THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
Research Proposal: The Imposition of Globalization Value within EFL
Classrooms in Chinese High Schools
Yudi Xiao
OISE, University of Toronto
Author Note
This research paper is being submitted on April 10th, 2015 for Jeff Bale’s
CTL3799 - Second Language Classroom Research course.
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
Research Proposal: The Imposition of Globalization Value within EFL
Classrooms in Chinese High Schools
Problem Statement
The general aim of this research is to identify the imposition of globalization
value within EFL classrooms in order to guide the design of EFL curriculum for use
in subsequent series of empirical studies. It will specifically investigate the process on
the imposition of this value and evaluate such an imposition may have on language
learners. English has been perceived as the dominant language in which EFL teaching
has evolved to be considered an essential life skill and impose the cultural values of
predominantly English speaking countries on non-native speakers. According to
Silverstein (1979), language ideologies are “any sets of beliefs about language
articulated by the users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language
structure and use” (p. 193). From this viewpoint, language serves as mediation
between one’s personal value and language and social context.
Nowadays, globalization serves as a process that integrates both economic and
cultural exchanges different values between different nations while English as a tool
serves and accelerates the entire process. Globalization has mainly sought to spread
the principles and practices of capitalism widely throughout the world. In Hasan’s
words (2003), ‘we will globalize anything and everything … the only condition is that,
in the final analysis, the private monopoly of profit should remain protected in its
incremental march’ (p.435). And so we transcribe capitalism under the neo-liberal
logic of economic profit that governs our ideologies, cultures, identities, languages.
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
Discourses of English as a global language are positioned in relation to teaching
English as a foreign language. This is certainly true of powerful languages like
English, the language of international communication, also known as a lingua franca
or global language. English learning and teaching imposes the idea of “globalization”
that may potentially shift and influence learners’ value and ideology. The value of
globalization can be interpreted in many different perspectives; however, the field in
this research has been narrowed down into a social and cultural perspective. Cultural
globalization involves the shared of conventions and knowledge of cultural identities.
It integrates and brings interconnectedness among different cultures and populations.
This study intends to emphasize this prevalent issue by situating something
within the context of EFL classrooms in Chinese high schools. China which possesses
the fastest developing economy in the world has drawn wide attention world widely in
the process of globalization while English education facilitates and constructs our
students not only on their language proficiency but also their construction of personal
values. This formal research paper will be presented as a Master thesis and the
anticipated audience will be the teachers or researchers in the relevant field of ESL
teaching, sociocultural studies in China and Canada. The data will be presented in
both a narrative and diagrammatic form. And the research paper will be shared both in
hard copy in library and online PDF version in school websites. Also, I hope it can be
shared among students so that they may receive more first-hand information. The
expected influence on this study is to raise the language and globalization awareness
among the audience and especially the teachers and policy makers. It intends to
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
rethink our cultural value construction in the teaching of a foreign language as
English and the designing of our curriculum in accordance with the process of global
migration and integration. Hopefully, it will provide an ethical and pedagogical
guidance for other countries where English is a non-native language.
Situating Study
Previous research aligning the cultural values imposition has been carefully
examined in different contexts of ESL/EFL teaching. Singh and Doherty (2004) from
the Queensland University of Technology investigated the phenomenon of cultural
globalization in which the teachers encounter difficulties in their pedagogical
development. The study drew on data from interviews that “elicited teachers'
reflections and elaborations on their videotaped classroom practices to profile the
nature of the dilemmas encountered in preparatory or foundation programs offered by
Australian universities to international students”(p.20). It produced an empirical case
study on the pedagogic dilemma referring the global university “contact zone” and
recalls the theories of globalization and cultural identity in the interviews with
teachers. The research therefore offered a few pedagogical strategies in response to
the moral dilemmas that teachers are confronting. In addition, it also has been argued
that growing internationalization may provide TESOL professionals a valuable
platform to reflect on the pedagogical approach with further implications. These
professionals still have much to share with the institutions and other global Western
universities. This study paid great attention to globalization and cultural diversity
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
issues in the context of Australian EFL classrooms from the teachers’ perspective.
However, there is a lack of data support and students’ opinions when presenting the
interview results by teachers.
Another research study that was conducted by Derrick (2006) from Jeonju
University in Korea reflects on the rethinking of culture teaching in English in the
context of globalization. He proposes that the main changes should take place within
at least three domains. First, English teaching professionals should abandon the
conventional belief that the US and Great Britain represent the sole “target cultures”
of the English language. Second, they should rethink the goals of culture and
language education to better meet their students’ varied needs. Finally, professionals
should do more to design and select teaching materials that are international and
inclusive in scope. The paper also indicated that EFL/ESL instructors should better
inform themselves and their students on world cultures so that they may promote
“genuine linguistic/cultural awareness and international understanding” (p.314).
While this study is very comprehensive and transparent as a research instrument that
illustrates the background topic and issue while it does not provide an empirical case
exemplar in a real EFL/ESL classroom context.
In Guilherme (2007)’s study on English as global language and education as
cosmopolitan citizenship, it has been pointed out that due to the overriding power of
English, the global economy, media, academy, entertainment are prominent and
connected. English language education has become truly essential in the development
of educational systems as well as the progress of our societies. English language
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
learning has therefore been portrayed as a fundamental tool that unquestionably
brings success. However, in this paper it argues for a critical pedagogy of English as a
Global Language. The use of English as a common language, but not as a lingua
franca, which can provide us with opportunities for acting as responsible global
cosmopolitan citizens, without suffering the loss of our cultural and ideological roots
when transforming English as our foreign language. This research shapes the
citizenship in the learning of English and implies the critical pedagogy referring the
dominant power of English language, which leads to a deep consideration when
regarding English as a global language and the imposition of global values.
From Zhang and Margaret’s (2010) studies, it redefined the role of English in the
setting of globalization and the implementation on the curriculum design. Since 2001,
the new curriculum has been progressively transcribed and redefined in China
particularly in Chinese secondary schools. The features of the new curriculum present
as part of a developing research field especially when comparing with the 1993 EFL
program. They focused on the educational policy statements and curriculum
documents as well as published previous research in order to understand the
redefining of the role of English as a foreign language in the new EFL curriculum. It
concluded that education in English has been mainly viewed as Chinese building up
their citizenship in consistent with the globalization. This study is well-developed on
the transformation of English curriculum especially targeting on context of
globalization. It provided abundant information on the education policy reform in
China that in accordance with my research setting.
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
Based on the previous research, it can be concluded that English as a global
language connects and communicates people during the process of globalization. And
the value and influence of globalization has been concerned in English teaching
especially in a multi-cultural EFL classroom. However, the imposition of
globalization values has not been examined and investigated yet in a Chinese
classroom setting and the quantitative study is not sufficient presently.
Research Design
a. Orienting Decisions
This research is mainly a “data-driven” project by providing quantitative and
qualitative data on how classroom and community language practices are reflected by
students and teachers. It will specifically identify the globalization value imposition
drawing on a corpus of text-analysis and the audio-recorded classroom discourses that
are collected over one semester, which improves its validity and reliability. The study
activity will take place in the capital of China --- Beijing that represents the highest
educational quality in this country. However, the teaching quality can vary among
different high schools and thus it can be necessary to identify and classify their levels
from advanced, medium to poor levels. The Beijing education committee has recently
released the ranking of the public high schools according to their teaching quality and
performances on the University Entrance Exams. Therefore, our researchers will
select three high schools ranking from the top to the bottom as part of samples.
Accordingly, there are altogether three high schools as samplings. One class will be
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
randomly selected ranging from grade 10 to 12 thus there will be 9 classes in total.
The anticipated and invited participants are the students in each class; therefore we
have to notify and inform them in advance in order to obtain trust. Meanwhile, their
background information such as the participants’ English proficiency will necessarily
be collected in this research. This research will be undertaken by L2 researches in the
field of EFL/ESL as well as Chinese students who are engaging in the LLE program
in the department of CTL. I will recruit and build a capable research team for my
project. In order to build this research team, I will go through the following processes:
1. I will announce the research plan to my fellow classmates; 2. I will use the E-mail
list of OISE Registrar’s Office to send out a general recruitment message. Also, I will
seek help and mentorship from my professors who are knowledgeable in this field.
The researchers should be familiar with the EFL classroom activities and they also
need to speak fluent Mandarin in order to conduct the interviews and collect the data.
There will be approximately five or six members in this research group and at least
two observers will audit the same class in order to compare different field notes to
ensure accuracy and validity.
b. Research design and Methodology
Similar to how Zhang and Hu (2010) used “case study research design that made
use of naturalistic observations to study teachers’ behaviors in classrooms and
employed interviews to uncover teachers’ belief and cognition (p.123)” to explore the
theme topic---task-based language teaching initiative, our research plans to plant a
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
few case studies and the teacher interviews as well. The entire research will be
divided into three stages --- preparation, implementation and data analysis. For the
preoperational stage, we must perform background research on each of the high
schools including their class capacity, time schedules of the English classes and the
contact information of each school board as well as the English teachers in order to
obtain their permission for the upcoming research activities. Moreover, the English
textbooks from Grade 10 to 12 needed to be gathered and the texts should be analyzed
as corpus data ahead of the implementing. The analysis of the texts will be
documented in a computer-oriented database (See appendix 1). Based on the corpus
data-analysis on these texts, we will focus on some particular texts that are highly
relevant to our themes---the imposition of globalization and we are going to track the
class activities that are going be taught in the classroom. The preoperational stage will
begin from May, 2015 and should have been completed before the implementation
stage in Aug, 2015.
The implementation of this research will be divided into two parts throughout a
whole academic term from September, 2015 to December, 2015. The first part will
focus on the gathering of data relying on the recording of audios during the
student-teacher activities and the collection of student’s oral practice will be severed
as supplementary material. Our researchers will participate as audiences in the
text-based classes that have been selected in the preoperational stage. The researchers
will audit the entire forty or fifty minutes’ lessons and note down the entirety of
teacher-student interaction on the deigned observation template (See appendix 2). The
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
second phase will be transferred to the face-to-face interviews among the experienced
EFL teachers. Questions highlighting on the imposition of globalization value will be
frequently referred (See appendix 3). Teacher as the facilitator in the classroom
receive most of the students’ feedback and reflect on it immediately. Therefore, the
interview between our researchers and teachers in a way will be more up-to-date and
comprehensive. In our real practice, these two phases will be operated simultaneously.
The observation templates will be originally recorded in the paper forms and
transcribed into the Word document at the end of the second phase. The audio records
on each of the lesson will be temporally stored in a Record Pen and it will be
continuously transcribed into a categorized file in the computer. Similarly, the
interviews will be recorded and saved in a memory device and constantly transform
into a named file.
The final stage is the data-analysis that will proceed from January, 2016 until
April, 2016. The gathered data can be classified into three different types: classroom
oral material, text resources and the interview record. Oral discourses involve the
analyzing of transcripts. The transcripts serve as supplementary material that
correspond the researchers’ observation templates within the classroom audition. It
provides the lived record on the classroom interactions and students’ performance in
case some of the key steps might be ignored. The combination of oral materials and
observation records is a reflection of students’ output in the context of an EFL
classroom within specific texts from the textbooks. By transcribing the recordings, the
researcher begins the task of analyzing the data by searching for patterns and
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
interactions referring the imposition of globalization values and ideologies. “In order
to accomplish this, the researcher should open up their mind and not with any
preconceived ideas of what the data mean” (Mckay, 2006, p104). Within the
analyzing of texts in corpus studies, it examines the language teaching referring the
curriculum design particularly within the Chinese educational backgrounds.
According to Mckay (2006), “a corpus is a collection of written or spoken naturally
occurring language that is stored electronically (p126).” A specialized corpus that
contains texts of a particular type for example our globalization value can be as
corpus that consists of a wide variety of ideas of global integration. The corpus
analysis is a computer-assisted method of texts. It provides analyses of several texts,
and also of patterns of language across millions of words of text corpora. Word
frequency lists are useful when they are sorted within one specific article. Words will
be categorized and their frequency will be calculated by mode in statistics targeting on
the word “globalization” or words that are highly relevant on this theme.
The gathered interviews will possibly acquire information from the experienced
ESL teachers regarding the influence and impact on the imposition of “globalization”
values and ideologies. Hopefully, the relationship between the teachers and our
researchers is trustful therefore the conversation will be more productive and involve
more teachers’ real experience. Based on their answers of the related questions, we
might draw some conclusions regarding teachers’ viewpoint on this issue and apply
this result to the future curriculum design in EFL classroom. Also, in terms of the
interview results, the schools’ teaching quality and some of the teachers’ social
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
background should also be considered into account.
Regarding ethical considerations, the participants will be notified before being
audio-taped and the data will be kept anonymous and their private information will be
kept completely confidential. The interviews are open to the experienced ESL
teachers and their identity information might be provided with their permissions and it
will be presented in our research studies. Another important consideration is the two
sides of objectivity and subjectivity. We will make sure that our own personal biases
and opinions do not get in the way of research and that we will give both sides fair
consideration.
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
Timeline
The scheduled timetable is as followed. The time duration will be adjusted due to
its flexibility and liability in the real practice. The whole project will last one
academic year from May, 2015 to April, 2016. Hopefully, the thesis will be completed
in May and a presentation fair will be held in the academic meeting.
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
References
1. Guilherme, M. (2007). English as a global language and education for
cosmopolitan citizenship. Language and Intercultural Communication, 7(1),
72-90.
2. Hasan, H. (1993). Globalization, literacy and ideology. World Englishes 22, no. 4:
433–48.
3. McKay, S. (2006). Researching second language classrooms. Mahwah, N.J.:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
4. Nault, D. (2006). Going global: Rethinking culture teaching in ELT
contexts. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19(3), 314-328.
5. Singh, P., & Doherty, C. (2004). Global cultural flows and pedagogic dilemmas:
Teaching in the global university contact zone. TESOL Quarterly, 38(1), 9-42.
6. Silverstein, Michael (1979). Language structure and linguistic ideology. In P.
Clyne, W. Hanks, & C. Hofbauer (Eds.), The elements: a parasession on linguistic
units and levels (pp. 193–247). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
7. Xiaohong, Z., & Zeegers, M. (2010). Redefining the role of english as a foreign
language in the curriculum in the global context. Changing English, 17(2),
177-187.
8. Zhang, Y. & Hu, G. (2010). Between intended and enacted curricula: Three
teachers and a mandated curricular reform in mainland China. In K. Menken & O.
García (Eds.),Negotiating language policies in schools: Educators as policy
makers (pp. 123-142). New York: Routledge.
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
Appendix 1:
Text Title
Mode frequency of Relevant Words (e.g.
Ratio
globalization/multi-culture/world
(Relevant words/ Total
development )
words)
Appendix 2:
Classroom Observation Form
Instructor:
Course: ______________
Peer/Observer: ____________________
Date and Time ____________________
Use criteria that apply to format of course observed.
Review Section
1.
PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE
ADDRESS
(Addresses appropriate curriculum standards;
Facilitates students’ use of higher level
thinking skills; Demonstrates ability to link
present content with past and future learning;
Demonstrates an accurate knowledge of the
subject matter checking for understanding) Ÿ
2.
INSTRUCTIONAL DELIVERY
(Addresses individual learning differences; Ÿ
Uses rigorous instructional strategies; Ÿ Uses
instructional technology;Ÿ Engages students;
Builds on prior knowledge; Communicates
clearly)
3.
ASSESSMENT FOR STUDENT
LEARNING
(Uses assessment tools based on division
curriculum and pacing guides; Uses a variety
Description/Comment
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
of valid, appropriate assessments; Gives
constructive feedback)
4. LEARNING ENVIORNMENT
(Arranges the classroom to maximize learning
and
provides
a
safe
and
encouraging
environment; Ÿ Establishes clear instructions
and
guidance;
Maximizes
instructional
learning time by working with students
individually and in groups)
5.
STUDENT ACADEMIC PROGRESS
(Assists students with academic problems;
Documents progress; Provides support to
increase student achievement)
6.
OTHERS
(Highlights the value of globalization within
the multi-cultural dimensions, Broadens the
horizon and encourages students to think
globally)
Strengths:
Improvements:
Overall impressions:
Other Notes:
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THE IMPOSITION OF GLOBALIZATION VLAUE WITHIN EFL CLASSROOMS IN CHINESE HIGH SCHOOLS
Appendix 3:
Interview Template
Questions
1. How do you interpret globalization
nowadays?
2. How do you interpret globalization
in EFL contexts?
3. Do you agree that there is
globalization value in EFL teaching
texts？
4. Do you pay attention to the
globalization value or cultural
interconnection in your teaching of
classes?
5. How do you anticipate your
students react to it?
(Interested/Uninterested/Bored…)
Teacher’s Feedback
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