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BERA Conference: Wen-Chuan Lin / Cardiff University

Learning English as socio-cultural practice: the impact of teachers’ guided construction of knowledge

in classroom discourse

Author: Wen-Chuan Lin School of Social Sciences Cardiff University

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association New Researchers/Student Conference, University of Warwick, 6 September 2006

AbstractThis study investigated how year 8 students (aged 13) from different ethnic groups in four Taiwanese secondary schools learn English. Studies of classroom interaction within the socio-cultural literature tend not to place micro-interactional processes within broader social, economic and historical contexts. This study investigated differences in teacher-student interaction in four regions in Taiwan chosen to represent locales dominated by one of four ethnic groups. The wider study, of which this subsection forms a part, is examining the way ethnic groups are positioned differently with respect to learning English as a foreign language within Taiwanese society where learning English has become a primary economic concern for global commerce. This study examines the socio-cultural resources used by teachers in everyday classroom interaction to bridge students’ access to new linguistic constructions in English. One such resource is students’ ethnic dialect and culture. Non-participant classroom observations were conducted in eight classrooms, two in each school over one term giving a total number of 35 lessons. Teacher-student interactions were audio recorded and fieldnotes were made. Audio recordings were transcribed and a coding scheme was developed to identify features of interaction. Analysis focused on how teachers and students constructed shared understanding in English language classrooms, and the extent to which joint understandings were achieved. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with students and teachers which asked them to describe aspects of classroom interaction. Emerging findings suggest that the overall valuing of high scores in language exams across regions encouraged grammar-oriented pedagogy. Mandarin Chinese was a dominant language in classrooms and was used to support students’ understanding of new linguistic rules. Teachers who shared their students’ ethnicity and dialect (such as Hakka or Paiwan) were able to draw on this joint cultural understanding as a bridge between school and outside school knowledge. Teachers without this shared cultural knowledge and language had more difficulty in achieving intersubjective meanings with their students even when both parties spoke Mandarin Chinese. Access to students’ ethnic knowledge and minority dialect therefore was found to be an important socio-cultural resource that aided English learning even when the dominant school language was Mandarin Chinese. Differences between urban and rural communities related to whether or not a student’s home language was also the dominant language of instruction in the school. In rural communities students are encouraged by government to learn their ethnic dialect. This paper explores the conflicting political and ethnic values attached to languages and discusses the differential problems of English language learning for each of the four ethnic groups.

Key Words: English as a foreign language; socio-cultural resources; classroom

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interaction

Introduction

Located across the Taiwan Strait from Mainland China, Taiwan is an island of 14,000 square miles with a population of 22.7 million. It is a multi-ethnic island which is inhabited by four major ethnic groups inhabit, namely Hokkien (69% of the national population) and Chinese Mainlanders (14%) living in the urban locales whilst Hakka (15%) and Indigenous (2%) ethnic groups predominantly in rural areas. The ‘native’ Taiwanese, including Hokkien and Hakka Chinese, are descendents of the Han Chinese who migrated from south-eastern China in the 17th century. The ‘Chinese Mainlanders’ who arrived after 1945, mostly in 1949, came from all parts of mainland China. They were fleeing from the Communist advance in Mainland China in the post war era. Long before the Chinese immigration, groups of Indigenous people (aborigines), who are believed to be of Malayo-Polynesian origin, inhabited in the mountains in the central and eastern parts of the island. It is the joint forces of the history of migration, geographical and political history that make Taiwan today an ethnically mixed island. This socio-cultural and political history contributes to latent discrepancies of English learning achievement among ethnic groups in Taiwan.

Foreign trade has always been the lifeline of Taiwan’s economic development in the past five decades. Following its formal WTO (World Trade Organisation) accession in 2002, Taiwan has undertaken more trade liberalisation and facilitation has taken hold throughout the global trade environment. This market liberalisation has fuelled a dramatic growth in the demand and supply for English language education both in business and education sectors within Taiwanese society. Knowledge of and skill in this international language is seen as a ‘survival kit’ for economic and academic success. The learning of English has become so popular as to trigger a ‘national movement’ to acquire skill in it. People in Taiwan assume that anything involving English must be good. Being able to speak English carries such considerable prestige that it is generally believed that speaking better English will fuel promotion job and upward social mobility.

The enthusiasm for learning English in Taiwan is not without problem. Debate has arisen as to whether Taiwan should respond so fully to the perceived need to connect with the world through English. The rising fear is that knowledge of and skill in English may cultivate an elite monolingual linguistic class, giving rise to social inequality. Indeed only certain groups within the society seem to be given the opportunity to acquire English language skills despite its seemly position as the ‘highest language’ in Taiwan. An examination of the first National Basic Competence Test for Junior High School Students from 2002 to 2005 suggested a long-standing English ‘language divide’ between urban and rural areas, albeit more financial resources have been allocated to deprived regions for years (Chang & Sun, 2005), Local research literature identifies this prevailing phenomenon as a ‘long existing problem’ dating back to 1982 (Chou, 2004). Much effort has been expended recently to address the problems of ‘English divide’, yet little attention has been paid to English language learning and its relations to the wider social, cultural and political aspects of ethnic groups within Taiwanese society.

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This study sought to investigate differences in teacher-student interaction in four regions in Taiwan chosen to represent locales dominated by one of four ethnic groups. It examines the socio-cultural resources used by teachers in everyday classroom interaction to bridge students’ access to new linguistic constructions in English. One such resource is students’ ethnic dialect and culture. The paper also explores the conflicting political and ethnic values attached to languages and discusses the differential problems of English language learning for each of the four ethnic groups.

Socio-cultural Perspectives on Language Learning

This paper views that learning does not take place in a social vacuum and is socio-culturally and historically situated. As has been cogently argued, knowledge cannot be transmitted from one person to another as ‘commodities’ (Wells, 2000), nor can it be treated as a process of ‘banking’ (Freire, 1970) that downgrades human minds as sheer knowledge containers. Learning in school is hence not regarded a process of direct knowledge transmission from teacher to students in classroom settings, but a dialogically interactive process between them that entails mutually constructed knowledge. This paper sets out to view learning English as a socio-cultural practice that take into account cultural resources available to students and further regards learning as a semiotic process mediated by languages (English and other ethnic dialects in Taiwan) in order to understand the impact of teachers’ guided construction of knowledge in classroom discourse.

Following this argument, Vygotskian and post-Vygotskian perspectives on language learning and development seem to be particularly helpful here. Vygotsky is ‘the founder of a dialectical materialist approach to psychological theory’ that has been variously recognised as either ‘socio-cultural’ or ‘socio-historical’ framework (Scribner, 1997:267). His concept of semiotic mediation was especially acknowledged and has had enormous implications in the field of education in the last three decades. In his short working life, however, his theoretical concept, especially semiotic mediation, appears to always act so ‘felicitously’ that it needs a further theory on language use (Hasan, 2002). Similar comments addressed also by Wertsch’s (1985, 1991) recent literature that has drawn attention to some problems in Vygotsky’s conception of language. Accordingly, one of the linguistic theories that may compatibly supplement Vygotsky’s framework would be Halliday’s linguistic theory of ‘systemic linguistics’ (Hassan, 2002; Wells, l999). As Halliday (1993) puts it, the exclusive characteristic of human learning is that it is ‘a process of making meaning- a semiotic process; and the prototypical form of human semiotic is language’ (p.93; emphasis in original). He continues to argue that ‘language is the essential condition of knowing, the process by which experience becomes knowledge’ (p.94; emphasis in original). Building on Vygotsky and Holliday’s notions of semiotic mediation, it could be argued that learning English in classrooms is not itself a neutral process as knowledge transmission or installation, but a semiotic process of meaning engagement of the two parties.

Since studies of classroom interaction within the socio-cultural literature tend not to place micro-interactional processes within broader socio-cultural and historical contexts, this study draws on Vygotsky and Halliday’s language-based theories to explore conflicting political and ethnic values attached to English language and discuss the differential problems of English language learning for each of the four

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ethnic groups. It is hoped that viewing language as a central mediating role of human mental development may help to chart how English language learning takes place, not only within the classroom walls, but also situated in a wider socio-cultural and historical context.

Methods

This study investigated pupils in grade 8 (aged 13) English language classrooms in four junior high schools with Hakka, Indigenous, Mainlander and Hokkien socio-cultural identities. Pupils were chosen to represent the wide range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds within Taiwanese society. Although Hakka and Indigenous groups have sub-groups spread island wide, this study’s sample included pupils primarily from the Meinung Hakka and Indigenous Paiwan tribe. The sample cannot therefore be considered to be representative of the overall Hakka and Indigenous population in Taiwan. Four schools were purposely chosen, namely, Urbany, Suburbany, Hakka Rural and Mountainside High School. School names have been changed to maintain anonymity. Each school had two parallel English classrooms taught by different teachers who agreed to take part in the study (see Table 1).

Non-participant classroom observations were conducted in these eight classrooms over one term giving a total number of 35 lessons. Teacher-student interactions were audio recorded and fieldnotes were made. Semi-structured interviews were also carried out with students and teachers which asked them to describe aspects of classroom interaction. Audio recordings were transcribed and a typology of coding scheme was developed as a generic guide to identify features of interaction (see Table 2). The typology involves teacher’s questioning and responding types comprising both ‘regulative’ and ‘instructional’ categories. Joint-knowledge markers were especially designed to explore how teachers bridge knowledge by sharing mental context with students. The typology has been tried out through a pilot study undertaken in a Taiwanese secondary school in 2004 and fashioned to ensure its appropriation before applying it to the present study. Analysis focused on how teachers and students constructed shared understanding in English language classrooms, and the extent to which joint understandings were achieved.

Table 1: Observed classes and teachers Urban Rural

School Urbany Suburbany Hakka Rural Mountainside

Class A B C D E F G H

Teacher Mr. Sun

Ms. Wu

Ms. Fang

Ms. Huang

Mr. Yuan

Ms. Mei

Ms. Lin

Ms. Lu

Ethnicity Hokkien Hokkien Hokkien Hakka Hakka Hokkien Hokkien Paiwan

Sex M F F F M F F F

Age 25 31 27 43 30 38 28 28Year / teach 2 8 2 15 2 14 5 4

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Table 2: Typology of teacher’s classroom instruction Teachers’ Questioning Type

Regulative InstructionalHousekeeping (e.g., T: Do you bring your books?)Rhetorical (No answer expected)

I.R.E Direct elicitationCued elicitation (scaffold/ ZPD )

Teachers’ Responding Type

Regulative InstructionalIgnoringRejection

Conformation (e.g., T: Very good)RepetitionElaboration

Teachers’ Joint-Knowledge Markers Royal plurals (‘We’ statements) Continuity (connect past & now) Appeal to shared experience (e.g., T: Do you go to ‘cram school’?)

Results and Discussions

The contrastive analysis of classroom interactions suggested that similarities and discrepancies coexisted across schools and regions. In terms of similarities, emerging findings suggest that overall valuing of high scores in language exams across regions encouraged grammar-oriented pedagogy. Mandarin Chinese was a dominant language in classrooms and was used to support students’ understanding of new linguistic rules. The traditional question-response-evaluation (hereafter termed as IRE) structure of interaction was a dominant instructional discourse. Overt regulative discourse pattern involving direct and indirect teacher control was found to be a generic dominant discourse across eight classrooms. In contrast, ethnic cultural variations across two rural communities contributed to the differentiation of classroom instructions and interactions. Teachers who shared their students’ ethnicity and dialect (such as Hakka or Paiwan) were able to draw on this joint cultural understanding to bridge between school and outside school knowledge. Teachers without this shared cultural knowledge and language had more difficulty in achieving intersubjective meanings with their students even when both parties spoke Mandarin Chinese. Four generic instructional patterns are described crudely due to limited space. Discrepancies of classroom discourse are discussed below in detail with exemplary extracts.

1. Similarities: generic instructional patterns

Structured by the Taiwanese national curriculum standard of ‘Grade 1-9 Curriculum’ and the everyday school schedule, most of the teachers have to cover as many tasks as they can within the constraints of time. Class interactions through oral directives, lecturing and drill practice through quizzes were generically found to be an efficient method of getting through curriculum content in whole class teaching. Little individual attention and group instruction could be discovered across these classrooms except the high ability class in Suburbany School on a few occasions. Given that, four similar instructional patterns across eight classrooms were identified as follows;

grammar-oriented pedagogy,

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Mandarin Chinese as the dominant language, Dominant IRE structures of interaction, Overt regulative discourse pattern.

Grammar-oriented pedagogy: The overall valuing of high scores in language exams across regions encouraged grammar-oriented pedagogy. Most teachers were discovered to explicitly instruct the class on points of grammar and illustrate that well by writing patterns and examples on the board. Grammatical properties of new words were especially illustrated in detail and were well-organised and written on board for students. Most students were requested to take notes by jotting down what was written on the board to ensure understanding and preparation for a possible quiz in the following days. This whole class teaching process was carried out through a mechanism encompassing teacher’s explicit grammatical lecturing and students’ note-taking that were beneficial to rote learning that may lead to better scores in exams.

Mandarin Chinese as the dominant language: Mandarin Chinese was found to be the dominant language in classrooms and was used by most of the eight teachers to support students’ understanding of new linguistic and grammatical rules. Most teachers would make use of Mandarin to tackle ‘house chores’ such as conducting moral education or checking homework in everyday classroom at the outset, and then assisted students’ learning of, for example, new vocabulary and sentence patterns. As the Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) is a dominant pedagogy prevailing in teaching English in Taiwanese secondary schools, Chinese translations were predominantly used to scaffold students’ comprehension of the new vocabulary, phrases and sentences. All eight observed English teachers confirmed in the interview that they tended to speak more Mandarin than English in class. It could be argued that the grammar-oriented pedagogy and overall value of high scores in exams encouraged teachers to speak Mandarin at the expense of listening practice. Under the endemic culture of ‘exam guides pedagogy’ (kao-shi-ling-dao-jiao-xue) within Taiwanese society, most teachers tend to view Mandarin as an effective means to guarantee grammatical explanation and thus high scores in exams because English speaking and listening proficiencies are not yet tested in the National Basic Competence Exam in English.

Dominant IRE sequence of interaction: This IRE structures, have been revealed by research literature as a remarkable dominance of classroom discourse (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975; Edwards & Mercer, 1987; Mehan, 1979). This classic structure was also found as a prevailing pattern across eight classrooms. Most teachers tended to initiate serial questions in order to call students’ attention to their instructions and trigger relevant responses. This turn-taking mechanism shows that the teacher and students engage in ‘turn-allocation machinery’ that achieves the orderly progression of interaction in lessons, as Mehan (1979) puts it. Such machinery was also identified as ‘guessing game’ question-and-answer sessions described by Edwards and Mercer (1987). Some of the questions, however, may go beyond such machinery whereby no answers from students are genuinely expected. This ‘rhetorical’ question type drawn from observational typology of this study, as can be seen in Table 1, was identified as one kind of ‘regulative’ discourse prevailing across eight classrooms.

Overt regulative discourse pattern: Classroom control as overt regulative discourse pattern was discovered to be salient in all eight classrooms. Research literature

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indicates that ‘classroom control’ which demonstrates an authoritative social role of teachers involving either epistemic or behaviour control is well documented by early classroom studies (Edward & Furlong, 1978; Feldman & Wertsch, 1976; Mehan, 1979). This ubiquitous classroom control found across eight classrooms seems to be a necessarily social and communicative process. As Edwards & Mercer (1987:156) put it, the teacher’s role is ‘crucial throughout, both in shaping the general pattern and content of the lesson, and in producing the fine-grained definition of what was done, said and understood.’ The asymmetrical relation of power and control between teacher and learner was exercised by participant teachers in order to warrant their setting agenda. It could be argued that such social relations may be best interpreted, in Bernstein’s words, as the regulative discourse as the dominant, moral discourse because it creates ‘a moral regulation of the social relations of transmission/acquisition, that is, rules of order, relation and identity, and …such a moral order is prior to, and a condition for, the transmission of competencies’ (1990:184).

2. Discrepancies: appeal to common knowledge

Given the similarity of instructional styles, perhaps what is more intriguing is the discrepancy that emerged across eight classrooms. In keeping with socio-cultural perspectives, both teachers and students bring with them values and assumptions about appropriate ways of learning, speaking and acting into classroom settings. To engage in effective discourse in the students’ zone of proximal development (ZPD) (Vygotsky, 1978), efforts could be made by reaching a ‘common ground’ that involves a stretch on both parts of the participants (teacher and students) that collaboratively construct intersubjective meanings of the task in hand. The following episodes, selected from observations in Ms Mei’s class (F) in Hakka Rural and Ms Lu’s class (H) in Mountainside Schools is the best exemplary highlighting the stretch on both parts of the participants to touchdown the niche of intersubjectivity (Rogoff, 1990 ) (see Table 3).

Table 3: Instructional styles of sharing common knowledge School Hakka Rural MountainsideClass F HTeacher Ms. Mei Ms. Lu

Common knowledge Using Mandarin or English

Using ethnic dialect

Using Mandarin or English

Using ethnic dialect

Everyday Taiwanese culture

Everyday ethnic culture

2.1. Sharing ethnic culture and language in Hakka Rural School

In Hakka Rural School, taking the case of Ms. Mei’s class, she was discovered to explicitly share both her students’ Hakka ethnicity and dialect in classroom teaching, and seemed to be able to draw on this joint cultural understanding as a bridge between school and outside school knowledge.Sharing Hakka ethnic culture: This lesson was conducted on the afternoon (13:20~14:05 pm) of 1st October, 2004, which was my fourth observation in Ms Mei

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class. The teacher was at the blackboard and the students were in their seats facing her. In this lesson (Dialogue Two in Lesson Three), Ms Mei and the students were talking about the dialogue between June and Coco. June is a high school girl from America who is currently talking to her Taiwanese friend, Coco, about their different experiences of schooling including cram school. At the outset of the lesson, Ms Mei asked the students to listen to the CD about Dialogue Two followed by some relevant questions. While dealing with the new term ‘cram school’ in the dialogue, she initiated a series of questions concerning Hakka students’ everyday cram school experience. Most of the teacher’s grammatical delineation and explanation was predominately done in Mandarin (hereafter termed ‘M’ in the following extracts).

Extract 1:1 T: After the dialogue about wearing school uniform, Coco changed the topic

2 by asking ‘Do you go to cram school?’

3 [writes on board and reads] ‘Do you go to cram school?’ (Coco changed a

4 topic by asking what?-M)=

5 Ss: [answer promptly] = (‘Do you go to cram school?’-M)

6 T: Cram school. ‘Cram’ is a new word. Read after me. ‘Cram’=

7 Ss: [repeat] =Cram

[The next few turns are spent in reading and repeating the words ‘cram’ and ‘cram school’ between teacher and students .]

8 T: What’s cram school? [expects Chinese translation]

9 Ss: ‘bu-xi-ban’(Cram school)

10 T: Ok, ‘go to cram schools’ is…[‘qi-bu-xi-ban’]

11 Ss: [‘qi-bu-xi-ban’]

12 T: Wo::w, ‘schools’. We have plural ‘s’ here, meaning lots of them.

13 Do you go to cram schools?…seem like a lot of you do. Hello, please raise

14 your hands if you go to cram schools.

15 Ss: [Raise hands and make a little noise.]

16 T: Wow, (half of you do-M). Ok, put down your hands.

17 Ss: [Some complain about going more than twice a week.]

18 T: So ‘lucky’ or so ‘poor’! You can feel about it by yourselves.

Hakka students are known as ‘cram school goers’ thanks to the focus on education within Hakka ethnic culture. When learning the new sentence pattern; ‘go to cram schools,’ as indicated in line 2 of Extract 1, she was discovered to refer to students’ cram school experience by asking ‘do you go to cram schools’ (line 13) with an attempt to bridge between students’ school and out of school knowledge. Following some students’ complaint about being tired of going to cram school (line 17), the teacher tended not to make any value judgment. Instead, she simply responded; ‘you can feel about it by yourselves’ (line 18) which highlighted her understanding and involvement of the local culture. Such local knowledge of everyday ethnic culture,

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and the intention to share it with students in classroom teaching, seemed to help achieve an intersubjective meaning between teacher and students.

Sharing Hakka ethnic language: Before the turns of series questions regarding Hakka students’ cram school experience, as can be seen in Extract 1 in the same lesson, Ms Mei and the students were dealing with the dialogue between June and Coco with a focal topic on their different experiences of wearing school uniforms. At the outset, a few turns were spent on where they were and how cute these two girls looked in school uniforms. Ms Mei then initiated a relevant question in Hakka dialect, as can be seen in the following Extract.

Extract 2:1 T: Coco an::d June are in Coco’s school. Hello! Where are they?

2 Ss: (In Coco’s school.-M) =

3 T: = They are in Coco’s school. [Teacher repeats in Mandarin again.]

4 Very good. June says first. (They start to talk-M) You look so cu::te!

5 (How does she look?-M)

6 S1: ‘ke-ai’. (Cute.) =

7 T: [repeats] = ‘hao-ke-ai’. (So very cu::te.)

8 [speaks Hakka dialect] ‘yi-tzuo-yi-lai-ho-kan-mo?’ (How does she look?)

9 Ss: [repeat in Hakka dialect] ‘hen-ke-ai’ (So very cute!)=

10 T: [echoes in Hakka] =‘hen-ke-ai’ (So very cu::te!)

11 Ss: [Respond with laughter when hearing their mother tongue]

12 T: (Looks very cute-M) [Teacher reads and writes on board.]

13 Ok, read together. You look so cute=

14 Ss: =You look so cute.

[The class continues to talk about June and Coco’s different experiences in wearing school uniform.]

Ms Mei, an ethnic Hokkien, is herself a Hakka daughter-in-law and has been actively involved in the acquisition of Hakka culture and dialect since her marriage. As she points out, ‘I can learn some Hakka from my students while teaching English…I can reflect the way and difficulties they may encounter in learning English from my experience of learning the Hakka language’ (10th December, 2004). She tended to speak Hakka, the students’ mother tongue, in class on occasions or asked students for Hakka translation of a newly learnt English vocabulary. As shown in line 8 of Extract 2, Ms Mei took advantage of her learnt Hakka dialect by asking the question ‘how does she look’ in Hakka which triggered a few turns between the two parties in Hakka (line 9 and 10). According to Ms Mei, this pedagogical strategy somehow helped to empower students to a certain extent because they may consider they were capable of giving the teacher new linguistic knowledge rather than merely being receivers in learning English. Her intention to share with students’ cultural understanding of cram

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school experience and the Hakka language made it possible for the constitution of intersubjective meanings and ‘co-membership’ (Cazden, 1988).

2.2. Sharing ethnic culture and language in Mountainside School Somewhat similar to Ms Mei’s instructional types yet different in ethnicity, Ms Lu is herself an ethnic Paiwan teacher with natural capacity to share students’ mother tongue (Paiwan tribal language) and relevant cultural customs. In Mountainside School, she was discovered to use such cultural codes as joint knowledge in her classroom instructions. This common cultural understanding serves as a ‘bridge’ (Rogoff, 1990) that effectively connects students’ school and outside school knowledge.

Sharing Paiwan ethnic culture: Taking the lesson conducted on the morning (10:10~11:00 am) of 8th September, 2004 for instance, it was my second observation in Ms Lu’s class. The teacher was at the blackboard and the students were in their seats facing her. In this lesson (Lesson One: Peter And Sam Had A Good Summer Vacation), Ms Lu and the students were tackling new vocabulary in Lesson One. At the outset of the lesson, Ms Lu asked the students to read all of the vocabulary together and then reviewed some of the new words learnt in the previous lesson. While introducing the vocabulary ‘family’, she led students to connect the previously learnt word ‘reunion’ and thus generated the phrase ‘family reunion’. She then initiated the question: ‘When do we Indigenous people have family reunions?’ as can be seen in the following Extract.

Extract 3:1 T: Family reunion=

2 Ss: =Family reunion [Students repeat loudly together three times.]

3 T: (How do you translate it?-M)

4 Ss: ‘jia-ting-tuan-jiu’ (family reunion) =

5 T: =Ok, ‘jia-ting-tuan-jiu’ [repeats while writing on board]

6 Ok, when do we Indigenous people have family reunion? Very important.

7 S1: (On the wedding day.-M)

8 S2: (And on the day they get engaged.-M)

9 T: (On wedding day, the day they get engaged and what else?-M)

10 S3: On ‘ching-min-jie’ (Chinese Tomb-swiping Day)

11 T: What about our ‘wu-nian- j i ’? (‘Paiwan Five-Year Ceremony’)

12 Ss: (Yes, we do. -M)

13 T: (None of the villagers are sobering, right!-M)

14 Ss: [Students smile with seemly understanding.]

15 T: (What about our ‘Community Sport Competition’? -M)

16 Ss: (Yes.-M)

17 T: So we have ‘family reunion’ on these events.

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[The next few turns are spent in learning another vocabulary ‘rice’.]

18 T: Next one, ‘Rice’=

19 Ss: =Rice. [Students repeat together three times.]

20 T: (Does anyone of you plant ‘rice’ at home? -M)

21 Ss: No

22 T: You are right. (We don’ t grow rice here . We only eat millet. -M)

23 Ss: [Students are overwhelming and chatting over home plants and food.]

As can be seen in line 6 of Extract 3, the powerful ‘we’ statement as ‘royal plural’ (Edwards & Mercer, 1987) seemed to set up a scene for an initial common ground upon which teacher and students can comfortably interact. In line 11 and 15, two specific Paiwan cultural events; ‘Paiwan Five-Year Ceremony’ and ‘Community Sport Competition’ were both raised as joint-knowledge whereby students may effectively reflect upon and conceptualise the new phrase of ‘family reunion’. Take the case of ‘Paiwan Five-Year Ceremony’, to give a flavour of this cultural activity in Paiwan tribe, here are my fieldnotes, written after the second observation. They express the impression of a crucial cultural activity highly valued by Paiwan community whereby family members will come home for both family reunion and religious purpose.

Paiwan’s Five-Year Ceremony (‘Maleveq’ in Paiwan dialect) is a unique cultural event in Paiwan. It’s the most important ritual held every five years during which families will get together celebrating the Return of Gods and Ancestors while at the same time drinking their Home- brewed millet spirit (‘hsiao-mi-chiu’) to their heart’s content. As this ceremony will be held again this year, Ms Lu seemed to have raised a timely issue in the right season. (Fieldnotes: 8th September, 2004)

Besides, ‘Community Sport Competition’, as another Paiwan cultural event was also indicated by Ms Lu to help the process of knowledge construction. Since Indigenous people are generally known for gifted-agility, the annual Paiwan ‘Community Sport Competition’ has been for decades an important cultural occasion within the community whereby family members tend to come home for this event as a family reunion. Like ‘Five-Year Ceremony’, it was used by the teacher to arrive at the point of intersubjectivity whereby students may effectively reflect upon and help to conceptualise the new phrase of ‘family reunion’. Moreover, the episode regarding growing ‘rice’ at home was discovered in following turns. While introducing the vocabulary ‘rice’ in the same lesson, Ms Lu initiated the question: ‘Does anyone of you plant rice at home?’ as can be seen in line 20. Following students’ ‘No’ response, Ms Lu immediately elaborated such shared cultural knowledge by saying: ‘We don’t grow rice here’ (line 22). Again, students’ home and school experiences were bridged through shared ethnic cultural legacies in Mandarin and English language.

Sharing Paiwan ethnic language: Besides her sharing of the students’ culture in classroom discourse, Ms Lu was found to use the Paiwan mother tongue in the same lesson just outlined. When introducing the vocabulary ‘grow’, the teacher initiated

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another question trying to connect students’ home and school experiences, as shown in the following Extract. Extract 4:1 T: ‘grow’=

2 Ss: =‘grow’ [Students repeat together three times including its past tense.]

3 T: (For example, what do you ‘grow’ at home now?-M)

4 S1: [speak Paiwan dialect] ‘V asa ’…

5 S2: ‘Vaqu’. [Other students utter different plants in Paiwan dialect.]

6 T: So ‘vasa’ is carrot. [Teacher repeats in Paiwan dialect and elaborates it.]

In line 3 of Extract 4, Ms Lu initiated the question: ‘What do you grow at home now?’ To my surprise, one of the students promptly replied with ‘Vasa’ (carrot) in Paiwan dialect (line 4). Interestingly, Ms Lu immediately took advantage of her Paiwan identity by responding with the same dialect (line 6). Her appealing to a shared understanding and experience of the Paiwan language seemed to connect students’ home and school knowledge. In her narratives of how she felt while using Paiwan language in teaching English, Ms Lu revealed that ‘I tend to use our mother tongue quite often…just to make my class ‘‘relax’’. It seems that a sense of warmness (‘qing-qie-gan’) could be created by using our shared Paiwan language’ (3rd November, 2004).

Intersubjectivity refers to a shared focus of perspective and attention that is mutually constructed between participants in discourse (Rommetveit, 1979; Rogoff, 1990; Smolka et al., 1995; Wertsch, 1998). Through bridging students’ ethnic cultural understanding and common dialects with school knowledge, Ms Mei and Ms Lu both create a comfortable home-like ‘zone’ where teacher and students can stretch their common understanding for knowledge transaction purposes. It could be argued further that, as Chang-Wells & Well (1993) argue on the dynamics of discourse of language and the construction of knowledge, they comment that knowledge construction is a semiotic process that knowledge is ‘signalled and marked by patterns of language use that cultural differences have their impact…the ways in which these differences are negotiated and validated affects what are accepted as the appropriate norms of interaction and interpretation in classroom’ (p.59). In speaking Hakka and Paiwan mother tongues alongside dominant Mandarin and English language, Ms Mei and Ms Lu demonstrate a semiotic process of meaning engagement as to whose understanding is used as the basis for determining what counts as knowledge and what is assumed to be known (Edwards & Mercer, 1987).

3. Issues of mismatch

In contrast to Ms Mei and Ms Lu’s classroom discourse, teachers who failed to achieve shared understanding of students’ ethnic dialect and culture seemed to retard classroom learning and teaching in an implicit way. Taking the lesson conducted on the morning (11:15~12:00 am) of 25th October, 2004 for example, it was my second observation in Class G in Mountainside School. The Hokkien teacher, Ms Lin, was at the blackboard and the students were in their seats facing her. In this lesson (Lesson Five: Amanda’s Cell Phone), the class were tackling new vocabulary as it was the

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very beginning of Lesson Five. At the outset, Ms Lin distributed three English learning sheets (designed by her) with a theme relating to the Paiwan people’s ‘Five-Year Ceremony’ which would take place the next day. She insisted the students listen very carefully to her instruction in order to avoid any misunderstanding. The whole discourse in the following excerpt was predominantly carried out in Mandarin Chinese.

Extract 5:1 T: Now I have learning sheets for you. Listen to me and take a look at it.

2 [Teacher holds the sheet high and requests students to look at it.]

3 Raise your hands if you have not got it!

4 Ss: [chatting noisily]

5 T: Keep your mouth shut! How can I talk if you guys keep chatting!

6 (.) This is for you because you will visit the site of ‘Five-Year Ceremony’

7 from eight to ten tomorrow morning. [Students calm down a little.]

[The next few lines are spent on reading and explaining three major tasks on the learning sheet alongside students’ occasional verbal responses.]

8 T: Question one: ‘What kinds of sacrifices are offered in the ceremony?’

9 Please draw them on the blank of the learning sheet. (0.5) We’ll talk about

10 Question two after tackling the dialogue on the second sheet. Question

11 three: ‘Do the elders wear special decorations in the ceremony?’ Watch

12 carefully tomorrow. Observe those of your chiefs and your elders. See what

13 do they wear for the ceremony. Write them down and draw.[Teacher raises voice pitch to put off students’ aggressive verbal response.]

14 T: [repeats how to do the task again]

15 S1: Question one…what is question one?

16 T: I will not explain further.

17 S2: What about question two?

18 T: [impatient] You don’t have to do it! Just one and three! Let me repeat once.

19 Don’t act like fools mis understand ing my points even after my repetition

20 for ten times ! [Teacher repeats the explanation again.]

21 T: The main reason I give out the shit now is to let you observe the two things.

22 [warning] Don’t tell me you do not see anything tomorrow.

23 Take out your textbook and turn to page 54. Put away other stuff.

24 Ss: [Some students seem not listening.]

25 T: [Addresses one of the students.] Put them away! Don’t let me find out you are writing other homework!

13


Although Ms Lin’s class could be characterised as a classroom with low attainment and verbally aggressive students, a great deal could be said about this episode. Three comments seem to have to suffice in terms of teacher-students interaction. First, as can be seen in line 5 and 25 of Extract 5, the teacher made use of extensive disciplinary discourse that made it possible for her students to follow what apparently seem to be simple tasks at hand. Phrases like ‘Keep your mouth shut’ and ‘Put them away! Don’t let me find out you are writing other homework!’ were exercised by the teacher to maintain classroom control. Second, in statements like, ‘Don’t act like fools misunderstanding my points…’ (line 19) and ‘Don’t tell me you do not see anything tomorrow’ (line 22) reinforced the message that the teacher suspected students’ ability to undertake the task at hand along whereby they should do exactly what they were told to do with teacher’s overt directives in a somewhat humiliated tone. Third, and perhaps something more important that involves ethnic boundary leading to implicit cultural mismatch. Though the apparent powerful ‘we’ statement was discovered in many classroom discourses, Ms Lin used ‘you’ instead in saying, ‘Observe those of ‘‘your’’ chiefs and ‘‘your’’ elders’ in line 12. Perhaps it was due to Ms Lin’s Hokkien identity that made it possible for her to position herself as an ‘outsider’. Instead of valuing students’ home cultural ceremony, Ms Lin seemed to view this cultural activity as an epistemic task such that it should be undertaken by students for academic purposes rather than a shared cultural understanding between the two parties.

In contrast to the preceding episode, a similar topic of discourse regarding the Paiwan people’s ‘Five-Year Ceremony’ was played out, yet in a somewhat different way. The following episode shows how Ms Lu took a different approach to sympathise rather than negate students’ experiences of attending their shared cultural legacy. This lesson was conducted on the morning (10:15~11:00 am) of 27 th October, 2004, the following day of ‘Five-Year Ceremony’. At the outset of the lesson, Ms Lu asked students about their experiences of the ceremony. The whole discourse was also undertaken in Mandarin Chinese.

Extract 6:1 T: Did you go there? Up the hill? (.) Where was it? On the hill, right?

2 What did you see there?

3 S1: Stabbing the ball.

4 T: For how long?

5 Ss: Two hours.

6 S3: [a little complaint] We are standing there all the time.

7 S4: The ball has never been stabbed!

8 S5: We still have it today…it runs everyday.

9 T: Was it fun?

10 S6: No, …very boring!

11 T: Can you join in the stabling?

12 Ss: No. [chatting about who were eligible for the ritual]

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13 T: [changes topic] Oh, (.) do you have to write things you spotted yesterday on

14 the learning sheets?

15 Ss: Yes.

16 T: Oh, I think I have to give you the learning sheets about this ceremony.

17 S7: [complains] Oh, no more. We have five or six pages!

18 T: Does it matter? Don’t worry, just like before. [Teacher tries to remind them of similar cultural learning done in the past.]

19 S8: We have to hand them in next week!

20 T: Ok, (.) then, I’ll give them to you before Friday.

21 S7: [inaudible] [seems like complaining]

22 T: Ms Lin designed it, not me. Just do it. It’s really not that troublesome![Ms Lu stops the turns and asks students to open books for Lesson Five.]

This episode commenced as Ms Lu attempted to invite the class for a discussion of how things went going on the previous day. As shown in Extract 6, the teacher initiated a few questions as a kind of ‘guessing game’ in the preparatory phase of the lesson. In asking, ‘Did you go there…Up the hill, right?’ in line 1, the teacher, as an ethnic Paiwan insider who knew the answer well, intended to elicit students’ understanding of this cultural event taking place on a hilltop only 3 minutes walk from school. In line 13, the teacher shifted from a discussion of students’ real experience to work on the focal topic of the learning sheets. Despite students’ mumbling complaints about seemly laborious homework required by school, Ms Lu appeared to make use of ‘continuity’ with statements like, ‘Don’t worry, just like before’ (line 18) to remind students of similar cultural learning carried out in the past. In this respect, Ms Lu seemed to not only bridge between students’ past and present experience but also generate a sense of ‘co-membership’ through her sympathetic understanding of the task.

Ms Lin’s classroom discourse in Class G in the preceding episode draws our attention to the issue of, in Lave’s (1996) words, ‘mislearning’ or ‘mismatch’, albeit from somewhat different theoretical perspectives. In the context of learning in situ, Lave (1996:16) argues that an alternative view of non-learning or ‘failure’ identities has to be placed and interpreted within the scope of meaningful ‘active normal social locations and processes’ rather than being ‘commonly assumed to result from the inability or refusal on the part of an individual.’ In other words, the underlying conception of non-learning or mis-learning has to be socially and historically situated. In a similar vein, taking the case of line 16 and 19 in Extract 5, when students’ prompt responses and queries were mostly rejected or even reprehended by Ms Lin, the teacher’s overt definition of meaning as authority and power prevailed in the discourse. As meaning is bound to be negotiated in everyday discourse (Mehan, 1996), the interlocutors of two parties are both responsible for the construction of understanding. In contrast to Ms Lu’s class, the students’ opportunity of meaning sharing was thus socially blocked leading to mismatch and mis-learning.

Conclusions

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This socio-cultural study views knowledge as mutually constructed through dialogical interaction and draws on Vygotsky and Halliday’s notions of semiotic mediation that place language as the mediating role of human mental development. The study sets out to investigate differences in teacher-student interaction in four regions in Taiwan chosen to represent locales dominated by one of four ethnic groups. Resulting findings are twofold; first, similarities of classroom instructions across schools suggest that valuing of high scores in language exams encouraged grammar-oriented pedagogy, Mandarin Chinese as a ‘national language’ in Taiwan was discovered to be a dominant language in classrooms and was used to support students’ grammatical understanding of English, classic IRE structures of interaction was a dominant instructional discourse, and an overt regulative discourse pattern as a generic dominant discourse across schools. These common discursive types seem to be mutually entwined serving to meet overall value of high scores in language exams within Taiwanese society. Second, and perhaps more intriguing findings reveal that two observed teachers in two rural schools who shared their students’ ethnicity and mother tongues (i.e., Hakka or Paiwan) were able to draw on joint cultural understandings to bridge between school and outside school knowledge. Teachers without this shared cultural knowledge and language had more difficulty in achieving intersubjective meanings with their students whereby invoked notions of mismatch leading to students’ mis-learning. Access to students’ ethnic cultural knowledge and minority dialects therefore was found to be an important socio-cultural resource that aided English learning even when the dominant school language was Mandarin Chinese.

Further exploration still need to be carried out to identify differences between urban and rural communities related to whether or not a student’s home language was also the dominant language of instruction in the school. In rural communities students are encouraged by government to learn their ethnic dialect. The conflicting historico-political and ethnic values attached to languages, i.e., learning English as an international language and learning through ethnic dialects as mediating tools seem to be at issue and may help to further understand the differential problems of English language learning for each of the four ethnic groups in Taiwan.

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