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Listening Materials

1. Dr. Aya Matsuda (Japan) [Living in the US]   (English as an International Language)

2. Dr. Seiko Harumi (Japan) [Living in the UK]   (Educational psychology)

3. Luisa Zeilhofer (Germany) [Living in Japan]   (Meditation)

4. Dr. Shaun O'Dwyer (Australia) [Living in Japan]   (Confucian philosophy)

5. Dr. Gabrielle Decamous (France) [Living in Japan]   (Art and censorship)

6. Lisa Hunsberger (Caribbean) [Living in Japan]   (Personal language development)

7. Dr. Ana Sofia Hofmeyr (Portugal) [Living in Japan]    (Intercultural competance)

8. Dr. Christina Gkonou (Greece) [Living in the UK]   (Psychology of emotion)

9. Dr. Nobuyuki Hino (Japan) [Living in Japan]    (Japanese English)

10. Dr. Diane Pecorari (Sweden) [Living in Hong Kong]    (English medium classes)

11. Dr. Ali H. Al-Hoorie (Saudi Arabia) [Living in Saudi Arabia] (Personal academic growth)

12. Natasha V. Broodie (Caribbean ) [Living in the USA]    (Career-related language learning)

13. Dr. Isabel Perfianco Martin (Phillippines) [Living in The Phillippines]    

(World Englishes and history)

14. Dr. Eva Lantsoght (The Netherlands) [Living in Equador]    (Working during COVID)

15. Dr. Nicola Galloway (British\Scotland) [Living in Scotland]    (Global Englishes)

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Coming Soon:

16. Dr. Jean-Marc Dewaele (Belgium) [Living in the UK]

17. Julija Kenezvic (Australia) [Living in Japan]    (Medical advice)

18. Dr. Nicos Sefakis (Greece) [Living in Greece]    (English language learning)

19. Dr. Janny HC Leung (Hong Kong) [Living in Hong Kong]    (International legal English)

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1. Dr. Aya Matsuda (Japan)
[Living in the USA]

Dr Aya Matsuda

Section 1 - Greeting (00:00 - 00:26)

A: Our interviewee today is Dr. Aya Matsuda, Associate Professor from the Department of English at Arizona State University. Good day.

B: Well, thank you for having me.

A: Well, it's very nice to speak to you. As I mentioned, in the email that I sent you, yours is work that I cite in almost every one of my papers, and it's something that inspired me to get into the area of World Englishes.

B: Thank you.

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Section 2 - Introduction / Background (00:26 - 01:40)

"Can you tell us something about your background?"

I'm originally from Japan, from Tokyo area. I first came to the United States when I was in high school, the late 80s. And High School exchange programs were really popular. So I came to Wisconsin and lived with a dairy farming family for two years.

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After that, I started college here and then went back to Japan to finish, I came back to The States again, to work on my graduate studies and I've lived in the US since then. When I first came to The States, as a grad, when I came back as a graduate student, my plan was to get a master's degree in TESOL and go back to Japan and teach English in middle school, that's that was the age group I wanted to work with, but things happened and I decided to stay here for a Ph.D. And that's where I was introduced the idea of World Englishes. I found it fascinating. And I decided to I decided I wanted to pursue further for dissertation and beyond.

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Section 3 - Research (01:40 - 04:15)

"How did people respond to your thoughts on English as an international language"

When I first started sharing some of the ideas, which I now call teaching English as an International Language, some people, some of the reactions were like, “Oh, so this is about being politically correct,” or, “oh, yeah, you're, you're a nice person. So you don't want to offend anyone by saying your English is wrong.” Um, and I felt like some people responded well, but only because they saw some parallelism or compatibility between what they thought I was promoting through th- these ideas, and their way of thinking or ideology that really embraces diversity and promotes respect for differences, etc.

 

And yes, those are great values, I share that as well. And I can see that compatibility, too. But I came in from more pragmatic, practical perspective, which is that, for example, in Japan, Ministry of Education, or many private language schools promote English saying that you have to know English because it's a global language. Or, you know, if you know English it opens, English is the key to the the new world and you can access this new international global resources that you cannot access without English.

 

But yet, once you go into the classroom, at least when I started talking about this, the focus was almost exclusively on United States American English, or British, UK, English. But if these students learn English, and if they really go out to international world, that would include more than US and UK, and they might go out there and thin-think, “Oh, what is happening, I've never heard of these different kinds of Englishes and I'm not ready to talk to these people.” then I thought that there's a disconnect between the way we are selling the lang- language and the way we are preparing our learners. And we are doing disservice to our learners by not exposing them to the whole set of the like the reality of the English speaking world. So I came from that perspective.

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Section 4 - Plans / Future (04:15 - 07:35)

"How do you think this field of research will change in the future?"

I think globalization is something that is promoted, or not necessarily promoted, but talked about at higher education, like in universities, colleges, perhaps globally, I, I must say, I'm not familiar with situations in all countries or even many countries. My view is pretty limited to Asia and North America. So I hesitate a little bit to talk about other contexts as well. But I think globalization is something that many governments see as important because they see themselves as part of this globalized world, whether we are talking about politics or economy or what not. So definitely, I think it will be part of the talk, and how different universities market themselves how maybe grants are distributed and so forth, the the globalization is going to be a big part.

 

I understand that some universities, many universities in Europe, for example, there's a strong push toward English Medium Instruction, because students in EU can freely move around and attend universities in other countries. [Yes] I think that happens a lot in Asia, too. I know that some university in Japan have colleges or programs within the university where all courses are offered in English. So I think that is that is happening already. And if more people are interested in that, there's sort of like a greater motivation to learn English with perhaps a very clear, specific purpose, English for academic purpose to get higher ed level education.

 

At the same time, though, I'm a little concerned if the direction is to push English as a medium of instruction. That concerns me a little bit, because I think it is a student's right to receive good quality education in their first language. [Mm-hm] And it comes to a situation where you have to know English to access good education, then that is going to create or reinforce a further socio-economic divide in the society, [Right] because people who come from, you know, wealthier backgrounds tend to have better access to better English education. Also, I think certain knowledge will be lost if knowledge-making is not done in that language. So I would hope that university also pushes toward education and doing research in local languages, other than English, and in academia, for example, value those research and publications as much as they value publication in English.

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Section 5 - Ideas about Englishes (07:35 - 08:51)

When do we need to think carefully about our use of English?

There might be situation where you need to, well, you may prefer to sound like a native speaker. And I understand I probably want to critique that, such a society where you get judged based on how you sound but I think that's a socio-linguistic reality of any language in any society. And I can understand that depending on the goal, that's the direction you want to strive for. 

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I don't and probably because I think of these goals as contextually defined things, I don't think that they will be one variety that would work in all an any situation. [Right] Um, that's, that's another reason that I'm skeptical of the idea of one international standard or international variety of English, you know, to think that there is one or that it's worthwhile to try to create one. And it's probably not very desirable to try to create one because then, of course, the quest–, some people's English will be privileged and others in the process and it will create another hierarchy, which I don't think very productive.

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Section 6 - Goodbye (08:51 - 09:00)

A: Thank you very much for your time. And I hope we have a chance to speak again in the future.

B: Yes, I hope so too. I really enjoyed our conversation today.

2. Dr. Seiko Harumi (Japan)
[Living in the U.K.]

Dr. Seiko Harumi

Section 1: Greeting (00.00 - 00:07) 

A: My guest today is Dr. Seiko Harumi. How are you?

B: I'm okay. Hello, Jonathan.

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Section 2 - Introduction / Background  (00:07 - 01:16) 

Can you tell me something about your background?​

I went to a university in Nagasaki. And also then afterwards, I I started working as a teacher at junior high school in Nagasaki. So, Nagasaki is really the the place I really started my career. And I came to London to do a master's degree and at the Institute of Education. So I was sort of inspired by students at the junior high school. [Mm-hm] I had lots of questions about the teaching methods. And but I didn't have a chance to study about it in Japan. So I decided to go to UK and to study more. After I did a Masters, it's actually only one year here in UK, so I wanted to go back to teaching. [Mm-hm] And so I went back. But then after two years, I came back to UK to do Ph.D., because and the first of all, the one-year for Masters was very short, and I still wanted to explore the this topic of silence for the Ph.D. And so I came back.

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Section 3 - Research Motivation  (01:16 - 03:12) 

Why did you decide to study about silence? Was your Ph.D. advisor a specialist on this topic?

My supervisor was Dr. Guy Cook, I don't know, Professor Guy Cook, I don't know, he he already retired. But at the time, when I did PhD, or MA, he was at the Institute of Education He is an expert for the discourse analysis. So he he was interested in this sort of classroom interaction, but he wasn't the sort of sort of expert for the ah the silence itself. But he gave me a lot of a lot of, and the sort of inspiration for my writing. [I see] And the so it's not because of the teacher, but I think it's just because of my the topic.

 

And the reason why I was interested in this topic was the I think it's, I think a two p–, two group of people inspired me. First is a students and I I myself as a Japanese English teacher, I come across this problem very often. So as you know because you teach in Japan, you as you said, this issue is a sort of widespread and still a sort of some way it's going on. And the other group is the ALT teachers, assistant language English teachers in Japan, because I did a lot of team teaching with them, and then the I often heard they moan, they moan that it's so difficult to break the wall of the silence. When you ask questions, there is no answer, and you don't know what to do. And then as a Japanese person, I could sense what students are feeling and thinking, but I couldn't explain well, So, that's why I wanted to find out the reason why this is happening in the Japanese classroom.

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Section 4 - Research Findings  (03:12 - 04:37) 

Did you continue this line of inquiry?

I did the similar survey in the other classes, like in my class, I now teach Japanese language to the students here. And then I think it depends on the levels of the proficiency. I think the beginners and I think linguistic problems can be a 60%, around 60%, 70% and the source of the problem are not speaking. But all obviously, it's related to psychological problems. So I think if you look into the, the correlation with both links, the problem psychological problems, it might be more interesting. Yeah. So I think I show data, the an- that the reason behind it, it's more complicated than you see from the data. So that's why you need, you need to have a sort of data from different sources and and to try to find out. I think, in reality, even you asked the reason for being silent. I think, you know, that person cannot be hundred percent sure [Right] what so they are thinking, so I think you you need to be careful about how to sort of make a generalization. And but I think in in that sense, I think the multiple data collection is very important, I think.

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Section 5 - Future Work  (04:37 - 06:55) 

Do you have any plans for your future work?

In the past, I wasn't very interested in the government policy how how to how how the curriculum is implemented. I didn't see the clear link between the curriculum and also the classroom teaching practices. But now I started thinking it has a big impact. And the a long time ago, it reminds me of the episode when I went to sort of the kenshuukai in Japan for the teacher the English teachers. [Mm-hm]  And you know that in a really big space, like the taikukan and, [Mm-hm like a gymnasium] and a teacher, yes, yeah. That teacher was sort of a teaching and to about 30 students, and the everybody was watching, and students are wearing a microphone. And then the, the teacher was teaching, but obviously, they rehearsed beforehand, [huh]  I think, because not many students and didn't make any mistakes. And of course there are some, but of course, this situation is also very odd. And after it's finished at the question and answer time, one ALT teacher asked, actually asked whether they rehearsed because there wasn't any mistakes, m–not not so much mistakes. And so I I felt this question is the really the reality of the Japanese classrooms, because the, you know, the aim for this kind of training is to to learn from each other. But I think the everything was sort of  setup beforehand. So that sort of the surficial, artificial, a sort of the the sort of strategy from the government, you know, which is affected, which affected the classroom teaching, even the training sessions was really striking. I think in nature I think government policy hasn't changed very much, even these things and you know, it's the sort of the new communicative approach and the CEFR and the the a lot of ideas coming in. But actual, the practices hasn't actually changed very much, to me.

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Section 6 - Reading academic research  (06:55 - 07:43) 

Do you have any advice for new researchers who are reading difficult academic research? 

I of course have a a problem with the the language but still, I think if you if I tried to communicate with ideas written in the article I think I find it very, very rewarding to do the reading. And so I think it depends what your interests are. I think I I f– I feel that, you know, doing research on silence is a bit like a hobby for me. It's like, it's just something you like it. And I think when I read this article this morning, I just thought about what I was thinking that time. I think I just simply was very interested in this topic. So it's just that it motivates in that way.

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Section 7 - Keeping your native language while living abroad (07:43 - 08:35) 

Living in the UK, how is your Japanese? Do you have Japanese friends? Do you find that your Japanese is getting worse?

Well, because I have to teach Jap–, Japanese [Oh OK] to students here I have to brush up but I think I'm sure there are aspects which is deteriorating, like a kanji writing. And I teach kanji sometimes. But I think when you're asked to write it on the board, I think sometimes you're not sure how how how you start the strokes. I think, of course, I have to study, well, prepare beforehand. Yeah. So, but it's interesting, just the, the, I think teaching Japanese to the students from non Japanese students. I don't see this exactly same problem with silence of silence with these group of students. So I think the silence in Japan is a sort of something very special.

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Section 8 - Goodbye  (08:35 - 08:47) 

A: Thank you for coming on the podcast and good luck with with the toilet paper and and everything in England.

B: Okay, thank you very much. Same to you. Bye.

3. Luisa Zeilhofer (Germany) [Living in Japan]

Luisa Zeilhofer

Section 1: Greeting (00:00-00:13) 

A: Joining us today is Luisa Zeilhofer, who is a Junior associate professor from the University of Kyoto. How are you doing today Luisa?

B: Oh, great. Thank you so much, Chris, for having me here.

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Section 2: Introduction / Background (00:13 - 02:42) 

Why did you choose to study Japanese?

I fell in love with Japanese culture when I was about 14, 15 and started to learn Japanese. So it was completely self-study with books and CDs, the you know, the old school way. And back then it was not easy to get access to videos or other resources. In this sense, the internet nowadays is such a paradise for language learners.  [Mm-hm] And at that time, unfortunately, I was somehow trapped in the German education system, where the path is already decided at the age of 10.  [Right] And my school was Realschule um a “real school” in English, you can say, like the name says it's targeted for real jobs like bank accountants, nurses, civil servants, and so on. So the academic world was completely out of reach.  [Mm] But after graduation, I went to vocational school and learned to be a foreign language correspondent  [Mm-hm] for French and English, actually. But I couldn't give up my dream to study Japanese at university.  [Mm] So that's why I decided to go back to high school. And there is a special high school system for people, you know, for the “real people”  [Mm-hm] who have their certificate in vocational training. But the problem was that these are extremely restricted, and you are only allowed to choose your own area. So in my case, foreign language correspondent was classified as economy, you know, economy area,  [Mm-hm] and I'm a person who is interested in almost everything, but not in economy stuff. So I hate this stuff.

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I wanted to change to another discipline, biology and science. But the German system is very strict. So to be allowed to attend, I had to do an additional year with teaching in tractor driving, welding, and even chainsaw training, several several injuries included, I can tell you,  [Oh my goodness], but in a certain way, but in a certain way, I benefited from the whole extra school time, because in the meantime, I was in Japan for short chunk Japanese language course.  [Mm-hm] And the teachers were so great, so devoted to the teaching. So that was when I felt that I want to be a teacher too.

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Section 3: Research (02:42 - 05:16) 

Could you tell us some background to your research into meditation?

Research has shown that meditation exercises can improve learning in different ways. However, can meditation also improve the learning of a foreign language? That was the big question.  [Mm] So until now, there are there were only a few studies, which looked on the combination of language learning and mindfulness, and not even one in a Japanese setting. There were all in with I think in target language were was English  [Mm-hm] so implementing meditation exercises in a foreign language setting in Japan with German is a completely new new thing.

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So to fill this research gap, I started to let my students meditate. And this article shows actually a partial study of 75 students. [Mm-hm]  But actually, there are more until now there are 300, I think, 300 students until now, and they were absolute–in this study, in my article, they were absolute beginners, and I let them meditate for a whole year. So over the two over the period of two semesters. The participants were divided into three classes with the same teacher, me,  [Mm-hm] and the same textbook, and the the two classes meditated every time in before class, or in the beginning of the class, two times a week. One class did a guided meditation, they listened to a three-minute audio recording with Japanese meditation instructions. And the second class did a counting breath meditation. The students counted from ten until  one in their head, and concentrated on their breath. And the third class was the comparison group and had no meditation exercises.

 

And I wanted to test if the meditation exercises had an effect on the language learning.  [Mm] So I did six language tests with grammar, vocabulary listening. So yeah, you can say the standard, the standard language test [Mm-hm] over the over the year. And to measure the mindfulness level of the students and the effect questionnaires was used. 

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Section 4: Mindfulness (05:16 - 07:37) 

What is 'mindfulness'?

Mindfulness, happiness, they are connected together. [Mm-hm] And mindfulness is the living about in the present moment.  [Mm] It's it’s it’s to be right here, right n–to feel the now. Actually, I have the comparison, the zoom lens. So a zoom lens can zoom out and zoom in,  [Mm-hm]  like you can switch your state of mind, you can have a larger perspective on what is taking place. So be mindfully aware of the whole situation. Or you can zoom in and focus on situational details. So focused attention. So I think, and this is the blueberry muffin, right?  [Mm-hm] I think it's, it's really like to not watch TV while you're eating the blueberry muffin or reading something or thinking about anything, [Mm-hm] just eating the blueberry muffin, is actually pretty difficult for most of us nowadays.

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What hints or advice do you have for other teachers–things that they could do today to improve their focus, mindfulness, and so on?

I really recommend to try anything. First, the what's feeling good for oneself, because some people love guided meditations and other hate them.  [Mm-hm]  Just, they don't want to hear anything, they was just meditate. So maybe try a guided meditation, go to YouTube, try one, 10 minute, 20 minutes, or one hour if you if you want. Really do that, and and try different speakers, because everyone has a different meditation guiding style. [Mm-hm] And you have to like the voice. And when I go into my classes, I try to take at least 20 seconds, also when I'm I’m little bit late, but I try to take 20 seconds. And just okay, this is my this is my class, these students, they come to my mind, and I try to be the nicest person in the room. Yeah. This is always my, my motto. And then we have the meditation for three minutes. So actually, I meditate with them. [Mm-hm] So it's pretty good for me.

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Section 5: Future work (07:37 - 08:47) 

Do you have any plans to use meditation in other fields?

Lately, for my Chinese studies, I love to listen to Chinese guided meditations. [Right] I enjoy it because I can learn and relax at the same time. And that's really great. Because it's slow, and it's repetitive, repetitive, and soothing. And you can really learn and train your listening skills. And I think Chinese is really beautiful, and can relax really good, really great.

 

For my work, actually, meditation research has shown so many benefits, like lower blood pressure, or cholesterol levels, relieving depression, and so on. Actually, there's so much research out there now. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by myself. But for me personally, I mostly benefit from relaxing and the help with overthinking, though I it showed me that I cannot control my thoughts. And even my next thought is not under my control. So I can take a step back and just observe the present moment. And that is really, really helpful for my job as well.

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Section 6: Goodbye (08:47 - 09:01) 

A: Thank you for your time today,Luisa, and I wish you the best of luck in your future work.

B: Thank you. Thank you so much, Chris, for having me here. And I wish you all the best and a mindful life.

4. Dr. Shaun O'Dwyer (Australia) [Living in Japan]

Dr. Shaun O'Dwyer

Section 1: Greeting (00:00 - 00:21) 

A: Joining us today is Shaun O'Dwyer, who is an Associate Professor from Kyushu University. And the book we're going to be talking about is his work, "Confucianism's Prospects: A Reassessment." Hello, Shaun.

B: Hello, and thank you for the introduction.

A: And how are you doing today?

B: Pretty good, as as well as as anyone else, I guess.

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Section 2: Background (00:21 - 02:01) 

Have you always been a university-based academic?

For a long time, I was, as the Chinese would would call it, "A Wandering Scholar", a bit of an itinerant scholar. So for a good many years, I was actually out of the university system working in the English language teaching sector, the the eikaiwa sector, as well [Oh no, a real job]. Yes,exactly, and and doing ALT jobs. But I'll I’ll mention this: about 20 years ago, I dropped out well I completed my Ph.D., and actually came to Japan and and became a NOVA teacher. And, in that year, I wrote and had published three academic papers. And I was out of the university system at that time, and it just came down to setting time aside and making sure I worked on stuff. And also, well the fact that I was a humanities scholar meant that all I needed was a laptop, an internet connection, and some books. And I think that also makes it bit easier if you're in the humanities, you don't need that much. So I think part of it is is is motivation, and then maintaining some kind of connection with networks of other scholars. So at that time, I was involved in a few online discussion lists, which allowed me to connect with scholars and share my ideas with them. So I think it's certainly doable. For a number of years I was out of academia, or at least not only just teaching full time, part-time sometimes, but I was still maintaining some some published output. So yeah my advice is to people who are kind of struggling perhaps, if they're not so tenured, or if they're sort of halfway in and halfway out of the academic world, is to keep it up and maintain some sort of connection by correspondence with scholars working in their field.

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Section 3: Interest in Confucianism (02:01 - 04:06) 

What interested you in the topic of Confucianism in Asia?

Well, my interest in in this kind of topic sort of started off about just over 20 years ago, I suppose. And at the time, I kind of went in for what I now regard as a rather naive notion that East Asian societies have a sort of deep and enduring Confucian heritage culture, which strongly influences their sort of social and cultural life. And that this, this sort of factors into what kind of political system is or systems are appropriate for their for their way of life. And so there are various proposals then around about what kind of political system is compatible with, you know, so-called Confucian heritage cultures. And I was sort of a part of this de-- discussion or debates about 20 years ago and published a few papers about it. But in the intervening years, I've sort of come to reassess and think well, ook, you know, look East Asia is a really highly diverse region of, you know, over one point, about 1.7 billion people living in very, very different societies. Some of them highly autocratic, of course, and and some of them are are state-of-the-art liberal democracies, which you know, in the current pandemic, are producing some really high-quality statecraft responses to the pandemic. And it just seems to me that this notion of a a sort of shared Confuscian heritage culture, still having effect today and how people sort of live their lives and how they, you know, do politics, it just seems to be not not a very good idea, not a very workable idea, a bit of a pie-in-the-sky idea, I suppose. So, my book is a kind of response to my own thinking 20 years ago, and also to the kinds of, you know, sort of political and moral and philo– philosophical works, which are being produced with that assumption in mind: that there is this deep, enduring Confuscian heritage culture which still has influence or if it has stopped, stopped having influence because of modernization and industrialization, that it It should somehow be restored. And I take issue with both of those assumptions.

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Section 4: Historical stories of Confucian rulers (04:06 - 05:29) 

What are some interesting events from Confucian state history?

So in the Mencius there there there's a scene where one of Mencius’s students highlights a a passage in the in the sort of legends of that King Shun where he, he is partial to one of his, one of his brothers. And his brother is a really horrible person, but he ends up giving him a kind of a sinecure in a faraway province. [Mm] And Mencius’s students is what what's with this? This is kind of partiality. He's, you know, this his son his br– the King Shun's brother is a bastard. So what's he doing rewarding him and sending him off to a province where he's going to inflict his you know, his tyranny on the people there possibly whereas the Shun actually harshly punished some other ministers who had no family relation to him so not exactly filial relation, but a a kind of familial relation which which some critics of Confucianism know at the time was saying introduces bias into rulership.

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It's almost becomes a black humor. There was a scene where the the brother and the father conspire to set fire to Shun when he's when he's in a barn. So it does it does sort of build up you think, you know, isn't it time to run away or leave but no, he shows his devotion to his father and quietly accepts and tolerates the the plots by his family against him. And that's one of the reasons why he's rewarded with the sort of the the rulership in the end.

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Section 5: Activities of Confucian rulers (05:29 - 07:33) 

So, could Confucian rulers do whatever they wanted?

It's hinted sometimes it’s more than hinted, well there's a thing called the Mandate of Heaven, for if a ruler is tyrannical, then yeah, the fact that he falls, is overthrown, is a sign that he didn't deserve to be there in the first place. So that gives a bit of a bit of wriggle room for ministers to sort of sort of hint to the ruler, who, you know, if you do really bad stuff, you could end up being treated like a criminal, you know, getting 'The Chop', which is what Mencius actually says in one of the dialogues, he doesn't actually say that ministers have a right to overthrow a a ruler, but he does say, "Well, you know, it's gonna it could happen to you, you know." So that's the theory that in that ministers could overthrow rulers who are tyrannical and that's the the ruler being overthrown as a sign that Heaven had withdrawn it’s consent to the ruler being there, which in a way is a pretty radical doctrine for the time. But in practice of course, in dynastic China once Confucianism became the the kind of, you know, the state doctrine, or the state’s ritual order as well, that kind of thinking was very much held in check, for obvious reasons, but there were from time to time in formal sort of practices and institutions whereby ministers could remonstrate, lecture, even scold the ruler, and and they could get away with it. It was assumed that was part of their job, but it was, it was a pretty dangerous thing to do. You could get your head lopped off. So there's a quite a famous story from the reign of the Hongwu Emperor in the this is in the early Ming Dynasty. He was he was actually the ruler who founded the Ming Dynasty, and he murdered quite a lot of ministers and quite a lot of scholars. Finally, one Confucian scholar had had enough. So he he decided he'd go and visit the Emperor and and really scold him. And he took the trouble to bring his coffin with him to the remonstrant session. So you know you can imagine him sort of having his coffin wheeled by some attendants when he sat in front of the Emperor and told him, I'm going to tell you off, [Wow] and the Emperor was apparently so impressed with his bravery that he let him live. 

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Section 6: Future plans (07:33 - 08:36) 

Having completed this project, what are you doing next?

Well, the next step is an edited book collection on Confucianism in modern Japan, which I'm editing for the Japan imprints document, sorry, Japan documents imprint, and yeah, I've sort of a third of the way through that. So so far, I've got contributions from Chinese, Korean, Japanese, British, Romanian, Indonesian, and Taiwanese scholars. And that sort of spans the period we've been talking about in this in this podcast from the late 19th century through to the 21st century. So yeah yeah, that's looking very interesting in the moment. So just in the quite early process of peer reviewing contributions. So yeah, that will be the next stage, I guess, looking at a a kind of a history of ideas perspective on the development of modern academic as well as politicized Confucianism, in the in the Japanese, and also the the regional context affected by Japan during the 20th century.

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Section 7: Goodbye (08:36 - 08:44) 

A: Thank you very much for your time today, Shaun, and I wish you the best of luck in all your work.

B: Okay, thank you very much. ame to you, Chris.

5. Dr. Gabrielle Decamous (France) [Living in Japan]

Dr. Gabrielle Decamous

Section 1 - Greetings (00:00 - 00:11)

A: Today's interviewee is Dr. Gabrielle Decamous from the Faculty of Languages and Cultures at Kyushu University. How are you today, Gabrielle?

B: I'm fine. Thank you. How are you?

A: I'm very well.

​

Section 2 - Background / Introduction (00:11 - 02:31)

What is your background?

I've worked in many museums, and also did academic research. The museums I worked for were the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Guggenheim, as well, essentially in New York, but also in Bilbao, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. And then I did my Ph.D. in the United Kingdom at Goldsmiths college. And then I ended up in Fukuoka, somehow. When I was at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, I came across a book, somebody pointed to me brought it to my attention. It was an exhibition catalog about a group of Italian artists called the Nucleai, which means “the nuclear.” And the group itself was really called that way, and their goal was to depict in painting the nuclear age. So that it was some sorts of some sort of drippings and and exploding forms all over the canvas. And the group was very active, and also included some French members such as Yves Klein. So I was shocked by this, I was surprised by why this group is forgotten. And also, everything about the nuclear age was forgotten. And at the time, I was interested in to the connection between art and science. And everybody was talking about biotechnology. It was the trend at the time. And I thought that among these kind of very contemporary things, because it was very high tech, I thought that the connection between art and science should involve some kind of hist- art historical connection as well, not just the contemporary, the new new new. And then after this, when I started researching the more I start I started kind of scratching or digging under the on on the surface, the more things came up from the Cold War from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from Chernobyl and then Fukushima happened. My ar– my archive went to like, a lot bigger than expected. But that's that’s that's the origin was the Peggy Guggenheim collection.

​

Section 3 - Censorship and Fukushima (02:31 - 04:56)

Do you believe there was censorship in Japan after Fukushima?

Yes. So Fukushima, I write about this in my book as well, “Censorship in Fukushima.” I mean, there's not a title of the book but a part in in in the book. In fact, contrary even to Chernobyl, we had the opposite effect of of like cover at first. [Mm] There was like a saturation of information, [ ] because of social media and and Twitter and people were were kind of sharing information, sometimes without checking information. And there was like an overload or saturation, and that people people were at a loss, I think so I think the cover-up would have been impossible at that time. [Mm] 

 

However, there was a different form of let's say, yes, I I guess I could say censorship as well. But what I find very interesting is that today, we don't talk about it anymore. The problem is still there, [Mm] is there is no solution as of yet like for Chernobyl , and it's gonna take time, and there's still an exclusion zone, but it has become very quiet in the media. So I think whether the it was a strategy by the by Shinzo Abe’s government or not, or if it was like, self-censor– censorship from the media. Gradually, we went from like saturation to absolutely nothing. [Mm-hm] And now, I think that with the virus, we have even less, and also at the same time, what I was questioning also, the question I was asking in my book was also that now that there is this this nuclear disaster happening, and and I can really say that there's been like an overwhelming number of artworks that were done, not just by Japanese artists, but by artists all over the world about Fukushima, then this create another kind of layer of information putting it in the shadow of former ones, the ones about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ones about Oceania. So they it's it's troubling, I think that by wanting to talk about th– the subject, we are putting in the shadow other traumas of nuclear traumas, as well.

​

Section 4 - Censorship after Nagasaki (04:56 - 07:35)

Did censorship occur after Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

That is something that was very surprising for me to learn is that so many works were were censored. In the book, I I write about this in greater details, but that sometimes the censorship was very loose as things would go through the cracks. And sometimes it would be very strict. I think there was also a lot of self-censorship on the part of of the Japanese artists also because in the 1930s, there was this case of communist writer who got beaten down by the police to death, he was killed by the police for being for having his freedom of speech. So I think there was a lot of this but for Ota Yoko what is very surprising is that they have censored a part of her book, a a an entire chapter, which is ded– was dedicated to, how to say,  scientific reports. And pre– when they broadcasted on radio broadcast about censorship, and and the atomic bomb, was that only scientific information would circulate. So it is really strange. And she writes about it herself. That's the the –. When she met with the censorship officers they were, it was completely surreal that everything went the opposite way, but that she finally managed to publish even if it was partial, they cut off one one chapter. Some some artists like her, pushed and succeeded in in publishing things, but there were a few and when the censorship was lifted, and I think this speaks volumes, as well: when the censorship was finally lifted in 1952, even one or two years before, it was loose, it started to get really loose. So many so many works were published and and images, not just literature or poetry or songs, it was also pictures, I mean photography that that were circulated. And what I find very surprising as well is that when I started digging into this archive, which is there, in in Japan, in in the atom bomb Museum in Hiroshima, Nagasaki wide in the open, and is that these images are still not circulating in in the West. And I was very surprised by that. So I would say that even though the censorship was lifted, the the the effect is lasting.

​

Section 5 - The history and problem of uranium mining (07:35 - 08:46)

Let's think about other problems: where does the uranium for nuclear energy come from?

It comes from the mines. And the mines also are very are polluting. And there is an entire history of uranium mining, which is completely in the dark as well. And that's where I think censorship is also very good at to keep this this one's in the dark. Uranium mining, there is an a history of uranium mining. If you think about the first times, uranium was was digged, it was at the time of Marie Curie. So it was in the Czech Republic. It was there was only one mine and then there was another one in the Belgian Congo. So here we stepped on to colonization, as well. And now we know the safety for the workers. But at the time we didn't. And so for decades and decades of uranium minings , not only the resources were emptied by colonial powers, when they were on the African continent, in particular, the French mining Niger, in Madagascar, and then there was the American mines in, in native Indian territories in the US and Canada.

​

Section 6 -  (08:46 - 09:42) 

What would you change if you wrote another book?

The planning for me is just that I thought, because I did my Ph.D. on on to the topic, I thought I had enough material. And when I reached Japan, I realized that there's a lot more. And then when I I managed to gather enough information I sent it to the publisher, and in the making, I came across so much more, so much more. And I couldn't see the end. I think at the time, when I started the book, I was under pressure to to publish and to put things outside for my my academic career. So I I went into a I did it a little bit in a rush. But today, if I could write again, another book, I would just take the time to really gather all the information and then start from there. Instead of just being in emergency all the time.

​

Section 7 - Goodbye (09:42 - 09:51)

A: Thank you very much for your time, and I wish you the best of luck in your future works.

B: Thank you for having me and for the nice questions.

​

​

6. Lisa Hunsberger (Jamaica) [Living in Japan]

Lisa Hunsberger

Section 1 - Greetings (00:

A: Today's guest is Lisa Hunsberger, a lecturer of English at the renowned Kyushu Sangyo University. Lisa, Welcome to Lost in Citations.

B: Thank you so much, Jonathan. I'm really very happy to be here.

​

Section 2 - Background / Education

​Can you tell us something about your background in Jamaica?

In Jamaica, we do not have Middle School, you just have elementary school, we say primary primary school, then it's high school, and you start high school at age 11 thereabouts. [Mm-hm] And you start there all the way up to age 16. And we follow kind of a British system. And so there's an extra two years where we do what we called A-levels, advanced level courses. And then those two years are optional. [Mm-hm] Take you up to age 18, and then university thereafter.

 

What made you interested in language learning?

Well, my family's kind of a language family. 

Oh, really?

Yeah, my mom did her her undergraduate degree in I think it was Spanish major and German minor. 

Oh, wow.

And, my Aunt, she did Spanish up to her Master's. And she also lived in Spain for a while. So, my family is kind of big on languages. I chose Spanish in high school but I'll be very honest, I I kind of coasted on by because my mom and my aunt, whenever we went to visit my aunt. my aunt would always speak to my mom in Spanish whenever they wanted to say something [Mm-hm] without me knowing what they were saying. 

(laughs)

And so to figure out what they were saying I was a very diligent student at first and was learning Spanish just so I could figure out what they were talking about. And then once I knew what they were saying, and they no longer could have their secret language in my presence, I totally lost interest in Spanish which you know much to the heartbreak of my family.

 

I lost an interest in Spanish, but when I went to university, I picked up French. Not by choice. I was actually off on my my academic credits [Mm-hm] by like three points, three credits. [Mm-hm] And an academic advisor was like, “Hey, why don't you try French?” And I'm like, “French? Are you kidding me?” I didn't say it out loud. But I was thinking, “Are you kidding me? Like, this language is so difficult. Nothing is spelled the way it's pronounced like I don't want to do French” but I, I didn't have any other option that was as interesting to me. And so I picked up French and I had beginner French [Mm-hm] every morning for two semesters from 8 am till 10 am. 

Wow.

Two semesters of French. And I remembered I was so mad. I walked into the first class and I was like, “Oh, I cannot believe I'm here.” And then in walks my French teacher, [Mm-hm] she just sashayed into the class "(Speaks French)",. [(laughs)] And she was so happy and bubbly and energetic and excited to teach us this language. And I was so impressed with her [Mm]  that it fel--it completely I I melted, Jonathan, I completely melt-melted.

​

Section 3 - Travel

​What do you remember from the traveling you did for your research?

I will never forget, there was one community that was only accessible by boats. [Mm] And the children, the school children, they would come to this main area for school, and then jump in their canoes, [(laughs)] and paddle home. It was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. And just going into the communities and recording the language was was very, a very unique experience, because this was a language that hadn't been documented as much as Lokono had been. And so just to even start was challenging, because one of the best ways to get speakers to speak naturally about their language is to have them tell a story. [Mm] And while they're telling the story, they're saying all these different things. And then you say, “Okay, so, can you explain to me what the story was about?” [Mm] And then they tell you the meaning of the story in English, so of course, they're bilingual. And when they're explaining the meaning in English, you hear keywords. (???), okay, this was a story about a man who went to the forest. So I'm like, “Okay, how do you say 'man' in your language? How do you say 'go' in your language? [Mm] How do you say ‘forest’ in your language? And then if they say “went to the forest,” then I have to say, I have to ask, “Okay, how do you say ‘is going',’ [Mm]  ‘went’, ‘will be going,’” and I get all of the the variations within one particular word, then so all the conjugations for verbs. So it w– that was part of what made it really challenging: [Mm] it was having to, you know, basically start with all of this knowledge and then kind of, you know, analyze it down to the nitty-gritty to get all the details.

​

Section 4 - Academic presentations

In your paper, you wrote about academic presentations. What problems have you seen in the academic presentations that you have seen?

I mean I did attend presentations. And sometimes I’d think, “Oh, man, there's just so much to read on the slide. I wish I could see everything, [Mm, yeah] but the presenter isn't saying everything,” and, you know, using that as the the guidelines some of the guidelines for the things that I have, even in the article as well.

​

It's why I I always say [(laughs)] it's important for presenters to remember that the presenter is is really the main person that the audience member came to to hear from, [Mm] or to understand, you know, to understand what is happening with this particular paper. I find that the presenters are sometimes so wrapped up in wanting to get the audience all of this information or even just not knowing where to start off [Mm, yeah] with making the slides. That is a copy and paste that happening--that happens. And so the p– from the presenter’s perspective, the the presentation becomes presenter-centered, as opposed to audience-centered. It's not digestible for the audience.

​

Section 5 - Jamaican English on TV

You make a video series on YouTube about Jamaican English. ​Why did you start this project?

Now, that part was the ling–, the linguist in me, having watched all of these TV shows, [Mm-hm] and also knowing that there are so many Jamaicans who don't realize that we have, we so many of us are bilingual, and we don't even realize it. We just say English and bad English, but it's really English [(laughs)] and the Jamaican language. And it's not bad English: it's a different language entirely. It has its own ​grammatical system. And I started making the videos because I had watched Marvel's Luke Cage. I am a superhero nerd. I watched Marvel's Luke Cage. And oh my gosh, it was real the Jamaican was so bad. [(laughs)] It was cringy for every Jamaican out there, it was so cringy. [(laughs)] And what you find happening is that Jamaicans will hear it and it's cringe-worthy, but they don't know why. So I was explaining that I was explaining so this is this is ungrammatical because [(laughs)] we don't conjugate we don't we don't mark tense in Jamaican like this. This is how English marks tense. In Jamaican, we mark tense like this, or this word, we don't mark plurality like this, instead in Jamaican we mark plurality like this. So that was really where that started. And then it was, well, if I'm going to talk about the grammar, why not talk about the writing system, and why not talk about this or that. So I do hope to make more videos. It's just the time that’s a challenge. Cause they do take it takes a, it takes a while to sit down and think of the concept. Same as wh- back when I was first starting out with presentation design, to sit, sit down and think of the concept, write out a script, then record it, then go in and edit it myself. Like all of that [Mm]  is it's quite the undertaking.

​

Section 6 - Goodbye

A: Lisa, thank you so much for coming on Lost in Citations.

B: Thank you so much, Jonathan. I really had a great time.

7. Dr. Ana Sofia Hofmeyr (Portugal) [Living in Japan]

Dr. Ana Sofia Hofmeyr

Section 1 - Greetings (00:00 - 00:09) 

A: Joining us today is Ana Sophia Hofmeyr, who is a lecturer at Kansai University. How are you doing today, Ana?

B: I'm doing great. Chris, thank you so much for having me.

​

Section 2 - Research motivations (00:09 - 03:31) 

What motivated your research project?

I wanted to look at how initiatives in domestic campus were fostering interculturally competent students. So really, my main question it was, does internationalization at home? So these initiatives on domestic campuses have the potential to generate intercultural competence in domestic students? And if they do, what are the circumstances for its production?

​

Now, which university are you doing your Ph.D. through?

 

I’m doing my Ph.D. through Osaka University.

 

So the people who are going to be judging you on your answers will be quite familiar with intercultural competence in the Japanese context.

 

Yes, I think so. Especially because I framed this idea of intercultural competence within the concept of global jinzai or global human resources. And as you know, that’s quite a popular term among universities who that are internationalizing in Japan and that are part of the Top Global University Project which Osaka University is also a part of.   

​

Now not all of our listeners are from Japan, so …

 

Right.

 

...what would be your definition or what was your working definition of global global jinzai, global human resources?

 

Well, you know to be honest, I didn’t start with one because the concept is quite vague even in the documents that are published by the Ministry of Education and by the Top Global Universities. So actually the first part of my thesis was dedicated to finding out what Top Global Universities and what the Japanese government meant by “global human resources” and what part of that concept was dedicated to intercultural competence.  

 

No I I think that’s a good way to start with it, particularly when as as as has come out in other interviews, the way that these concepts are defined is either quite vague or is defined by each institution.  

 

Right, so you know I wanted to look at the concepts specifically in higher education because it's, you know, the concept is also linked to industry. And it's mostly about creating a global workforce. But I really wanted to see how universities were perceiving this idea of global jinzai. So I started by looking at promotional and policy documents that were being published by these 37 universities and by the government, and what skills and attitudes and knowledge they said that they would foster in their students. And then after looking at that, I had a a bit of, I guess, a clearer picture of what they meant by global jinzai by global human resources. I did frame it, sorry, I did frame it in comparison with more of a Western model of intercultural competence, just to compare and to see what Japan had, that was not being mentioned in the case of the United States and the UK, and kind of the specificities of the Japanese case.

​

Section 3 - Research contents (03:31 - 05:30) 

Explain a little more about the project

I was looking at how programs at these domestic campuses could develop intercultural competence and specifically, I was looking at extracurricular programs because quite a lot of research has been done on EMI, for example, English as a Medium of Instruction programs. So I wanted to look other programs that are more co-curricular extracurricular. And so what I expected to see really was that these programs would directly impact intercultural competence in domestic students participation in these programs. So I was I was thinking that students who enrolled in these programs would develop intercultural competence directly. And but what happened was that it was not a direct relation. So students' prior experiences or experiences prior to enrolling in university had more influence than what actually happened on campus. So for example, students who spent time abroad prior to enrolling at university, students who were more interculturally motivated as soon as they enrolled, and also gender impacted students confidence in their intercultural competence. So I'm not talking about actual, intercultural competence, but their confidence in their intercultural competence levels. And in turn this confidence impacted their engagement with the campus. So if they felt more confident in their intercultural skills, they were more likely to enroll in extracurricular programs with an intercultural focus, they were more likely to engage with international students outside of these programs, and they were more likely to engage with the multicultural campus in general.

​

Section 4 - Research findings (05:30 - 06:49) 

What did you find in your project?

Well, if you're, if you're talking about at the higher education level, I really think that, you know, in terms, so actually, students attitudes towards intercultural contact were fairly high. Students showed curiosity, students showed openness. And there's really a lot saying, there's a lot of literature and a lot of in the news, you see it in Japan as well, that there's this inward looking use in Japan, which is not necessarily the case, students seem to want to interact with international students. I think if I had the budget, rather than motivation, I'd really focus on increasing students' understanding of other cultures, their intercultural knowledge and skills, other than language skills, because I think most of the budget does go to foreign language skills at the moment. But the reason why there was such a gap between intercultural motivation, and what students actually did was that students had almost no confidence in their knowledge about other cultures and in their skills to be able to communicate with other cultures. So actually, if I had the money, that's that's where I would invest it, I guess.

​

Section 5 - Ph.D. actions (06:49 - 10:32) 

Has it been difficult trying to gain a Ph.D.?

You know, to give listeners a bit of background, I started my Ph.D. as I started my new job. I started the new job at the same time, which in retrospect, was a very risky and challenging thing to do. I had to manage new classes and a new environment, and a whole new research project at the same time. I'm a lecturer so I teach 10 classes a week. That involves a lot of preparation. I have some other duties as well. In addition to that, I got pregnant during my Ph.D. And I got pregnant, I already have a daughter. So this was my second child. And so I had to manage a pregnancy eventually two small children with my new job and a Ph.D. Honestly, for people who are thinking of doing a Ph.D., you'll need to reconsider my approach, I think. (host laughs). So I did my Ph.D. in three years. And I think honestly, despite everything with the coronavirus, if I hadn't had to stay at home for a whole year, I wouldn't have finished it in three years, it would have taken me an extra year. I saved time that I could use on my Ph.D. on commuting time, on time between Zxoom classes on being able to switch quickly between classes and Ph.D. work while I was at home. For the rest of the time. It was a big challenge. And it involved a lot of preparation and time management skills, I would say. You really need to be able to compartmentalize. I had my teaching days and I had my research days, and no teaching work was done on my research days and no research was done on my teaching days. And that really helped getting the work done. If you if you wake up in the morning of a research day and you think well I'm just going to have a quick look at my email see if any students said anything, if there's any homework, oh, you'll never get to your research. You start answering emails. You get lost in the email. You remember there's something else you need to do for your classes. Suddenly it's lunchtime. For me, mornings are more productive. So then by the afternoon I was just tired. I couldn't do my research. What really worked for me was to separate those and then leave evenings open as much as possible. Now, I have to say that towards the end of my Ph.D., this was just not possible. And for quite a few months, I worked every night. But, you know, especially when I was pregnant, I was out by 6 pm. That was it, I was very tired. My son is gigantic. So, and I'm very small. So. But it's hard, it's hard. And it really took, I guess, a very supportive husband, that, you know, looked after the children, and especially for the interviews. I had so these two universities that I analyzed, they were not, you know, physically close to me, I had to travel for the interviews. So, that involved taking my husband and my daughter and my newborn son, who was at the time about a month and a half to two months to the interviews, and my husband looked after the baby while I did the interviews. And so you know, you need the support, you need the support from people around you, you need the time management, and then you need to give yourself a break.

​

Section 6 - Research publications (10:32 - 12:11) 

Have you been able to publish any of your research yet?

I have one article that is in the final stage of the publication review process. And that's the one about the concept of global human resources in Japan and what that means in higher education. Yeah, that's almost done. Then I have two more articles that I would like to publish with my results. But I'm going to leave that for the end of January or February for submission once classes are finished. I'm just aiming for big international journals. You know me I'm, you know, I'm fairly ambitious and I tend to aim for the club. Just right before I started my Ph.D., I had conducted this study with almost 400 students that I wanted to publish. And so I found the biggest international journal in my field. And I decided this is where I'm going to submit it. And I thought, let's start from the top. And if they reject me, I get some good feedback and I'll go to the next level. But they didn't reject me. They said, the quality is not at the level we expect, you know and looking back at it, I hadn't even started my Ph.D. so I'm not surprised they said that. But they were interested in my findings. And they were interested in that gap of the research that I was looking at. So it took me two years, but I finally managed to get my article published there. So really, I'm just looking to publish in international journals. And especially in my field, I'm looking at internationalization at home.

​

Section 7 - Goodbye (12:11 - 12:17) 

Thanks and goodbye

A: Thank you for sharing your time with us today, and good luck in the future.

B: Thank you very much for having me.

​

​

8. Dr. Christina Gkonou (Greece) [Living in the U.K.]

Dr. Christina Gkonou

Section 1 - Greetings

A: Today's guest is Dr. Christina Gkonou, associate professor in TESOL, and the Masters in TESOL Program Director in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex. Dr. Gkonou, how are you?

B: I'm very well, thank you. How are you?

A: I'm doing quite well, thank you for agreeing to do the interview at this time

​

Section 2 - Background

You have taught a variety of different kinds of students. Can you talk about your experiences and which you prefer teaching?

I actually started as a language teacher, so I was teaching students. And, and that was not as part of any of the courses I'm teaching on at the moment. But that was, these were students like English language learners. So they were learning English as a foreign language or a second language, really. [Mm-hm] So this is how I started. But alongside that, I was also doing my Ph.D. And I was interested in research. And in researching the the topic I was focusing on at the time, which was language learner anxiety. [Mm] And I was going to conferences, and I could see how much I would enjoy academic discussions and being with other researchers, and listening to their ideas about my research, their comments and feedback. I felt I learned a lot from that. And I think this is how I became more interested in, in in in working in an institution in a research-based post, which is what I am, which is what I'm doing now. So my position at the moment combines teaching and research. But I would say it's more research focused, or maybe the– I'm doing some teaching, but there are lots of expectations from me and and colleagues who are in the same position to to do research, and publish and go to conferences and stuff. And so this is how I became interested in academia. Teaching is something that I have, that I have always enjoyed I think, and I find it very relaxing as well. And and of course, face-to-face teaching is something that I enjoy a lot more than online teaching, [Mm] because I think nothing can replace the interaction among people. But unfortunately, we don't have another option at the moment. Ah so and then your other question about which group I prefer. I don't really mind to be honest with you. But working with practicing teachers at the MA level, which is most of what I do, [Mm] and excites me the most, I think, and I do something to two undergraduate students, which, which is fine. And I like that too. Because of the dynamics in the class they're very different from my MA classes, but working with the MA students who are practicing teachers, and apart from the psychology module, I do teaching practice with them, and lesson planning and classroom management and research skills. And I like this combination of topics and the fact that they are here and they are receiving training to become English language teachers. Most of them go back home and they they work as language as English language teachers in their home country. So it's really, it it's different. It's different types of groups. I do I enjoy both. But I think I prefer practicing teachers, working with teachers.

​

Section 3–Teaching experiences

Have you ever had any negative experiences as a teacher trainer?

The program is the MA program the MA TESOL program here at Essex is both for inexperienced [Mm] or less experienced teachers, but also for experienced teachers. And what we do is in the second term, we have two pathways, and the teachers are the teachers follow, let's say the pathway that is for them according to the teaching experience that they already have. But in the first term, they are all together [Mm] in the same class and in the same group and they take the same modules. And I can sometimes understand who knows something quite well and who doesn't and needs more support. I haven't been challenged openly in class as part of this role because we use a system here in which the course director–myself in this case–meets the students and talks to them and explains things to them. So I think that by making clear, by making everything clear right from the start, it is very helpful. But I remember being challenged in the past when I was working as an English language teacher here. And perhaps a critical incident for me when I was challenged by a student in class about my age. And, and you know, things like that, not necessarily the way I was teaching, you know, [Hm] so perhaps for me, that was a critical incident. So that was something that I was thinking about after the class and maybe a few days after the class. But in terms of, you know, having more experienced teachers in the class and challenging me, I think I've learned how to handle that. So maybe through all these little chats, the one to one meetings, and and by giving some good answers in class during the lesson. he thing is that, so far, the the people that have more experience than our on our MA TESOL course are the ones that are usually silent and appreciate what we do.

​

Section 4–Emotions and feelings

In your research, you say that emotions and feelings are different. Can you explain more about that? 

Yeah. And we felt that it was important to clarify the difference between emotions and feelings, because as we say, on this page, before the extract that you have just read out, we actually say that most people tend  to use the words emotions and feelings interchangeably, [Mm] or they see them as synonyms, maybe, words that have exactly the same meaning. But that's not right. Maybe in everyday speech, when we do not, when we do not discuss emotions within this particular context of psychology, but the let's say we talk with a friend about how we felt about something, maybe within this informal context, we can use these words interchangeably, but when we are talking about approaches to understanding emotions, and researching emotions, and so on, which is the focus of this book, we need to make sure that we understand the difference between emotions and feelings. And yeah, emotions are things we can see. That is why we say physical manifestations. [Mm] OK, I know that some people might contest that. They might say that, well, some of us are very good at hiding our emotions or we know how to do that so you can't always see how you can't always see our emotion. I know that people will contest that but in order to understand the difference between the two, we can say that emotions are physical manifestations of how we feel. And this is why they lead or this is how they lead to feelings. So they are different.

​

Section 5 - Life lessons

What have you learned in your time as a university professor?

What I have learned throughout the years is how to best manage my time. [Mm] I think I was doing that OK anyway, but I can tell that I'm doing much better now. And I have learned, I have learned how to manage time, how to prioritize tasks, and also how much time I should devote to each task. So I'm not sure if everybody can do that, because they might be handling tasks that are more demanding than what I have at the moment. But I try to evaluate in advance how much time I should devote something, depending on its nature, depending on how important it is, who it relates to and so on. And so that was one thing I have learned. And the other thing that I have learned is that, at the beginning, when I joined the department in this research position, I was trying to do everything at the same time, to stay online until late, to to answer all the emails, maybe spend some time during the weekend to finish something. But I have learned to be more relaxed now. [Mm] And understand that things can also wait. So you don't always have to finish something. And you know when this makes you stressed and this takes away time that you might want to spend with your family, etc. So again, this is something that I have learned, which I think is very closely linked to what I mentioned earlier: time management. And you learn as you go along to complete tasks quicker and to be more efficient. And I think this is something you learned through experience.

​

Section 6 - Goodbye

A: Than–thank you again for coming on the show and best of luck with your teaching and research this term and year.

B: Thank you.

9. Dr. Nobuyuki Hino (Japan)[Living in Japan]

Dr. Nobuyuki Hino

Section 1 - Greeting (00:00 - 

A: Joining us today is Dr. Nobuyuki Hino, who is a professor of language and culture at Osaka University. Very nice to make your acquaintance, Professor.

B: Well, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Haswell, or Chris sensei. I'm glad to be here. And I feel really honored to to be on your program. Thank you.

​

Section 2 - Background

Can you tell us something about your background in this research?

Well, it’s a long story. Let's see. Well, it goes back to exactly 50 years ago. 1970. It's the year the the Beatles disbanded. Are you from the UK? Right? Right? 

Yes, I am. 

Great. Yeah. Great music band from your country. Yeah. So what happened in 1970. So the dis– disbanding of The Beatles, and also, the book by Kunihiro Masao. Kunihiro Masao is a pioneer Japanese simultaneous interpreter, and also a cultural anthropologist. And he wrote a book in 1970 Eigo no Hanashikata, the English title is English Works for You. So he wrote it in Japanese, and he discussed it, what he discussed there was the, what he called eigo no datsu eibeika. That's, he later translated it, like, the Anglo-Americanization of English. So it so he argued that the Anglo-Americanization of English is occurring. And also he talked about the diversification of English or varieties of English. So, and on top of that, he claimed that, well, Japanese English should be valuable as a means of communicating or representing Japanese values, or East Asian values. OK, so I was just a first-year junior high school student. I was 12 at that time, so I didn't understand what he was talking about, but I intuitively felt something must be there, something important. Later in senior high school, I encountered another book, this time by a book by Suzuki Takao. And in that 1975 book, he discussed his concept of “Englic.”. “Englic”is also international English, the Anglo-Americanized English for international communication, OK. And Suzuki Takao also argued that Japanese English should be valued as a for expressing Japanese culture or Japanese values, or international means of communication for Japanese people. And so those two books had a great impact on me, although first I didn't understand what they were really talking about. By the way, interestingly, those two books became bestsellers in Japan. [Yes] See, this is very, something very interesting about Japan. Already in the 1970s, the general public was exposed to the idea of English as an international language.

​

Section 3 - Research approach

What is your approach to research?

Well, my belief is research should not be for research’s own sake, OK. Research has social responsibility. And for our area of English language teaching or ELT, it should have pedagogical benefit. It it should go to do to [(recording is cut a little here)] students, or teachers. I really take it for granted that our research should have some some practical benefit for students and teachers. And in some way, actually, when I say practical benefit, I also include spiritual benefit. So if I may say this, because I mentioned the Beatles, Beatles just a few minutes earlier, my ultimate goal is to increase love and peace, actually. So our research and our teaching should increase love and peace in this world, ultimately. So for that for that goal for that goal towards that goal, our our research should have some, well, pedagogical benefit on the way.

​

Section 4 -  Englishes and nationalism

What do people who don’t research language need to know about worldwide English use?

So first of all, we should be careful about any categorization. Okay, not only nation-state framework. Once we categorize something, we we could have, unless we are very careful, we could have well stereotyping and labeling and even othering. Right? So there's that danger. That’s the inherent danger of any categorization. The especially the nation-state framework. Well, Japan has a very negative history a–about English language teaching from that viewpoint. Look at the English language textbooks during World War Two in Japan. Textbooks were limited in those days in wartime. And the America was enemy Britain was enemy still still out there were English textbooks, well, but the content was the content was they try to exclude Anglo-American culture. And they try to uphold the superiority of Japanese culture, th–th–, so that was an ethnocentric textbook, [Mm-hm] although it was English for Japanese values, OK, in a sense, in a sense, because they expressed they replaced American English, British names with Japanese names like a Hanako, and things like that. [Right] And content was like, we pray for the brave Japanese soldiers. So in a way, it's a represent representation of Japanese values. But but the but it's not EIL as far as I'm concerned, this is not EIL textbook because EIL has to be based on the balanced view of cultures. [Right] So prejudice against other cultures is the farthest away from EIL. In that way, so nationalism really worked negatively against EIL. But on the other hand, as we as we have been talking about nationalism in the Outer Circle, you mentioned or post-colonial environment, was a driving force really driving force for standing up for their local Englishes. It's really a double-edged sword.

​

Section 5 - EIL and testing

Does an International English approach cause a problem with language testing?

Firstly, we shouldn't be worri– too too too worried about testing, right? Because testing is, in a way about results. And we should be more concerned with teaching first, and then testing. So if we say because testing is difficult, we should not do this. That's the other way around, really OK. So, yeah, well, anyway, I do respect testing experts, they are doing a wonderful job. And because testing today is a really specialized area, I often refrain from commenting on testing because because there are real experts on that, but, but if I may comment on this a a little think of the yes testing of EIL is a, well, complicated one or complex one, but it should be possible. What is required is the widening of the scope, diversification of standards, but it should not be really impossible. For example, a well about testing for receptive skills, tasks involving varieties varieties of English can be given such as listening comprehension questions on conversations between, say, Chinese English and Brazilian English talking about Greek culture or something like that, OK? And in th– in that case, scopes of exams are widened really, with respect to linguistic and cultural aspects, the basically the same methods of testing should be applicable. hey can be used in my understanding, [Mm] as in conventional testing in American and British English. And for productive skills, which concern MJ (model of Japanese English) that you mentioned, well criteria also need to be liberalized to allow for diversity. So for example, in writing in test of writing, a Japanese style of text organization may be accepted in writing in EIL. This kind of thing will make the job of examiners much more complex, but it's not impossible. OK, that's how I see it. And if I may add one more thing. I think probably the most difficult part is to test the communication skills, interactive skills in EIL. [Mm-hm] Really, that's the key for English as a lingua franca, especially ELF: how can you measure their communication strategies. Well we've been doing in a  subjective way, but how can we do that more objectively? That's that’s really a task we may be faced with. Let me add one more thing. I think we are familiar with the EIKEN EIKEN first-grade test Step Test. [Mm-hm] Well, for the international audience, it’s it’s a st– indigenous Japanese standardized test, OK, of English. [Mm-hm] The highest, let’s see, first Step Test, interview is given in the second round. And the examiners are usually one native speaker, so one one examiner from the Inner Circle and one examiner from Japan. Japanese examiner plus American examiner or British examiner Canadian examiner [Mm-hm, mm-hm] and so so on. I always wish we if we could have if the budget allows if we could have one more examiner, maybe from the Expanding Circle or the Outer Circle. [Mm-hm] So examiner from India examiner from Thai, something like that. Those three examiners would make a very good team in terms of EIL and World Englishes. 

​

Section 6

What are your ideas for the future in this research field?

I think we should continue with what we are doing now. Well, we should publish more on the teaching of EIL and ELF and World Englishes. The thing is traditionally, World English scholars and also EIL scholars were more interested in theoretical aspects, and pedagogical practice in a wider scale began just maybe a a decade ago or so something like that–rather recent, although it's really in full bloom now. Oh, well, anyway, so we should continue with this pedagogical application of EIL and World Englishes, ELF to actual classroom. We should write reports and give presentations on our pedagogical practice and share with other teachers. And we should develop materials in EIL, and many other things. We should do what we can do and we should continue​

​

Section 7

A: Thank you very much for your time today.

B: Well, thank you, Chris sensei. My pleasure.

10. Dr. Diane Pecorari (Sweden) [Living in Hong Kong]

Dr. Diane Pecorari

Section 1 - Greetings

A: Joining us today is Dr. Diane Pecorari, who is a professor of English at City University of Hong Kong. How're you doing today Diane?

B: Very well, thank you.

​

​Section 2 - English in Sweden and Hong Kong

What are some differences between how English is used in your country and how it is used in Hong Kong?

In Sweden, there is a a very strong level of of knowledge of proficiency in English. That's quite that's an important factor that underpins the the prevalence and the growth of EMI in Sweden, a sort of societal belief that every– everybody, by virtue of having done compulsory education ought to have the proficiency in English to do pretty pretty much anything that's required in English and therefore, attending university or teaching university classes. Those things are no exception. But English is very much a foreign language in in Sweden, a very strong one. 

Hong Kong of course has a a long history of English as a colonial language.The expectation of proficiency in English isn't as universal. There are obviously very many people with very strong English language skills, but others without it, and this is to a great degree linked to medium of instruction at school. However, almost all of Hong Kong's universities are exclusively English medium. So, in Sweden students go to university from a base of having attained a very high level of proficiency in English, and then can choose between attending university in English, or individual courses in English or in Swedish. In Hong Kong, the choice to attend university in Chinese or with Chinese as the medium instruction is almost non-existent. Not quite, but almost. But people reach university having gone to English medium schools or Chinese medium schools, or some blend thereof.

 

Section 3 - English as a Medium of Instruction

​One of the concerns with EMI is that it may cause English to replace or supersede the use of local languages. What do you think about this issue?

I think it's a real concern. It's and and it's a concern at two levels, right? So at the societal level, there's, there's reason for concern. There are are very many people who are concerned that EMI may result in domain loss. This is a a very big issue in in the Nordics. Sweden is the most populous Nordic country with just ten million people. So then you look at Norway with something like three or three and a half million people, Denmark a little bit larger than Norway a little bit  smaller than Sweden. The the number of people who speak Scandinavian languages is very, very small. And that's one of the reasons that EMI has the toehold that it has in the Nordics. So there has for many years been a concern that about about domain loss. Academics have to conduct their academic activities in English. Textbooks are published in English. There are some textbooks published in the Nordic languages, but quite a lot of textbooks are in English, either English textbooks are adopted, or i– sometimes local academics write their textbooks in English, for for the sake of you know that that greater international accessibility. Research of course is exclusively published in English, at least, if it's going to be published in high-impact journals and so on. If teaching moves to be more and more in English, there's a real concern among many people, that Swedish or the other Scandinavian languages will just cease to have an academic domain. So that that's one area of concern. 

 

The other is at the individual level, that EMI might lead to something that's sort of akin to subtractive bilingualism. You know, Bourdieu famously said academic discourse is nobody's mother tongue. So you've gone to school in your local language your whole life, you're a proficient L1 user of of the local language, and then you get to university. And even if you attend university in your L1, you become a language learner again, because you're learning that new foreign language, you're learning academic discourse. If you get to university, and you're attending classes and reading textbooks in English, then you're learning academic discourse in English and not in your first language. So you're training to be a midwife, or you're training to be a a veterinarian, and you're reading in your textbooks and learning in your clinical practices about mastitis. And then you have to talk to a Cantonese-speaking dairy farmer about the health of dairy herd. How have you learned how have you learned to say mastitis in Cantonese, and using the word that real people use rather than the word the textbooks use? So at the individual level, there's also I I think, a a real reason to ask whether EMI is crowding out other languages. And there’s a whole lot of hand wringing, and a whole lot of emotional language about this topic. I don’t necessarily adopt the the more millenialist perspectives at that end of the spectrum, but there are questions that need to be asked. There is a source for concern.

​

Section 4 - Different opinions about EMI

Two questions: First, do you think that the problem is that there is an imbalance of power, with those in power like university administrators pushing for EMI, while those with less power like individual teachers opposing it? Second, if this is true, what do you see your role as the editor of a new journal about EMI to handle this power imbalance? 

I don't think it's primarily a balance of power question if if I'm interpreting you correctly. I I don't think for example, that the situation is that administrators love EMI and teachers hate it. I think that they probably either like it or don't like it for different reasons. I think administrators like EMI because it makes it very simple to tick the internationalisation box to fill up seats in classrooms. I think that that teachers have attitudes that are are closer to the classroom and teaching and learning. The teachers who like EMI like it because they they believe in incidental acquisition, or because they believe that internationalization is important for the personal development of their students, for enriching the classroom. So if if there if there's any kind of balance of power divide, I would suspect that it's more to do with academic disciplines, rather than to do with with levels of the university. I think the differences we see across those levels are more about why you think EMI might be good or might be bad. 

​

The the second part of your question is, is a very interesting one. And I suspect, at at one level, that in terms of editorial policy, there's very little that we need to do to ensure a critical and balanced perspective on EMI because in my experience, and it is perhaps somewhat paradoxical, the people in a university who are most concerned about English and its potential negative consequences are precisely English linguists, so I would be very surprised if we received a significant number of submissions to the journal that laud EMI to the skies, or that take an uncritically positive perspective on it. But certainly our our our intention and our mission is to bring a great breadth to the EMI question and to elicit a wide range of perspectives on it.

​

Section 5 - Using L1 in class

How much are students allowed to use Chinese (L1 - first language) in their classes in Hong Kong?

Here as in many places, the use of the L1 is very much frowned upon. One of the questions on our teaching evaluations that has to be asked every class is “My teacher used English as the exclusive medium of instruction?” And if the answer to that is anything other than “Yes,” the teacher is in trouble. And, and yet, even even at a a university like City U so in a in a very competitive environment–my university City University of Hong Kong is ranked in the the top 50 universities in the world by by the QS rankings, o we are very competitive, we're able to attract the very best students–there is a widespread recognition that students are not able to do everything in English.  So wander down wander down a hallway, and eavesdrop outside a classroom and yes, you'll hear explanations being given in in Chinese, you'll hear definitions or translations being given in Chinese. Now, as a a linguist, I hear that and I think, “Wow, translanguaging, excellent., we need more of this,” but university administrators would say “No, no, we need less of this.” And I, you know, I've I've spoken about my own university, because I'm familiar with it. But I don't think you'd find anything different at the other Hong Kong universities, and if you look at sub-degree institutions, if you look at your two-year colleges granting associate's degrees, you'd find even more of it.

​

Section 6 - COVID and research

Has the COVID situation caused any difficulties or new possibilities?

This this this past year has thrown up massive challenges - I guess what I have been trying to do myself, so maybe it's what I would advise others to do is roll with the punches. We can't get on airplanes and and go to conferences as easily as we could. On the other hand, we've all become adept at using ZOOM. So my my co-author, Hans Malmström and I were scheduled a year ago to start a round of vocabulary testing. We're really keen to find out how well prepared for the English medium environment people in our respective contexts are. And one way we were going to set about answering that question was by testing their their academic vocabulary knowledge. Well, it's been 12 months now. And we're not able to get people into a physical room and give them vocabulary tests. So what we've what we've done is, you know, retrench, put those plans on hold, and set about writing up some of the data that we've already gathered, that we've been a little bit too busy to, to write up because we've been getting on planes and flying off to conferences. So the the only survival strategy I know is, you know, roll with the punches, gather the advantages in these strange circumstances and milk them for all they're worth.

​

​Section 7 - Goodbye

A: I wish you the very best of luck with all of your work, Professor, and thank you very much for your time today.

B: Thank you so much. Thank you for the invitation. It's been a great pleasure.

​

​

Dr. Ali Al-Hoorie

11. Dr. Ali H. Al-Hoorie (Saudi Arabia) [Living in Saudi Arabia]

Section 1 - Greetings (##:## - ##:##) 

A: Today's guest is Dr. Ali Al-Hoorie, a linguist, an academic researcher of note from Saudi Arabia. Dr. Ali Al-Hoorie, welcome to 'Lost in Citations'.

B: Hello, thank you for inviting me.

​

Section 2 - Background in language research (##:## - ##:##) 

Can you tell us a little about your background in language research?

As an MA student, that was one of the options available. I was, you know, in a hurry. And there was no particular reasons I had offers from I think three other three universities in total. So I decided to go to ethics and it was okay. I didn't have that much experience to be selective at that point. I see. And how soon after, did you start your Ph.D.? That is a funny story. You know, I first after reading some of Zoltan Dornier's books, I sent him an email asking him whether it is possible to be his Ph.D. student. So he replied to me the other day saying sorry, I, I have too many students. I cannot take more students I need, you know, at least three more years before I have a vacancy. Whoa. â€‹One year afterwards, I sent him a reply saying so is there any updates waiting for one year? â€‹This time, I don't think he had applied to me. I don't remember a reply from him to the second email. The following year, I sent him another email also in the reply to the first email saying have been waiting for now almost three years. â€‹Is there any vacancy? â€‹So he did did reply to me this time saying, you know, like, okay, so you have been waiting all this time. Send me a document showing why you are strong enough to study at Nottingham. Whoa. So it was like a challenge to me. And now at this time, I wasn't just sitting you know, â€‹you know, watching YouTube and TV, I was doing research. I was reading his but his books and his articles because I was really interested in this subject. So I wrote him a long document saying what books of his I read the papers I read and showed him a paper that I wrote on my own and collected my own data from my institution saying this is the paper that I did during the time I was waiting for you.

​

Section 3 - Language use (##:## - ##:##) 

Please give us some background to your language use experiences

Because I have to read in English all the time. I just I wish I could just read something for fun in Arabic, or like, how did you because I feel like I really struggle, I really struggle with that, like, I almost feel guilty if I watch a movie in English, because also, oh, I need to get better at my Japanese, I'm constantly worried about getting better at Japanese, because it's just not good enough. You know, learning a language is really incremental. You know, according to some estimates, you need like seven or eight years of constant immersion and exposure to the language before you can become fluent. So it you know, doing some practice for a couple of days or a couple of weeks is not going to have a noticeable impact. There might be an impact, but it's so subtle, that you don't experience it, or you don't feel it, and then you become discouraged. And you know, I've been trying, I've been reading novels, and but nothing has changed. But actually, there is a change, but you may not notice it in the short term. So it's just a matter of practice. It's, you know, I The way I see language learning, it's a skill, you develop it, just like you develop your football skills, or your swimming skills, or in your case, your music skills. Right? It just needs practice. And with more practice, you know, practice makes perfect. That's actually the secret recipe that everybody knows.

​

Section 4 - Research output (##:## - ##:##) 

How do you maintain your impressive research output?

time management is very important. You know, if you want to be an academic, a professional, academic, you know, it's no different than being a professional football player. For example, imagine how much and the football player is going to put into training every day, you know, it's just it will become a lifestyle. You cannot, you know, just over the weekend will lead you know, have a paper half a paper for half an hour or something and consider yourself a professional academic, you know, it's a lifestyle, you have to change your lifestyle into this job. It's becomes, you know, second nature. So what I do, I, you know, I hold myself accountable. I downloaded an app that I have a mobile phone app, an iPhone app that I have been using for like, I think 10 years now, it's called is a diary called day one. Okay? So every day, I add a new entry, and say how many hours I studied on that day.

 

And I set myself a minimum of three hours. â€‹And, and if I reach that goal, I give myself a star. If not, I don't get a star. And, and over time, I see the ratio of the star entries versus the non start entries. So it's like a competition with myself. So, you know, I might, I might, you know, say, you know, two hours and a half, I push myself you know, just have half an hour more I have a goal to reach, you know. So there is a goal that you know, you are trying to reach. So at the beginning, I didn't set three hours. This is changes from time to time when I was doing my Ph.D., I had more free time. So I set myself a higher goal, then when I'm busy, I set myself a lower goal. So this changes it, you know, can be different from one person to another. But I follow up with this diary and make sure that I hold myself accountable.

​

Section 5 - Research processes (##:## - ##:##) 

What is your process of choosing which research routes to follow?

if you pick a paper, the authors might happen to be deceased. Does this mean that that's it, we give up, you know, the authors are diseased, so forget about it. Now, it shouldn't be like this, the paper should be an independent document, that there is a method a method section, there is an instrument section, there is a data analysis section. And this should be detailed, and you just go and allows you more or less to replicate this study. In many cases, this is not enough. The information in the in the paper is not enough, this is a problem. But you know, this happens. So we did this study, and, and then I was at AAA IRL conference. And it was in the United States after we did this study, and we pre-registered it. And I met the editor of language learning, Pawel, and I told him that, you know, I took him aside and said, you know, we you publish the paper, in language learning by our supervisor, and we have a replication of it. Since you publish the published the first paper, would you consider a replication of it? He said, Yeah, why not? You know, we published the first paper, we would consider the second in our application of it. And then we told him that it's pre-registered, and that piqued his interest. Because, you know, pre-register studies have, you know, like this kind of, you know, prestige, to pre-registration, because, you know, you promise, basically, pre-registration means you promised the readers that you will do the analysis in a pre-specified way. I love this. And, yes, and yes, so he liked the idea. And then after we wrote up the paper, we submitted it, there were five reviewers, plus the two editors, handling the paper, and we received loads of feedback. Helpful, very helpful feedback. You know, without this feedback, the paper wouldn't have been like this. If you compare the final version published in the paper and the journal with the first draft that we wrote, completely different, you know, the level, but we took the feedback seriously.

​

Section 6 - Advice for future work (##:## - ##:##) 

Do you have any advice for other people to build on your work?

you can always play around with the model, you can play, you know, add things here and there, add paths look at something called the modification indices that the software, because the software usually asks you tells you that if you add this link between this variable and that variable, it will improve the fit. So you add that link, and then you redo the analysis and look at the results. And then the modification indices will say, if you also add this link from this variable to that variable, it will improve the model fit. And so you add these based on ad hoc calculations by the software, there's no theory behind them. You can imagine a theory post hoc, but that's no longer confirmatory now. So one of the points that we argue in the paper and we saw people arguing the same is that you should not delete nonsignificant links from your model, you have this model beforehand, you say that these three variables will predict this variable, and then in turn, this variable will predict the other variable, and test the data and present it presented as it is we want to see the results as a second step, then you can play around with the model. That's okay. People will know that this is the results of the confirmatory step. And this is the results of the exploratory step.

​

Section 7 - Goodbye (##:## - ##:##) 

A: Thank you for for taking on this endeavor and being a good role model for other researchers. So and thank you for coming on the show.

B: Thank you for inviting me

​

12. Natasha V. Broodie (Jamaica) [Living in the USA]

Natasha Broodie

Section 1 - Greetings 

A: Joining us today is Natasha Broodie, who is a consultant on strategic communication and an advisor in the UN system. So, very nice to meet your acquaintance today, Natasha.

B: Nice to meet you, too. Chris, thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.

 

Section 2 - Motivation for writing the book

Tell us about your new book “Give me tea, please”

I started the book out with a very short story about some, like the first few days of me living in Moscow, Russia, and I had moved there so that I could learn Russian to better help me with my work as a humanitarian advisor within the UN system. So here I am trying to just go for it. As language learners, we know that we have to speak, we have to read we have to write, we have to listen in order to gain fluency in our chosen language. So, I am literally trying every single day just to use the language as much as I can. Russian is incredibly difficult, so simplifying the language for me was one way that I learned would be easier to pick up on the sound and the kind of guttural ah noises that your the back of your throat had to make, I was really just trying. Thankfully, in this particular cafe that I was in, the the the reception was really welcoming. And so I would just keep trying and trying and trying and trying [Mm] to communicate that I want tea by not using English. And finally, it just was not working out right, so I was pointing around and doing all sorts of whatnot with the menu. And then I asked the waitress when she understood, you know, how, how do I say this in Russian properly. And so she gave me ahh an expression “(speaks Russian)” which in Russian is “give me tea, please.” So when I went back home just to reflect on, you know, the the different phrases that I had learned from the day, this one really struck me where I'm hearing this very direct response or direct, very direct question, give me tea. We can't do this in English, if we were to, you know, go out into any kind of restaurant in a cordial environment, and just say, “give me something” it's too direct in our culture. But for Russian culture, it was it was fine. It wasn't seen as offensive and I am sure there were other elements where it was clearly that I was a foreigner and just trying to learn the language so I I do understand there was some elements there.

 

Section 3 - Making speaking foreign languages simpler

So, your advice to students and users of foreign languages is to make them easier?

It's a really good question. And I think when I when I think about this, I want to be able to say off the bat, Yes, go ahead and just simplify the language. But I've now lived it, I've lived all over this world, I'm very sensitive to the fact that there are so many different communication styles that are based on the culture. And the cultures are very different, especially when you're comparing to a westernized environment, which that's where English is coming from. So, I’m hesitant to say emm for all foreign languages just simplify the language. I wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t rush to say that because I don’t know all languages and I’ve lived in many cultures where it might be better or it might be more effective to change the way your language is communicated. I just don’t know. And what I mean by simplifying the language that I think language learners will understand is revert to a system, one subject, one verb, one object per sentence

 

Section 4 - United Nations story

Can you give an example from your experience working for the UN?

I was working um at the UN and I had an ambassador that was that I was arranging this trip for, ahh for him to go abroad. So we needed his passport. And this particular type of arrangement, I had to send the passport off to DC couldn't do it in New York, where I had been living at that time. So here I am sending the passport and the documents, going paranoid and doing all my checklists, [laugh]  making sure everything's there, only to the point where I think maybe two or three days have passed, and I'm not getting back of my envelope with this passport that my boss needs to use to go abroad. His passport is still in DC, couldn't figure out what was going on. So I called up the embassy that had the passport to do some documents and to arrange to travel. And the embassy had told me “Oh, well, there's no return envelope inside of this package so we can't actually send it back to you.” So you can imagine my panic that I'm being told my my boss's passport cannot come back to me. [Mm-mm] This is crazy. I had already developed this system of you know, using modals to be extremely polite and ahhm kind of sweet-talking people with emails, so this was already something that I had, I had down pat. So my goal was how do I get this passport? When I can't fly over there? I can't take a train over there. I have to stay in New York, and what am I going to do? I called up the embassy and, essentially, I had asked for my opposite number in the embassy, who I could write out to on a peer level. And once they gave me that contact details and information, I used loads of modals with the other structures that I kind of mentioned in the book, you know, start with something kind of polite and you know, acknowledge that someone is more than just a machine that they're human. And so in forming this email and forming this, this ahh this request I was essentially asking him: “I made a mistake. I can't get this passport. Can you can you arrange for someone to pick up our colleague's passport [Mm-mm] so that we can you know, send him off?” And so when he did that, when he had arranged the entire system and he had people going out and grabbing the grabbing this, this passport and bring it back, for me it was a it was an acknowledgment to see that my colleagues who I did not know, never met before, never had any engagement with before were kind enough to do this kind of going above and beyond and kind of saving the day by doing this, all of that was a very big lesson to me.

 

Section 5 - TVs and movies

Did you watch TV and movies to help learn the languages you speak?

Absolutely! Did I understand what I was watching? Hmm-mm I would say not the majority of it, no, you really start looking at body language and how the eyes start moving, and did it help? It really did help. Because I think again, a lot of times, if you don't live outside of your cultural environment, you can become inundated with stereotypes and have a preconceived notion about what a particular culture or what a particular region of the world is like, when in fact, when you live in that region, it's often very different. So when I was watching TV, either in Russia, where I was watching TV, even in Egypt, or in France, it it it really was a very different experience, even between these three regions of the world. And you get to hear how the language is spoken. You get to hear how their body language expresses the words that they're saying. And even though you may not know every single word, hearing those intonations, hearing the pronunciations, it really does help.

 

Section 6 - Body language

What other forms of communication do you use?

One of the things that was called to my attention that I didn't, I just don't realize, because I like being around people is that I'm very animated. And I know I am. I'm fully aware of that. So whether I'm coaching or I'm teaching, or just normally talking, my body is doing all sorts of things, my hands are going all over the place, my eyes are going all over the place. I'm really, really excited usually because I'm in another country, I'm in another culture, and I'm exploring and this is just part of my personality. So one, a lot of the feedback that the consistent feedback that I would get, regardless of what region of the world I was in, was that I'm very animated, and in cultures like Russia, and I would say probably in Egypt, that kind of animation is not so much so part of the cultural environment, or at least I didn't really see it that much as part of the cultural environment, it's much more reserved in body language, it's much more reserved. Now, given I wasn't necessarily fully engaged in a professional environment, because clients would come to me when rather than me living and working in a professional environment and interacting with all of an office. So yeah that dynamic I do think, is going to inform a bit on how I see body language. Instead, most of my time was just walking around streets, walking around museums, being with friends, and making friends, and going to cultural events and things like that. So the the body language that I saw there was much more reserved, compared to my body language. Now, I'm Caribbean, my roots start from the Caribbean so in Caribbean culture, body language is just part of how we communicate so it is very much part of my my makeup. But when I s- can, when I think of it in terms of something like France, I think from what I saw in French culture, they they're a little bit more animated, closer to the way that I would interact. So there are more similarities there than I would see in someplace like in Moscow, those would be pretty probably the differences that I would say.

 

Section 7 - Goodbye

A: Thank you very much for your time today and I wish you all the best in the future.

B: Thank you so much, Chris, for having me here and for releasing this to your audience. I really do appreciate it. Thank you.

13. Dr. Isabel Perfianco Martin (Philippines) 

Dr. Isabl Martin

Section 1 - Greeting

A: Joining us today is Dr. Isabel Pefianco Martin for who is a professor in the Department of English at Ateneo de Manila University. Very nice to speak to you today, doctor.

B: Hello, hello. Hi, Chris, nice to speak to you today.

 

Section 2 - English in the Philippines

What is the history of English in the Philippines?

English arrived in the Philippines with the American occupation in the late 1800s. So 1898. And then in 1901, as soon as the Americans arrived, it was really the the soldiers who came to the Philippines, became English teachers. OK, so and then in 1901, the public school system was established in the Philippines. And we have to understand that before the Americans arrived, we had 300 years of Spanish colonial rule. So that was really a big difference, because the Spanish colonizers didn't really introduce education in a widespread way, you know, compared to the Americas. In fact, the joke is that the Philippine history is really 300 years in the convent, and 50 years of Hollywood. [Laughs] So, so that but that's 50 years of Hollywood with the Americans that really, that really made English very strong in the Philippines, because it came with education, when [Mm] previous to that, previous to that previous to that only the rich were educated, the women had to go to the convent, the men, the rich men could go to Europe, but largely a large population of the Filipinos really had no access to schooling. When the Americans arrived, they brought English and education. So you can imagine, you know, the impact of that on us and English was embraced by the Filipinos and it spread so very rapidly. [Mm-hm] I mean, a very fast pace, and that the Filipinos were even said to be like little brown Americans, because the way that the Filipinos spoke was very native-like at that time.

 

Section 3 - Spanish in the Philippines

Did Spanish develop in the Philippines similarly to English?

Yeah, that that's a very interesting question. Because we do have a Philippine variety of Spanish in Mindanao. It's called Chavacano, [Mm-hm]) and no, but that that that doesn't really connect them with, you know, with the Spanish speaking world, but English does, no? I think it's also the nature of English as a global language compared to to Spanish. There, if I'm not mistaken there are in terms of number of second language users of E- of of of any language I think it's English that's number one. [I believe so]. Yeah. Compared to the other languages. So it's also the nature of English and what it has become as an institution, I suppose. no? And and so comparing it to Spanish, at least from the Philippine context, it's not it's not going to work because the Filipinos were not taught Spanish as well, actually. At the time, of the Spanish the colonial period, Spanish was kind of like the la- n- the language of God, more, so only the the elites [Mm] were kind of like, encouraged to to learn that and that the Filipinos were just remained in their own native Philippine language. Spanish wasn’t really widespread [Um] in the Philippines. Imagine we had 300 years of Spanish rule, but it was what what happened was the Spaniards learned the Philippine languages. Most of them were priests anyway, it's kind of like that's part of their proselytizing. [Mm] But it was different with the Americans because they really kind of like gave English, you know, [Mm] and made it made it made it a tool for education. So it it it's, it's not comparing Spanish and English, then it will really have to be English in the way it was introduced [Mm] to us.

 

Section 4 - Philippine English

Has it been easy to help people understand the position of English in the Philippines?

No, I've struggled at I've struggled that, you know, there was a time after I presented at at a conference, I can't remember now. One of the native speakers came up to me and said, “you know, your, your English is really good. Where did you go to school?” And so I said, “you know, I studied in Manila, [Mm] we speak English in the Philippines.” So I don't know if he got it, but but [Laughs] I suppose, or somebody would, then here's another person and in a conference in Cebu, going through one of the I think the one of the Russian speakers saying something like, “you know, can you speak more slowly because I cannot understand your accent.” So I think the Russian speaker said something like, “well, we all have accents.” [Mm-mm]  You know there's a there’s a there's a way by which you can not really counter but I suppose gently educate some people about language variation about the natural behavior of language and that actually all languages are perfect, no, [Mm] in their own context of use. There's no such thing as an inferior language. [Mm] So I'm not, I'm not the type to snap to snap at people and say, “Ah, you know you know why don’t you why don’t you  come to my three unit PhD class [Laughs] to learn more about about English and how it behaves?” But I just kind of like gently, you know, say that, “well, you know, we all have accents. And I studied in Manila, and we speak English there.”

 

Section 5 - Recent work

What does your recent work in this field focus on?

So what I've been working on lately, the last few papers have been on what I would call Pinoylish. Pinoy is a Filipino, kind of like a slang term for the Filipino Pinoy. So instead of calling the English as Philippine English, which tends to be associated with the educated variety, I use the term Pinoylish, wi- which hope hoping that the term would capture the non-educated use of English in the Philippines, because that's a lot. There's really a lot. For example, gay speak. We have a very, very, very vibrant, gay, gay speak a a vibrant gay community with a very interesting language. In the Philippines, that that's one group. And then there is the term, there's even the term Jejemon which means the language used by the you know Filipinos in a lower income bracket. But then there's a lot of English there as well. And then the notion the idea of switching know that that that [unclear: canceling book practice?]  too and lots of English embedded there in translingual practice so, so I I have been working on on, I suppose, raising awareness on the the the vibrancy of English language use in the Philippines by documenting those that are in the periphery, I suppose.

 

Section 6 - Other research

What other research have you been working on?

I I I did, I did write something about the not not the physical, non-linguistic codes, but the the non the non-linguistic codes of the millennials now, when they text, for example, when they send the text message, where is translingual practice, there's translanguaging, that happens in text messages, especially now that you know, smartphones can send s- I'm sure you know that in Japan, they have all of these emoticons, these emojis, and then you can send gifs g-i-fs [Mm] gifs. My students, when they talk to each other on Facebook, they have all of these, you know, they didn't look like language. [Mm, laughs] (umm) But I kind of like somehow figured out that they were saying something. I think that's part of translanguaging is not not just looking at the linguistic codes, but the non-linguistic codes as well, which is more readily available because of technology, but also the work on forensic linguistics, which is language and law language in the legal domain. And that's one area I've been neglecting. Because you know, you're a busy academic, and you can only do so much in a year. Right now, there's a project I'm working with with another colleague, another professor from another university. And it is it's really kind of like a monograph about the origins of language and law studies in the Philippines. nd and because because I'm a social linguist, so that's, that's really more my track know when I do work. So I'm looking at language policy in that specific area. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, English will always come into play in the legal domain in the Philippines. [Mm] And that what I suppose the central argument that we will be making is that if we go on and just insist on English, you know, justice is not going to be served well, because a large majority of Filipinos cannot access English in the first place. And Legal English is even worse. You know, so that that's something that I wish I had time to work on a lot.

 

Section 7 - Goodbye

A: Thank you very much for your time today, Professor, and I wish you the best of luck in the future.

B: Thank you. Thank you very much, Chris. I had a I had a wonderful time on this podcast.

14. Dr. Eva Lantsoght (The Netherlands) [Living in Equador]

Dr. Eva Lantsought

Section 1 - Greeting

A: Joining us today is Dr. Eva Lantsoght, who is a professor at the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito, in Ecuador, and also a part-time professor at the Delft University in the Netherlands. Very nice to speak to you today.

B: Thank you so much for having me, Chris.

​

Section 2 - Background

Can you give us some information about your background?

So I did my Ph.D. in the Netherlands. And my husband is originally from Ecuador. So after I got my Ph.D., and he got his Ph.D. in the US, we were looking for a place or at least a country where both of us would be able to find positions. And at that point, we were both looking at academic positions. And that's what we found in in Ecuador. But at the same time, I really wanted to continue the research that I was doing in the Netherlands. So I explored the opportunity of staying on as a part-time postdoc originally, and then they amplified the amount of or the fraction of the full-time equivalents that I was working. So by now I am in a tenured position there on a part-time basis.

​

Section 3 - Research teamwork

How did you put your research team together?

Yeah, that's a great question. And for all of the co-authors, it's the first time that I've collaborated with them. And for all of us together, it's our first collaboration. And I actually reached out to academics who I respect, and who I've interviewed for my blog in the past, their methods of working to see if they would be interested in joining me. And one of the co-authors is also a childhood friend of mine, who is working in a relevant field. So she was the first person to reach out to, and then the other ones are people that I have interviewed for my blog in the “How I Work” series. So that's how I started to reach out to people and actually every person that I had in mind that I reached out to agreed and was interested in a topic. So that was a a stroke of luck, I would say. And I looked for geographical distribution to have researchers in the different parts of the world because we wanted to do the survey and have an international, an international group of respondents in there. So we having researchers in different parts of the world would facilitate as well reaching out to potential respondents for the survey.

​

Section 4 - Data from the project

What were some findings of your research about the period of COVID-19?

I think there's two parts to my answer here. And the first part is what I’ve seen with some of the conferences, my in my field, particularly, that really rushed towards going back to an in-person meeting. They do, some of them have to be transferred now back to an online format last minute, but there seem to have been in May, June, July, really a push towards going back to the old part and doing as much in-person conferences again, which then takes away some of the advantages that we found from the virtual conference or hybrid forms of conferences, that it makes it more accessible for people who live in different countries, that it’s, it's sometimes easier for academic parents, because they don't have to worry about child care, this whole amount of reasons that seem to have been swept under the rug in the rush towards going back to in-person meetings. So there is a I would say there is a disjoint between what I originally thought there in terms of what we would be seeing after the pandemic or as the pandemic fizzles out bit by bit, I think there will not be a hard stop to it, which is sort of fizzling out of it, is that I had expected there would be much more hybrid, much more collaboration through zoom, etc. And that was not in line with my observation of especially in my field of rushing towards returning to in-person conferences. And I have been doing some thinking about what we can do to get some of the social aspects back and still avoid that travel.  [Mm] If we come out of the pandemic, we are still faced with a climate crisis that having hundreds of people fly in to a conference seems something of decades ago, and maybe not something that we want to do anymore. So I do think there's a lot of opportunities for improvement, but maybe there is not as much willingness to to make those bigger changes that I was expecting to see coming up.

 

Section 5 - Personal effect of COVID

How did the pandemic time, when people couldn’t freely travel, affect you personally? Were your experiences similar to those from your study?

Yeah, that's a great question. And the first part to my answer here is that since I work part-time in the Netherlands, I could not travel to the lab and see the experiments that were ongoing. And my original plan for summer 2020 was that I would be in the laboratory shoulder to shoulder with my Ph.D. student, and we would be working on her experiments together for a good stretch of the summer. So that fell through. And I do feel that, that as a large miss. I would say in terms of meeting people for short stretches of time, I don't feel that it has changed that much. I was already doing a lot of zoom and WebEx and whatnot meetings, because I'm in Ecuador, and traveling for me is not always an option. And I had my daughter in 2017. So as long as she is very small, I am also a little bit reluctant to travel more. And I think for anything that is this, once in a while meeting, it I don't feel that there's that much of a miss in the personal interaction. But where it comes to working with people for a longer stretch of time, such as being in the laboratory together for weeks on end, that I do think is something then that is still very valuable, and that I still miss.

 

Section 6 - University changes

What lessons have universities learned from the last two years?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think the answer also depends on the university. We do see the case of, for example, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the University of Brussels, where they have declared themselves as a compassionate university, and they put compassion as their core value, and center and as a central part of their policies. And we also see, for example, that TU Delft in the Netherlands has developed a lot of tools both for their students, their doctoral candidates and their faculty, for working on their well-being. And it has been more accessible, for example, to get access to a coach or somebody to talk to to help you get give some ideas on how to balance your workload and how to make better decisions. All of them, especially the talking to a coach, etc., those are still actions at a personal level. And when it when it comes to the general pressures of ideas on publication outputs, etc, that is slow to change still. But I do think–and that's more speculation from my side here, because I don't have a glass bowl here that I can look into and see the future–but I hope, and I still believe that we are undergoing a shift in in the world. And then as we are looking for more sustainable solutions in not just how to reduce our carbon footprint, etc, but also how to live more balanced lives and go towards a circular economy and stable growth. There, I think, will be the opportunities for academics as well to have a maybe more balanced life or more space for the different parts in the different seasons in their life, then, that go with having children and then leaning out and leaning in when necessary.

 

Section 7 - Family effects

Did the COVID-19 restrictions affect mothers and fathers equally?

Yes, and one of the major findings of our study is that both academic mothers and academic fathers had a negative impact or observed a negative impact on their research and they had the same challenges. And that may be in contrast to some of the findings that really looked at, for example, publication output of women in the first month of the pandemic as compared to men. If you factor in the parenting role, we do find that both academic mothers and fathers have faced the same challenges. And as for example, in couples, where one is the academic who can be working from home, and the other may be in a role that requires, for example, a physician who has to go in in the hospital and there's a quote of an academic father and in the paper, which who is in that situation, the person who is at home becomes the default parent who deals with helping the children with the with their virtual schooling. And from our results, we found that gender didn't matter matter that much anymore. If you look at the way these parents talk about the way they were dividing their time before the pandemic and then during the pandemic, we do see that before the pandemic academic mothers had less leisure than academic fathers. They were spending more time on childcare, more time on household tasks, but during the pandemic, it has become much more equal.

​

Section 8 - Goodbye

A: Thank you very much for your time today and I wish you all the best with your future research.

B: Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Nicola Galloway

15. Dr. Nicola Galloway (British\Scotland) [Lives in Scotland]

Section 1 - Greeting

A: Joining us today is Dr. Nicola Galloway, who is a Senior Lecturer from the University of Glasgow. Very nice to speak to you today, Dr. Galloway.

B: Nice to speak to you, too. Thank you for inviting me along.

 

Section 2 – Global Englishes

What is your view of recent Global Englishes research?

I think it's important to point out that as English has spread beyond its original boundaries, and it's increasingly used on a truly global scale, and particularly knowing the educational domain domain with the phenomenal growth in EMI, this is an area that I've also become quite heavily involved in. I worked at an EMI institution in Tokyo. With the globalization of English and interest in the diversity of English-related fields of research within applied linguistics, as you see have emerged to document the use of English globally, how it manifests itself and more recently, how it should be taught. And this is where my work lies in the pedagogical implications of the global spread of English. Global Englishes researchers highlight the pluricentricity of English use, and they showcase how it's adapt and used alongside other languages. As Steven May points out, you know, multilingualism it seems is a topic de jour at least at least in Applied Critical linguistics. Global Englishes research is part of this movement and it aims to consolidate work in these related fields: World Englishes, English as a lingua franca, English as an international language. As an umbrella term, Global Englishes research also aims to unite similar movements in the fields of second language acquisition, such as translanguaging and the multilingual turn.

 

Section 3 – Resistance

Is there any resistance to your way of thinking about this subject?

Yeah, this notion of resistance comes up quite a lot when we we talk about Global English language teaching or ELF-aware pedagogy or world in English informed ELT. I think you raise an important point here both in terms of practitioners’ attitudes, the importance of practitioners’ attitudes, and also this possible resistance to any innovation in a TESOL curricula. I mean, resistance to new concepts won’t just influence the curriculum, but they may also help explain you know possible reluctance or resistance to change [Right] as well. And we do see this within the paradigm. In my recent book, I draw a lot on curriculum innovation theory. And I've started to explore this in more detail. So starting to look, I I started in the field, looking at students’ attitudes, with a course on World Englishes in Japan. This was my PhD thesis. And then as I left the classroom and moved into academia, teaching in a master's in TESOL program at the University of Edinburgh, I was able to introduce our Teacher Education course, where I introduced a Global Englishes course. I have moved more into teacher education [Mm], and more into thinking more about curriculum innovation as well. And I think it's important to note that, you know, different stakeholders will always have different views about an innovation. We've got change agents to use White et. al.’s terms, those that advocate the innovation, so myself, for example, the Global Englishes researchers. And then we've got the receivers or the changers. And this these would be the teachers that we’re asking to put these innovations into effect. And this is a really challenging task, and they'll encounter different ob-obstacles depending on the context. And I think that's really important to highlight that this, this has to be context specific. And that's really why the title of the article in TESOL quarterly is also “bottom-up curriculum innovation” that has to be in consultation with the teachers themselves. I mean, any failure to take the teachers’ viewpoints or attitudes into consideration will almost invariably lead to difficulties or resistance to change. Even if an institution was to make Global Englishes language teaching adaptations to the curriculum, if they don't take teachers viewpoints into consideration, then they may not be delivered at the classroom level. There will always be resistance of course there will be, Global Englishes language teaching requires a new ontological stance you know [Mm] both about language teaching and learning but also about language itself. Teachers may reject this if it clashes with their beliefs, so we really need to understand their belief systems but it's not about changing attitudes or changing beliefs. It's about working with teachers on teacher education courses to explore the underlying factors behind this beliefs and this also relates to my my work on language attitudes with students about exploring these factors where these strong attachments to standard language ideology and native speakerism come from and how do we address this.

 

Section 4 – Global Englishes in teaching

How can we encourage more use of Global Englishes in the language classroom?

I think that we have to encourage our pre-service and in-service teachers on our courses to consider their own contexts when they're learning Global Englishes subject matter to critically reflect on the policies, the education policies, the materials, the Ministry of Education approved textbooks that they they're often compelled to work with, you know, some teachers may be very fortunate that they're able to design their own elective courses or their own [Mm] their own their own entire curriculum. But very often, my students are going to work in perhaps high school contexts where they have to work with a, you know, a government-approved curriculum that is based on native English norms. [Mm] So what I tend to do in my course, and I've worked with Aya’s materials, she has a bit with lesson plans. And so I put the students into groups and they work with these lesson plans. And they adapt these so that they critically reflect on these World Englishes or EIL lesson plans for the appropriateness of students in their own context, the how they would adapt this to their their own curriculum as well. So I think it's important to note and I highlight this in the recent book, too, that it doesn't have to be a complete overhaul of the entire curriculum. You can introduce Global Englishes subject matter in a number of different ways. I did this in an EAP curriculum that I was, an ESP curriculum I was the coordinator of in a Japanese university with Heath Rose [Mm mm] where we were preparing students for an an EMI program in business, but we introduced Global Englishes subject matter in the EAP course. So it can be introduced in different ways: the reading materials were about the globalization of English, and that the presentations were on this topic as well. So I think that it's, a-again, to go back to your point about changing beliefs, or if there's resistance, it’s it's about critically reflecting on their own context and what's appropriate and what GELT proposals would be relevant for students in their context, what barriers would be most salient and do other barriers exists as well and.

 

Section 5 – Recent work

How is your current work related to this topic?

The idea is that we want to well I wanted to encourage more interaction between researchers and practitioners, as as well as increase the impact of our work as well and encourage pedagogical uptake. You know, teachers are very busy, they don't always the have the time to read full-length books or full-length articles. So we have little blog summaries of articles, blog interviews with teacher educators in Global Englishes. So it's a growing network, I've recently just been granted funding to develop an alumni strand to this. So it's internal funding at the University of Glasgow. So the idea is that I'll be able to work with my students once they graduate, and really to, to do long longitudinal, I'm just trying to think there's any longitudinal projects with them, where I don't want to say “follow” them in their teaching careers, track them, or work with them in contact with them, [stay in contact with them] stay in contact yes with them to to examine, you know, how relevant was the course for their teaching practice? What can I learn from this as well? How are they implementing Global English use perspectives in their teaching? If at all, how are they reinventing this [Mm]? What barriers do they face?

 

Section 6 – Connections to other universities

Tell us about your university’s collaboration with other language centers

Yeah, one of the reasons for setting up the Global Network was the growing number of early career researchers in [Mm-hm] this field. [Mm-hm] So we have a YouTube series a webinar series for early career researchers. I found that some of my own Ph.D. students needed to network with other Global Englishes Ph.D. students. So we partner with the Center for Global languages, for example, and the the Oxford Centre for EMI. So it's really nice to see that the Ph.D. students and early career researchers working together there, the network was also set up because you you you meet people at conferences that are interested in the field [Mm-hm] and you talk and then then you all go home. And it was set up to facilitate ongoing dialogue, and so that we could work together as well. So I've seen a lot of a lot of good things coming out of the network, a lot of the early career researchers, some are still Ph.D. students, some have now graduated, they're having regular meetings via the network, ah to work on collaborative research projects as well, which is great.

 

Section 7 - Goodbye

B: Thank you very much, and we'll have to chat soon about your work.

A: What? I look forward to it! Thank you for your time today.

B: Thank you very much.

​

 

16. Dr. Jean-Marc Dewaele (Belgium)

17. Julija Kenezvic (Australia) 

18. Dr. Nicos Sefakis (Greece) 

19. Dr. Janny HC Leung (Hong Kong)

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