng Huat Chau
Universiti Malaya, Malaysia
<chaumenghuat
yahoo.co.uk>
Anita Lie
Widya Mandala Surabaya Catholic University, Indonesia
<anitaukwms.ac.id>
George M. Jacobs
Universiti Malaya, Malaysia
<george.jacobsgmail.com>
Willy A Renandya
National Institute of Education, Singapore
<willy.renandyanie.edu.sg>
Recent years have seen increased attention to the need for promoting diversity and inclusion in language education. A recent special issue of ELT Journal, for example, was devoted to an exploration of the importance of creating educational environments that are inclusive of different identities that relate to gender and sexuality (Banegas & Evripidou, 2021). Around the same time, a special issue of the Forum of another leading journal of the field, TESOL Quarterly, focused on the notion of ableism. In the words of the guest editor Subtirelu (2021, p. 670), the issue was “intended to explore how concepts of what ‘normal’ abilities are or should be make English language teaching inaccessible, ineffective, or oppressive for many students”.
In this special issue of TESL-EJ, we focus on Global Englishes and translanguaging, two areas that have attracted much recent interest and efforts as ways to advance the agenda of diversity and inclusion in language education. As expressed in the initial call for papers for this special issue, a major aim of the special issue is to engage in and promote exchanges which offer insights into how language learning and teaching based on the spirit of Global Englishes and translanguaging:
- acknowledges the strengths and talents of all students;
- promotes student engagement, agency, and voice;
- contributes to the acceptance and celebration of different language backgrounds, cultures, beliefs, and values of students;
- suggests a change of the teacher role in the classroom; and
- encourages a rethink about issues of materials design, language assessment, curriculum development, teacher education, and language policy.
As guest editors, we were pleased to receive an overwhelming response to our invitation for contributions. The contributions came from scholars and language educators working in diverse research sites and teaching contexts, including such countries and regions as Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Indonesia, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the Republic of Korea, the UK and the US. There are two sections for this special issue. The first section comprises nine main articles, with a commentary by Ofelia García. The second section, In Perspective, comprises short contributions from both prominent and emerging scholars in the field. This latter section expands the range of voices for our readers to consider.
The first three of the nine main articles focus on Global Englishes. The first article, CEFR: A Global Framework for Global Englishes?, by Kristof Savski and Denchai Prabjandee, considers the prospects for using the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages Companion Volume to support heteroglossic pedagogies such as Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT). The second article, Focus on the Speaker-Learner in English as a Global Language: Agency and Satisfaction, by Kurt Kohn, emphasizes the need for students to become aware of their own responsibility for agency and speaker satisfaction. This is followed by Marc Jones and Carolyn Blume’s Accent Difference Makes No Difference to Phoneme Acquisition. This study supports the view that GELT is as valid a language teaching approach as using prestige varieties in the classroom.
The next five articles focus on translanguaging. The article, A Systematic Review on Pedagogical Translanguaging in TESOL, by Grace Jue Yeon Kim and Zhenjie Weng, reports on a study which explored 20 empirical articles on translanguaging pedagogies, and identified a good number of benefits of and challenges in implementing translanguaging pedagogies. The next article, Digital Service-Learning: Creating Translanguaging Spaces for Emergent Bilinguals’ Literacy Learning and Culturally Responsive Family Engagement in Mainstream Preservice Teacher Education, by Sunyung Song, examines how monolingual elementary preservice teachers constructed and enacted a translanguaging stance in a digital service-learning setting. Jinsil Jang’s article, Translanguaging as an Agentive Action: A Longitudinal Case Study of Uzbek EFL Learners in South Korea, is a three-year longitudinal qualitative case study which explored the notion of agency in the out-of-school English language learning experiences of three Uzbek students in South Korea. Quite similarly, the next article, Translanguaging Life Writing: Autobiography-Driven Writing Instruction, by Demet Yigitbilek, introduces an ‘autobiography-driven instruction’ approach which is suggested to be able to help students to take a more active role in their learning. Erin Mackinney’s article, “It’s How We Get Along”—Translanguaging in Middle-School Mathematics Class, considers the translanguaging practices of five middle-school emergent bilinguals and the multimodal aspects of translanguaging that these students used to make sense of their mathematics learning.
Fan Fang and Yidie Xu’s article, Commonalities and Conflations of Global Englishes and Translanguaging for Equitable English Language Education, responds to our special issue by suggesting that both the Global Englishes and translanguaging paradigms should be recognized and incorporated into current English language education. Proposals were made for promoting equality from the critical pedagogy perspective and the decolonising pedagogy perspective. These points are further taken up by Ofelia García in her commentary, entitled Designing New Ownership of English. In addition to reviewing all the main articles in the first section of this special issue, García takes us through a brief but fascinating historical journey into how language was related to the national formation of US and Western European powers, which sheds light on how the two paradigms of Global Englishes and translanguaging stand in opposition to the legacy of a modern Western national language ideology.
Overall, this collection of articles highlights how, through the perspective of Global Englishes and translanguaging, our bi/multilingual students can be seen to be actively using their linguistic, cultural and life resources to make sense of the worlds they live in (e.g., home) and study in (e.g., school), and why they need to be supported to continue doing so.
In editing this special issue and reflecting on Global Englishes and translanguaging, we found that these two paradigms, like ecolinguistics (see, e.g., Chau & Jacobs, 2022), are very much about stories. That is, ecolinguistics, as defined by Stibbe (2021), emphasizes stories and the stories we tell about ourselves and others, and the crucial role of language in creating and framing ‘reality’. Here is a quote about the power of stories by Dr Jane Goodall, DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and U.N. Messenger of Peace:
I’ve often said that to make change you must reach the heart, and to reach the heart you must tell stories. … the stories we tell spark compassion and action. (Goodall, 2022)
The collection of articles in this special issue, we hope, is telling and contributing to the creation of stories which also inspire actions that will make a real difference in the welfare and wellbeing of multilingual students and teachers.
We would like to add that as language situations differ widely across the world and even across a classroom, we as language educators would need to be ready to adapt what we do and how we view what each of our students does. While readers of this special issue of TESL-EJ can learn much from the examples that appear within its pages, at the same time, we cannot Copy and Paste from these pages onto our classrooms. In line with the core values of diversity and inclusion emphasized in this special issue, we, in communication with our students and other stakeholders, may need to apply Global Englishes and translanguaging in a range of ways as our understandings evolve.
We would like to express our gratitude to all the authors who entrusted us with their work and provided full cooperation throughout the editing process. Our heartfelt thanks go to the most dedicated editorial team of TESL-EJ for not only inviting us to undertake this special issue on Global Englishes and translanguaging, but also for fully supporting us throughout the publication process.
We close this introduction with a poem contributed by one of our guest editors, George M. Jacobs:
I’m a Native Speaker of American English
Everyone wants to hire me to teach them English even though I have no teaching credentials.
I’m sittin’ on top of the world.
I’m a native speaker of American English.
I get paid more than non-native English teachers who are just as good as me or maybe better.
I’m livin’ on Easy Street.
I’m a native speaker of American English.
Everyone thinks whatever I say must be grammatically correct; no need for me to know syntax.
I’m ridin’ the gravy train.
I’m a native speaker of American English.
I can use any idioms that come to mind; no need to worry if others can understand.
I’m the cat’s meow, sittin’ in the cat bird’s seat.
I’m a native speaker of American English.
Even though I just graduated from university, teachers with 20 year’s experience in the Global South are required to attend my workshops.
I’m cruzin’ in my pink Cadillac.
I’m a native speaker of American English.
Everyone wants to learn my culture; it’s the coolest. I see people like me in textbooks, which contain songs I know and stories from my country.
I’m Elvis’ heir.
I’m a native speaker of American English.
BUT
I’m monolingual with no need to learn another language.
I tell my students the advantages of multilingualism, but that doesn’t apply to me. Does that make me a hypocrite?
I’m a native speaker of American English.
I haven’t a clue about my students’ native languages.
That means I lack lots of insights. Can I still be a good teacher for these students?
I’m a native speaker of American English.
My local colleagues all speak two, three, or more languages well.
I wish I could too. Am I cognitively impaired?
I’m a native speaker of American English.
I have tried learning other languages, but I’ve never progressed very far.
And everyone is happy to use English with me. Am I lazy?
I’m a native speaker of American English.
Other languages are dying as the world switches to English.
I wish I could do something, but I don’t know what. Am I partly responsible?
I’m a native speaker of American English.
So many people want to imitate the bad sides of my culture.
Meat eating, car driving, disposables dumping, convenience seeking, war-making, self focusing. Am I implicated?
I’m a native speaker of American English.
This poem is copyright-free. Readers are welcome to use it as they see fit. No permission is needed. Please acknowledge the source, when possible.
About the Guest Editors
Meng Huat Chau teaches and mentors students conducting research in applied linguistics and language education at Universiti Malaya. He holds/has held Adjunct and Visiting Scholar or Professorships at Jeonbuk National University in the Republic of Korea, the University of Cambridge in the UK, and Yogyakarta State University in Indonesia. His teaching, research and mentoring on topics in applied corpus linguistics, Global Englishes, language and writing development, multilingualism and language education have been motivated by ecojustice considerations. ORCID ID: 0000-0003-2329-5916
Anita Lie is a professor at Widya Mandala Surabaya Catholic University and a consultant on school improvement in remote regions. Her research interests include teacher development and heritage language learning. In 2011, she was a research fellow at UC Berkeley. Her research on heritage language learning among Indonesian-Americans was funded by AIFIS. She received a 2018 Dedicated Scholar Award from Kompas.id. ORCID ID: 0000-0003-4818-2811
George M Jacobs is an adjunct professor at Universiti Malaya. His research interests include student-centered learning, cooperative learning, and humane education. George is an active volunteer with such organizations as Kampung Senang Charity and Education Foundation. He serves on the boards of the Extensive Reading Foundation and the International Ecolinguistics Association. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-7640-1842
Willy A Renandya is a language teacher educator with extensive teaching experience in Asia. He currently teaches applied linguistics courses at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is a frequent plenary speaker and has published extensively in the area of second language education. He maintains a large teacher professional development forum called Teacher Voices: https://www.facebook.com/groups/teachervoices/. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1183-0267
To Cite this Article
Chau, M. H., Lie, A., Jacobs, G. M., & Renandya W. A. (2022). Introduction: Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in Language Education through Research and Practice in Global Englishes and Translanguaging. Teaching English as a Second Language Electronic Journal (TESL-EJ), 26 (3). https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.26103a0
References
Banegas, D. L., & Evripidou, D. (2021). Introduction: Comprehensive sexuality education in ELT. ELT Journal, 75(2), 127-132. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccaa085
Chau, M. H., & Jacobs, G. M. (2022). Practical applications of ecolinguistics. Journal of World Languages, 8(2), 227-231. https://doi.org/10.1515/jwl-2022-0034
Goodall, J. (2022, September 1). MEDIA RELEASE: Jane Goodall Among 80+ Leaders in Animal Advocacy & Conservation Calling for AP Stylebook Update. In Defense of Animals. https://www.idausa.org/campaign/guardian/latest-news/jane-goodall-joins-in-defense-of-animals-call-for-ap-stylebook-update/
Stibbe, A. (2021). Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology, and the stories we live by (2nd ed). Routledge.
Subtirelu, N. C. (2021). Introduction: Confronting ableism in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 55(3), 669-672. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.3052
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