Suchergebnisse

As demand for proficient English speakers increases worldwide, there is growing concern about the standard of English achieved by students during their schooling. With English teachers (rightly or wrongly) receiving much of the blame for a perceived decline in language standards, policy-makers are increasingly interested in the language-related competencies of English teachers: both their language proficiency (or 'communicative language ability', CLA) and their 'knowledge about language' (or Teacher Language Awareness, TLA). As a result, the assessment of English teachers' language-related competencies has become more widespread. In any attempt to measure those competencies, however, several important interrelated issues have to be confronted. Some relate to the precise nature of the knowledge/awareness that English teachers have of the language they teach, and the difficulties inherent in setting/measuring standards of Teacher Language Awareness. Others concern the language model(s) of which English teachers are expected to be aware, and about which teachers themselves feel they should be aware. The present paper examines some of these issues. It begins by exploring the nature of TLA, and some of the challenges in TLA measurement. It then considers questions relating to the varieties of English which form models for TLA, with particular reference to Hong Kong.

In recent years, the setting of standards or benchmarks for teachers as well as for learners has been brought into education as one of the key mechanisms for accountability and quality assurance. Language standards setting is one of the top priorities for policy makers. This paper points out that while standards setting in education raises issues that are largely educational and philosophical, language standards setting is often culturally and politically charged. This is particularly so in English standards setting because of the long-standing association between English and colonialism and cultural and economic domination. The domination of English has not diminished in the post-colonial era. The paper outlines a number of complex issues generated by English standard setting, including whether native or non-native varieties of English will be used as the model for determining standards, whether the same standards should be used for first and second language learners, how one determines whether deviations from the standard English model are errors or variations, and the social and political implications for adopting the standard or the local varieties. A brief summary of how each paper in this Special Issue addresses these issues is provided.