More on fees

I was interviewed on BBC Radio Newcastle yesterday. The interview is on iPlayer, with the link here. My piece starts at 10:30. I was questioned about my blog entry (below) in support of the student protests - so at least someone is reading my blog!

Today I received a note from one of my old friends, who teaches in an FE college in the UK. Here's his note, followed by my reply:

Craig Wheeler

I liked the call Alan. To a point I can agree with what you said. However I work in FE and everyone of my students have to pay money to complete their course. If they don't do the course, then they can't progress in the work place. Which in... turn means they loose money. 99% on my students are self-employed and are responsible for paying for their own education. Up until now they have had help from the Train to Gain program which has reduced the amount of money they have to pay. This has just about finished, meaning all learners will now need to contribute 100% to get the qualifications they need, to be able to continue earning a living. So why should students who go to Uni be treated differently?.....I do think 6k a year is too much, but they should pay for some of it!!!See More

2 hours ago ·

Alan Firth

Hi Craig, nice to hear from you, mate. Personally I think all education for people training for a profession or career should be free -- just like primary and secondary education is free. But I'm a bit of an idealist, perhaps - I lived in Scandinavia for many years, so I got used to such provision being accepted and normal practise. In today's UK climate, students have to pay part of the way - ok, fine - whether in FE or HE. What concerns me, though, is that we will seriously risk denying college or uni education to a large proportion of people who otherwise - people like me, when I was 18 years old (long time ago) - couldn't afford getting into huge amounts of debt, which is what the current proposed rises in fees and diminution of grants will lead to. Long-term consequences are that Higher Ed will be even more dominated by people from affluent backgrounds. And that, to me, is socially divisive, immoral and a waste of human talent.

Newcastle University Students Protest

My letter below was posted on the Newcastle University Occupation blog:


I was due to teach in the Fine Arts Lecture Theatre tomorrow, but the venue has been changed due to student protests - my response? BRAVO to you for your COLLECTIVE convictions and your determination to stand up (and sit-in) for a cause that transcends political parties, generations and social class! The planned cuts will deliver a savage blow and will without question lead to a diminution of educational standards and opportunities across all communities in this country.

I took English university degrees throughout the 1980s - under Thatcher, when cuts and closures were also ravaging working-class communities. And yet, throughout, I received free education (no tuition fees!) and a maintenance grant that I did not have to pay back! My generation benefitted greatly from the principle of free education.

Your generation not only has been forced to pay, but are now facing paying fees that outstrip all universities in the world. This is indefensible, particularly when the Liberal Democrats were voted into parliament on the back of a solemn promise NOT to increase university fees. 

Many are behind you. And rightly so. You are fighting for a cause that is just and critically important for all our futures -- but yours especially.

Alan Firth
Senior Lecturer
School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences
Newcastle University

Panoramic self-indulgence & Bid Failure

I don't think it was that BBC's 'Panorama' pointed a long accusatory finger at FIFA in their programme broadcast earlier this week - 2 days before the vote - that did most of the damage. 

It was, rather, how the investigation was carried out - in good old in-yer-face, 'go on then, sunshine, hit me', knockabout Roger-Cook style. This might make for 'fun' TV, but was surely the final nail in the goodwill coffin, and probably destroyed England's slim chances of getting a sufficient number of supporting votes. In the end, we garnered fewer votes than the combined Holland-Belgium bid.

With the Panorama journalist confronting FIFA committee members unannounced - in streets, in airports, getting in and out of their cars, emerging from their 6-star hotels - while shouting out accusations and incoherent questions, and generally coming across as unprofessional and aggressive (and slightly mad), Panorama gave the doubtless corrupt FIFA members the chance to justify and relish treating the journalist - and the BBC - with disdain and contempt.

For better or worse, the BBC is seen as representative of England and the UK, so revenge must have felt decidedly sweet when all but 2 of the 30 members did not vote in England's favour. I'm not saying the programme was THE decisive factor, but its broadcast date was self-indulgent and its method of approach hyper-provocative. So what was to be expected - an increase in supporting votes?

But no doubt the BBC will be broadcasting merrily from the Red Square in the summer of 2018 - it does make for a smashing backdrop, after all.

Footnote: The Guardian, dated 8.12.10, contained an article entitled 

Fifa vice-president Jack Warner blames British media for 2018 defeat

 which included the following: 

"It is understood the Fifa president Sepp Blatter raised the issue of the "evil" media coverage of Fifa just hours before the vote and England's rivals, including the Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin and influential Spanish ex-co member Angel María Villar Llona, played heavily on it."

Geordie Snow

SNOW has been THE feature of life in Geordieland this last week and has affected almost every aspect of it - 300+ schools closed, traffic chaos, etc. - not helped by Newcastle City Council's refusal to clear footpaths in the city centre - which makes even walking in the city centre treacherous, not least for the elderly (see the photo above, as an example of the treacherous conditions). We pay our council taxes but Newcastle City Council do not deem it necessary to clear snow from any public footpaths, even though there is 15 cm of ice and snow on them. This just cannot be right. Perhaps it'll take someone's death, caused by a fall, to make the Council do something.

The Daily Mail (once again, as they do each year) enjoyed the chance to engage in a bit of social-classism by mocking Geordie girls' legendary dislike of winter coats when out on 'The Toon' - in this article entitled

'Howay man, it's not cold!' As Britain shivers, Newcastle girls prove they're not frightened of a bit of snow

Readers' comments to the article were mixed, with large doses of regionalism/social-classism (which the article panders to):

"The cheap gets even cheaper. Thank god I am a Londoner!"

Tolerance:

"GO GIRLS - you're mad, who cares!!!! :-))"

"I love these pics. I think that those girls know that a good time means. the girl on the 2nd pic on the right side looks fab."

and intolerance - even amongst Newcastle locals themselves, who distance themselves from the girls in the photographs:

"I think this article makes us all look cheap with no class. I'm sick of being lumped in with that lot."

Otherwise it's a good opportunity to take photographs of stunningly-transformed urban scenes:

I took this Lowry-like scene on way home from the Newcastle-Chelsea match at the weekend:

Gateshead:

'Mr Angry' - Data Session

Ever called a helpline and got really angry at the 'helper(s)' on the other end of the line? Today I presented data at our weekly MARG meeting and took the opportunity to revisit the fascinating 'Mr Angry' transcript/recording - a recording of a man who becomes extremely angry when the helpline will not help him unless he first pays money for the help. He sees himself as a long-time 'loyal' customer and entitled to a 'freebie' - and makes his (ultimately unsuccessful) case in a robust manner - which includes shouting the good old Anglo-Saxon 'SHIT'.

Thanks to the hugely-talented members of MARG for their insights, attention to detail and more detail, and their ideas. It was inspiring to collectively pore over detail in the transcript, and to build up rich layers of commentary and insight. For me, there is much to develop and write about in a journal article based on the recording. I think my goal will be to shape it into an article that looks at institutional mandates and identities by explicating how these can so easily conflict with non-members' mandates and identities. Identities in conflict, that sort of thing, and how parties to the interaction 'escalate' their anger, 'deflect' it, mollify, minimise, upscale it, etc. Mr Angry was not happy with the "very greedy little people" he saw the call-taker as representing. I would like to show how his anger was micro-managed and contextually moulded in the unfolding interaction.

Certainly there were no 'dry clacking bones' in the transcript/recording we examined today - so this would have been to the approval of Michael Moerman (who, in his book 'Talking Culture', 1988, complains that CA data materials are lacking in emotion and the visceral realities of real life experiences).

By the way, Moerman's wonderful book is available free to read online here

Tomb of The Elephant Man

Your Presentations

I very much enjoyed your presentations - well done everyone for being so engaged and enthusiastic! It was great that we covered such a wide range of issues. I also felt that our discussions were most interesting and useful. I'm keen to know what you think of the module so far - how's it going for you?

Session 4, 28 Oct 2010: The Questionable Core, Skin & Cog of the Lingua Franca Core

Jennifer Jenkins has done a great deal to advance research in English as a 'lingua franca'. She has been prolific and writes with a zeal and fervour - rare qualities in academic writing. But this should in no way prevent us from engaging critically with her work, and the more I look in detail at Jenkins' 2002 article on the 'Lingua Franca Core', the more I scratch my head over the fact that the research was published in a journal as esteemed as 'Applied Linguistics'.

Why?

While I agree with much of what she writes in the first few pages of her article - on what we might call 'Native-Speakercentrism' in applied linguistics and ELT - and while I would applaud many of Jenkins' goals - to challenge the ELT status quo, to promote an open and 'liberated' ELT, and to devise a programme of teaching based on empirical research - I nonetheless find her 2002 'Applied Linguistics' paper quite profoundly flawed - especially the empirical sections of the paper, which is critically important, because it purports to be a paper fundamentally based on empirical findings.

Her method of analysis is unclear and unexplicated (it's not Conversation Analysis, it's not Discourse Analysis, it's not Interactional Sociolinguistics), her presentation of data lacks detail and is superficial, thus preventing us (as readers/analysts) from engaging in re-analysis of the data; her data analyses are (to me, at least) unconvincing; her extrapolations on the data analyses are unjustified and seem to be over-reaching; her understanding of the notion of 'context' is really quite poor - as is her grasp of the complex processes of spoken interaction (as these have been described in a large body of Conversation-Analytic research).

As such, the theoretical and not least the empirical underpinnings of the 'LF Core' are, in my view, highly questionable.

I hope the reasons for all the above were made clear in class today.

Hence the following image ...

Or am I being too harsh? Was the red card too hasty?

What are your views?

This is an excellent topic upon which you could base your assignment: Can you challenge, develop, test, confirm, support, reject, or revise Jenkins' LF Core, based on analyses of your own empirical data extracts?

Session 3, 21 Oct 2010: Ownership & imperialism

Both notions examined in class are ripe for your own detailed discussions and explorations. The claim that some form of ownership can be manifest in various ways, as can orientations to other people's orientations - not least in micro-terms, i.e. in social interaction - need to be examined carefully. How, for example, is 'ownership', in its various guises, displayed in spoken interaction, when people talk to each other, in various social settings? How is 'ownership' manifest in the L2 classroom, or in ELF encounters outside the classroom? Does setting make a difference? How? Why? Such questions would form the basis of a very nice research project.

Linguistic imperialism is a warning to all who feel ELF/EFL/ESL triumphalism coming on. Phillipson is right to warn of the 'darker side' of the spread of English. But is he going too far the other way, one wonders? Does he not have perhaps a too-jaundiced view of the global spread of English? This too is a rich area to explore and certainly worth considering as an assignment topic - perhaps combining it with the question of how might 'linguistic imperialism' manifest itself at the level of social interaction?

Please ensure you are well prepared for next week's class - we'll be looking closely as jenkins' 'ELF Core' idea.

Enjoy the fleshly-made salad: (look carefully)

Thanks to Richard Gunion for the photo!

Session 2, 14 Oct 2010

So did Kachru catch you? The 'Concentric Circles' model and the thinking it contains was a significant step forward when it was published in the mid 1980s, marking a shift of emphasis from native English speakers to the possibility of a variety of possible 'models', which in turn is based on a critical deconstruction of some of the most powerful, almost (to some) axiomatic notions in Applied Linguistics: that native speakers of a language 'own' that language, determine its correctness and its normativity, and form the model upon which FL/SL teaching should be based. So credit where credit's due. Kachru moved the field forward in a profoundly important way.

As did Smith, Greenbaum and Quirk in their thinking on 'International English' - just not quite as profoundly as Kachru.

But the empirical time bomb ticked away, because very little work had been done on how 'International English' was actually used by actual people in concrete settings, while Kachru's model was still predicated on retaining the sanctity of the native speaker in his/her 'Inner Circle'. This 'inner circle' metaphor is rather (unwittingly) ironic, given Kachru's larger aims of deconstructing native speaker hegemony.

There are other problems with 'International English' and Kachru's model, which you can (and should) research and read about.

Our discussions covered a good deal of central issues in the area termed 'Language Planning': especially concerning state-based promotion and organisation of language teaching, language standards and language use - although the connections between actual use and macro-based planning decisions are not well formulated even today. Micro and macro are often strangely disconnected in much research and thinking in the language sciences - Applied Linguistics included.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed the session and found it thought-provoking and informative. As long as we are critical towards ideas and 'information', we are making progress. Thanks for your engagement, I am having a great time learning from you!

By the way, I like this language blog from 'The Economist'. Not a direct connection to this module but I like it all the same.

And a Gary Larson cartoon never goes amiss, does it?