ICALLE 2020 INVITED SPEAKERS

Plenary Speakers

Dr. Maria Luz C. Vilches

Nicola Galloway's Webpage

Ateneo de Manila University
Philippines

Becoming a Trainer: The Experience of Philippine English Teachers in the Primary Innovations Project

In an era when English has been spreading exponentially (Crystal, 1997; Graddol, 1997, 2006), a development linked to economic expansion and greater access to knowledge, the role of competent teacher trainers is crucial in facilitating teacher development programs (Burns and Richards, 2009) that can enhance expertise among English teachers so that they can respond more fully to the pedagogic demands of global English. However, relatively little is known about the process of becoming a teacher trainer. This paper reflects on the experience of four skillful English teachers in the Philippines as they learnt how to become teacher trainers in the Primary Innovations Project (PIP). First, I shall give an account of PIP against the background of English teacher education in the Philippines, including a profile of the participants of the study - the Primary Trainers of Teachers (PToTs), and an analysis of PIP content and procedures. Then I describe the PToTs’ experiences of becoming trainers, particularly how they accessed their teaching and training skills and what they learned from such experiences, based on a small-scale inquiry I undertook. I conclude by extracting learning points from the reflection on PToTs’ experiences in relation to the dynamics of ELT trainer development processes and by discussing the implications for the development of thinking on professional learning and the training of teacher trainers.

Professor Adam Jaworski

Nicola Galloway's Webpage

The University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR, China

Three-dimensional language objects in unequal urban spaces

In many parts of the world, urban regeneration and gentrification have brought to prominence new forms of displayed language, for example, in the form of commercial signage (Trinch and Snajdr, 2018), public art, and decorative “language objects” (Gonçalves, 2018; Jaworski, 2015). In this paper, I specifically focus on publically emplaced 3D-place names, such as the “Hollywood” sign in Los Angeles, that do not function as indexes of place; rather they are metonyms of place heavily invested in the cultural production of the tourist–consumer experience. Following a Social Semiotic (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996) and Geosemiotic (Scollon and Wong Scolon, 2003) analysis of the affordances of these language objects, I suggest that, for the most part, they manifest an egalitarian stance styling the tourist–commercial areas of their emplacement as accessible, inclusive, and ludic. However, they also stand in contrast to this democratizing ethos, as the regenerated and gentrifying urban spaces sustain rather than alleviate economic and class inequalities fragmenting cities into ‘mosaics of polarized geographies’ (Mac Giolla Chríost, 2007: 10).

Professor Handoyo Puji Widodo

Nicola Galloway's Webpage

King Abdulaziz University
Saudi Arabia

Mainstreaming Global Englishes (GE) in Language Materials Design

In contemporary English language teaching (ELT) practices, native speakerism and standardized English discourses remain prevalent or institutionally legitimized where English language learners are benchmarked against native speaker-like or Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR)-based language proficiency, for example. This benchmarking trivializes the complexity of English language learning in contexts where English is not widely spoken or officially used in multicultural and plurilinguistic encounters. This case shows the socio-politically dominant discourses of native speakerism and otherness-oriented language standardization in an educational landscape. These two discourses are still adopted in English language materials design where assessment-type learning tasks become typical coursebook activities. To add to a growing body of research on Global Englishes (GE) in English language education, I would like to talk about the integration of GE into language materials design. The goal of this plenary talk is to propose a nuanced way of designing GE-based language materials from a critical ecological perspective. To begin with, I talk about the reconceptualization of Global Englishes in an educational territory. Then, I move on to sketch out a critical ecological framework for designing GE-based language materials. Finally, I will exemplify GE-based language learning tasks where I experimented with my students. I argue that language materials design should go beyond native speakerism and CEFR-benchmarking discourses. Contextually-sensitive language materials design should be encouraged.

Young Scholars Forum

Dr. Raymund Victor M. Vitorio

De La Salle University
Philippines

Dr. Raymund Vitorio is based at the Department of English and Applied Linguistics, De La Salle University-Manila. He recently earned his PhD in Language, Discourse and Communication from the National University of Singapore and King’s College London. His dissertation investigated the discursive construction of citizenship in Singapore through linguistic ethnography, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and metapragmatics. His papers have appeared in international publications, such as in volumes published by Channel View Publications and the Oxford University Press.

New Citizenship and the Global-Local Interface: A Metapragmatic Approach to Citizenship Narratives in Singapore

This paper participates in the ongoing academic debates on language and citizenship by examining the perspective of new citizens in the discursive construction of citizenship—a perspective that has been neglected by many recent studies on the sociolinguistics of citizenship. This perspective is important because it reflects the inimitable position of new citizens in society: even though they had already proven their worth as deserving recipients of citizenship, they continue to face social issues because of their transnational connections and visible racial and linguistic differences from local-born citizens.

In this paper, I use a metapragmatic approach to investigate how new citizens talk about citizenship. The data used in this paper come from an ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Singapore in 2015-2016. I argue that my participants’ accounts of affect and lived experiences about moments when they claimed to have encountered the notion of citizenship in their everyday lives reveal how new citizens can contest and negotiate the global-local interface—a binary opposition that undergirds dominant public discourses on Singapore (new) citizenship. This paper views citizenship as a metasign: a sign “…that regiments how it itself and other signs are to be interpreted” (Gal, 2016: 114). I show how my participants used the signs of family and passports—signs which are within the semiotic range of citizenship (Agha, 2007)—to present themselves as new citizens who contest the global-local interface but still adhere to the expectations of the Singaporean state and society. This shows that new citizens are not merely passive subjects of citizenship regimes and discourses: they can negotiate and reconfigure them when self-presenting as good new citizens of Singapore. Hence, I claim that the notion of citizenship must be understood not just in terms of its legal-political aspects but also with respect to people’s affect and lived experiences.

Christian Albert G. Go

National University of Singapore
Singapore

Christian Go is a PhD candidate studying English Language and Linguistics at the National University of Singapore. His current research examines the semiotic construction of Metro Manila Pride’s linguistic landscape. His research interests fall under language and sexuality, linguistic anthropology and affect theory.

It’s (not) OK to be gay: Heterotopic formations in the linguistic landscape of the Metro Manila Pride March

This study examines the linguistic landscape (LL) of the 2018 Metro Manila Pride March (MMPM) in relation to the presence of three dominant stakeholders: a progressive Christian church (Church of Freedom in Christ Ministries), an Evangelical anti-LGBT group, and the pride march participants. Specific focus is given to the these stakeholders as they represent varying and conflicting religion-based conceptions of sexuality in the Philippines. These tensions manifest materially in the LL of the MMPM, and so I argue that while the MMPM is generally seen as an ‘LGBT-affirmative’ space, it is likewise a constrained, contested site, partly emerging from the intersections of religious and sexual discourses. Using gathered data (photographs, videos, and field notes), I examine each stakeholder’s use of multimodal signs to take up stances (Kiesling 2018) in relation to other stakeholders, as well as discourse that (in)validates non-normative sexualities. Moreover, I utilize the principle of emplacement (Scollon & Scollon 2003) to examine how the physical location of these groups contribute to the development of the MMPM as a ‘heterotopic affective space’ (Zembylas 2009). That is, each stakeholder present in the MMPM creates heterotopic formation by circulating particular affects such as (un)acceptance to demarcate their respective position within the MMPM. As such, the configuration of competing heterotopic formations, founded on and supported by contrasting affects and discourses about non-normative sexuality, is crucial to understanding the MMPM as an LL. This study contributes to the growing scholarship regarding sexuality’s embeddedness in linguistic landscapes.

Nicanor L. Guinto

University of Hong Kong & King's College, London
Hong Kong SAR, China & United Kingdom

Nicanor (Nic) Guinto is currently pursuing his PhD jointly offered by the University of Hong Kong and King’s College London (University of London). He is working on how the notion of domestic work(er) emerge in situated tellings of lived experiences of Filipinos hired as domestic workers in Hong Kong. He is an Assistant Professor (on study leave) at Southern Luzon State University in Quezon Province. His research interests include language communication-in-society, critical discourse analysis, and critical pedagogy.

Chronotopic (re)configurations in life stories of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong

Temporary labor migrants from the Philippines, particularly those employed in the caring and service industries, are said to collectively evoke a sense of belonging to an imagined community of Filipinos-in-diaspora as a way to mitigate feelings of, among other things, contradictory class mobility and dislocation (Aguilar Jr., 2014; Parreñas, 2001). Employing a linguistic ethnographic approach, I investigate these claims by examining the chronotopic organization of life stories of 20 Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong who were part of a University-based organization that offers free Sunday classes to domestic workers. The narratives were elicited as part of ethnographic interviews conducted by me, a kababayan (fellow Filipino), between February to December 2017. Following Agha (2007), chronotopes are non-isolatable configurations of ‘place-time-and-personhood’ that are hinged on particular participation frameworks (what he calls ‘mass mediated spacetime’). I demonstrate that, on the one hand, such situated tellings enable us to see (re)conceptualizations of time and space that may not be typically linked to widely held notions about ‘being a domestic worker’ or ‘being an Overseas Filipino Worker’; on the other, these situated chronotopic (re)configurations tend to be used by the tellers to recursively position themselves in the unequal distribution of global labor opportunities.

Maxine Rafaella C. Rodriguez

National University of Singapore
Singapore

Maxine Rafaella C. Rodriguez is an Instructor at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines, Diliman. She is pursuing her MA in English Language and Linguistics (Research) at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), historical revisionism, and sociolinguistics. Her presentation “Marcos legacy as state ideology in Social Sciences textbooks” is part of her MA thesis in which she investigates the historical revisionism of Ferdinand Marcos in seven state-sponsored Social Sciences textbooks.

Marcos legacy as state ideology in Social Sciences textbooks

Education plays a key role in establishing alignments with historical figures as state ideology. This is particularly the case with the textbook – an educational state apparatus that systematically perpetuates ideologies among young and impressionable target consumers. On the one hand, historical revisionism is inevitable due to the need for updating information; on the other is its pejorative use (Cattini, 2011) in which historical narratives are manipulated for political ends and with a complete lack of empirical evidence. In this paper, I assume the second definition by using a multimodal critical discourse analysis of the historical revisionism of dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos in two state-sponsored textbooks published in 1987 and 2000, respectively, and consumed in the Philippines. I conclude that state ideology can be deduced in the striking correlation between Marcos’ representations in the textbooks and the political alignments of the incumbent president during the respective textbooks’ publication years. By and large, Marcos is represented positively when the president is politically aligned with him, and negatively when not. Findings from this study suggest the presence of an unstandardized Social Sciences textbook content across curricula and a shifting perception of the Marcos regime across administrations, both of which constitute the role of the education sector in (un)consciously promoting the socio-political resurgence of the Marcos legacy of “corruption, brutality, and impunity” (Robles, 2016).

SYMPOSIA

Lexical Bias among Tagalog-speaking Filipino Pre-school Children

Aprilette C. Devanadera (Southern Luzon State University, Lucban, Philippines)
Ericson O. Alieto (Western Mindanao State University, Zamboanga, Philippines)E

This study examined the narrative production of forty (40) Tagalog-speaking Filipino pre-school children to determine the noun bias in the early vocabulary of the participants. The results showed that the noun utterances got the highest percentage of occurrences in the children’s narrative production. Thus a noun bias is present among the young Filipino bilingual children. Although the results revealed that both male and female do not significantly differ in the production of nouns and adjectives, it is however interesting to point that there is a significant difference in the use of verbs between male and female pre-school children. The female children showed a preponderance in the use of verbs which several studies claim that verbs are more complex for children to learn. In addition, the present study investigated the influence of socio-economic status of the family in the lexical inventory of the participants. The result of the study illustrated that gender and socio-economic status influence the participants’ lexical inventories.

Examining the Morphological Processing of Inflected and Derived Words by Students in Grades 7, 8, and 9

Jennibelle R. Ella (Colegio de Sa Juan de Letran Calamba, Philippines)
Marvin C. Casalan (University of Antique, Sibalom, Philippines)
Dr. Rochelle Irene G. Lucas (De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines)

Morphological processing of inflected and derived words tends to vary by age as studies have reported that preschool children begin to produce inflected words spontaneously in their speech earlier than derived words (Brown, 1973; de Villiers & de Villiers, 1973). Conversely, knowledge of derived forms occurs in late childhood and are continuously learned even beyond adolescence. This study follows Deacon, Campbell, Tamming, and Kirby’s (2010) attempt to establish a direct comparison of relational knowledge of inflected and derived forms through priming method. Specifically, it focuses on ESL children whose native language is Kinaray-a – a language widely spoken in Antique Province in the central part of the Philippines. The experiment involved 90 students from Grades 7, 8, and 9 in a public high school. They were presented four types of priming conditions – root forms, inflected, derived and orthographic control items (e.g., form, formed, forming, and format) then followed by a fragment completion task (e.g., f o _ _ ). The results showed that the participants were able to complete the fragment with the target word (e.g., form for f o _ _ ). Analysis of the mean accuracy and priming effect revealed that identity/root form had the highest score and the greatest priming effect was followed by the inflected and the derived forms. Moreover, no statistically significant difference was found between inflectionally and derivationally suffixed words as they are both equally effective in eliciting the target words. Finally, priming effects were greater for the inflected and derived forms than for the orthographic control, and they were also found to be consistent by and across grades.

Features of Filipino Infant Directed Speech (IDS) and Maternal Input

Richard M. Rillo (Centro Escolar University, Manila, Philippines)
Jimmylen Z. Tonio (Catanduanes State University, Virac, Philippines)
Dr. Rochelle Irene G. Lucas (De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines)

When talking to infants, adults, especially mothers, espouse a particular type of speech known as Infant-directed Speech (IDS) or “babytalk” or “babytalking” , which contains a set of specialized speech with simplified grammatical construction; more repetitive; and more grammatical than adult-directed speech. Specifically, this study reports on the lexical repertoire of Filipino mothers’ IDS enriched by the inclusion of code switching as a linguistic strategy in optimizing language development among multilingual Filipino infants. This study has found out that Filipino mothers use as many nouns as verbs in their IDS more than any other lexical categories; and explored inter-sentential code switching as a strategy in their IDS. The findings of this study generate baseline information in part by recent cross-linguistic studies on early lexical development, contrary to the universal noun-bias hypothesis among young children, and the use of a single language in addressing young children to optimize language development.

Rewriting Boundaries: Integrating English and Science Classes Using the PREP Method in Writing Short Essays

Mark Collin V. de Guzman (Espiritu Santo Parochial School, Manila, Philippines)

This paper is an action research that gauged the effectiveness of an intervention designed to make students use the organizational pattern PREP (Point, Reason, Evidence and concluding Point) Method learned during English classes, in short essays in summative assessments of Science classes. The intervention process is aimed to solve the problem of making students purposely use language arts skills mastered during English class in content subjects through a more purposeful level of subject integration. Following the genre – based approach to teaching writing, the English teacher treated the writing of short essays as responses in summative tests as a genre, meaning its characteristics were fleshed out and practiced using the PREP Method. Consequently, in the Science class, the teacher highlighted the advantage of using the PREP method in answering summative assessments (particularly, in the laboratory experiment sheets and fourth quarterly exam). Implemented during the last weeks of the final grading period, the intervention process was clipped into a period of three weeks and was focused on a single Grade 9 class. The results showed that the intervention clearly worked since it made the students use the PREP Method on their own volition and without prompts in a major examination. Albeit limited in scale, the research showed that making learners use language arts skills in content subjects can be achieved only if content teachers are willing to work closely with language arts teachers in developing materials and activities that would allow students to see language as a tool in mastering content

Can academic writing become learner-centered? Reflections on the pedagogy of writing in the university

Rommel Chrisden Rollan Samarita (San Beda College Alabang, Muntinlupa, Philippines)

This participatory action research revisited the writing pedagogy in the Basic Research Skills/English for Specific Purpose course—ENGLRES—an academic writing program offered by the Department of English and Applied Linguistics (DEAL) to undergraduate students of De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines. Using a needs analysis questionnaire, the study documented the learning needs and preferences of 120 university students in academic writing. The survey revealed that among numerous English lessons and skills involved in the academic writing program, students considered (1) topic selection, (2) editing, and (3) thesis statement, as needs in the course. In addition, students preferred (1) writing exercises, (2) conferencing sessions, and (3) library visits in the program. The findings were consistent with the responses of selected students in focused group discussions and the accounts of selected professors in one-on-one interviews on writing pedagogy. With this context, the research considered topic selection as site of intervention and the suggested learning activities as inputs to materials design. The study utilized a teaching module which contains lesson plans, worksheets, and assessment tools on topic selection. Forty (40) university students served as participants in the intervention, which ran for 2 weeks. After delivering the module, the intervention yielded positive results. The study reported (1) the positive attitudes of students on the learning activities, (2) the high scores of students in 3 writing exercises on topic selection, and (3) the noteworthy evaluations of students and professor on the intervention. The study confirmed the pedagogical assertions of Spratt (2001), Lambert (2001), and Nunan (1988) that students’ needs and preferences are at the forefront in reforming the general design of, and the ruling practices in language classrooms. This research poses the possibility of a learner-centered academic writing curriculum as an emergent site in the theory and practice of second language writing.

Enhancing Reading Comprehension Through Culturally Relevant Texts and Literature Circles: An Action Research

Dannah Neriah L. Tan (De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines)

This paper reports on the results of an action research that explored the relationship between reading comprehension and cultural relevance of text along with use of literature circles for a group of eight (8) tenth-grade high school students in the Philippines. Cloze tests were first administered to the participants to determine the reading level of the selected texts, which were found to be at the independent reading level, an important prerequisite for literature circles. Reading comprehension was measured by the previously mentioned Cloze tests alongside reading comprehension tests, unaided story retelling, and journal writing. To help define and determine the cultural relevance of texts from the perspective of the participants, the Cultural Relevance Rubric adapted from Ebe (2011) was used. The results of data gathering, including the reading comprehension and cultural relevance scores of the participants, suggest that while participants were able to relate to the stories, there was no significant relationship between reading comprehension and cultural relevance. In spite of this, improvements in reading comprehension of the participants were observed, mainly from the results of journal writing and personal observation. The level of cultural relevance was found to be affected by how closely participants felt the text mirrored events of their personal life. The use of literature circles was met with positive responses and were cited by the participants to be very effective for learning and improvement. Aspects of cultural relevance as seen in the study, as well as implications for text selection and use of literature circles, are also discussed.

WORKSHOPS

Dr. Jonna Marie A. Lim

St. Scholastica's College Manila & De La Salle University
Philippines

Jonna Marie A. Lim, Ph.D. is an educator and a BSE Major in English graduate of Philippine Normal University. She holds a Ph. D. in Applied Linguistics and an M.A. in Teaching English Language from the De La Salle University, Manila. She is currently a part–time faculty of the DLSU’s graduate school and the High School Principal of St. Scholastica’s College Manila where she started out as a High School teacher of English, 14 years ago. She is the language trainer of Chevrolet Philippines and she recently published a course module on Purposive Communication for Rex Publishing. Her research interests include language teaching and assessment, sociolinguistics, language acquisition and psycholinguistics.

Statistical Literacy and Production in Language Research

The objective of the workshop is two-fold: (1) develop the participants’ statistical literacy – their ability to understand quantitative data in language research, through result analysis, and (2) equip them with the knowledge and skills to use fundamental statistics in the different sub-fields of applied linguistics through demonstration and hands-on exercises. Specifically, the workshop will focus on the most common statistical methods and analysis in applied linguistics research articles: one-way ANOVA, t-test, and Pearson correlation. At the end of the workshop, the participants are expected to comprehend statistical results in language research, identify and use the correct statistical test given a research question and its corresponding data, use the JASP software to run basic statistical tests, and interpret the results of these statistical tests.

Dr. Raymund Victor M. Vitorio

De La Salle University
Philippines

Dr. Raymund Vitorio is a full-time faculty at the Department of English and Applied Linguistics, De La Salle University-Manila. He recently earned his PhD in Language, Discourse and Communication from the National University of Singapore and King’s College London. His dissertation investigated the discursive construction of citizenship in Singapore through linguistic ethnography, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and metapragmatics. His papers have appeared in international publications, such as in volumes published by Channel View Publications and the Oxford University Press.

Qualitative Research Methods in Sociolinguistics

Methodological issues and innovations are integral to the development of the field of sociolinguistics. While earlier sociolinguistic methods were able to effectively illustrate the methodological problems of Chomskyan linguistics (e.g. Labov, 1972), they were consequently criticized for being too structuralist and positivist. In this workshop, I discuss the place of qualitative research methods in sociolinguistics. To do this, I first provide a historical sketch of the key events (or “waves”) in the development of sociolinguistics that warranted a turn to qualitative methods. I then discuss several qualitative methods that have become dominant in variationist and non-variationist sociolinguistic research, such as interactional sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, linguistic ethnography, discourse analysis, and narrative analysis. The workshop concludes with a discussion of the relationship between theory, method, and writing.

ICALLE 2020 INVITED SPEAKERS

Plenary Speakers

Professor Adam Jaworski

The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR, China

Young Scholars Forum

Dr. Raymund Victor M. Vitorio

De La Salle University Philippines

New Citizenship and the Global-Local Interface: A Metapragmatic Approach to Citizenship Narratives in Singapore

SYMPOSIA

Lexical Bias among Tagalog-speaking Filipino Pre-school Children

Aprilette C. Devanadera (Southern Luzon State University, Lucban, Philippines) Ericson O. Alieto (Western Mindanao State University, Zamboanga, Philippines)E

Examining the Morphological Processing of Inflected and Derived Words by Students in Grades 7, 8, and 9

Jennibelle R. Ella (Colegio de Sa Juan de Letran Calamba, Philippines) Marvin C. Casalan (University of Antique, Sibalom, Philippines) Dr. Rochelle Irene G. Lucas (De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines)

Features of Filipino Infant Directed Speech (IDS) and Maternal Input

Richard M. Rillo (Centro Escolar University, Manila, Philippines) Jimmylen Z. Tonio (Catanduanes State University, Virac, Philippines) Dr. Rochelle Irene G. Lucas (De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines)

WORKSHOPS

Dr. Jonna Marie A. Lim

St. Scholastica's College Manila & De La Salle University Philippines

Statistical Literacy and Production in Language Research

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The University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR, China

De La Salle University
Philippines

Aprilette C. Devanadera (Southern Luzon State University, Lucban, Philippines)
Ericson O. Alieto (Western Mindanao State University, Zamboanga, Philippines)E

Jennibelle R. Ella (Colegio de Sa Juan de Letran Calamba, Philippines)
Marvin C. Casalan (University of Antique, Sibalom, Philippines)
Dr. Rochelle Irene G. Lucas (De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines)

Richard M. Rillo (Centro Escolar University, Manila, Philippines)
Jimmylen Z. Tonio (Catanduanes State University, Virac, Philippines)
Dr. Rochelle Irene G. Lucas (De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines)

St. Scholastica's College Manila & De La Salle University
Philippines