Accommodation Strategies Used by English-Mediated Instructors in

English as Lingua Franca ClassroomsAdvisee: Yi-Rung Tsai

Advisor: Dr. Wen-Li TsouPresenter: NA3C0005 楊馨琦

To investigate what types of accommodation strategies in ELF are frequently used by Taiwanese instructors for academic lectures in an ELF environment.

Purpose of Study

What are the accommodation strategies applied by Taiwanese professors in EMI/ELF classrooms? Do they differ from strategies used in ESL/EFL language instruction?

What is the nature of the circumstances when applying accommodation strategies in EMI/ELF classrooms?

What are the common language clusters used by Taiwanese professors in EMI/ELF classrooms?

Research Questions

Perspectives of English as a Lingua FrancaELF studies have been hotly debated from a wide range of perspectives in relation to phonology, lexis, lexical-grammar, pronunciation, and pragmatice issues.

Literature Review

EMI in higher educationEMI courses has been successfully sweeping across the higher education landscape worldwide.As English has become the classroom language and also a main tool for communication among instructors and students, it ahs salient association to English as a lingua franca in academic settings, which is a flexible concept being able to be used in all subjects at the level of higher education.

Literature Review

Signaling cues in classroomsJung (2006): signal cues display information connected to the following knowledge.

Leech and Svartvik (1975): 14 types of signaling cuesYorkey (1982): 8 signaling clssifications

Literature Review

Signaling cues by Gillett (1999)

What I intend to say is

What I'd like to do is to discuss…

What I intend to do is to explain…

In my talk today,…

My topic today is…

Today, I'm going to talk about…

Accommodation strategies in ELFCommunication Accommodation Theory (CAT):a means of communication converging with that of interlocutors. Speakers need to mutually meet other speakers, to identify with common ground consciously or unconsciously. Adjustment to and acceptance of the linguistic features of their pronunciation or different accents, turn-taking practice, topic conventions, etc.

Literature Review

Accommodation strategies in ELFELF speakers used accommodation strategies commonly for the purpose of buying some time and hesitation in order to retrieve or come up with the next words or sentences.Approximation and explicitness are two essential characteristics involved in accommodation strategies, typically applied by ELF speakers.

Literature Review

Strategies in ESL/EFL language instructionLexical phrase discourse organizers:(modified from DeCarrico & Nattinger, 1988:95-96)A. Global macro-organizers 1. Topic Markers 2. Topic Shifters 3. SummarizersB. Local macro-organizers 4. Exemplifiers 5. Relators 6. Evaluators 7. Qualifiers 8. Aside Markers

Literature Review

Strategies in ESL/EFL language instruction

Literature Review

Strategies in ESL/EFL language instructionClassification of discourse markers:(modified from Eslami & Eslami, 2007:29-30)Textual Markers:1. Frame markers 2. Code glosses3. Logical connectives 4. Evidentials5. Endophoric Markers 6. IllocutionaryInterpersonal Markers1. Boosters 2. Hedges3. Attitude markers 4. Relational markers5. Person markers

Literature Review

Clusters analysis in corpus linguisticsMauranen (2010a): 3-word clusters (also named lexical bundles or trigrams) were found to be frequently use by ELF speakers.Backer et al., 2008; Hyland, 2008; Nesi and Basturkmen, 2006; Csomay, 2012:Clusters have played a significant role and functioned beneficially as an analytic tool in discourse of news articles and classroom discourse analysis both in spoken and written language.

Literature Review

Methodology

Course Selected 5 EMI IMBA courses were conducted by 5

professors:1. Leadership Theory and Practice2. Production and Operations Management3. Human Resource and Management4. Investment5. Financial Management

All courses are 3 hours in length with a 10 to 15 minute break in the middle.

Teachers:

Methodology

Participants

Backgrounds of IMBA teachers

Teachers GenderCountry

(PhD. Earned)Current Status

Teaching Experience

Teacher A Male Taiwan Assistant Prof. 3 years

Teacher B Male Japan Assistant Prof. 3 years

Teacher C Male UK Prof. 13 years

Teacher D Female France Assistant Prof. 4 years

Teacher E Male USA Prof. 11 years

Students:164 graduate students from 5 different IMBA classes, including native English-speaking students and non-native-English-speaking students.

Methodology

Participants

Classroom observations4 courses were recorded 3 times during 5th of May to 16th of June in the term in spring, 2011. 1 course was observed during 3rd of November to 16th of December in the term in fall, 2011. There were a total of 15 transcriptions. Teachers’ lecture were the priority for analysis. The selected transcription was 10 hours in total.

Methodology

Instruments

Interviewsface-to face interview is to inquiry questions, including strategies application in what circumstances or specific timing, teachers’ solutions to unexpected problems in discourse, teachers’ attitudes and other concerns while engaging in communication among various students with different linguistic backgrounds.

Methodology

Instruments

2 software packages were selected:1. Corpus Tool: annotating linguistic features, classifying data and analyzing tokens and frequencies to input data.2. WordSmith Tools:dealing with concordance, keyword and wordlist.

Methodology

Corpus analysis

Six types of accommodation strategies:defining strategy, listing strategy, eliciting strategy, giving-examples strategy and emphasizing strategy

ConclusionRQ1: What are the accommodation strategies applied by Taiwanese professors in EMI/ELF classrooms? Do they differ from strategies used in ESL/EFL language instruction?

Types of strategies Teacher A Teacher B Teacher C Teacher D Teacher E

Introducing 6.67% 7.62% 20.95% 32.38% 32.38%

Defining 3.35% 17.68% 17.65% 29.47% 31.76%

Listing 8.00% 1.33% 48.00% 16.00% 26.67%

Eliciting 32.00% 27.24% 17.39% 7.35% 15.84%

Giving examples 5.71% 20.00% 27.62% 28.57% 18.10%

Emphasizing 37.88% 15.15% 17.68% 19.70% 9.60%

Distribution of each teacher's strategy

Seven types of situation:content difficulty, students’ nationality, lexicon/sentence selected, students’ language proficiency, no feedback from students and teachers are not able to clearly explain in English.

ConclusionRQ2: What is the nature of the circumstances when applying accommodation strategies in EMI/ELF classrooms?

what is thethis is thewhat’s thethat’s theyou know thelook at thethe first oneyou know thecost of capitalone of the

ConclusionRQ3: What are the common language clusters used by Taiwanese professors in EMI/ELF classrooms?

The application of accommodation strategies are effective in keeping communication going, preventing misunderstandings and enhancing learners’ knowledge of subject matters.

Teachers who take advantage of accommodative strategies commonly facilitate keeping communication continuing and reaching intelligibility with interlocutors in tertiary education.

Conclusion

Pedagogical implications

Not large-scale investigationThe tendencies of the observed Taiwanese instructors’ oral usage of strategies.

Only analyzing the teachers’ linguistic features and not compiling learners’ oral output.

Conclusion

Limitation

Authentic expressions and functions specifically used by ELF speakers in a Taiwanese academic setting.

Lectures given in lingua franca settings through an investigation of the accommodation strategies used by Taiwanese universities professors.

The application of effective accommodation strategies brings tremendous benefits to non-native English instructors in Taiwan.

Eliciting strategy is the most useful means out of six types of accommodation strategy.

Conclusion

Contribution

Interviews with international students and EMI teachers.

More analysis of linguistic features can be added, such as pronunciation, lexicons, syntactic structures and body language.

Compiling a teachers’ guidebook about efficient accommodation strategy used by Taiwanese EMI teachers together with classroom strategies, and specifically address students’ feedback and strategies based on the use of language.

Conclusion

Suggestion for further researches

Thanks for your listening!