Spoken lingua franca English in tertiary education at a Swedish technical university: an investigation of form and commu

1. Spoken lingua franca English in tertiary education at a Swedish technical university: an investigation of form and communicative-pedagogical effectiveness Beyza Björkman, Department of English

2. Outline • Background information: English in Sweden This setting • This project: A study on spoken lingua franca English in tertiary education at a Swedish technical university Aim Speech events and subjects Points of investigation and methods Findings • Beyond the findings • What is next? Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

3. English in Sweden • History • 1900s • Expected proficiency: French, German, English • Instruction: Swedish • 1980s-to present • Expected proficiency: English • Instruction: Swedish, increasingly English • Standards are relatively high • Swedish English generally ranked high ”almost mother-tongue like, ..., clear, well-mastered” (Jenkins, 2008) Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

4. The setting • A technical university in a large city in Sweden • Responsible for 1/3 of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education • ca 20,000 students • ca 3,000 employees • predominantly Swedish • also Russian, Chinese, German etc. • ca 1,500 exchange students in 2006 • English used extensively Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

5. Master's programs in English at the site 40 35 30 25 20 Number of programs 15 10 5 0 1999 (10) 2000 (10) 2001 (12) 2002 (13) 2003 (16) 2004 (23) 2005 (27) 2006 (34) 13 in Swe. Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

6. Context: Technical communication • Data • Real high-stakes technical dialogues from content courses • Different from speech events in language courses (comparative corpus) • Interviews and questionnaires Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

7. Speech events Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

8. L1s and speakers Spanish German Swedish Lang.s from India Arabic Russian Persian/Farsi Icelandic French Turkish Italian Chinese Somali Greek Uzbek Finnish Catalan English Polish Serbian Number of speakers: 107 (in all types of speech events, excluding audiences in lectures) Number of L1s: 20 Monologic (lectures): 54% Swedish, 46% Foreign speakers Dialogic: 51% Exchange students 24.4% Ethnically non-Swedish 24.4% Swedish 8 2014-07-14 Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

9. Points of investigation • Morpho-syntactic non-standard usage (Disturbing? Non-disturbing? Irritating? ) • Criteria: What is a commonality? The feature: • occurs in different types of speech events • by different speakers with different L1s • 10 times Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

10. Overtly disturbing? Y Unsuitable for LF situations N Potentially problematic? N Suitable for LF situations Y Covertly disturbing? Y N Suitable for LF situations? Irritating? Y N Suitable for LF situations

11. Categorization of findings 1. Morphological (41) Variations in word form: e.g. boringdom, discriminization, forsify, levelize, more big, more easy, more clear,… 2. Syntactic (178) Correctly formed words used appropriately but in syntactically deviant constructions 2.1 Phrase level NP VP 2.2 Clause level Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

12. Phrase level: NP (1) Not marking the plural ..200 degree.. ..two type of … We have four parameter.. …two more condition.. ..two way.. Over 10 meter.. ..6000 hour per year… It is always ten digit. ..ten glass vessel.. We need all the detail… …just to get result.. There are some difference…. There are some different type of reference… ..several conclusion… you have severalunknown… ..same advantage compared with other technology. There are other reason. Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

13. Phrase level: NP (2) Article usage Superfluous/Incorrect articles The poor people use… I have a exam. No article when needed …solve the problem as ? whole This is ? more tricky one. But they have ? very good subway system. It’s not ? effective solution. Some We need to give some proposal. In high school, you do some examination report. ..some conclusion…,.. some commas.., ..some line here..,..some different type of reference…, Zero article normally means indefinite. Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

14. Phrase level:VP • SVA • 3P e.g. …these functionsdescribes..,people doesn’t.., Engineers works like this,… • 3S e.g. It come from this equation, The volumeincrease…, The traffic have gone beyond…. • Tense and aspect e.g. ...A power system is called a power system, because it is using different generator systems. You can remember what a turbine is doing, it is taking care of... • Passive and Active voice e.g. But we affect by the flow../Some of these graphics devices can attach to your pc... / It can be happened that… Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

15. Clause level (1): Non-standard question formulation <S1> er... in the outlet , what we have in the outlet? </S1> <S2> . what?</S2> <S1> in the outlet what we have? <S1/> <S2> (xx) reflection for vapor </S2> • Two different types: • Wh questions • How many pages they have? • So where we are? • Why it is black? • What other equation I would use? • Why the function looks like that? • What we have in the outlet? • SVO We should go through every topic? We have to choose one of them? You’re sure it is solar? This is to fit in the equation? Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

16. Clause level (2): Left dislocations This rate you have it. Diffusivity you need it. This report we’ll do it later. The composition of the liquidit’s the same,.. The supercapacitors I don’t know much about them. All these chemical reactionsthey are reversible. Increased explicitness (Mauranen, 2007) Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

17. Clause level (3): Unraised negative I think he won’t be here. I think my X is not OK here. It looks not good. I think it’s not a proper way to describe it. I think the teacher can’t read (the report) carefully. She has no time. Do you have any ’non’s on T4 that lead not to 0 here? Transfer or cognitive? Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

18. Disturbance? Morphosyntacticfeatures Overt disturbance Non-standard word formations ND Not marking the plural ND Double comparatives/superlatives ND Incorrect plural forms/countability ND Subject-verb disagreement ND Tense and aspect issues ND Passive/Active voice problems ND Non-standard question formulation D! Negation ND Left dislocations ND Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

19. Questionnaires and interviews • Intolerance: Students Teachers Challenging? Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

20. Success of communication in ELF settings seems to depend on two factors: • Situation Orientation: content (not form) 2. Nature of lingua franca features Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

21. Nature of lingua franca features • Non-standard usage that leads to disturbance in communication e.g. Non-standard question formulation 2. Successful reductions of redundancy e.g. Not marking the plural 3. Devices that increase comprehensibility & economy e.g. Left dislocation and unraised negative Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

22. Conclusions • Settings in which English is a lingua franca are too dynamic for ELF to be a stable variety. • There are commonalities and common procedures. • ELF features reported so far might be reassertions (Crystal, 2008) • Purist grammarians introducing artificial rules e.g. informations (1800s) information informations • More research needed. • Emphasis in teaching? Beyza Björkman, Department of English, beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se

23. Department of English www.english.su.se