Editing contributed scholarly articles from a language management perspective

Taking language management as its initial perspective, this paper examines some of the sorts of linguistic problems that second language writers of English face when contributing to scholarly journals and some of the issues that editors face when working with authors on those problems. Language management theory (hereafter LMT) is briefly explained. Drawing on a substantial corpus (slightly less than 500,000 words), illustrations of various categories of problem types are provided. One finding shows that it is difficult, in practice, to differentiate between simple language management issues and organized language management issues, because what may appear to be simple management issues may in fact have extended implications. Some problem types are not unique to non-native speakers, but appear with different frequency and distribution in non-native speaker texts as compared with native-speaker texts. Some ethical questions implicit in editing non-native speaker texts are explored

Language Policy and Planning in Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa: Some Common Issues

This volume covers the language situation in Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa explaining the linguistic diversity, the historical and political contexts and the current language situation, including language-in-education planning, the role of the media, the role of religion, and the roles of non-indigenous languages. The authors are indigenous and have been participants in the language planning context. Botswana, Malawi and Mozambique are not well represented in the international language policy/planning literature, while the South African section draws together the published literature in this area. The purpose of the volumes in this series is to present up-to-date information on polities that are not well-known to researchers in the field. A longer range purpose is to collect comparable information on as many polities as possible in order to facilitate the development of a richer theory to guide language policy and planning in other polities that undertake the development of a national policy on languages. This volume is part of a areal series which is committed to providing descriptions of language planning and policy in countries around the world

Coordinating government and community support for community language teaching in Australia: Overview with special attention to New South Wales

An overview of formal government language-in-education planning for community languages (CLs) that has been undertaken in Australia and New South Wales is provided, moving from the more informal programmes provided in the 1980s to school-oriented programmes and training at the turn of the century. These programmes depend on community support; for many of the teachers from the communities, methodological training is needed to complement their language and cultural skills. At the same time, Commonwealth (Federal) and State support for CL programmes has improved their quality and provides students with opportunities to study CLs at the senior secondary matriculation level. The paper concludes with specific recommendations for greater recognition of CL schools and for greater attention to CL teacher preparation

Norms and varieties of English and TESOL teacher agency

The growing recognition of the plurality of English underling the World Englishes (WE) paradigm has problematised the conventional second language acquisition (SLA) views of errors. If English use in emerging English-speaking contexts is to be judged by local norms, as argued by WE scholars, applying exocentric norms in these contexts can be inappropriate. On the other hand, despite the significant growth of WE, varieties of new Englishes have yet to develop widely acceptable endocentric norms. These developments have raised a critical question: How can TESOL teachers distinguish between errors in the SLA sense and varietal features in the WE sense? Framed around language management theory (LMT) and teacher agency, this paper investigates how a group of global TESOL practitioners in an Australian university evaluated usages of English as a second language, what criteria they used and what implications their judgments and decision-making processes have for TESOL pedagogy and WE research

Speaking of Science: The Use by Australian University Staff of Language Skills

This paper reviews and examines the increasing trend to publish journal literature in English B i.e. the language use trends in the various scientific disciplines. The impact of communication in English in scientific writing and citation, displacing as it does the use of other languages, has been the topic of discussion in the literature. The question this paper poses is - what impact has this practice had on English-speaking scientists? To answer this question, attitudes towards language use in business as a general indicator of the value placed on languages in multicultural Australia are examined. Then language teaching at Australian Universities is briefly examined and finally university Science Staff language use is studied to see whether they use and cite work published in other languages. Is work in languages other than English ignored by English speaking scientists or does it impact on the field

Horses for courses: subject differences in the chances of securing different types of graduate jobs in the UK

Analysis of the 2010/11 Longitudinal Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey shows that overly-simplistic conceptions of graduate success underestimate the value of obtaining a degree in some subjects. Using a skills-based classification of graduate jobs the research finds that maths and vocationally-oriented subjects associated with higher earnings returns (Belfield et al., 2018a, 2018b) - engineering, architecture, computer science and nursing - increase the chances of having an 'Expert' job compared to the average for all graduates. However, more generalist subjects that have been linked with lower earnings such as creative arts, languages and mass communication and documentation are better for accessing graduate jobs where creativity and ability to communicate is key. The research demonstrates the value of using a more nuanced conception of graduate jobs and shows that debate about the value of higher education needs to move away from a narrow focus on earnings