Critical Language Awareness among Business English Students

Kan, H. K. (2010). Is there a place for critical language awareness in the teaching of Business English to polytechnic students in Singapore? (Master’s thesis). Retrieved from http://libris.nie.edu.sg/

Background

The study was motivated by the author’s desire to linguistically empower polytechnic students, whom she saw as being disadvantaged in society.

Aims

The study investigated (1) how much the students’ dispositions towards learning English were influenced by linguistic instrumentalism (i.e. learning English for utilitarian goals), (2) if students’ use of metalinguistic resources in reconstructing texts was adequately and consciously informed by the metapragmatic purpose (i.e. the signalling of the pragmatic goals of the communication) of the written task given, and (3) if the Critical Language Awareness (CLA) (Stevens & Bean, 2007) model could be used to teach at the polytechnic level.

Sample

Six classes of mostly second-year Engineering diploma students (n=154) in a Singapore polytechnic participated in the study. English was not the language of choice for many of these students.

Method

The implementation consisted of weekly deconstruction and reconstruction tasks that covered texts and discourse roles, registers and tones encountered in work-based scenarios. The students were explicitly taught how to use metalanguage resources to achieve metapragmatic purposes. At the end of each lesson, the students wrote a reflection. Pre- and post-implementation surveys were used to investigate the students’ experiences with and attitudes towards learning English and their thoughts on the CLA implementation.

Findings

The findings showed that all students displayed to some extent an acceptance of linguistic instrumentalism. The majority (75.4%) accepted it uncritically, citing benefits such as economic advancement. Those who opposed it, however, neither established an alternative stance nor ever wholly abandoned the ideology.

The students showed a general awareness of metapragmatic purposes and some awareness of metalinguistic resources. Most students (83.3%) were able to use metalinguistic resources to convey their intended socio-pragmatic purposes.

The post-implementation questionnaire indicated a generally positive attitude to the CLA implementation. Most students found the learning of metalinguistic resources useful, but not so much the reconstruction tasks.

Implications

The author believed that language education in polytechnics should adhere less rigorously to competence models and instead adopt the spirit of CLA.

Original article retrieved from NIE Digital Repository.