IJIELTR Volume 1, Number 2 pp. ISSN: 2156-5716 © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. CREATING A MINI RESEARCH CENTER FOR SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH AND ITS PEDAGOGY Bill Templer Preslavsky University, Shumen, Bulgaria ABSTRACT The article proposes the creation of an empirical research unit or center for investigating the teaching of more simplified and sustainable forms English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), especially to ordinary non-privileged learners among the world’s Social Majorities. Key research areas outlined for such a mini center involve investigation on Ogden/Richards’ BASIC ENGLISH 850, VOA Special English, Grzega’s Basic Global English, Jean-Paul Nerrière’s GLOBISH, and other alternatives to the present English language syllabus in the schools, particularly in the Global South. Such a research center would also look at the implication of the Plain Language movement for teaching English as an additional language, the viability of simpler models of English for Academic Purposes (a kind of “EAP Lite”), new approaches to text “readability” and aspects of the “vertical translation” of standard English texts into BASIC ENGLISH 850 and other simplified modes. The article is framed in the spirit of “discourse democracy” and a TESOL of equity and solidarity in the 21st century, and expanded research on working class pedagogies of ESL. Keywords: BASIC ENGLISH 850, English as a lingua franca, plain language, simplification, VOA Special English. INTRODUCTION My prime thesis here is that the TEFL profession is faced with an evident need it is not adequately addressing. Teachers of EFL have to experiment with and research in empirical depth new paths toward a more sustainable, “clearer, plainer” English among the world’s Social Majorities, and non-privileged learners from working class, rural, and poverty backgrounds everywhere. Such English should be more easily learned and retained, and easier for teachers to master. This article proposes a mini research center to that end. Far too much orientation in our field—and in global education more generally, shaped by the ethos of An earlier version of this article was published in IATEFL Global Issues Newsletter (No. 26, Spring. 2011, pp. 14-16). “cultural elites” and their “meritocracy”—is toward teaching middle-class learners, too little toward “educating working class children in their own interest” (Finn, 1999). Writing on the neo-liberal transformation in education geared to the dictates of the free market, Hill (2006, p. 15) notes that class related criteria such as “aptitudes” are leading in Britain and across much of the world to increased social class differentiation in the schools, in part structured by race, ethnic background and gender as well. He asks: “What influence can critical librarians . . . cultural workers, teachers, pedagogues have in working toward a democratic, egalitarian society/economy/polity?” (p. 18). One answer is a more simplified global lingua franca. Lamb (2011) discusses the impact in provincial Sumatra in Indonesia of a “Matthew Effect” in which the social, economic, and cultural capital provided by home background and early educative experiences enables some learners to benefit more from English language education at school as well as to “exploit opportunities to learn the language outside school” (p. 201), leading to a “massive competitive gain” in English proficiency over children from more modest backgrounds. In turn, this can lead to a widening economic and cultural class divide over the long term. That “Matthew effect,” advantage begetting further advantage, is evident in many countries across the planet both in the Global South and lower socioeconomic strata in the industrialized North (Rigney, 2010). The upshot in our own discipline is growing inequality in the effective teaching of EFL as a tool of international communication, and the increasing conversion of English language proficiency into a badge of class privilege, inequity, cultural capital, and the mythology of “upward mobility.” There is a widening chasm between small islands of privileged middleclass learners of EFL across the developing world, the EFL haves—and the masses of working class learners and ordinary poor folks, the EFL have-nots. Not only that “money talks,” as the old saw goes, but “money talks English,” generating vast spaces of inequity in global discourse (Templer, 2008c). Colemen (2010, p. 16) reminds us: “any ‘entitlement’ to English as a passport to development must be strictly available to all who desire it, otherwise it becomes a means of barring access to the less privileged.” In the interest of “discourse democracy” and a TESOL of equity and solidarity in the 21st century, we need strategies to resist and counter that. Surprisingly, at no point does Coleman discuss the option of a more simplified and readily learnable form of English for mass instruction. Anchored in this idea, I propose the creation of a Mini Research Center for Simplified English, needed especially in the Global South, for investigating, in empirical terms, alternatives to the present English language syllabus in the schools, and a simpler version of English for Academic Purposes (“EAP Lite”). One concrete aim is to test specific models of simpler and leaner, more sustainable and significantly “less complex” English as a lingua franca (ELF) for instruction to the Social Majorities in many developing countries, and the working class majorities in the more industrial economies. To our knowledge, there is no such research unit or center anywhere at present. FURTHERING WORKING CLASS PEDAGOGIES OF ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA (ELF) My guiding thesis suggests that ideally, all individuals on this planet should have the right to learn an efficient, compact lingua franca for intercultural communication, in effect reclaiming the commons of discourse through pedagogies for plainer talk, as applied in the teaching of English as an additional language (Templer, 2008a). Such a proposed mini research center is in the fundamental interest of average people learning a simpler English to communicate across borders and social boundaries, a globalization “from the bottom-up” for the Multitude, not the small privileged minorities across the developing and developed world that feature so centrally, for example, in CNN programming and its incessant ideology of the global “meritocracy.” Most of our students live in a quite different world. English as a lingua franca for the Social Majorities is often neglected in linguistic and pedagogical research and practice, and in national syllabi for teaching English across the planet. In many countries, especially in the Global South, only a relatively small minority of learners of English achieve a mid-intermediate level proficiency in English. At present, little more than 1% of the world’s population goes on to tertiary education, and far less to a completed degree. The teaching of English as a lingua franca (ELF) across much rural and working class education faces formidable challenges: a lack of qualified teachers and materials resources, low levels of pupil motivation, and achievement among non-privileged learners. In promoting BASIC ENGLISH decades ago, Ivor Richards pointed to the millions of “largely wasted boy/girl hours” in conventional EFL classrooms. That is still the alarming case. Wedell (2011) notes that reports from many countries suggest that there are relatively few state school classrooms anywhere in which most learners are developing a useable knowledge of English. The learners worldwide who do succeed in developing the higher level communication skills have often attended private schools or had extra private tuition. In SE Asia, experience in Thailand is a striking example of this low level of achievement (Tayjasanant and Barnard, 2010, pp. 303-304). Mackenzie (2008), commenting on basic problems in TEFL in the Thai state school system, notes: “very low English and teaching skills proficiency levels of teachers; 60-80% of English teachers being non-English majors; poorly resourced schools; shortfall of 50,000 English teachers nationwide.” So, the problem begins with many low skill teachers of English in the government primary schools. They themselves need perhaps to really master a more simplified form of English which they could then confidently teach and gain high proficiency in. The strong resistance by many Thai students to learning English beyond the “postbeginner” level is noteworthy, and has often been commented on. Significantly, Thailand has a very large number of foreign English language teachers in secondary schools and at all colleges and universities. Despite their presence, learner language proficiency remains poor, and many such teachers leave the country, often frustrated, as letters on www.ajarn.com, the main website for ex-pat EFL teachers in Thailand, indicate. There is little doubt in my mind, based on several years experience in the Thai state university system and numerous interviews with teachers, that approaches to simplified English need solid experimentation in the highly problematic Thai context. In Indonesia, as Coleman (2011) stresses, the present schooling system in the country is “perpetuating social inequalities, particularly through the way in which English is offered and taught.” Pupils who can afford private English tuition enjoy access to a heavily subsidised state school system which gives “high priority to the use of English as a medium of instruction. On the other hand, those who urgently need English (and other languages) for survival while working abroad are left to fend for themselves without access to language tuition of any kind” (p. 105). This is true for many disadvantaged working class learners in Indonesia whether they become “labor migrants” abroad or not. In teaching ecologies where poverty is a major factor—the bottom two billion on the planet—we need to think more “laterally” about what teachers and most learners need as a solid basic skill. If we strive toward “putting the brakes on complexity” (Templer, 2008c), I suggest that we can work to forge a more sustainable TEFL pedagogy in the interest of average working class learners pretty much everywhere. A research unit of the kind proposed can investigate in multiple ways what kinds of more “downshifted,” simpler English for the Multitude—including “wide reading for pleasure”–can actually work, particularly for less motivated and more “marginalized” students (Mason and Krashen, 1997). This is not happening; for this reason, such a research unit is necessary, based in Indonesia, Thailand, or elsewhere. KEY AREAS OF THE RESEARCH CENTER The proposed research unit or center, attached to a state university or polytechnic, can concentrate on several focus areas: BASIC ENGLISH 850: There is need to initiate an array of pilot projects to test the efficacy of teaching a revitalized mode of Ogden and Richards’ BASIC ENGLISH, grounded on 850 key words/word families within school systems in a spectrum of language learning ecologies, both as a “first stage” and as a “target plateau” (i.e., “just really master this!”). It is also far easier to train teachers who concentrate on educating learners intensively in BASIC ENGLISH, as was done in Yunnan in China 1939-1945 (Templer, 2007, 2005, 2006, 2008c). Research is needed on using Richards and Gibson’s textbook (1973) English through Pictures, recently reprinted in Canada and now being used worldwide (www.englishthroughpictures.com). It utilizes a slightly expanded version of BASIC that Richards came to call “Every Man’s English” (Katagiri and Constable, 1993, pp. 344-355). Work is also needed on techniques of teaching “vertical translation” from standard English into BASIC as a tool for all learners and users of English. That was Wynburne’s (1960) vision, and involves research on intralingual translation and “semantic leveraging” (Templer, 2012), utilizing BASIC 850 to enhance “language awareness” among both L1 and L2 learners. Seidlhofer (2002) discusses the need for a new look at BASIC from the perspective of lingua franca research. Richards (1943) remains a good introduction to BASIC and its conception, itself written largely in BASIC. A mini research center could also develop a networked project of producing new texts in BASIC 850, and translating newspaper articles and many other texts into BASIC 850. The Bible in BASIC is one such paradigm: http://www.o-bible.com/bbe.html. BASIC GLOBAL ENGLISH: There is a need to develop pilot projects to test a model of easier English developed by German linguist Joachim Grzega, Catholic University, Eichstätt/Germany (www.basicglobalenglish.com). Joachim’s experimental model is grounded on 750 high frequency words/word families, with a further 250 chosen by the individual student. Spoken communication is emphasized from the start. BGE has had success in trial projects in adult education and in early primary education in Germany. Joachim introduces BGE on a video: http://youtu.be/B0iGgshLzxI . Broader empirical research and experimentation are necessary. VOA SPECIAL ENGLISH: We need to significantly spur classroom and academic research on VOA Special English (www.voaspecialenglish.com) as a second tier of simplified clear English, at the level of 1,500 higher frequency headwords. This can be promoted as a target plateau level, with a large corpus of materials for reading (Templer, 2009). This can involve workshops for primary and secondary school teachers in the use of VOA Special English as a resource for a simpler “Scientific and Academic English Lite,” especially for supplementary comprehensible reading and extensive listening (Templer, 2008a, 2008b). Syahro’s (2009) investigation indicated statistically significant better scores on the IELTS reading examination among an experimental group using VOA Special English texts for examination preparation. GLOBISH: Jean-Paul Nerrière’s GLOBISH, based on 1,500 word vocabulary, is now an expanding phenomenon. Research is needed (Templer, 2007). Noble (2010) offers a readable introduction as e-book. Pekica Pagon (2005) provides a useful interview with its originator, J-P Nerrière. The GLOBISH websites are a useful starting point: http://tinyurl.com/423byg in France, and a website in the U.S.: www.globish.com. A video with Nerrière is also instructive: http://youtu.be/054zM_ON_z8. It is a growing movement and may be in some ways more flexible for communication than VOA Special English as a desired “plateau target level.” Like Special English, GLOBISH tends to avoid idioms and figurative expressions. Its promoters consider GLOBISH a highly robust and vibrant tool for communication. PLAIN ENGLISH: The “Plain Language” movement is burgeoning, promoted by the US government (http://www.plainlanguage.gov/), the New Zealand government, and many professionals (especially in law, medicine, and government administration) in a number of countries around the world, including the Plain Language Association International (www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/). The goal is discourse simplification (Cutts, 2009), as exemplified in The Netherlands in the work of www.texamen.com. A good PowerPoint introduction is DuBay (2008). Stephens (2010) is instructive for orientation, and useful website. The U.S. Federal Plain Language Guidelines (March 2011) are highly instructive: tinyurl.com/24rjfxk, as is this Plain English Handbook from the U.S. government: tinyurl.com/j64uo. In Australia, a useful government handbook is online: tinyurl.com/3t9742w. DuBay (2011) also reminds us: National surveys show that half the adult population reads below the 9th-grade level. More than a third reads below the 6th-grade level. To reach the widest audience, you have to accommodate those different levels of reading skill. [...] Many Websites are written at the 16th-grade level, putting them out of reach of 95 percent of the reading public. The fact that many native speakers in the U.S., Australia, and Great Britain have reading skills roughly at the level of instruction for 14-year-olds needs to be taken into account in thinking about what our aims are in teaching English as a lingua franca skill. What implications does a concern with “reading ease” and its effect on comprehension have for teaching ELF for the Social Majorities? More research on readability formulas such as Flesch-Kincaid applied to simplified texts for ESL learners is also needed (DuBay, 2004). Schriver and Gordon (2010) explore some of the needs for research on plain language more globally. IMPLEMENTING KEY FOCUS AREAS OF THE RESEARCH CENTER An array of projects is possible, and most would be low cost. At a university or polytechnic, VOA Special English for Extensive Reading and Listening can be investigated with control and experimental groups. We need to establish whether using Special English increases student motivation, listening proficiency, and interest in reading independently. Can it be used for preparing for high stakes “gatekeeping” tests such as IELTS and TOEFL? Syahro’s (2009) work in Malaysia suggests that this kind of research is badly needed. Is VOA Special English a reasonable “target level” for many learners? Longer term research can explore this. One thesis that jibes with Krashen’s (1997, pp. 39-51) views of second language pedagogy is that a solid grounding in VOA Special English is sufficient for school based instruction. Learners who wish can go on to “higher” proficiency levels through self study on their own. Others can read and listen to Special English to deepen their mastery of that form of “downshifted” English, enough for any needs they have. Research is needed on whether VOA Special English can be used successfully as an “English Lite” foundation for what Krashen calls “narrow academic reading” (1997, pp. 36-37), concentrating on a specific subject area but using Special English and its 14 topic categories. Another project would be to try to get a number of English teachers in the secondary schools to start using VOA Special English materials from the Internet as a supplement at low- to mid-intermediate level. The proposed research unit could hold focused workshops on this in a number of schools in an outreach program. Follow-up research could be devised, including action research by teachers using VOA Special English. Most have no knowledge of this rich and cost free resource, online, and available as regular shortwave broadcast. Such a center could also hold workshops for U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in Thailand, Indonesia (tinyurl.com/3bog6c9) and elsewhere in the ASEAN region, for example. Such PCVs often do not know anything about VOA Special English even though it is developed and financed by the same government department that supports the Peace Corps. This is a fact the author has substantiated through interviews. Discussion has been initiated with Lexitronics based in Turkish Cyprus on developing a corpus of VOA Special English, and the Special English office in Washington, D.C. would welcome such a project (see below). Research on GLOBISH can be included as a comparative model. A project using it and VOA Special English for comparison can be designed. Many other questions deserve investigation. How do learners respond to it? How rapidly is it mastered? What can be read in it at this point? What needs of learners globally is it responding to? (Nerrière and Hon, 2009; Templer, 2007). Can it be utilized for teaching potential migrant workers from low income backgrounds in adult ELF instruction (Coleman, 2011)? BASIC ENGLISH 850 or Richards expanded version “Every Man’s English” is best for students who know very little, or have fossilized at a kind of “false beginner” or “postbeginner” level over many years; that is common, for example, in Thailand, and perhaps in rural China, village Indonesia, and other teaching ecologies of the developing world. Experimentation with BASIC 850 in a number of schools with results compared over a two-year period would be one such project. This was done in Israel in the early 1960s, in agricultural collective farms, with surprisingly positive results (Katagiri and Constable, 1993, pp. 359-367). The Ministry of Education in Indonesia, Thailand, or Cambodia, for example, could embark on such an experimental project. We would recommend use of Richards and Gibson’s (1973) textbook English through Pictures. Kesevan (2010) is an example of a M.Ed. thesis that explores using Basic English with weaker international students at a government college in Perak state, Malaysia. She found definite improvement in vocabulary control in her limited, 6-week study. BASIC ENGLISH 850 or Ivor Richard’s expanded version “Every Man’s English,” could be taught in experimental groups of learners from high poverty backgrounds. This has been discussed as a potential project working with Romany (Gypsy) children and adults in Bulgaria, most of whom have no knowledge of English, and often drop out of school at an early age. Many Romanies from the Balkans now go the route of “labor migrants” to Western Europe where language barriers are difficult. Research on BASIC ENGLISH 850 can indeed be especially relevant for potential “labor migrants,” who migrate elsewhere simply to earn a living, and often have only skills in L1. As Coleman (2011) notes: “Indonesia’s migrant workers constitute a neglected constituency, they are calculated to generate IDR108 trillion in foreign exchange but are given minimal – if any – language training or other pre-departure preparation” (p. 104). Could BASIC ENGLISH be one option the government in Indonesia might explore in state funded ELF instruction for Indonesian migrant workers? Experimentation and investigation are needed. Grzega’s model of BASIC GLOBAL ENGLISH could also be experimented with along similar lines. His research indicates it is a highly useful “downshifted” form of English introduced as a kind of “mini English” model in selected German schools and in adult education. He believes it is a more “viable” form of BASIC ENGLISH 850, and oriented to communicative pedagogy. A control and experimental group could be set up working with BASIC 850 and Grzega’s model, and the results compared. His model is also of interest in language education for migrant workers. The research unit can encourage postgraduate students at several universities in the country or region where such a research center is established to do MA theses on aspects of several focus areas, including Plain English. Plain Language and writing skills in English as a lingua franca is an area in which there is virtually no research. Can ELF learners improve their writing by using guidelines that make it more transparent and understandable to other readers (DuBay, 2008)? The new Journal of English as a Lingua Franca launched in 2011 by Barbara Seidlhofer (Austria) and Jennifer Jenkins (UK) is a potential scholarly platform for research on simplified modes of English as a lingua franca. There may be a tendency for ELF research in the Euro-Atlantic context to concentrate on more elite learners in the corporate, governmental, and university spheres. That needs to be offset. As it develops, the proposed research unit or center will seek to forge links to individuals and research institutions with analogous interests elsewhere, in particular: Basic English Institute (www.basic-english.org ). The principal online resource center for BASIC ENGLISH of Ogden/Richards, now revitalized for the 21st century. Centre for Information Design Research, University of Reading, UK (www.reading.ac.uk/simplification/). A unique initiative in the UK, the Centre's work focuses on how to make overly complex information clearer, through a program of research, training and consultancy. It builds on the work of the UR Simplification Centre: www.simplificationcentre.org.uk. Lexitronics (http://lexitronics.edublogs.org/). The proposed research mini center hopes to develop a corpus project with Lexitronics on VOA Special English. Center for Plain Language based in Maryland. Its motto: “Plain language is a civil right” (centerforplainlanguage.org). The work of CPL is highly relevant to the research agenda of the proposed research center. The work of Bill DuBay, as exemplified in his impact-information.com site and newsletter, and his work on readability (DuBay, 2004; 2008; 2011). See also http://tinyurl.com/3syxgne . He stresses the need there to “establish the reading level of the audience,” and then to “create documents to match that reading level.” Plain language is language “that everyone in your audience can easily understand.” The research at CLAD (Clear Language and Design) in Toronto/Canada likewise with an informative newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/3gwsrv9. The research paradigms at bureautaal (http://www.bureautaal.nl/) and Texamen (http://www.texamen.com) in The Netherlands. They are doing exemplary work on both “eenvoudig Nederlands” and English at a clearer, more simplified level. “Simple Dutch” is at the level of B1 in the Common European Framework (http://tinyurl.com/5r5pegl), roughly about the “threshold” level of VOA Special English and GLOBISH. CONCLUSION A mini research unit or center can spur comparative research in the field with simpler models for ELF pedagogy, conduct workshops for teachers, and begin to reshape more sustainable, “lower energy” curricula. For working class kids and adults, this can be cast in a broader framework moving from “domesticating education” to “liberating education” in Finn’s (1999, pp. 129-135) sense of “literacy with an attitude.” Now is the time. The cost of establishing the center can be very modest, its potential impact exponential. Important is a formal attachment to a university somewhere in Europe or the Global South. It could be somewhat along the lines of a Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) in the sense common at German universities. The core aim is to further teaching of English as a “people’s lingua franca” (Templer, 2005) and a “TESOL for social justice” – forging what might be called “counter hegemonic” strategies for teaching ELF in the context of grassroots “globalization from below,” and to ground this on solid empirical investigation in the world’s ordinary classrooms. Wedell (2011) underscores the lack of success worldwide in many teaching ecologies in getting most ordinary learners to develop a useful degree of English proficiency, noting the need to “seriously question the extent to which the investment in English for Everyone makes a genuine contribution to ‘global development’. This debate is just beginning” (p. 288). 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