Nature of Educational Research Formative

e Nature of Educational Research (031)Formative Assignment––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Doctor of Education TESOLGraduate School of Education

A Critical Analysis of:e Cultural and Intercultural Identities of Transnational English Teachers: Two Case Studies

from the Americas by Julia Menard-Warwick (TESOL Quarterly) and Intelligibility and

Individual Learner Differences in the EIL Context by Hiroko Matsuura (System).

Submitted to: Dr. Salah Troudi

Submitted to: Michael Pazinas

Student Number : 600053089

1. Introduction

e rapidly changing landscape of English as an International Language (EIL) is of great

interest to me as traditional ‘native-speaker‘ norms become obsolete. is interest has led me to

investigate this issue further. e aims of this paper are to critique one article within an

interpretivist paradigm and another within a positivist one within this theme. However, I am

not intending to make this is a captious piece, nor am I interested in focussing solely on

weaknesses; but rather to look at both within a discerning framework (Perry, 2005). My

intention is to explore each article in terms of its research paradigm, its methodological design,

results and implications. I intend to investigate academic rigour, breadth and depth; reviewing

two contrasting paradigmatic notions and their implications on research throughout each

paper.1

2. Article 1: e Cultural and Intercultural Identities of Transnational English Teachers:

Two Case Studies from the Americas by Julia Menard-Warwick (TESOL Quarterly)2

2.1 Summary of Article

is article presents two case studies of experienced teachers. One teacher, originally from

Brazil, works in ESL in California. e other, an EFL teacher from Chile, has worked

extensively in the US and returned to work in her home country. e case studies were based on

both interview and observational qualitative data and examine the teachers’ transnational life

experiences, intercultural competence, their definitions of their cultural identities and how they

tackle cultural issues with their learners. While both teachers view themselves as being

bicultural, they use rather different tactics when teaching cultural matters. e teacher from

California/Brazil focusses on comparisons between experiences in her multicultural classroom

and American culture, while, the Chilean teacher, concentrates on shifts in her own and her

students’ home culture resulting from globalisation. Instead of focussing on the dichotomy

between native and non-native speakers, the researcher concentrates more on the value that

needs to be attached to the pedagogical resources transnational and intercultural teachers can

offer the language classroom.

THE NATURE OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH - FORMATIVE ASSIGNMENT

2

1 Full texts of these studies can be found in the appendices.

2 Please note an APA style bibliography fully references these articles at the back of this paper.

2.2 e Paradigmatic Approach

e author is inclined towards an interpretivist epistemological approach to research: she states,

“...my work is interpretive, focused on links that teachers see between their experiences, their

identities [and] their teaching practices...” (Menard-Warwick, 2008: 621). Additionally, she is

concerned with “human understanding, interpretation, intersubjectivity [and] lived

truth” (Ernest 1994: 24) - there are indications of this throughout the paper. Her focus on how

the two teachers feel, act and perceive life via the case studies themselves allows me to infer that

her ontological belief system is “anti-foundationalist” (Grix, 2004: 61). e researcher is

inclined to prefer “subjective [explorations]...rather than establishing deterministic cause-and

effect relationships” believing that through one’s own personal life narrative, one is able to

“identify resources and contrasts” and incorporate these into their teaching (Menard-Warwick,

2008: 636-637). is is incompatible with a foundational ontology of reality existing outside of

our knowledge (Grix, 2004) and thus not in keeping with a positivist paradigm.

2.3 Research Design

In line with its interpretative stance, it would appear that the researcher of this article has taken

a primarily qualitative approach to research design. I am not suggesting this is solely

characteristic of interpretivism, but merely that it is often associated with it (Ernest, 1994).

ough there are various elements of conventional qualitative design evident in this research,

there is perhaps a lack of structure regarding its rationale; this tends to be dispersed throughout

the text. However, there are clear questions that the case studies aim to address - how

transnational life experiences have helped the participants to develop intercultural competence,

how they define their (inter) cultural identities and how they approach these issues with their

students. ere is also a “clear statement” for the need of this research (Cohen et al., 2007: 79):

“little research has been conducted on the bicultural or intercultural identities of second and

foreign language teachers” (Menard-Warwick 2008: 621).

Additionally, while there is no direct reference to ethical considerations within the research text

- such as details of relationships and data collection methods etc, (Dörnyei, 2007) - though

there is an indication of anonymity when referring to pseudonyms of participants.


3

What is also important to note is that this paper is secondary research extracted from a larger

study which may offer insights into why some details are missing from the design3 .

Additionally, the original larger sample would also offer the reader more “information-

rich” (Perry, 2005: 58) data characteristic of this paradigm.

2.4 Research Methods, Data Collection and Results

e researcher has decided that in order to capture the complexities of issues such as identity,

culture and life experiences, qualitative data methodology works best. In this case, tools such as

audiotaped observed classes, interviews and ethnographic field notes (see page 621-622 of the

article) were used for data collection. Processing data through coding and thematic analysis

allowed her then to form case studies. Using case studies in her analysis - a strategy of inquiry

exploring depth (Richards, 2003) - has allowed the researcher to focus on the particular as

opposed to the general4. While some may argue that this presents a problem when applying this

to a wider context, Yin (2003) claims that the idea of case studies is not to be representative of a

particular sample for generalisation but instead to support broader theories - this seems to be

appropriate in her quest to encourage other practitioners in our field to do the same.5

However, her observations and interviews may be influenced by Researcher, Pygmalion and

Hawthorne effects (Perry, 2005). While evidence of triangulation is presented within the

research, it may have been more desirable from the viewpoint of academic rigour to show

evidence of validity by individually tackling each of the data collection methods (i.e. by drawing

attention to evidence of member-checking and/or constant comparison of coding - see


4

3 One need only refer to Cohen et al., (2007) p.78-79 to see an exhaustive list of elements for research design. When comparing this to this research, we find that many items that should have been included are missing. I am not suggesting that all should have been included but items such as ethical considerations and more details in the research tools used for composing the case studies may have been useful.

4 What is important to note however, is her emphasis on the particular versus the general and the thick description provided within her case studies may well allow reader engagement in terms of their own context (Richards, 2003: 289). Additionally, and to the credit of the researcher, is that these case studies are creditable in terms of Yin’s criteria (2009) in that they are significant (in an expanding world of EIL), they consider alternative perspectives from the native versus non-native speaker dichotomy and they are engaging through the personal narratives she provides in the case studies.

5 Here, I refer to Menard-Warwick’s original comment of encouraging others to incorporate similar subjective explorations of cultural and intercultural experiences into teacher education programs. Additionally, Nisbet & Watt (1985) claim that case studies allow insights into other insights outside of the case study allowing interpretation of these in a wider context.

Cresswell, 2009: 287). However, it cannot be denied that the researcher presented weaknesses

within her research admitting to potential researcher effect and adding more weight to it.6

Using qualitative data in forming her case studies has enabled the researcher to tackle the issues

raised in her research questions. She has clearly categorised the case study results into the

relevant research areas (i.e. transnational life stories, (inter)cultural identities and the teaching of

interculturality) allowing the reader to match them to the questions raised. Furthermore, the

case studies not only give rich and vibrant descriptions relevant to the research questions but

also provide chronological narratives focusing on individuals and showing the researcher’s

involvement which are all valid points to consider within case study research (Cohen et al.,

2007).

2.5 Implications

Since the implications for the TESOL community are not based on causality - the researcher

has chosen to focus on using these case studies as examples to other practitioners. is aids in

developing “a qualification for teaching that needs to be more appreciated” (Menard-Warwick,

2008: 638); believing that if fellow teachers explore transnational experiences such as these they

will benefit their individual language classrooms. Indeed, much literature has been dedicated to

the native / non-native speaker teacher debate (see Moussu and Lourda, 2008) with little

emphasis on bi/trans-cultural teachers of English. Perhaps this is a niche in the research that

could be explored more; thus adding a third player to the debate.

3. Article 2: Intelligibility and Individual Learner Differences in the EIL Context by

Hiroko Matsuura (System)

3.1 Summary of Article

is study investigates the intelligibility (or recognition of words or utterances) of American

English and Hong Kong-accented English towards Japanese students of English. It concentrates

on connections between intelligibility and individual learner differences including, perceived

comprehensibility, familiarity with varieties of English, language anxiety and perceived


5

6 Menard-Warwick claims that the limited observation “may not be representative of... [the participants’] teaching practice” (2008: 624); her admission of this weakness adding more weight to her research.

competence. e author notes that that there was a substantial negative correlation between

intelligibility and language anxiety and that perceived competence was the most efficient way of

predicting intelligibility. However, perceived comprehensibility significantly correlated with the

intelligibility of American English alone. Furthermore, the degree to which participants were

familiar with different varieties of English indicated a significant correlation with the

intelligibility of Hong Kong English, though this was not the case with American English. e

author concludes by saying that it is important to ensure that students are exposed to a wide

variety of English in today’s world of EIL.

3.2 e Paradigmatic Approach

It would seem this article is positivistic. ere are several characteristics within the text that

indicate this. Firstly, words like ‘measurement’ and ‘variables’ are used throughout the study.

Secondly, the researcher is primarily concerned with quantitative data where intelligibility (the

dependent variable) is influenced by items such as familiarity of US English, language anxiety

and perceived competence (independent variables); this also seems to be characteristic of a

relation-finding article (Shank and Brown, 2007). Furthermore, it contains characteristics of the

functions of science (Maslow, 1954) including, testing, generalising, technologically involved

with instruments and methods. is study also seems to be geared towards absolutism (Ernest,

1994), an epistemology within positivist thinking as there does not seem to be much

prevaricated language. An example of this can be seen when Mastuura claims, “In light of the

recent stress placed on the teaching of EIL, instructors should7 give their students opportunities

to listen to wide varieties of English” (2007: 301).

3.3 Research Design

e researcher has taken a very structured approach to designing the research paper. Mastuura

(2007) claims that there is a niche for this study therefore validating her research as valuable to

the research community; unlike her predecessors in this research field, she chooses to focus on

perceived intelligibility as a factor in predicting intelligibility with non-native listeners as opposed

to native listeners. us there is a clear focus and structure when it comes to deciphering

research questions. Although the study loosely follows the conventions of standard quantitative

research design (an example of which can be found in Cresswell 2009: 76-77), it does have


67 is word has been italicized by me to make a point of strong modals used by the researcher in the text.

several items missing from it - namely, delimitations, ethical considerations and details of

preliminary or pilot tests. If included these perhaps would have given it more credence.

3.4 Research Methods, Data Collection and Results.

Considering the scientific nature of the study, ‘objective’ research methodology is employed

(though it is doubtful that anything that is perceived can indeed be objective!). It is unlikely that

the researcher has used random sampling8 which may cast doubt over “whether correct

generalisations are being made” (Perry, 2005: 61). More probable, and highlighted by the fact

that there is no justification for the selection of the sample, is that the researcher has used a

convenience sample (see ibid, 2005: 65). One major characteristic of the scientific method is that

results should be generalizable (Shank and Brown, 2007) and this would be difficult if one

cannot show “that the sample corresponds to the larger population on important

characteristics” (Perry, 2005:64) which this does not do.

e tools used for data collection included cloze dictation tests which assess actual intelligibility

as opposed to perceived intelligibility and make one part of the research focus more on objective

data as opposed to subjective. However, Likert scales were used to gauge perceived

comprehensibility, familiarities with English varieties, language anxiety, and perceived

competence. Although Cronbach’s Alpha regarding the scale on language anxiety was calculated

at 0.79 (a good internal consistency, Perry 2005), it still does not dismiss the possibility of

weaknesses attached with this type of tool including, partial utilisation of the scale, participant

tendency to be overly or less positive (i.e. not reflecting reality) and also not knowing reasons

behind choices9 (Gillham, 2007) in the other variables. It should also be noted that the use of

audiotaped language for data collection, also has the disadvantage of not allowing the speaker’s

facial expressions and gestures to be seen by the participants which may also be a hindrance to

real life communication. Furthermore, generalisation to wider contexts would be difficult when

we consider that only one American speaker was used in the recording when regional accents

vary greatly across regions in the States.


7

8 ese types of samples have the advantages of being more representative of a population - making it easier to generalise and averaging out extreme circumstances. (Shank and Brown, 2007)

9 Although this is probably where more qualitative research would come in.

In her analysis of the results, Matsuura (2007) has addressed each of the research questions

directly and answered them individually. However, I am doubtful as to how these results can be

generalised. e use of correlational coefficients show only slight relationships in the main (with

the exception of the correlation of dictation and perception in both varieties of English) and

may not be of considerable use in individual or group studies (Cohen et al., 2007).

3.5 Implications

e researcher claims that her study shows that perceived comprehensibility is not always

effective in predicting the level of intelligibility. She also claims that student’s self-evaluation of

competence is best when it comes to dictation outcomes. Also the extent of familiarity with

varieties of English affects intelligibility scores in Hong Kong English. Although she answers her

research questions with conviction I am doubtful that all the data within the research can be

generalised, namely because more information is needed on her data collection methods and

analysis. Furthermore, in light of EIL, I am not sure how useful including American speakers is

within the test. While Matsuura refers to Graddol (1997) in her literature review regarding the

numbers of English speakers around the world (2007: 294), perhaps she should have referred to

his later book in which he stipulates that:

In the new, rapidly emerging climate, native speakers may increasingly be identified as part of the problem rather than the source of a solution. ey may be seen as bringing with them cultural baggage in which learners wanting to use English primarily as an international language are not interested.

(Graddol, 2006: 114)

4. Concluding Remarks

is critique has looked at two very different research studies. Although, they are both from

very different paradigmatic stances, they are invariably linked by their association with EIL and

the native / non-native speaker debate. While the first study offers an interpretative perspective

on a third player in the debate, the second aims to understand intelligibility in this changing

linguistic landscape. However, I do feel that the implications of the latter are of less impact on

TESOL than the first.


8

Bibliography

Cohen, L., Manion, L. and Morrison, K. (2007). Research Methods in Education. Routledge:

New York.

Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Ernest, P. (1994). Monograph Series: An Introduction to Research Methodology and Paradigms.

Research Support Unit, University of Exeter: Exeter.

Gillham, B. (2007). Developing a Questionnaire. London: Continuum International Publishing

Group.

Grix, J. (2004). e Foundations of Research. Palgrave Macmillan: London.

Maslow, A.H. (1954). Motivation and Personality. Harper & Row: NY.

Nisbet, J. and Watt, J. (1984). Case Study in T. Bush, A. Fox, J. Goodey and S. Goulding (eds)

Conducting Small Scale Investigations in Educational Management. London: Harper and

Row, 79-92

Perry, F. L. Jr. (2005). Research in Applied Linguistics, Mahwah, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates, Inc.

Pring, R. (2000). Philosophy of Educational Research, London: Continuum.

Mastuura, H. (2007). Intelligibility and Individual Learner Differences in the EIL Context.

SYSTEM 35, 293-304

Menard-Warwick, J. (2008). e Cultural and Intercultural Identities of Transnational English

Teachers: Two Case Studies from the Americas. TESOL QUARTERLY (42: 4), 617-640


9

Moussu, L. and Llurda, E. (2008). Non-Native English-speaking Language Teachers: History

and Research. Language Teaching (41:3), 315-348

Richards, K. (2003). Qualitative Inquiry in TESOL. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke.

Shank, G. and Brown, L. (2007). Exploring Educational Research Literacy. Routledge: New York.

Yin, R.K. (2003). Case Study Research Design and Method. Sage Publications: ousand Oaks,

California.

Yin, R.K. (2009). Case Study Research - Design and Methods. Sage Publications: ousand Oaks,

California.


10

Appendix 1:

__________________________________________________________________________

Menard-Warwick, J. (2008), e Cultural and Intercultural Identities of Transnational English

Teachers: Two Case Studies from the Americas. TESOL QUARTERLY (42: 4), 617-640


11

The Cultural and Intercultural Identitiesof Transnational English Teachers: TwoCase Studies from the AmericasJULIA MENARD-WARWICKUniversity of California, DavisDavis, California, United States

This article presents case studies of two long-time English languageteachers: a California English as a second language instructor originallyfrom Brazil, and a Chilean English as a foreign language teacher whoworked for many years in the United States before returning home.Based on interview and classroom observation data, this research ex-plores teachers’ perspectives on the connections between their transna-tional life experiences and their development of intercultural compe-tence, how they define their own (inter)cultural identities; and howthey approach cultural issues with their English language learners. Al-though both women self-identify as bicultural, they were observed tohave somewhat different approaches to teaching cultural issues: TheCalifornia teacher emphasizes subjective comparisons between themany national cultures represented in her classroom, but the teacher inChile focuses more on the cultural changes that she and her studentshave experienced as a result of globalization. Whereas previous studiesof teacher identity in TESOL have focused primarily on the dichotomybetween native- and nonnative-English-speaking teachers, this articleargues that the profession needs to put more value on the pedagogicalresources that transnational and intercultural teachers bring to Englishlanguage teaching. I end with implications for educating interculturalteachers.

In recent years, many authors have discussed the dichotomy betweenthe native-English-speaking teacher (NEST) and the nonnative-

English-speaking teacher (NNEST) in TESOL (e.g., Lazaraton, 2003;Nemtchinova, 2005; Pavlenko, 2003). A rough consensus is perhapsemerging that NNESTs have been unfairly discriminated against, thatthey provide good role models for English language learners (ELLs), butthat they may lack knowledge about the target language and culturalnorms. Although it is not uncommon for authors to mention in passingthat many TESOL professionals are “multilingual (and) interculturally

TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 42, No. 4, December 2008 617

savvy” (Sparrow, 2000, p. 750), little attention in the research literaturehas gone to such teachers—especially those who do not fit neatly into theNEST/NNEST dichotomy. Nevertheless, intercultural teachers havemuch to offer TESOL pedagogy. Conversely, teachers with limited ex-perience of other cultures, no matter their native language, will needspecial guidance in teacher education programs in order to successfullyteach interculturality (Kramsch, 2005). What’s needed are teacherswhose life experiences have led them to intercultural competence andwho “just as importantly have a meta-cognitive awareness of their com-petence” (Byram, 1997, p. 20).

This article provides case studies of two such teachers, Ruby,1 origi-nally from Brazil but a long-time adult English as a second language(ESL) teacher in California, and Paloma, a university-level Chilean En-glish as a foreign language (EFL) teacher who spent 20 years in theUnited States. Interculturality (Byram, 1997; Kramsch, 2005), that is, see-ing cultural issues from multiple perspectives, should not be viewed assynonymous with transnationality (Kumaravadivelu, 2008; Risager, 2007),that is, having significant interests or experiences that cross nation-stateboundaries. I refer to these teachers as transnational, however, becausetheir accounts emphasize the importance for their intercultural identitydevelopment of having lived long-term in two different national con-texts. Thus, these interpretive case studies explore three questions fromthe perspectives of these two teachers: How have their transnational lifeexperiences helped them to develop intercultural competence and ameta-awareness of this competence? How do they define their own (in-ter)cultural identities? How do they approach (inter)cultural issues withtheir students? The article concludes with a call for incorporating similarsubjective explorations of cultural and intercultural experiences intoteacher education programs so as to facilitate new teachers’ awareness ofcultural complexities in the second language (L2) classroom.

CULTURE AND INTERCULTURALITY IN L2 EDUCATION

In the 1990s, U.S. professional organizations collaborated on nationalstandards for foreign language (FL) learning, with one goal being thatstudents gain knowledge and understanding of other cultures (Phillips,2003). Specifically, the framework requires students to analyze relation-ships between the practices, perspectives, and products of the culturesstudied. Culture in these standards is undefined but can be inferred tomean a group of people (e.g., a nation) sharing practices (e.g., greet-

1 Names are pseudonyms.

618 TESOL QUARTERLY

ings), perspectives (attitudes, values), and products (books, foods, etc.).However, culture can also refer to the shared practices, perspectives, andproducts themselves.

Clearly, groups of people (from nations to garage bands) do tend toshare practices and perspectives that to some extent differ from thoseshared by other groups. However, there has been a recent shift from thestable, normative view of culture implied by the national standards to-ward seeing cultures as heterogeneous, dynamic, loosely bounded, andsubjectively experienced (Kramsch, 1998). Atkinson (1999) proposed a“revised” view of culture in TESOL in which learners are seen as indi-viduals-in-context with “multiple, contradictory, and dynamic” (p. 643)identities. However, Atkinson’s proposal was critiqued for not takingaccount of power relations (Siegal, 2000) or the specificities of educa-tional contexts (Sparrow, 2000). Moreover, as Kubota (1999) writes, rep-resentations of culture in TESOL (e.g., that Japanese students valueharmony) need to be problematized as discursive constructions oftenimposed by politically and economically privileged groups. Similarly,Harklau (1999) argues for problematizing cultural content in order to“facilitate students’ explorations of culture from their own varied indi-vidual backgrounds” (p. 126).

Meanwhile, European economic integration and heightened globaltensions between the West and Islam have led to growing emphasis inlanguage pedagogy on dialogue across national and ethnic boundariesleading to interculturality (Byram, 1997; Wesche, 2004), defined as “anawareness and a respect of difference, as well as the socioaffective capac-ity to see oneself through the eyes of others” (Kramsch, 2005, p. 553).According to Byram (2003), interculturality is not the same as bicultur-ality, the capacity to function in two distinct cultural groups, but bicul-turality may facilitate interculturality. Similarly, intercultural experi-ences, that is, interactions across cultural boundaries, can facilitate in-terculturality but should not be seen as synonymous with it. Along withknowledge of one’s own and other cultures, interculturality involves at-titudes of curiosity and openness, skills in interpretation and mediation,and a critical awareness of conflicting value systems (Byram, 1997). How-ever, survey research inspired by Byram’s work and conducted with Eu-ropean FL teachers found that most perceived culture in terms of knowl-edge about target language nations, and few promoted interculturalcompetence (Sercu, 2006).

Other recent scholarship on cultural pedagogies in language teaching(Kumaravadivelu, 2008; Risager, 2007) situates this work within the cur-rent context of globalization. Without denying the importance of na-tional and ethnic identities, these authors emphasize the need for lan-guage educators to move away from a simplistic equation of nation–culture–language (as in the teachers surveyed by Sercu, 2006) to what

THE IDENTITIES OF TRANSNATIONAL ENGLISH TEACHERS 619

Risager calls a transnational paradigm, based on an awareness of linguisticand cultural complexity in a globalized world where practices and per-spectives (as well as individuals) often cross national borders. In thisglobal context, both authors advocate a focus on the “the complexity ofan individual’s cultural growth” (Kumaravadivelu, 2008, p. 6) withinlanguage education.

TEACHER IDENTITIES

This emphasis on complexity is in keeping with recent views of identityin L2 education (e.g., Norton, 2000) as “often contradictory, and subjectto change across time and place” (Morgan, 2004, p. 172). However, it isprimarily learners whose identities have been theorized in this way. Al-though ESL teachers’ racial and gender identities have been profiled inrecent years (e.g., Lin et al., 2004), the NNEST/NEST dichotomy re-mains the most prevalent way of theorizing teacher identity in TESOL.This scholarship represents a commendable attempt to get away fromthe “colonial legacy” of the “native speaker fallacy” (Morgan, 2004, p.172), but teachers’ cultural, intercultural, national, and transnationalidentities remain undertheorized.

Research on teachers has often portrayed them as prototypicallymonocultural. Although Alsup (2006) convincingly outlines teacheridentity development as a process which “incorporates . . . personal sub-jectivities in to the professional/cultural expectations of what it means tobe a ‘teacher’” (p. 27), all her research participants were young whitepeople preparing to teach high school English primarily to other youngwhite people. Indeed, much of the TESOL literature that concernsteachers’ cultural identities connects the limitations of their back-grounds to their difficulties in addressing culture in the L2 classroom.Duff and Uchida (1997) profile four English teachers in Japan, whose“sociocultural perceptions and identities” (p. 473), along with institu-tional constraints, led them to make classroom choices about addressingcultural issues that were often at odds with the beliefs they stated ininterviews. In a U.S. context, Harklau (1999) observed ESL instructorswho were experienced in working with international students but un-equipped to handle the more intense cultural identity issues faced byGeneration 1.5 immigrant students. Finally, Lazaraton (2003) empha-sizes a lack of cultural knowledge in chronicling NNESTs’ attempts toanswer ESL student questions.

In contrast to the rather bleak picture of teacher identity drawn byTESOL researchers, scholars of bilingual education detail teachers’pedagogical resources, indexing the importance of “identity as peda-

620 TESOL QUARTERLY

gogy” (Morgan, 2004, p. 178). Through biographical case studies,Galindo and Olguín (1996), Weisman (2001), and Monzó and Rueda(2003) note the gifts bilingual teachers bring to the socialization oflanguage minority children. As Weisman explains, such teachers are“vital role models who can offer their students the opportunity to imag-ine possibilities for their future that do not negate their cultural world-view” (p. 222). Moreover, bicultural “teachers bring . . . worldviews . . .shaped by the sociocultural and historical contexts of their lives” (Monzó& Rueda, p. 72), which enable them to address the linguistic, ideological,and social concerns of students from diverse communities. However,before teachers’ identities can become resources for pedagogy, “criticalreflection (on) life experiences” may be needed (Galindo & Olguín, p.33; cf. Pavlenko, 2003). Such biographical reflection facilitates not onlybicultural and/or intercultural competence, but additionally a meta-awareness of this competence that can be shared with learners (Byram,1997).

Some authors note biculturality or interculturality as an asset ofNNESTs: For example, Nemtchinova (2005) mentions that NNESteacher trainees’ “study of language and culture other than their ownenables them to make explicit cross-cultural comparisons and con-trasts . . . and to weave these observations into their teaching” (p. 254).Although this example shows how teachers incorporate personal subjec-tivities into their professional identities (Alsup, 2006), little research hasbeen conducted on the bicultural or intercultural identities of secondand foreign language teachers or how such identities might influencepedagogy.

METHODOLOGY

This article comes from a larger qualitative study, conducted between2004 and 2006, at a small university in Chile and several California adultESL programs. Through multiple case studies of English language teach-ers in both educational contexts, this project has explored teachers’perspectives on their own cultural identities and how these identitiesaffect their approaches to teaching culture in the language classroom.

Recognizing the complexity of teachers’ pedagogical decision mak-ing, which is necessarily based on an interrelationship between institu-tional and biographical factors (Duff & Uchida, 1997), I cannot argue fora straightforward causal link between the particularities of teachers’ trans-national experiences and the ways they approach cultural pedagogies.Instead, my work is interpretive, focused on the links that teachers seebetween their experiences, their identities, their teaching practices, and


especially the approaches to teaching culture that I observed in theirclassrooms (Watson-Gegeo, 1988). Indeed, because the research inter-view itself is a site where speakers can “do discursive work to addressdilemmas and resolve contradictions in order to construct coherentidentity” (Taylor, 2003, p. 194), to some extent my research questionsco-constructed their conceptualizations of these links. Rather than pre-senting an objective account of how particular experiences result inparticular pedagogies, this article recounts my interpretive explorationof these complex issues with two intercultural, transnational Englishteachers.

In this exploration, I define culture as shared understandings andpractices within groups of people, while noting that these “shared” un-derstandings and practices are inevitably subjective, heterogeneous, anddynamic (Kramsch, 1998); I define identity as a negotiation between howone sees oneself and how one is seen by others (Blackledge & Pavlenko,2001). Since interculturality involves distancing oneself from one’s owncultural viewpoint in order to explore the perspectives of others (Byram,1997; Kramsch, 2005), an intercultural identity is thus a negotiated invest-ment in seeing the world through multiple cultural lenses.

DATA COLLECTION

I observed and audiotaped the classes of three Chilean English teach-ers and five California ESL instructors, spending 8 hours in each class-room over several weeks. Immediately after each observation, I wroteethnographic field notes. I also conducted audiotaped interviews withthe eight observed instructors, regarding their history of FL study anduse, their experiences as English teachers, their cross-cultural experi-ences, and their perspectives on culture in language teaching. I con-ducted follow-up interviews to get their perspectives on the cultural is-sues from the class observations. Interviews lasted from 1 to 2 hours.

I recruited California participants through personal contacts; all wereteaching intermediate to advanced ESL classes, which focused on L2skills (e.g., reading) but which also allowed time for open-ended discus-sions. The U.S./Chile Binational Fulbright Commission arranged for meto conduct research at the Chilean university. On arrival, I receivedpermission from the instructors of the most advanced general Englishcourses to observe their classes and to interview them. These classes werecomparable in level and subject matter to the classes observed in Cali-fornia. I focused on intermediate to advanced classes assuming that stu-dents’ greater linguistic competence would allow more discussion ofcultural topics. Participants knew I was interested in issues of culturalidentity and how teachers talked about culture in the classroom.

622 TESOL QUARTERLY

Though this was not the basis on which I selected them, all the par-ticipating teachers had significant intercultural experiences, such as so-journs abroad or intercultural marriages. However, Paloma and Rubywere the two who by far had spent the longest time living abroad andwere the only ones who self-identified as bicultural. As an Anglo-American English teacher who has taught and conducted research inLatin America as well as in U.S. Latino communities, I have always foundinterculturality (to the extent I can accomplish it) to be a significantresource for my work. Therefore, I am interested in exploring the per-spectives of truly transnational English teachers who have become im-mersed in cultural contexts other than their own to the point where theyconsider themselves bicultural.2 Both Paloma and Ruby were teachingadvanced general English classes when I observed them, Paloma to uni-versity students preparing to become English teachers and Ruby to amixed-nationality class of immigrants at an adult school in an upper-middle-class California community.3

DATA ANALYSIS

Having decided to write a comparative case study of Paloma and Ruby,I conducted a thematic analysis of their interview and classroom datausing NVivo (QSR International, 2006) qualitative data analysis software.Prevalent themes included politics, students, and gender. Additionally, Icoded the classroom data for types of activities, e.g., responding to texts andsharing opinions. However, since my research questions concerned con-nections between cultural identities and pedagogies, I needed to opera-tionalize a definition of culture that could be applied to different typesof data across research contexts. Although the national standards ap-proach to culture discussed earlier (Phillips, 2003) is simplistic, for thisvery reason it served as the basis of a workable coding system: I codeddata as having cultural content when it concerned practices, perspec-tives, and resulting products that are shared among groups of people.For example, in the data from Ruby’s class, tattooing is a practice sharedby fashionable youth worldwide, which results in a product (body art)and arguably exemplifies values of individual freedom and self-expression. Though it could be argued that linguistic forms are cultural,

2 While I recognize that living transnationally is neither necessary nor sufficient for thedevelopment of interculturality, it is nevertheless one significant means to this end. Like-wise, although biculturality is not synonymous with interculturality, these should be seenas mutually facilitative.

3 California adult schools offer government-funded, free ESL classes. Ruby’s adult schooloffers general English classes at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels, and mul-tilevel classes for immigrant parents.


I excluded most form-focused activities, for example, vocabulary exer-cises, from my cultural coding.4

Data coded for cultural content was given subcodes as to whether itconcerned practices, products, or perspectives. I also coded cultural datafor approaches toward culture taken by participants. Ruby’s most commonapproach was cultural comparison (Byram, 1997): discussion of how thepractices or perspectives of one group (she focused primarily on nationalgroups) differ from those of another group. Paloma also used this ap-proach, but more often focused on cultural change in Chile: discussion ofhow contemporary practices and perspectives compare with those in thepast.

The Transnational Life Histories section consists of chronologicallyarranged interview data thematically related to major life events: educa-tion, marriage, emigration, long-term employment, and current activi-ties. The (Inter)cultural Identities section is a synthesis of data coded forcultural identity, defined as participant’s sense of belonging or not be-longing to particular groups based on his or her history and participa-tion in particular practices and systems of meaning. Finally, I selectedclassroom data that exemplified trends in teaching culture that I ob-served. I had not coded for interculturality (Kramsch, 2005; Byram, 1997)because identifying its presence within data excerpts requires particu-larly high levels of inference. Thus, in my analysis of classroom data, Ipoint to evidence of interculturality within typical activities in the twoclassrooms.

In presenting this analysis, I know that the 8 hours I spent in Ruby’sand Paloma’s classes may not be representative of their teaching practiceand that my presence may have affected the approaches they took duringmy observations.5 Moreover, the life narratives in this article should notbe seen as transparent representations of factual information, but ratheras the tellers’ perspectives on past events in relation to the context oftelling (Ochs & Capps, 1996; Taylor, 2003). Nevertheless, in triangulat-ing interview and classroom data (Watson-Gegeo, 1988), I found enoughcongruence to draw interpretive conclusions about participants’ per-spectives on their own intercultural experiences and how these experi-ences affect their teaching.

TRANSNATIONAL LIFE HISTORIESTeacher identities are multiple, complex, contradictory, and subject

to change over time and place (Morgan, 2004). These complexities and

4 In a few cases, cultural and linguistic content was inextricably interwoven.5 Ruby told me that she actually talked about culture to her students more when I was not

there.

624 TESOL QUARTERLY

contradictions may shift and realign within discursive interactions butare also constructed long-term across personal and social histories. Intheir 1997 study of EFL teachers, Duff and Uchida found that particularcultural identities became foregrounded in classrooms due to biograph-ical as well as institutional factors. Thus, I present accounts of my par-ticipants’ life histories to contextualize my later discussion of their (in-ter)cultural identities and teaching practices.

Ruby

Born in Brazil in the 1950s, Ruby was a middle child in a family whosefortunes fluctuated over the years of her childhood. The complexities ofher language development trajectory make it difficult to label her aseither a native or a nonnative speaker of English, NEST or NNEST. Herfather had moved to Brazil from the United States as a young man, andher mother had come from England as a child. Both were bilingual inEnglish and Portuguese and spoke both languages at home in Ruby’searly childhood. Her father was initially successful in business, but laterthe business failed. After her parents divorced when she was five, Rubydescribes her family life as “spinning in chaos.” Mostly she lived with hermother, who used only Portuguese at home after the divorce; in this wayRuby lost her early proficiency in English. After her mother remarried,Ruby at 13 temporarily joined her father in Holland, where she re-learned some English. This European sojourn interrupted her Portu-guese-language schooling, and she ended up behind her age groupwhen she returned to Brazil.

At 17, needing to earn money, Ruby dropped out of high school andbegan using her English skills as a freelance tour guide. The next yearshe got a job teaching at a private English school because although she“didn’t speak that well at all,” she “did speak without an accent.” Outsideof class, Ruby spent time with expatriate English teachers, who urged herto continue her education; with her “staunch capitalist” but now impov-erished family; and with a “very left-leaning” boyfriend, critical of themilitary regime in Brazil. An invitation to move to New York and live withher uncle offered her a way out of these contradictions, through what shenow sees as a rather naïve embrace of the “American Dream.” She re-members telling her students, “I’m gonna be zipping around in thisconvertible Mercedes and isn’t life great.”

In New York, she finished high school, took junior college classes, andregained a native-like proficiency in English. In her mid twenties, shemoved to California, got a degree in agronomy, and met her husbandMatt, a university lecturer. They married and had two daughters. Rubyinitially planned to be a full-time mother but was offered an evening job


teaching ESL at the local adult school. When her daughters startedschool, she was able to change to a morning class. “That class was a littlehigher level . . . and I didn’t know the grammar at all. . . . I was gettingall mixed up . . . so I decided that if I was going to teach English, Ineeded to go back to school.” Ruby earned a master’s degree in TESOLand continued teaching.

Both her daughters have now finished high school and recently spent6 months in Brazil to improve their Portuguese. Along with teachingEnglish, Ruby organizes local Latin American music festivals, as well asBrazilian community gatherings: “Any information we have of any eventthat has to do with Brazil we just send it to everybody on (our) Yahoogroup. . . . So it’s pretty fun, I’m really happy about it.”

Paloma

Born in the 1940s, Paloma was the youngest child in a Spanish-speaking middle-class family in the Chilean city where she now lives.Having acquired English initially through academic study in Chile, shedescribes her English-language proficiency after many years in theUnited States as “near-native.”6 Though she particularly enjoyed study-ing French in high school, “for some reason I always told my mom thatI wanted to be a teacher of English,” so she enrolled in the Englishteaching program at the local university. She married her boyfriendJavier right after graduation in December 1970, and then learned thatshe had been accepted for a Fulbright grant to earn a MATESOL degreein the United States. Deciding to go with her, Javier “was a wonderfulhusband . . . (he) sold everything he could, he took money, and hecleaned dorms.” Javier got his master’s degree in literature at the sameuniversity where Paloma studied TESOL.

Returning to Chile in 1973, they found the country enduring severeshortages of consumer goods in the final days of Allende’s socialist presi-dency. The coup and military dictatorship soon followed. Though theyhad initially supported Allende, the fact that they had spent most of hispresidency abroad meant they were able to keep their jobs while col-leagues viewed as leftist fled into exile. “But things turned out very, verybad and then we just devoted ourselves to working.”

They taught English at the university in their hometown under mili-tary rule until 1985, when Javier was accepted into a doctoral program ata U.S. university and Paloma found a job as coordinator of teaching

6 Thus, in terms of the debate in the field, Paloma could be described as an NNESTalthough she herself did not use this precise term in describing herself.

626 TESOL QUARTERLY

assistants in the Spanish department. Over the next decade and a half,Javier finished his doctorate and taught Spanish literature, while Palomagot a second masters in Spanish and continued to coordinate teachingassistants.7 Their son, nine at the time of the move, acculturated to lifein the United States and for the most part abandoned Spanish. In thelate 1990s, Javier lost his U.S. teaching job and received an offer to teachEnglish literature at their former university in Chile. The country hadreturned to democracy in 1990, and he wanted to return. At the time,Paloma was just starting a doctoral program in education, so she triedstaying in the United States alone but found it too hard on their mar-riage. Returning to Chile in 2003 without finishing her doctorate, shebegan teaching English part-time at the same university.

Although transitioning back to Chile was difficult for Paloma, it even-tually brought new opportunities to promote cultural awareness. Palomafelt lost in her native land until a friend invited her to attend a leadershipdiploma program. As a project for the program, Paloma started an ex-change program for Chilean English teachers to spend a month in theUnited States, living with Spanish teachers and assisting in their classes.Two years later, when I interviewed her, she was excited about the resultsof this cultural immersion project, as a life-changing experience forChilean teachers. She described one participant saying, “Now I believe Ican do things. . . . Now I trust myself that I can bring change.”

(INTER)CULTURAL IDENTITIES

In my interviews with language teachers, probably the most challeng-ing question I asked was “How would you define your own culturalidentity?” A number of teachers stumbled over this question or asked meto define cultural identity first. However, perhaps because they had a moreexplicit metacognitive awareness of their bicultural status (Byram, 1997,2003), Paloma and Ruby answered readily, although with laughter. Inthis section I look at how they represent themselves as women who havelived and identified with different cultural groups. Although nationalidentities may lose relevance in an age of globalization (Kumaravadivelu,2008; Risager, 2007) and should not be equated with cultural identities(Kramsch, 1998, 2005), it may also be true that living in two differentnation states actually reinforces the salience of national identities. Whenpowerful experiences of cultural difference come as a result of crossingnational boundaries, it is easy for national labels to stand in as cultural

7 Due to bias against NNESTs, Javier and Paloma taught Spanish rather than English in theUnited States.


labels, as they often do when Ruby and Paloma articulate their metacog-nitive awareness of their intercultural histories (Byram, 1997). However,it remains crucial to note that in other contexts, national identities maynot be at all salient. Therefore, though national and cultural identitiesmay be emically conflated by the participants in this study (Watson-Gegeo, 1988), they should be kept theoretically distinct.

Ruby

When I asked Ruby about her cultural identity, she immediatelylaughed, and said, “Split. Definitely split. . . . I feel like a hybrid of somesort, you know. . . . I think at this point I’m probably more Americanthan Brazilian.” At times she has felt alienated from other Braziliansbecause of being married to an American and of having lived, in someways, a “gringo” life even in Brazil. Though not particularly close to herfather, she had picked up some of his values, especially pride in knowingpractical skills like gardening, which middle-class Brazilians disparage:“I’m very American that way.”

At the same time, Ruby saw her own communication style as veryBrazilian, based on context and body language and often leading tomisunderstandings with her more literal-minded North American hus-band. She prioritized passing on Brazilian values to her daughters, likethe importance of socializing with friends and family. To this end, shehad actively reclaimed her Brazilian identity during her daughters’ child-hood. Although the Portuguese she knew best was “rebellious teen Por-tuguese” with “a lot of cuss words,” she began singing to them the chil-dren’s songs she remembered. Indeed, it was through music that shereconnected with her heritage, after meeting a Brazilian musician whowas looking for a vocalist: “Next thing I know, it’s been 10 years, andwe’ve been singing together ever since.” This involvement in music led toher work with the Latin American cultural organizations described ear-lier.

Paloma

Like Ruby, Paloma laughed when I asked about her cultural identity.Still laughing, she replied, “My cultural identity. Um, I was born white,Catholic, I went to the States, they told me that I’m not white, I’mHispanic . . . I am not a majority, but a minority.” Despite being racial-ized in this way (Kubota & Lin, 2006), Paloma felt that her level ofeducation brought her some acceptance in the white community. Whencolleagues called her “near-native,” she would respond, “Thank you for

628 TESOL QUARTERLY

saying ‘near’ because if you say ‘native,’ I am not, and I will never be.”Nevertheless, she appreciated being called “near-native” in recognitionof everything she had gained and suffered in the United States. Sheeventually got used to the way North Americans tended to prioritize stricttime schedules over human relationships, but found her greatest chal-lenge was raising “a bicultural kid . . . sometimes I’m talking to him, Isound like a person from (Chile) and he responds as an American.”

Eventually, however, she realized “I belong to both cultures.” Shespoke of metaphorical “umbilical cords” connecting her to Chile but alsoto the United States. At the same time, her years abroad heightened herawareness of how much Chile had changed while she was away, in bothpositive and negative ways. Therefore, one of her goals for teaching hasbeen to help her students reflect on the value of traditional practicesnow being lost to globalization.

TEACHING INTERCULTURALITY

Sercu (2006) states that it is now commonplace in Europe to speak ofthe intercultural dimension of language learning and to expect teachersto incorporate this in their classes. However, her survey findings indicatethat incorporating the intercultural dimension is still difficult for manyteachers (cf. Duff & Uchida, 1997; Harklau, 1999; Lazaraton, 2003).Teachers who have experienced and reflected on cultural differences areperhaps best equipped to help language learners understand them.However, appropriate pedagogical responses to students’ confrontationwith cultural otherness will take different forms depending on the localcontext. The contrasts between Paloma’s and Ruby’s approaches illus-trate possible ways that cultural pedagogies might arise not only frombiographical identities, but also from institutional settings (Duff &Uchida, 1997).

Ruby

Ruby said that for many years she taught culture “incidentally, only ifa question (came) up.” In so doing, she drew on her own background,sometimes thinking through issues in Portuguese so she could identifystudents’ sources of confusion with English concepts. In recent years,however, she said she was influenced by an article she had read on thecultural orientation framework (Buckley, 2000), which presents a modelfor understanding cultural assumptions and values, for example, indi-vidualism versus collectivism. Although she found this article useful for


understanding differences between herself and her “very American” hus-band, she discovered in classroom discussions that her students didn’tfall into the neat national patterns the article predicted. Nevertheless,she continued to use the article’s concepts to illustrate values and as-sumptions that underlie cultural behaviors.

In her classroom I observed discussions of tattoos, eating contests,political dissent, and punishment for children. In each case she wouldrelate specific issues, such as eating contests, to more general themessuch as affluence and waste. After introducing the topic with a form-focused exercise, she would direct students to talk in groups about howthis issue is regarded in “your countries,” and then report back to theclass. She asked students to share personal experiences, and she sharedexperiences of her own. For example, in connecting eating contests toissues of affluence and waste, she mentioned being shocked as a childwhen her “American cousins” staged a “food fight” during their visit toBrazil. When students from the same country disagreed, she encouragedboth to share their ideas, in this way emphasizing the heterogeneousnature of cultural practices (Kramsch, 1998). Thus, in my analysis, cul-tural comparison, contrasting national cultures from subjective perspec-tives, was Ruby’s principle orientation to teaching culture.

I illustrate this with excerpts from the classroom discussion of tattoos(audiotaped May 11, 2005). Ruby began with a pronunciation exercisebased on a poem about the topic, followed by small group discussion. Asgroups reported back to the class, most agreed that tattoos were moreprevalent in the United States than in their countries. However, twowomen from Argentina disagreed on whether tattoos were commonthere, with the younger woman arguing, “It’s like a fashion in Argentina(we have to go)8 to have tattoos.” However, she added that she used towork at McDonald’s, “and if you have tattoos, you can’t work there.”Ruby asked the class if this would be true at McDonald’s in the UnitedStates. When several expressed uncertainty, she gave her own opinion: “Iwould guess you can work at McDonald’s with a tattoo, in fact I wouldguess probably many people do have tattoos who work there.” When sheasked students why they thought there were more tattoos in the UnitedStates than in their countries, several replied, “America is more free.More freedom.”

Ruby then told her own tattoo story, to the accompaniment of studentlaughter, about taking her daughters when they were younger to a birth-day party at an urban public swimming pool. In her story, she seems tobe drawing on her identity as a long-term resident of the United Stateswho is not yet fully acculturated. In so doing, her identity becomes

8 ( ) indicates transcriptionist doubt; [ ] indicates paralinguistic behavior or explanatoryinformation; italics indicates emphasis.

630 TESOL QUARTERLY

pedagogy (Morgan, 2004) as she humorously models for her studentsthe intercultural attitude (Byram, 1997) that one can be a life-long cul-tural learner in United States, developing new understandings of U.S.practices and values without fully embracing them (Weisman, 2001). Sheends by noting the inadvisability of generalizing based on a single expe-rience:

I was completely shocked. Because there, you could see everybody’s tattoosbecause everybody was wearing a bathing suit . . . and I don’t know if itwas that particular place or what, but I would say, I think 70% of thepeople had tattoos . . . I mean, everyone I looked at had a tattoo, but . . .I’m not saying that 70% of American people have tattoos . . . maybe it wasjust that one day at that pool [laughing].

Ruby next returned to the issue of employment discrimination, askingwhether a U.S. employer could refuse a job to someone with a tattoo.Students initially chorused, “No!” but when Ruby asked “Why not?” shereceived more nuanced replies: It would depend on the position, theimage of the organization, and whether the tattoo was visible. Severalstudents gave examples of employers asking about (hidden) tattoos dur-ing interviews in their countries. When Ruby responded, “My feeling isthat in America people would consider this private information,” sheseemed to be again drawing pedagogically on her intercultural identity(Morgan, 2004) as a long-time resident who can see “America” from bothinside and outside perspectives. This approach affirmed the possibility ofalternate cultural worldviews (Weisman, 2001) and opened space forseveral students to implicitly argue against the posited “American” pre-occupation with privacy by pointing out health concerns related toblood-borne diseases. Thus, they were developing critical cultural aware-ness (Byram, 1997) through the juxtaposition of opposing values. Therewas a discussion of blood-testing practices around the world, before theclass returned to the idea of tattoos as a fashion statement. Based on astudent comment, Ruby drew a tentative conclusion: “So you’re sayingthat people are more concerned about . . . standing out as different, theywant to make a mark. They want to show their individuality more, andyou think that’s where this is coming from.”

Thus, this discussion included the most common features of culturalpedagogy in Ruby’s classroom: encouraging students to make generalremarks about “your countries” and also about personal experiences,Ruby’s sharing of her own experiences (in both the United States andBrazil), and the relation of a small issue (tattoos) from a text used in aform-focused exercise to more general cultural concerns (privacy, indi-viduality, employment discrimination). This discussion also implicitlytouched on other important issues: First, in addressing employment dis-crimination against individuals with tattoos, students noted the influence


of societal power structures on cultural practices; second, the focus ontattoos as a contemporary fashion statement illustrated the dynamic trans-national nature of many cultural practices (Risager, 2007) rather thanseeing culture as simply tradition. Ironically, when I asked Ruby aboutthis interaction in an interview, she said this was a “good cultural issue”but expressed insecurity that perhaps she did not know enough aboutissues of privacy and individualism in American culture “for a teacher tobe discussing and trying to tell students” about them.

Paloma

For Paloma, teaching culture is connected to a larger goal of socialtransformation through education. She stated in interviews and whileteaching that she saw good teachers as “agents of change.” As mentionedearlier, in taking Chilean educators to visit U.S. schools, Paloma per-ceived that awareness of other cultures empowered teachers to imple-ment new educational practices. In her own case, studying multicultur-alism in the United States had led her to value diversity in Chile, espe-cially the local indigenous cultures, and she now had “an agenda to . . .expose students to these beliefs.”9 However, at times she simply workedto prepare her students for transformations in education outside theircontrol. At the end of my interviews, I mentioned that change seemed tobe a theme in all her classes. She laughed and said, “The idea aboutadjusting to new times . . . so it surfaces, huh?” She saw her experienceof living abroad as key to her commitment to discussing these issues withher students. As she explained in a follow-up e-mail, “I was away fromChile for 18 years . . . I came back in 2003 with a very objective set ofmind to see things that my fellow Chileans did not see.”

Paloma usually connected her class activities to a central theme, ex-tending one theme over several lessons. Although this was officially aclass on English rather than teaching methodology, her students weresoon to be full-time teachers in local schools, so pedagogy was one themeshe included. The other two themes I observed were the changing familyand terrorism (the latter requested by students). Like Ruby, Paloma in-troduced cultural issues through short readings. Generally, the classwent from reading comprehension exercises to sharing opinions aboutthe ideas presented. Unlike Ruby, Paloma rarely asked her students tocompare different countries, but rather to contrast Chile’s past and pres-ent. Because contemporary cultural trends in Chile are widely seen as

9 Some Chilean teachers have come to similar commitments through contact with thePan-Andean indigenous education movement in South America, but Paloma attributes herinterest in multiculturalism to her education in the United States.

632 TESOL QUARTERLY

wholesale adoptions of so-called global culture (Kumaravadivelu, 2008;Moulián, 1997), interculturality in this context can involve comparingtoday’s globalized culture (to some extent borrowed from English-speaking countries) with older Chilean practices and values. Thus, Idescribe Paloma’s approach as focused on cultural change, emphasizingthe dynamic nature of cultural practices and values (Kramsch, 1998).

Paloma introduced the following discussion by talking about how stu-dents had performed in their recent oral presentations. She had broughtin an article titled “30 Second Success” (Demarais, 2004) to suggest ideasto help students improve their public speaking skills and ultimately theirteaching. She began by assigning a student, Casandra, to read the firstparagraph aloud, which was on eye contact and body language. Anotherstudent read the next passage, which directed readers to “Smile evenwhen you aren’t in the mood,” adding, “We actually encourage ourclients to fake it.” Paloma opened this issue for discussion:

How do you feel with that? Mmmm? So, good Pepsodent and start smil-ing. [Students laughed]. I see three faces that are absolutely serious andI know what that means. What do you think about faking? [Studentslaughed]. Because that’s a value. . . . Some of you may say, “I am sorry, Idon’t feel like smiling and I will not do it.” (Audiotaped July 5, 2005)

As subsequent turns showed, Paloma was correct in assuming thatmany students disagreed with the value of fake smiling although theywere initially hesitant to voice this. Finally, Casandra said:

Probably if I am working as a salesclerk, I should smile all the time, but inour own cases, we think that . . . when we are in front of a teacher that isalways smiling, we (feel that they are faking), and that makes us feeluncomfortable. (Audiotaped July 5, 2005)

Casandra went on to explain at some length that once she began teach-ing, she hoped her students wouldn’t expect her to be happy all the time.Antonio then raised a larger issue:

I think that we will focus on the social context in which occurs thissituation. Here it says “we actually encourage our clients.” So it (tells) youthat in business you have to forget your emotional moods and perhaps besmiling every time, but it is different when you are with your friends orwith your professors. (Audiotaped July 5, 2005)

Paloma’s response drew on her own changing identity as a teacher(Morgan, 2004):

I come from that model, in the past, that in education you do not have“clients.” And today, that’s all there is to it! Everything is selling a goodproduct, selling a good education, with a methodology. And also, webecome clients. I become a client of [textbook publisher] if I am a good


professor, and you are my students. It’s interesting that in our mind wehave no concept for that. A client is only—for business. (Audiotaped July5, 2005)

As in the discussion of employment discrimination in Ruby’s class, thisinteraction has a subtext as to how societal power structures can compelor limit new cultural practices. Although neither Antonio nor Palomasays the word neoliberalism, the management of education “like a busi-ness” is part of the current economic model in Chile, as in many otherparts of the world (Holborow, 2006); indeed, students at this universityhad recently gone on strike to protest the privatization of student loans.Moreover, the social solidarity that Antonio invokes is widely seen as atraditional Chilean value now being lost to neoliberalism (Moulián,1997). Paloma picks up these implications of Antonio’s remarks, imply-ing that she is willing to entertain her students’ regrets for lost solidarity.As in Ruby’s class, critical cultural awareness (Byram, 1997) appearsthrough the juxtaposition of different value systems. Although Paloma’stime abroad was not explicitly thematized in this interaction, I contendthat her multifaceted view of educational change had been facilitated byher teaching experiences in different sociocultural and historical con-texts. It was her ability to see the issue from divergent perspectives thatallowed her to understand and address her students’ concerns (Monzó &Rueda, 2003), while still giving them a realistic picture of the currenteducational climate. When I interviewed her about this exchange, sheexpressed ambivalence about these business-oriented values but said shehad to prepare her students for the future, “otherwise they are going tosuffer in the schools.”

DISCUSSION

In this section, I review how these teachers’ transnational life experi-ences helped them to develop intercultural competence and a meta-awareness of this competence, how they defined their own (inter)cul-tural identities, and how they approached (inter)cultural issues withtheir students. I then relate these findings to questions of identity raisedin the L2 teaching literature.

Like many L2 teachers, Ruby and Paloma were “multilingual (and)interculturally savvy” (Sparrow, 2000, p. 750). Aside from brief Europeansojourns, Ruby spent her first two decades in Brazil, and the next threein the United States; Paloma spent two decades of her adult life in theUnited States before returning home to a globalized, neoliberal Chilevery different from the insular dictatorship she had left. Both women hadspent years negotiating cultural issues with colleagues, students, and

634 TESOL QUARTERLY

family members—at times finding ways to adapt, at other times choosingnot to. Ruby had figured out the cultural patterns in her miscommuni-cations with her husband Matt, and Paloma had learned to schedule timein advance if she wanted to talk with North American friends. As theirdifferent identities interacted within their daily lives (Wing, 2000), in-terculturality became central to their way of living. Both women definedtheir cultural identities as split, hybrid, mixed: Indeed, Paloma meta-phorically saw herself as having two umbilical cords, one tied to herChilean hometown and the other to the U.S. college town where she hadspent two decades.

Their approaches to teaching reflected not only their biographicalexperiences but also their institutional contexts (Duff & Uchida, 1997).As an ESL instructor for immigrants from many countries, Ruby fre-quently used a strategy of cultural comparison, inviting her students torecount personal experiences with particular issues in their homelands.Although this approach has been critiqued as essentializing differencesbetween nations while denying differences within nations (Harklau,1999; Kubota, 1999), this is not what tended to happen in Ruby’s class,as students from the same countries often disagreed with each other,while finding commonality with students of other nationalities—as inRisager’s (2007) transnational paradigm. Additionally, Ruby stressed theimportance of defining, when possible, the assumptions that underliecultural behaviors (Buckley, 2000), because doing this had helped hercommunicate with her North American husband. Likewise, Paloma’sChilean students occasionally made cultural comparisons between Chileand English-speaking countries, and Paloma encouraged them in this.However, more common were comparisons between traditional Chileanpractices and rapidly shifting, globalized practices. Thus, Paloma’s prin-cipal orientation to teaching culture was exploring cultural change: in-deed, being an “agent of change” is key to her teacher identity. Based onher own transnational experiences, she believed that awareness of othercultures can empower teachers to adopt new educational practices butalso to hold onto valued traditions.

Thus, Paloma and Ruby had brought their intercultural identities intotheir classrooms (Morgan, 2004). Moreover, their experiences providedresources for addressing students’ linguistic, ideological, and culturalconcerns (Monzó & Rueda, 2003). However, these sorts of identity re-sources have been little addressed in the TESOL literature, which hastended to dichotomize teacher identity as either NEST or NNEST, adichotomy that doesn’t address the kinds of resources that interculturalteachers like Paloma and Ruby bring to their teaching. In sharing theirpersonal histories of understanding and adapting to multiple culturalframeworks and thus modeling intercultural identities, they can open up


identity options not previously imagined by their students (Morgan,2004; Weisman, 2001).

Nevertheless, despite their impressive skills and experience, I cannotcontend that Paloma and Ruby have found all-encompassing solutions tothe problems of intercultural pedagogy. For example, although neitheris naïve about how power operates in their societies, their pedagogies donot explicitly address how privilege is implicated in cultural representa-tions (Harklau, 1999; Kubota, 1999). Rather than praise or critique theseteachers, my aim in sketching connections between their identities andtheir pedagogies is to draw attention to general connections betweencultural identities and pedagogies (Monzó & Rueda, 2003; Morgan,2004; Weisman, 2001). Above all, I encourage educators to reflect ontheir own (inter)cultural experiences and identities, and re-examinetheir approaches to teaching culture in light of those reflections (Mor-gan, 2004).

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHER EDUCATION

Like the research interview, the teacher education classroom can be asite where speakers “address dilemmas and resolve contradictions inorder to construct coherent identity” (Taylor, 2003, p. 194). Throughdiscussions and written assignments, new teachers can learn to “incor-porate their personal subjectivities” into their teaching practice (Alsup,2006, p.27; cf. Morgan, 2004). Such reflection is indeed key to contem-porary theorizing on language and culture pedagogy, which emphasizesdeveloping a metacognitive-awareness (Byram, 1997) of the complextransnational and (inter)cultural trajectories of language learners andteachers (Harklau, 1999; Kumaravadivelu, 2008; Risager, 2007).

Thus, an aim of this paper is to encourage TESOL educators to re-quire student reflection and sharing on their own cultural trajectories aspreparation for their future work as language teachers. From this per-spective, teachers (like Paloma and Ruby) who can comprehend andarticulate their own (inter)cultural journeys should be able to help theirL2 students do likewise. Moreover, like my conversations with Palomaand Ruby, such classroom explorations will necessarily be interpretiveand subjective, focused on “teachers’ own ways of theorising about theirpractice (which) tend to be narrative in form . . . (and thus traditionally)undervalued in academic settings” (Morgan, 2004, p. 177). Rather thanestablishing deterministic cause-and-effect relationships between havinga certain cultural identity and practicing a certain kind of cultural peda-gogy, teacher educators can help novice L2 teachers identify the culturalresources and constraints that arise from their personal and social his-

636 TESOL QUARTERLY

tories and then decide how to incorporate this self-understanding intotheir teaching.

In my explorations of these questions with my own TESOL students,I have found it important to ask students to share specific experiencesand to be explicit in interpreting how these experiences can informteaching. As students interact in this way with TESOL classmates, theyfind that their collective cultural experiences are far more complex thanany one student’s individual experience. Learning interculturality fromeach other, they gain a richer understanding of how to explore in L2classrooms the variety of cultural differences that inevitably arise, whileavoiding simplistic stereotyping (Kumaravadivelu, 2008). Clearly, suchclassroom reflection is particularly enriched by the insights of prospec-tive teachers who have already immersed themselves for significantamounts of time in unfamiliar cultural settings, whether as a Peace Corpsvolunteer in Africa or as a Chinese international student at a U.S. uni-versity. Although this experience will often be transnational, it may in-volve other varieties of multicultural encounters: The insider/outsiderperspective on U.S. cultural practices that Ruby gained transnationally isalso common to many who grow up in U.S. minority communities (e.g.,Anzaldúa, 1999).

Certainly, novice educators should be encouraged to further developinterculturality outside the classroom, whether in another country oranother neighborhood. However, even teachers with minimal intercul-tural experience can develop metacognitive awareness (Byram, 1997) oftheir own social and cultural identities. Autobiographical reflection(Galindo & Olguín, 1996; Pavlenko, 2003) can help them recapturepersonal experiences with Otherness and being othered themselves—experiences that inevitably occur, even in fairly homogeneous commu-nities. Such experiences may be based on social categories such as age,sexuality, (dis)ability—but may also involve membership in cultural orsubcultural groups: from an Italian-American extended family to a looseaffiliation of hip-hop fans or surfers. As new teachers compare the sub-jective experiences that have shaped them, they can begin to “distance[themselves] from [their] own cultural assumptions and see [them-selves] as . . . possessing a learned culture” (Wesche, 2004, p. 279). Theycan also examine how power relations between groups in their owncommunities affect cultural practices.

However, to prepare prospective teachers for classroom diversity, andto help them learn skills of cultural analysis that they can pass on to theirstudents, autobiographical reflection may not be enough. Texts exem-plifying a broad range of human experience can bring students beyonda focus on their own experiences. Such texts could include multiculturalmemoirs (e.g., Anzaldúa, 1999) or films such as Travellers and Magicians(Thomas & Norbu, 2003), which depicts the dilemmas of a young Bhu-


tanese man who dreams of moving to the United States. Dialogue withand around such texts can “create a special space and time at the bound-aries between two views of the world . . . [leading to] a sudden grasp ofdifference” (Kramsch, 1993, p. 30). A teacher who has thought deeplyabout Anzaldúa’s manifesto “I Am My Language” is less likely to devaluestudents’ first language identities and more likely to strive toward bicul-turality for herself and her students. In all such activities, teacher edu-cators should reject static, uniform notions of national or ethnic cultures(Kramsch, 1998), elucidate power relations between different groups(Kubota, 1999), juxtapose divergent value systems (Byram, 1997), andfacilitate explorations of culture based on the diversity of students’ back-grounds (Harklau, 1999).

Transnational experiences, such as those described in this article, areclearly valuable for developing intercultural identities—a qualificationfor teaching that needs to be more appreciated in TESOL. However, Icannot contend that living for decades on another continent is necessaryfor developing appropriate cultural pedagogies. In the long run, it willbe more important for the TESOL profession to develop a metacognitiveawareness of the cultural resources that every teacher and student bringsto the classroom (Kumaravadivelu, 2008). This is an awareness that all ofus, regardless of cultural or linguistic background, can strive to cultivate.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was funded by the U.S./Chile Binational Fulbright Commission and bya grant from University of California, Davis. I thank the anonymous reviewers whosecomments shaped my revisions, and all the Californian and Chilean teachers whoparticipated in my study.

THE AUTHOR

Julia Menard-Warwick is an assistant professor in the Linguistics Department at theUniversity of California, Davis, United States. Her research focuses on questions ofidentity in L2 learning and teaching. Previously, she taught ESL for 10 years at acommunity college in Washington state.

REFERENCES

Alsup, J. (2006). Teacher identity discourses: Negotiating personal and professional spaces.Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Anzaldúa, G. (1999). Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza (2nd ed.). San Francisco:Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

Atkinson, D. (1999). TESOL and culture. TESOL Quarterly, 33, 625–654.

638 TESOL QUARTERLY

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=0039-8322()33L.625%5Baid=4818190%5D

Blackledge, A., & Pavlenko, A. (2001). Negotiation of identities in multilingual con-texts. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 5, 243–257.

Buckley, L. C. (2000). A framework for understanding crosscultural issues in theEnglish as a second language classroom. The CATESOL Journal, 12, 53–72.

Byram, M. (1997). The intercultural dimension in “language learning for Europeancitizenship.” In M. Byram & G. Zarate (Eds.), The sociocultural and interculturaldimension of language learning and teaching (pp. 17–20). Strasbourg, France: Coun-cil of Europe.

Byram, M. (2003). On being “bicultural” and “intercultural.” In G. Alred, M. Byram,& M. Fleming (Eds.), Intercultural experience and education (pp. 50–66). Clevedon,England: Multilingual Matters.

Demarais, A. (2004). 30-second success. Reader’s Digest. Retrieved September 22,2008, from http://www.rd.com/content/openContent.do?contentId=27636.

Duff, P. A., & Uchida, Y. (1997). The negotiation of teachers’ sociocultural identitiesand practices in postsecondary EFL classrooms. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 451–486.

Galindo, R., & Olguín, M. (1996). Reclaiming bilingual educators’ cultural re-sources: An autobiographical approach. Urban Education, 31, 29–56.

Harklau, L. (1999). Representing culture in the ESL writing classroom. In E. Hinkel(Ed.), Culture in second language teaching and learning (pp. 109–130). Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Holborow, M. (2006). Ideology and language: Interconnections between neo-liberalism and English. In J. Edge (Ed.), (Re-)locating TESOL in an age of empire (pp.84–103). Houndmills, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford Univer-sity Press.

Kramsch, C. (1998). Language and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Kramsch, C. (2005). Post 9/11: Foreign languages between knowledge and power.

Applied Linguistics, 26, 545–567.Kubota, R. (1999). Japanese culture constructed by discourses: Implications for ap-

plied linguistics research and ELT. TESOL Quarterly, 33, 9–35.Kubota, R., & Lin, A. (2006). Race and TESOL: Introduction to concepts and the-

ories. TESOL Quarterly, 40, 471–493.Kumaravadivelu, B. (2008). Cultural globalization and language education. New Haven,

CT: Yale University Press.Lazaraton, A. (2003). Incidental displays of cultural knowledge in the nonnative-

English-speaking teacher’s classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 37, 213–245.Lin, A., Grant, R., Kubota, R., Motha, S., Sachs, G. T., Vandrick, S., et al. (2004).

Women faculty of color in TESOL: Theorizing our lived experiences. TESOLQuarterly, 38, 487–504.

Monzó, L. D., & Rueda, R. (2003). Shaping education through diverse funds ofknowledge: A look at one Latina paraeducator’s lived experiences, beliefs, andteaching practice. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 34, 72–95.

Morgan, B. (2004). Teacher identity as pedagogy: Towards a field-internal concep-tualisation in bilingual and second language education. Bilingual Education andBilingualism, 7, 172–188.

Moulián, T. (1997). Chile actual: Anatomía de un mito. Santiago, Chile: Editorial LOM-Universidad ARCIS.

Nemtchinova, E. (2005). Host teachers’ evaluations of nonnative-English-speakingteacher trainees—A perspective from the classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 39, 235–261.

Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educationalchange. Harlow, England: Pearson Education.













http://www.rd.com/content/openContent.do?contentId=27636

QSR International. (2006). NVivo (Version 7) [Computer software]. Cambridge,MA: Author. Available from http://www.qsrinternational.com/default.aspx.

Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (1996). Narrating the self. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25,19–43.

Pavlenko, A. (2003). “I never knew I was a bilingual”: Reimagining teacher identitiesin TESOL. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 2, 251–268.

Phillips, J. K. (2003). National standards for foreign language learning. In D. L.Lange & R. M. Paige (Eds.), Culture as the core: Perspectives on culture in secondlanguage learning (pp. 161–171). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Risager, K. (2007). Language and culture pedagogy: From a national to a transnationalparadigm. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

Sercu, L. (2006). The foreign language and intercultural competence teacher: Theacquisition of a new professional identity. Intercultural Education, 17, 55–72.

Siegal, M. (2000). Comments on Dwight Atkinson’s “TESOL and culture”: A readerreacts. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 744–747.

Sparrow, L. M. (2000). Comments on Dwight Atkinson’s “TESOL and culture”:Another reader reacts. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 747–752.

Taylor, S. (2003). A place for the future? Residence and continuity in women’snarratives of their lives. Narrative Inquiry, 13, 193–215.

Thomas, J. (Executive Producer) & Norbu, K. (Writer/Director). (2003). Travellersand magicians [Motion picture]. London: Prayer Flag Pictures.

Watson-Gegeo, K. A. (1988). Ethnography in ESL: Defining the essentials. TESOLQuarterly, 22, 575–592.

Weisman, E. M. (2001). Bicultural identity and language attitudes: Perspectives offour Latina teachers. Urban Education, 36, 203–225.

Wesche, M. (2004). Teaching languages and cultures in a post-9/11 world. ModernLanguage Journal, 88, 278–285.

Wing, A. K. (2000). Introduction. In A. K. Wing (Ed.), Global critical race feminism: Aninternational reader. New York: New York University Press.

APPENDIX

Data Collection Schedule

Observations Interviews

Ruby 5/9; 5/11; 5/16; 5/18: total 8 hrs. 6/6; 6/13: total 3.5 hrs.Paloma 6/21; 6/28; 7/5; 7/6; 7/7; 7/12; 7/14; 7/26: total 8 hrs. 7/6; 7/29: total 3 hrs.

Note. All dates are 2005.

640 TESOL QUARTERLY












http://www.qsrinternational.com/default.aspx

Appendix 2:

__________________________________________________________________________

Mastuura, H. (2007), Intelligibility and Individual Learner Differences in the EIL Context.

SYSTEM 35, 293-304


36

Intelligibility and individual learner di!erencesin the EIL context

Hiroko Matsuura *

Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Fukushima University, 1 Kanayagawa,Fukushima 960-1296, Japan

Received 16 October 2006; received in revised form 16 March 2007; accepted 20 March 2007

Abstract

According to Smith and Nelson [Smith, L.E., Nelson, C.E., 1985. International intelligibility ofEnglish: directions and resources. World Englishes 3, 333–342.], intelligibility refers to word/utter-ance recognition, whereas comprehensibility is the understanding of word/utterance meaning. Thisstudy examines the intelligibility of American English (US English) and Hong Kong-accented Eng-lish (HK English) to Japanese EFL students, specifically focusing on the relationships between intel-ligibility and such individual learner di!erences as perceived comprehensibility of these two Englishvarieties, familiarity with di!erent English varieties, language anxiety, and perceived competence. Interms of both varieties, there was a significant negative correlation between intelligibility and lan-guage anxiety, and perceived competence was found as a best predictor of intelligibility. Perceivedcomprehensibility, on the other hand, significantly correlated with intelligibility of US English only.The extent of familiarity with di!erent English varieties indicated a significant correlation with theintelligibility of HK English but not with the US English intelligibility. Allowing students to beexposed to a wide variety of English appears to be important in an era of teaching EIL (Englishas an international language).! 2007 Elsevier B.V.. All rights reserved.

Keywords: EIL; Intelligibility; Perceived comprehensibility; Familiarity; Anxiety; Perceived competence

0346-251X/$ - see front matter ! 2007 Elsevier B.V.. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.system.2007.03.003

* Tel./fax: +81 24 548 8370.E-mail address: [email protected]

System 35 (2007) 293–304

www.elsevier.com/locate/system

SYSTEM

mailto:[email protected]

1. EIL and intelligibility studies

English today has acquired the status of an international language, with users aroundthe world including an estimated 375 million native English speakers, 375 million second-language speakers, and 750 million foreign-language speakers (Graddol, 1997). Maintain-ing that English serves various roles in di!erent countries and regions of the world,Kachru (1989) proposed the notion of three concentric circles. The Inner Circle consistsof countries where English is used as a primary language: e.g., US, UK, Canada, and Aus-tralia. Multilingual countries and regions such as Singapore, Hong Kong, India, and thePhilippines are in the Outer Circle, where English is a second language and the medium ofcommunication in such domains as government, law, media, and education. The Expand-ing Circle contains countries where English has no o"cial status and is studied and used asa foreign language. Examples are Japan, Korea, and China. English now belongs to peopleof various nations and regions who use the language for their own purposes. An importantimplication of the use of English as an international language is the existence of numerousvarieties. Teaching EIL must therefore aim to ensure intelligibility among speakers of dif-ferent English varieties (McKay, 2002).

Hong Kong English is one of the unique forms of Outer Circle English, although rel-atively little attention has been paid to it compared to other Asian English varieties (Bol-ton, 2000). In Hong Kong, English has been an o"cial language of the government alongwith Mandarin since 1974. However, Cantonese has always been the dominant languageof the region, and in 1996 only 38.1% of the population claimed that they knew English(Bolton, 2000). In 1995, the Hong Kong government announced its new language policyof ‘‘biliterate and trilingual.’’ Since then both English and Chinese have been the o"cialwritten languages, and English, Cantonese, and Putonghua (i.e., Mandarin) have beenthe o"cial spoken languages (Tsui, 2007). In secondary education, there are two typesof high schools: English-medium schools and Chinese-medium schools. English is themedium of instruction for most subjects at prestigious English-medium schools, the num-ber of which has been restricted due to the government’s emphasis on the Chinese lan-guage. In the late 1990s there were only 114 English-medium schools, which accountedfor about a quarter of all (Honna, 2002). At Chinese-medium schools, instruction takesplace mostly in Chinese except for EFL classes. At the tertiary level of education, onthe other hand, English is used for almost all disciplines. Generally, young people in HongKong exhibit a fairly good knowledge of English. Examples of unique phonological fea-tures in Hong Kong English include the substitution of short vowels for long vowels,the substitution of voiceless fricatives for voiced ones, and the confusion of [l] and [n]sounds (Hung, 2000).

With English gaining a more significant role as an international language, research onthe intelligibility and/or comprehensibility of di!erent varieties of English appears tobecome more important than ever. In general, both intelligibility and comprehensibilityrefer to the extent to which utterances are actually understood by listeners. However, com-prehensibility might be a higher level of understanding than intelligibility, as Smith andNelson (1985) suggested. According to the authors, intelligibility refers to word/utterancerecognition, and comprehensibility is the understanding of word/utterance meaning. Fol-lowing these definitions, Munro and Derwing (1995) and Derwing and Munro (1997) elab-orated a method for assessing comprehensibility and intelligibility. For the measurementof intelligibility, the authors employed the exact-word method, in which native-speaker

294 H. Matsuura / System 35 (2007) 293–304

subjects were asked to write down what they heard word for word, and subjects’ accuracywas then scored. Comprehensibility, on the other hand, was measured by subjects’ percep-tions of how much they could understand using a nine-point Likert scale. In other words,the comprehensibility in their study was solely assessed by the subjective judgments of lis-teners, and therefore, it was consistently called ‘‘perceived comprehensibility.’’

Although Smith and Nelson (1985) suggested that intelligibility and comprehensibilitybe assigned specific meanings, many researchers have used these terms interchangeablyand conducted research in order to find factors that would facilitate or impede intelligi-bility (or comprehensibility). Gass and Varonis (1984), for example, focused on whichof the four variables most facilitates native-speaker comprehension: familiarity with thetopic, familiarity with non-native-speaker speech in general, familiarity with a particularnon-native accent, and familiarity with a particular non-native speaker. Their finding wasthat familiarity with the topic of discourse greatly facilitated the interpretation of theentire message, while the other variables also had facilitating e!ects on comprehensibility.Anderson-Hsieh and Koehler (1988) focused on the e!ect of speaking rate, and theirresults revealed that an increase in rate from normal to fast decreased comprehensionto a greater degree with respect to the most heavily accented speaker in the study thanit did for the other speakers. The study of Anderson-Hsieh et al. (1992) indicated thatdeviance in prosody a!ected comprehensibility to a greater extent than deviance in seg-mentals and syllable structure. Hahn (2004) found that when listening to speech with cor-rect primary stress, native English speakers recalled significantly more content than whenprimary stress was aberrant or missing. Munro and Derwing (1995), on the other hand,found that a strong foreign accent might not necessarily reduce the comprehensibilityof L2 speech.

While many researchers are interested in investigating native-speaker comprehension ofnon-native-speaker English (Gass and Varonis, 1984; Anderson-Hsieh and Koehler(1988); Anderson-Hsieh et al. (1992); Munro and Derwing, 1995; Hahn, 2004), there arestill others who investigate intelligibility (or comprehensibility) when non-native speakersare listeners. Major et al. (2002), for example, investigated the e!ects of native languageaccent on listening comprehension and found that Spanish speakers scored significantlyhigher when listening to Spanish-accented English, whereas Chinese speakers scored lowerwhen listening to English spoken with their native-language accent. Tauroza and Luk(1997), on the other hand, found that there was no significant di!erence in the extent towhich Hong Kong students comprehended RP-accented English and Hong Kong-accented English. In Japan, Matsuura et al. (1999) asked EFL students to listen to twodi!erent native-speaker English varieties: American English and Irish English. They foundthat familiarity with a particular Irish English speaker had a significant e!ect on Japaneselisteners’ comprehensibility judgment with respect to Irish English. Other findings includedthe following: Perceived comprehensibility did not necessarily indicate intelligibility,whereas TOEFL scores of grammar and reading significantly correlated with intelligibilityscores. Matsuura (2000) also conducted research on the e!ect of ambiguity tolerance onEFL learners’ perception of comprehensibility and found that ambiguity tolerance andperceived comprehensibility correlated at a significant level. The author speculated listen-ers’ tolerance of ambiguity possibly contributed to lowering their anxiety level when listen-ing to unfamiliar speakers and novel speech content. Anxieties as well as ambiguitytolerance seem to play a crucial role in facilitating or impeding the comprehensibility levelsof listeners.

H. Matsuura / System 35 (2007) 293–304 295

2. Individual learner di!erences

Many language instructors are aware that individual learner di!erences more or lesscontribute to the success of language learning. According to Larsen-Freeman (2001), avariety of learner di!erences are grouped into three main categories: (1) attributes thatindicate who learners are (e.g., age, aptitude, personality, and social identities); (2) concep-tualization, indicating how they conceptualize second-language acquisition (e.g., motiva-tion, attitude, and beliefs); and (3) actions, indicating what they do (e.g., learningstrategies).

Among a number of individual learner di!erences seemingly relevant to success in L2learning, anxiety is seen as an important personality trait (Larsen-Freeman, 2001), andits e!ect has been examined fairly extensively. Anxiety is thought to cause cognitive inter-ference in the performance of specific language learning tasks such as listening (Vogely,1998; Elkhafaifi, 2005; Noro, 2005), speaking (Young, 1990; Phillips, 1992), reading (Saitoet al., 1999), writing (Cheng et al., 1999), and vocabulary learning (MacIntyre and Gard-ner, 1989). In order to identify those students who are particularly anxious in the foreign-language class, Horwitz et al. (1986) developed a 33-item scale called the Foreign Lan-guage Classroom Anxiety Scale. MacIntyre and Gardner (1994) also created an anxietyscale, focusing on the specific processes of language learning. Their scale is a three-stagemodel for the measurement of input, processing, and output anxieties.

Perceived competence is a self-evaluation of L2 skills, a judgment made by the learnerabout the degree of mastery of the target language (MacIntyre et al., 1998). According toClement (1986), perceived competence, along with lack of anxiety, is a key construct of L2confidence. Kitano (2001), on the other hand, viewed perceived low competence as one ofthe potential sources of anxiety in speaking. The study by MacIntyre et al. (1997) revealedthat L2 anxiety, perceived competence, and actual L2 competence intercorrelated withregard to the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. As suggestedby these authors, perceived competence appears to be closely linked with language anxiety.

3. Research questions

The present study examines the intelligibility of di!erent English varieties (here, USEnglish and HK English) for EFL learners and explores possible learner factors thatwould explain and predict the intelligibility of these two varieties. For the measurementof intelligibility, this study employs a cloze dictation, a method used in Matsuura et al.(1999). Other variables involved in this study are: familiarity with di!erent English varie-ties, language anxiety, and perceived competence. In addition, listeners’ perception ofcomprehensibility level (i.e., perceived comprehensibility) is included as a possible variablethat might predict intelligibility, although previous research has pointed out that perceivedcomprehensibility does not necessarily predict intelligibility with relation to native-speakerEnglish (Matsuura et al., 1999). It would be thus worth testing whether or not similar find-ings would be obtained with regard to non-native English intelligibility as well.

The research questions of this study are as follows:

(1) What are the relationships between intelligibility and such individual learner di!er-ences as perceived comprehensibility, familiarity with di!erent English varieties, lan-guage anxiety, and perceived competence?


(2) Which learner factor best predicts the extent of intelligibility: Perceived comprehensi-bility, familiarity with di!erent varieties, language anxiety, or perceived competence?

(3) Does the learner-related factor that best explains intelligibility di!er when listeningto US English and when listening to HK English?

4. Method

4.1. Participants

Participants in this study were 106 Japanese students, 50 males (47.2%) and 56 females(52.8%), enrolled in either a private university in the Tokyo metropolitan area or anational university in northeastern Japan. These students were all social science majors:71 students (67.0%) were majoring in either economics or business, and the remaining35 (33%) were international relations majors. All of them were native speakers of Japaneseand were taking one or more English courses at the time of the survey. Their average agewas 19.34, ranging from 18 to 22. According to their self-reports, 77 students (72.6%) weremost often exposed to North American English, 16 students (15.1%) to Japanese English,five (4.7%) to British English, and four (3.7%) to other varieties of English. None of theparticipants reported that they were most familiar with Hong Kong English. Amongthe participants, 36 took the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication),the average score of which was 528.75 (SD = 96.39, Min = 360, Max = 775). This scoresuggests that most participants had an intermediate level of English proficiency.

4.2. Audiotape

Initially, two females from the USA and two females from Hong Kong were asked toread the same passage taken from a textbook written by Chiba et al. (2002), reading com-prehension material for intermediate level ESL/EFL students (Appendix A). The readingswere recorded. Among these four, two were native speakers of American English, and theother two were native speakers of Cantonese, speaking English as a second language. Theywere in their early- to mid-1920s and were either university graduates or undergraduate stu-dents who had obtained their degrees or were pursuing their degrees in their own countries.

After the recording, three Japanese EFL teachers evaluated the comprehensibility of thefour readers by using a seven-point rating scale, ranging from 1 ‘‘very di"cult to under-stand’’ to 7 ‘‘very easy to understand.’’ The mean ratings for the Americans were 6.67and 7.00. The Hong Kong females obtained the same mean of 6.00. As these averages sug-gest, the English spoken by the four readers was fairly intelligible to the teachers. How-ever, this investigator decided not to use one of the Americans (i.e., the one with the6.67 average) and one of the Hong Kong females for this study, because the former readthe passage too fast and the articulation of the latter was not as clear as that of the otherreaders. The speech rates of the remaining two readers were 169.5 words per minute forUS English and 142.7 words per minute for HK English.

4.3. Scales for intelligibility and perceived comprehensibility

In order to assess intelligibility, a cloze dictation with blanks after every six to eightwords was created. In all, 30 words were missing from the reading passage. In order to


gauge the perceived comprehensibility of US and HK English, a seven-point rating scalewas given to the participants. The range of possible scores was from 2 to 14 for perceivedcomprehensibility and 0 to 30 for dictation.

4.4. Scales for familiarity with di!erent English varieties, language anxiety, and perceivedcompetence

Familiarity here was apropos of the question of how many varieties of English a studenthad experienced previously, thus di!ering from the extent of exposure to a single variety ofEnglish, as in the study by Matsuura et al. (1999). In order to elicit the extent of familiaritywith di!erent varieties of English, participants were asked to select as many varieties asthey had encountered previously. The options given to students were American (or Cana-dian) English, British English, Australian (or New Zealand) English, Singaporean English,Philippine English, Hong Kong English, South African English, and Japanese English.For those who experienced other English varieties, a blank was provided, and they wereasked to write whatever varieties they had heard before. The total number of varieties eachparticipant reported was used for analyses.

In order to assess participants’ language anxiety, a 15-item scale was made on the basisof the three-stage model MacIntyre and Gardner (1994) developed. Five items wereadapted from each stage, thus making a total of 15 items. Each of these 15 items, consist-ing of a statement and seven-point Likert scale (indicating ‘‘strongly disagree’’ to‘‘strongly agree’’), was translated into Japanese (Appendix B). Possible cultural deviationswere eliminated through this translation procedure. After the administration of this anx-iety scale, the internal consistency estimate of reliability for the 15-item questionnaire wascalculated, and the Cronbach’s Alpha was .79.

The investigator created a scale to measure the perceived competence of students. Thisscale included a seven-point rating scale for the four language skills: listening, speaking,reading, and writing. A rating of 1 indicated ‘‘I am extremely poor,’’ and a rating of 7 indi-cated ‘‘I am extremely good.’’ Students’ ratings for the four skills were totaled up to giveperceived competence. Instead of asking students to select their own proficiency level fromthe popular categories of advanced, high intermediate, low intermediate, and beginner, theinvestigator decided to employ a rating scale for each of four language skills. By perceivedcompetence, the intention was to assess not individual student knowledge in terms of thestudent’s own proficiency levels, but their confidence levels vis-a-vis the study of English.The investigator considered that the use of a rating scale for separate language skills wouldbe e!ective and might be easier for the participants to rate, as most of them were taking orhad taken more than one skill-based English class such as reading, writing, listening, andspeaking, or combinations of these. In general, tertiary level Japanese students tend tobelieve that they are good at one skill (typically, reading) but are poor at another (typi-cally, speaking) depending on how much time they spend in improving a particularskill-related competence. Many EFL instructors in Japan are aware of this tendency byexperience.

4.5. Procedure

In an attempt to eliminate an order e!ect in presenting two di!erent English varieties,two surveys were conducted. Participants were randomly divided into two groups, each of


which consisted of the same number of students. In the first survey, Group 1 students wereasked to listen to the first half, or the first paragraph, of the passage read in Hong Kong-accented English and then rate the comprehensibility of Hong Kong English. Group 2 stu-dents, who were in a di!erent room, listened to the first half of the passage read in Amer-ican English, and then rated the comprehensibility of this English variety. Both groups ofstudents were then asked to fill in the blanks while they listened to the same tape again.After this dictation task, the subjects took the test of language anxiety, and answeredthe questions on perceived competence and extent of exposure to varieties of English. Ittook the participants approximately 15 min to complete all the procedures involved in thisfirst survey, which was conducted during regular English class hours.

Several weeks later, the second survey was conducted. Participants were asked to listento the same passage as the one used in the previous survey. Contrary to the first survey,Group 1 students listened to the first half of the passage read in US English and the secondhalf read in HK English. Group 2 listened to the first paragraph read in HK English andthe second half read in US English. After listening to each English variety, the subjectsrated its comprehensibility. Then they completed the dictation task. It took no more than10 min for each group to complete this second survey.

5. Results

Table 1 gives descriptive statistics for dictation scores, perceived comprehensibility rat-ings, the number of English varieties experienced, language anxiety scores, and perceivedcompetence ratings. As the dictation scores indicate, it was rather easier for Japanese stu-dents to understand the speaker of HK English (M = 15.37) than it was for them to under-stand the speaker of US English (M = 12.62). Similarly, Japanese students perceived HKEnglish as easier than US English with the means of 8.77 and 7.92, respectively.

Table 2 shows Pearson Correlation Coe"cients between dictation scores and individuallearner di!erences, including perceived comprehensibility, familiarity with English varie-ties, language anxiety, and perceived competence. It was found that dictation scores forthe US English speaker and perceived comprehensibility for this speaker correlated atthe significant level (r = .24, p < .01). Unlike US English, there was no significant correla-tion between dictation and the perceived comprehensibility of HK English (r = .12, n.s.).In terms of US English, dictation was found to correlate positively with perception ofcompetence (r = .37, p < .01) but negatively with language anxiety (r = !.29, p < .01).With respect to HK English, though, dictation and perceived competence were found tocorrelate positively (r = .50, p < .01) and so were dictation and English varieties

Table 1Descriptive statistics

Variables Min Max M SD

Dictation for US English 4.00 28.00 12.62 5.38Dictation for HK English 8.00 24.00 15.37 3.92Comprehensibility for US English 2.00 14.00 7.92 2.67Comprehensibility for HK English 2.00 14.00 8.77 2.42Familiarity with varieties 1.00 10.00 3.97 1.86Language anxiety 30.00 105.00 65.52 11.99Perceived competence 5.00 24.00 14.35 3.98


(r = .23, p < .01). And there was a significant negative correlation between dictation andanxiety (r = !.30, p < .01).

Stepwise multiple regression analyses were then performed to examine which of the fourlearner aspects best explains the extent to which students understand each English variety.The dependent variable here was dictation scores. Perceived competence in terms of bothUS English and HK English was revealed as a most important variable that could predictintelligibility level (Tables 3 and 4). On the other hand, familiarity with di!erent Englishvarieties was a good predictor of HK English intelligibility only (Table 4).

6. Discussion

It appears that a listener’s judgment with respect to comprehensibility is not necessarilya good indicator of intelligibility, since a significant correlation between these variableswas identified for US English but not for HK English. A similar finding was obtainedby Matsuura et al. (1999) in their study of two native English varieties. There might bea complex system at work, possibly one involving both psychological and attitudinal fac-tors, intervening between L2 intelligibility and a listener’s perception of comprehensibility.Future studies should deal in greater depth with the relationship between intelligibility andperceived comprehensibility.

In terms of both US and HK English varieties, there was a negative correlation betweendictation and language anxiety, which suggests that students with lower anxiety under-stand the passage better than students with higher anxiety. The finding of this study is

Table 2Correlation coe"cients between intelligibility and individual di!erences

US English HK English

Comprehensibility 0.237** 0.122Familiarity with varieties 0.144 0.231**

Language anxiety !0.287** !0.297**

Perceived competence 0.369*** 0.500***

** p < .01.*** p < .001.

Table 3Results of stepwise regression analysis for US English

Step Variable entered Adjusted R-square Beta t p

1 Competence 0.128 0.369 4.048 .000

F = 16.390, p < .001.

Table 4Results of stepwise regression analysis for HK English

Step Variable entered Adjusted R-square Beta t p

1 Competence 0.243 0.512 6.270 .0002 Varieties 0.301 0.254 3.109 .002

F = 23.660, p < .001.


notable in that anxiety appeared to a!ect not only the intelligibility of English that wasperceived as more di"cult to understand (US English) but also that of English perceivedas easier (HK English). Probably, it was the dictation that made students feel anxious.Dictation is a popular test method widely used both inside and outside Japan. As Horwitzet al. (1986) notes, it is widely acknowledged by teachers and researchers that a test tendsto create tension among students.

Perceived competence is another student factor correlated with the intelligibility scoresof the two English varieties. The positive correlation identified suggests that the higher astudent perceived his/her proficiency to be, the better he/she could understand the passageread by the US English speaker and HK English speaker. The results of this study appearto reinforce the finding of MacIntyre et al. (1997), who reported the perceived competenceof L2 learners and their actual listening ability correlated positively. The finding of thisstudy, however, is somewhat di!erent from that of these authors in that the correlationwas identified not only when students listened to a native variety of English but also whenthey listened to a nonnative variety. These results suggest that a student who is confidentin his/her English abilities is more likely to be a capable listener when encountering Eng-lish with varying intelligibility levels. Actually, the stepwise regression analyses revealedthat perceived competence best predicted dictation outcomes for US English and HK Eng-lish. This should be a notable finding.

The last discussion point, which is probably the most important from a pedagogicalpoint of view, is on the relationship between dictation and familiarity with di!erent Eng-lish varieties. What should be noted here is that a significant correlation was obtained forHK English only. The results of stepwise regression analyses also reveal that along withperceived competence, the number of English varieties students had experienced could bestpredict their dictation outcomes for HK English but not for US English. These results sug-gest that the more varieties students are exposed to, the better their understanding of anonstandard variety will be. Keeping recent stress on teaching EIL in mind, EFL teachersshould provide students with opportunities to listen to a variety of English pronunciations.It is hoped that through exposure to many varieties of English, students will not onlybecome more tolerant of di!erent English varieties (Matsuura et al., 1999) but alsoimprove their listening competence with respect to them.

7. Conclusion

This study investigated intelligibility vis-a-vis US English and HK English with respectto Japanese EFL listeners and the relationships between intelligibility and individual lear-ner di!erences. With relation to intelligibility and perceived comprehensibility the findingwas that the latter was not always a good indicator of the intelligibility level, which wasa finding similar to that of Matsuura et al. (1999) study concerning American and IrishEnglish. Other notable findings were that dictation and language anxiety correlated nega-tively with respect to both English varieties, and that students’ self-evaluation of compe-tence was the best predictor of dictation outcomes. The extent of familiarity with a widearray of English varieties, on the other hand, appeared to influence the intelligibility scoresof HK English. In this study, the more English varieties students had experienced, thehigher the level of understanding they exhibited when listening to HK English, an unfamil-iar variety for most Japanese. In the light of the recent stress placed on the teaching of EIL,instructors should give their students opportunities to listen to wide varieties of English.


There are some suggestions for future studies. A future study should examine the rela-tionship between the extent of familiarity with di!erent English varieties and time allo-cated to listening to English. In this study the extent of familiarity with di!erentvarieties appeared to influence the dictation scores of unfamiliar English (i.e., HK Eng-lish). More detailed analyses, however, might be needed because those who experiencedmore varieties might have spent greater amounts of time listening to English than thosewho experienced fewer varieties. Total amount of time with a variety of English mighthave influenced dictation scores. A future study should also examine the relationshipsbetween intelligibility and other student factors such as motivation, beliefs, and attitude,in other words, Larsen-Freeman (2001) conceptual factors relevant to the study of English.In this study, those students who had greater familiarity with di!erent English varietieshad better dictation scores with HK English, an unfamiliar variety for most Japanese stu-dents. Then, a question emerges: what were the motivations, beliefs, and attitudes thatdrove them to listen to di!erent varieties of English? This should make an interestingresearch question for a future study from a di!erent angle.

Appendix A

In some countries, Japan, for instance, (people) entertain their guests with a lot of(food), usually of high quality. There are (however) countries where hosts just serve what-ever (they) usually eat. Japanese guests may be (surprised) at the simplicity of the food(served) in such places. On the surface, the (practice) of serving everyday fare to guests(may) appear to be o!ensive, and some (people) may, indeed, take o!ense. However,the (reason) for doing so may be anything (but) o!ensive. In those places the serving of(ordinary) dishes to a guest is a (way) of showing that the guest is a (part) of the family.Therefore, it is a (good) idea to sit back and enjoy the food and appreciate the ‘‘not-sospecial treatment’’.

From the (information) above, it is clear that the (concept) of hospitality varies fromcountry to (country). This is certainly true when it (comes) to the dinner table, but it(can) also apply to other aspects of the (host)–guest relationship. It is fairly (rare), forexample, for Japanese to allow (people) to stay at their homes. However, (in) the UnitedStates it is fairly (common). Expecting practices and attitudes to be the (same) throughoutthe world can lead (to) misunderstanding and sometimes even trouble. It is (always) agood idea to learn as much (as) you can about your host (culture).

Note: The words in parentheses were deleted for dictation.

Appendix B

1. strongly disagree2. disagree3. somewhat disagree4. neutral (cannot say)5. somewhat agree6. agree7. strongly agree


(1) When I become anxious during an English test, I cannot remember anything Istudied.

(2) It bothers me if my English notes are disorganized.(3) No matter how hard I try, I have trouble understanding it.(4) I get upset when English is spoken too quickly.(5) I enjoy just listening to someone speaking English.(6) I get irritated unless English is spoken very slowly and deliberately.(7) Learning new English vocabulary does not bother me.(8) When I am nervous, I cannot verbalize what I would like to say.(9) I never feel tense when I have to speak in English.

(10) I feel anxious when my English class appears disorganized.(11) I feel confident that I can easily understand the meaning of an English dialogue.(12) I get nervous when I write something in English.(13) I may know the proper English expression, but I get nervous when it won’t come out.(14) I get irritated when I read in English because I must read things again and again.(15) The only time that I feel comfortable during English tests is when I have had a lot of

time to study.

Notes: (1) The original version was written in Japanese. (2) Scores for Items 5, 7, 9, and11 were reversed: e.g., 1 became 7, 2 became 6, and 3 became 5.

References

Anderson-Hsieh, J., Koehler, K., 1988. The e!ect of foreign accent and speaking rate on native speakercomprehension. Language Learning 38, 561–605.

Anderson-Hsieh, J., Johnson, R., Koehler, K., 1992. The relationship between native speaker judgements ofnonnative pronunciation and deviance in segmentals, prosody, and syllable structure. Language Learning 42,529–555.

Bolton, K., 2000. The sociolinguistics of Hong Kong and the space for Hong Kong English. World Englishes 19,265–285.

Chiba, R., Tabei, K., O’Connor, W.F., 2002. Cultural Diversity. Sanshusha, Tokyo.Cheng, Y., Horwitz, E.K., Schallert, D., 1999. Language anxiety: di!erentiating writing and speaking

components. Language Learning 49, 417–446.Clement, R., 1986. Second language proficiency and acculturation: an investigation of the e!ects of language

status and individual characteristics. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 5, 271–290.Derwing, T.M., Munro, M.J., 1997. Accent, intelligibility, and comprehensibility: evidence from four L1s. Studies

in Second Language Acquisition 19, 1–16.Elkhafaifi, H., 2005. Listening comprehension and anxiety in the Arabic language classroom. The Modern

Language Journal 89, 206–220.Gass, S., Varonis, E.M., 1984. The e!ect of familiarity on the comprehensibility of nonnative speech. Language

Learning 34, 65–89.Graddol, D., 1997. The Future of English. The British Council, London.Hahn, L.D., 2004. Primary stress and intelligibility: research to motivate the teaching of suprasegmentals. TESOL

Quarterly 38, 201–223.Horwitz, E.K., Horwitz, M.B., Cope, J., 1986. Foreign language classroom anxiety. The Modern Language

Journal 70, 125–132.Honna, N., 2002. The Encyclopedia of the English Language Situation in Asia. Taishukan, Tokyo.Hung, T.T.H., 2000. Toward a phonology of Hong Kong English. World Englishes 19, 337–356.Kachru, B.B., 1989. Teaching world Englishes. Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics 15, 85–95.Kitano, K., 2001. Anxiety in the college Japanese language classroom. The Modern Language Journal 85, 549–

566.


Larsen-Freeman, D., 2001. Individual cognitive/a!ective learner contributions and di!erential success in secondlanguage acquisition. In: Breen, M.P. (Ed.), Learner Contributions to Language Learning: New Directions inResearch. Longman, London, pp. 12–24.

MacIntyre, P.D., Clement, R., Dornyei, Z., Noels, K.A., 1998. Conceptualizing willingness to communicate in aL2: a situational model of L2 confidence and a"liation. The Modern Language Journal 82, 545–562.

MacIntyre, P.D., Gardner, R.C., 1989. Anxiety and second language learning: toward a theoretical clarification.Language Learning 39, 251–275.

MacIntyre, P.D., Gardner, R.C., 1994. The subtle e!ects of language anxiety on cognitive processing in thesecond language. Language Learning 44, 283–305.

MacIntyre, P.D., Noels, K.A., Clement, R., 1997. Biases in self-ratings of second language proficiency: the role oflanguage anxiety. Language Learning 47, 265–287.

Major, R.C., Fitzmaurice, S.F., Bunta, F., Balasubramanian, C., 2002. The e!ect of nonnative accents onlistening comprehension: implications for ESL assessment. TESOL Quarterly 36, 173–190.

Matsuura, H., 2000. Perceived comprehensibility of native English for EFL learners. JACET Bulletin 32, 79–90.Matsuura, H., Chiba, R., Fujieda, M., 1999. Intelligibility and comprehensibility of American and Irish Englishes

in Japan. World Englishes 18, 49–62.McKay, S.L., 2002. Teaching English as an International Language: Rethinking Goals and Approaches. Oxford

University Press, Oxford.Munro, M.J., Derwing, T.M., 1995. Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second

language learners. Language Learning 45, 73–91.Noro, T., 2005. The mechanism of listening stress: how do anxiety-related variables a!ect listening

comprehension? JACET Bulletin 41, 111–122.Phillips, E., 1992. The e!ects of language anxiety on students’ oral test performance and attitudes. The Modern

Language Journal 76, 14–26.Saito, Y., Garza, T.J., Horwitz, E.K., 1999. Foreign language reading anxiety. The Modern Language Journal 83,

202–218.Smith, L.E., Nelson, C.E., 1985. International intelligibility of English: directions and resources. World Englishes

3, 333–342.Tauroza, S., Luk, J., 1997. Accent and second language listening comprehension. RELC Journal 28, 54–71.Tsui, A.B.M., 2007. Language policy and the construction of identity: the case of Hong Kong. In: Tsui, A.B.M.,

Tollefson, J.W. (Eds.), Language Policy, Culture, and Identity in Asian Contexts. Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, Mahwah, New Jersey, pp. 121–141.

Vogely, A.J., 1998. Listening comprehension anxiety: students’ reported sources and solutions. Foreign LanguageAnnals 31, 67–80.

Young, D.J., 1990. An investigation of students’ perspective on anxiety and speaking. Foreign Language Annals23, 539–553.


Nature of Educational Research Formative

Documents

Transcript of Nature of Educational Research Formative