发布时间：2018-04-23 15:05浏览数：1412评论数：0 收藏
近年来，英语作为国际通用语（English as a lingua franca，ELF）的研究越来越发深入细致，在英语学习的方方面面均有体现；焦点不同，研究方法亦多有不同。本期热点聚焦分别选取一篇质性研究论文和一篇量化研究论文。前者探讨了ELF对中国英语学习者“国际公民”身份的跨文化影响；后者发现以英语为载体的学术论文写作中“非正式化”程度出现了跨文化、跨学科的变化。两篇文章具体研究内容虽不同，但是均反映了ELF对英语学习、使用的影响。这给我们的启发是：ELF视角下的跨文化研究可以从不同具体内容切入，综合全面进行考察。
方帆
专家简介
With the status of English as a global lingua franca (ELF), English is no longer the sole property of its Anglophone native English speakers (NES) problematizing the current dominance of Anglophone cultures and NES in the field of English language teaching (ELT). The notion of intercultural citizenship education offers a critical alternative model in language education. To investigate how ELF, intercultural approaches and the concept of intercultural citizenship might be integrated within the field of ELT, a study was conducted in a university located in southeast China. Due to the large number of ELT learners and high degree of student mobility in China these are issues of much relevance in this setting. The research collected qualitative data through face-to-face interviews, email interviews and focus groups with students on study abroad programmes who have both ELT and first-hand intercultural experiences. Many students spoke positively about aspects of intercultural citizenship, but classroom instruction offered only limited channels for students to experience and understand intercultural communication and citizenship. In contrast, most of their understanding and experiences were gained outside the classroom during study abroad. Furthermore, many students spoke about the importance of English in their development of intercultural connections and citizenship.
Source:
Fang, F., & Baker, W. (2017, online). ‘A more inclusive mind towards the world’: English language teaching and study abroad in China from intercultural citizenship and English as a lingua franca perspectives. Language Teaching Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168817718574
Ken Hyland
专家简介
Informality has become something of a contemporary mantra as, from the denim-clad offices of internet startups to the pages of business reports, we are encouraged to shed old constraints and relax conventions. This study explores the perception that since informality has now invaded a large range of written and spoken domains of discourse, academic writing has also followed this trend. It asks the question whether academics are now freer to construct less rigidly objective texts and craft a more inclusive relationship with their readers. Taking a corpus of 2.2 million words from the same leading journals in four disciplines at three periods over the past years, we explore changes in the use of ten key features regarded by applied linguists and style guide authors as representing informality. Our results show only a small increase in the use of these features, and that this is mainly accounted for by increases in the hard sciences rather than the social sciences. It is also largely restricted to increases in first person pronouns, unattended reference and sentences beginning with conjunctions. We discuss these results and argue they represent changes in rhetorical conventions which accommodate more obvious interpersonal interactions in the sciences.
Source:
Hyland, Ken., & Jiang, Feng (Kevin) (2017). Is academic writing becoming more informal? English for Specific Purposes, 45, 40-51.
