BAAL 2014 Abstract accepted!
BAAL Abstract accepted!
My abstract has been accepted for the 2014 Annual BAAL IC SIG (British Association for Applied Linguistics, Intercultural Communication Special Interest Group). The conference will be held at the Moray House School of Education, the University of Edinburg during May 22nd-23 2014. I feel grateful to Richard for his time, thoughts and advice on how to write an abstract that fits with the theme of the conference and what message the audience can take with them from my talk (the ‘so what?’ question). Please see my abstract below and here’s the link to the event: https://baalicsig.wordpress.com/activities/icsig-seminar2014/
This is the BAAL IC SIG blog http://baalicsig.wordpress.com/
Mapping the Intercultural (Communicative) Competence Territory: Analyzing Education Policy Documents within ASEAN Economic Community Context
ABSTRACT:
In 2015, the member states of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) – including my home context of Thailand – will establish the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) thereby enabling the free flow of professionals, goods, services and investment throughout ‘the single ASEAN’ market. There will also be increased intercultural interactions between people within the same region but from differing cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Since 2008, English has been ASEAN’s official working language (ASEAN Charter: Article 34), a lingua franca role within the region which is set to become even more marked after the establishment of the AEC. In this paper, I present my documentary analysis of selected ASEAN and Thailand education policies (written in both English and Thai) in particular focusing on the policies written by the Thailand Commission on Higher Education which consider the possible impact of the AEC establishment on the Thai Higher Education. From this analysis, I draw conclusions regarding: the extent to which the concerns for intercultural communication within the ASEAN region are discussed; the ways the notion of Intercultural (Communicative) Competence is described; and the possible implications for the role of Thai TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) practitioners like myself.
KEYWORDS: Intercultural (communicative) competence, Thai TESOL, ASEAN Economic Community, policy documents
And here is the abstract for my also accepted presentation:
“The Cultural and intercultural dimensions of ELF: Implications for language education”
In the national paradigm of language teaching, the foreign language is typically linked to a particular society associated with that language. Although this paradigm is being increasingly challenged (e.g., Risager’s transnational paradigm, 2006), it remains a powerful anchor for much foreign language education globally. The rise and rise of English as the dominant global lingua franca provides a further stimulus for challenging the national paradigm. However, much research on English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has tended to focus on the linguistic aspects of an emergent variety of English, and less on the cultural and intercultural aspects of ELF. Further, research into ELF has not ventured into the applied linguistics territory of, for example, the methodological implications of ELF for teaching English globally. As intercultural educators with language teaching backgrounds, in this paper we address both of these under-explored areas by: a) drawing on a corpus of critical perspectives on the cultural/intercultural dimensions of ELF taken from chapters of a book soon to be published with Multilingual Matters (co-edited by the first presenter, and with a chapter contributed by the second) which goes beyond the narrow confines of some current strong forms of ELF analysis focused on the linguistic; and b) introducing a possible ELF pedagogy that includes interculturality, a pedagogy that has implications for language education more generally.
Prue Holmes (Durham University)
Richard Fay (The University of Manchester)
Well done, Kwan, and Richard for the support.
Yes, I can do this one. I plan to include this as a part of my PhD thesis.
This looks very interesting Khwan. Is that what you plan to share with us all?
Congratulations 🙂