• Title/Summary/Keyword: Cultural English

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The Comparisons of Pronunciation Teaching in Lingua Franca Core and IMO Maritime English Model Course 3.17 for Global Communication at Sea

  • Choi, Seung-Hee;Park, Jin-Soo
    • Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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    • v.40 no.5
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    • pp.279-284
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    • 2016
  • As the International Maritime English Organization (IMO) model course for Maritime English has been recently revised and updated, the requirements of current changes to both the 2010 STCW Manila Amendments and English education have been actively reviewed. In order to provide practical guidelines for language teaching, a wide range of new pedagogical approaches and their theoretical backgrounds are also suggested. However, considering the current spread of Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF) and its critical importance in maritime communication, the pedagogical approaches need to be re-evaluated, specifically in terms of teaching pronunciation in order to emphasize clear and effective communication among international interlocutors. Therefore, the core pedagogical elements of pronunciation should be clearly set and provided with consideration for Lingua Franca Core (LFC), which places importance on mutual intelligibility rather than following the rules of native speakers. In this paper, the current trends of BELF in the maritime industry will thus be introduced. Following this, the importance of LFC in maritime communication will be outlined, and its key features will be discussed in terms of effectiveness and clarity of international maritime communications. Finally, a close comparison between LFC and the pronunciation guidelines suggested by the IMO Maritime English model course 3.17 will be conducted, and pedagogical implications for future teaching pronunciation in cross-cultural global maritime industry will be suggested.

Beyond Politeness: A Spoken Discourse Approach to Korean Address Reference Terms

  • Hong, Jin-Ok
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.15 no.2
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    • pp.93-119
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    • 2009
  • Internalized Confucian cultural scripts trigger meta-pragmatic thinking in Korean communication. Commonly shared cultural knowledge acts as a powerful constraint upon the behavioral patterns of each participant and this knowledge can be strategically manipulated to avoid confrontations. The strategic use of address reference terms utilizes cultural values as a face-redress mechanism to achieve situation-specific goals. This paper offers a view of Korean address reference terms that rests on four revisions of politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1978, 1987). First, the notion of discernment - or 'wakimae' - as a culture-specific mechanism is reanalyzed. Secondly, culture-specific values as another R (ranking of imposition) variable are introduced. Thirdly, a reevaluation of the notion of positive face (respect) is discussed. Finally, the address reference terms in combination with other honorifics by the speaker that can be strategically applied either to threaten or to enhance the face of the hearer is observed. Because Confucianism is embedded in Korean cultural identity, teaching cultural values integrated and their roles in situation-dependent politeness is required in order to understand interactional nature of politeness occurring from particular discourse contexts.

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A Study on the Security English Ability Status and Progress Plan of Security Related Department Students (경호관련학과 학생들의 경호영어 능력 실태 및 발전방안)

  • Kim, Doo-Hyun;Choi, Byun-Kwon
    • Korean Security Journal
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    • no.15
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    • pp.51-72
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    • 2008
  • This study is aimed at looking into the security English ability status and progress plan of security related department students. The status was captured through a questionnaire survey to English proficiency and simple tests on security knowledge. Current status to general English and security English ability was indicated very low and unsatisfactory as a whole, through which individuals and students perceived their need of positive effort. The security personnel for domestic figures and VIPs need to have English communication ability as an international ability, and the security related department students have to improve English communication ability during their college course for smooth post-graduation employment and career preparation. General English ability should be bettered through the diversity of cultural English programs, and systematic learning and effort needed for equipment of ability on specialized security ability, for this, compilation of security English curricula encouraged by each college. It is expected that significance and perception of security English would be conscious and progressive in Korean security related departments, by which more security personnel with international qualifications and abilities would be produced.

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New Orientations of Cultural Studies in 21st Century China

  • Ning, Wang
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.60 no.2
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    • pp.233-247
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    • 2014
  • Cultural Studies is characterized by being opposed to (elite) literary studies not only because it points to popular or non-elite literature which is usually not dealt with by elite literary scholars or comparatists, but also because it severely challenges the established literary canon and even tries to subvert this elite-oriented canon. In addition, Cultural Studies complements literary studies in that it contributes a great deal to the reconstruction of new literary canon by expanding the narrow domain of (elite) literature and its studies. What was not touched upon by traditional literary scholars is now studied by Cultural Studies scholars. In this sense, we should realize that it is not the field of Cultural Studies that occupies the domain of literary studies, but rather, it has expanded its traditional domain and added some new cultural elements. This article will illustrate how the interdisciplinary writings of some of the representative Anglo-American literary scholars have paved the way for effective dialogues between literary studies and Cultural Studies. I argue that the practice of Cultural Studies in China will not only contribute to global Cultural Studies in general, but also carry on equal dialogue with its Western and international counterparts. My purpose is to deal with the challenge of Cultural Studies to comparative literature studies in general before mapping the new orientations of Cultural Studies in $21^{th}$ century China.

ESL Teachers' Corrective Sequences and Second Language Socialization

  • Seong, Gui-Boke
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.13 no.2
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    • pp.177-200
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    • 2007
  • The language socialization approach states that novices are socialized into cultural norms through participating in routine, repeated interactional acts and sequences (e.g., Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984; Ochs, 1988; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986a; 1986b; Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo, 1986). One of the cultural norms or dominant epistemological orientations in American culture is the tendency to avoid the overt display of power asymmetry in novice-expert relationship (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984). This study examines how this cultural preference is reflected and encoded in ESL teachers' use of routine discourse patterns in corrective sequences. Eight hours of ESL classes taught by three Caucasian teachers born and educated in the U.S. were analyzed for the study. The analysis showed that the cultural tendency in question is keyed and indexed in the teacher's routine corrective discourse patterns in the form of various questioning, elicitation, and mitigation practices. Findings support that teachers' routine classroom discourse practices represent their cultural ideologies and transfer these cultural predispositions to second language learners and that they possibly socialize the learners into the target language-oriented beliefs.

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Heritage Language and Culture Maintenance in the U.S.

  • Lee, Eun-Hee
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.17 no.1
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    • pp.147-163
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    • 2011
  • In recent years, the relationship of language maintenance to culture and identity has received increased attention in the language acquisition and education fields. Korean immigrants in the U.S. form one of the biggest Asian groups and their language and cultural maintenance has been a major issue for both parents and ESL teachers. The present research is designed to investigate the cultural and social identities as well as the psychological investment factors that contribute to heritage language maintenance. Three Korean immigrant families in a small Midwest university town in the U.S. were surveyed and later interviewed. Issues and strategies concerning their children's Korean education in the U.S., coupled with the competing goal for the children to learn English were documented through parent interviews and interviews with school-aged focal children. Strategies and stances that facilitate or hinder both heritage and target language maintenance goals are presented along with participants' major reasons for heritage language maintenance in their homes and via Saturday schools. This work will assist ESL teachers and sociolinguists in situating both Korean student and parent goals in the context of shifting cultural and linguistic identities in countries where they have immigrated.

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Case Studies in EFL Reading: Perceptions, Experiences, and Strategies

  • Chin, Cheong-Sook
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.15 no.4
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    • pp.1-22
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    • 2009
  • This case study aimed to explore proficient EFL readers' perceptions and experiences about reading tasks and how those perceptions and experiences influence their reading processing behaviors, and to examine how the cultural background of a text affects their reading strategies and comprehension. Three college students who were non-English majors participated in this study. Three data sources were employed: questionnaires, interviews, and think-alouds. The results showed that: (1) the participants emphasized comprehension as the goal of reading and considered themselves good EFL readers; (2) their reading purposes were closely associated with personal pursuits; (3) they preferred to read materials that deal with areas of interest but did not try to take a risk in terms of level of difficulty and/or length; (4) they implemented a multistrategic approach to reading in that the majority of their strategy use was in conjunction with their concern about meaning construction; (5) they were able to develop useful understandings of unknown vocabulary; and (6) their clear awareness of the cultural background presupposed in the text helped them invoke prior knowledge and reduce unknown vocabulary hindrances which contributed to comprehension. Pedagogical implications for EFL reading instruction are provided.

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Some (Re)views on ELT Research: With Reference to World Englishes and/or English Lingua Franca

  • Cho, Myongwon
    • Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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    • v.2 no.1
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    • pp.123-147
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    • 2002
  • As far as the recent ELT research concerned, it seems to have been no hot ‘theoretical’ issues, but ‘practical’ ones in general: e.g., learners and learning, components of proficiency, correlates of L2 learning, etc. This paper focuses on the theme given above, with a special reference to the sub-title: specifically, 1) World English, world Englishes and world's lingua franca; 2) ENL, ESL and EFL; 3) Grammars, style manuals, dictionaries and media; 4) Pronunciation models: RP, BBC model and General American, Network Standard; 5) Lexical, grammatical variations and discourse grammars; 6) Beliefs and subjective theories in foreign language research; 7) Dilemma among radical, canonical and eclectic views. In conclusion, the author offers a modest proposal: we need to appeal to our own experience, intention, feeling and purpose, that is, our identity to express “our own selves” in our contexts toward the world anywhere, if not sounding authentic enough, but producing it plausibly well. It is time for us (with our ethno-cultural autonomy) to need to be complementary to and parallel with its native speakers' linguistic-cultural authenticity in terms of the broadest mutual understanding.

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Imperial Nostalgia and the Detective Genre: Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans

  • Eli Park, Sorensen
    • English & American cultural studies
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    • v.9 no.1
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    • pp.323-348
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    • 2009
  • Kazuo Ishiguro's fifth novel When We Were Orphans (2000) tells the story of Christopher Banks, a private detective, who embarks on the ultimate case of his career, the puzzle of his own life. The novel consists of two overall parts, one taking place in London, the other in Shanghai-a division which reveals one of the novel's major themes, the relation between home and abroad. Set in the 1930s, Ishiguro's novel on the one hand contains all the classic ingredients of the so called golden age detective genre-an archetypal English private detective, equipped with fierce deductive skills and a magnifying glass, as well as suspects, criminals, and victims-and yet on the other hand it also deviates in significant ways. In this article, I will attempt to make some links between When We Were Orphans and the genre paradigm of the golden age detective story, arguing that Ishiguro's novel offers an exploration of the genre's ideological connections to a larger historical discourse of imperial nostalgia and decline.