Teacher’s awareness of intercultural pragmatics in adult EALD classrooms: an exploratory study in the multicultural context of Australia

Abstract

The teaching of English as an additional language or dialect (EALD) in Australia has been problematised partly due to teachers’ limited understanding of learners’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The gap could be potentially bridged with the integration of intercultural pragmatics (IP). Adopting a qualitative case study approach, this study explored how a teacher with awareness of the role of IP in intercultural communication could incorporate IP into adult EALD classrooms to enable learners to use the target language appropriately in the multicultural context of Australia. The findings illustrate the teacher’s awareness of multiple aspects of IP and how these aspects were meaningfully taught in adult EALD classrooms. The study thereby confirmed the usefulness of IP teaching in the investigated setting in particular and adult EALD classrooms in general. Hence, it suggests a need for systematic integration of IP into adult EALD programs and reveals pedagogical implications for IP teaching regarding not only teachers’ classroom practices but also teacher education and teacher professional development.

ABSTRACT (VIETNAMESE)

Trong bối cảnh của nước Úc, việc giảng dạy tiếng Anh như một ngôn ngữ bổ trợ hay ngôn ngữ thứ 2 (EALD) chưa thực sự hiệu quả như mong đợi. Một trong những nguyên nhân đến từ sự khác biệt về ngôn ngữ và văn hóa giữa giáo viên và người học. Để giải quyết vấn đề này, các vấn đề về ngữ dụng liên văn hóa (intercultural pragmatics) cần được lồng ghép vào các bài giảng. Đây được xem là cơ sở lý thuyết để chúng tôi thực hiên nghiên cứu này nhằm tìm hiểu về nhận thức và thực hành của một giáo viên về việc kết hợp các vấn đề về ngữ dụng liên văn hóa trong giảng dạy EALD ở Úc. Kết quả cho thấy giáo viên đó có nhận thức sâu sắc về tầm quan trọng của ngữ dụng liên văn hóa và có kiến thức đa dạng về nội dung này. Vì vậy, giáo viên này đã lồng ghép rất tốt các kiến thức về ngữ dụng liên văn hóa vào thực tế giảng dạy. Qua nghiên cứu này, chúng tôi muốn khẳng định hiệu quả của việc lồng ghép kiến thức ngữ dụng liên văn hóa vào các lớp học tiếng Anh như ngôn ngữ thứ hai ở Úc cũng như các lớp dạy Tiếng Anh như một ngoại ngữ nói chung. Từ kết quả nghiên cứu này, chúng tôi cũng đưa ra những khuyến nghị cụ thể liên quan đến thực tế dạy-học cũng như việc bồi dưỡng và đào tạo giáo viên.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

Teachers of English as an additional language or dialect (EALD) in Australia have been identified to encounter challenges due to their limited understanding of learners’ diverse backgrounds in terms of both source languages and cultures. Without teachers’ awareness of enabling learners to use English appropriately in communication with people from different backgrounds of language and culture, the objective of EALD programs could be hard to achieve. As its name shows, the EALD program aims at assisting migrants regarding the language aspect to settle in Australia. Therefore, this study was conducted to explore how a teacher with awareness and knowledge of language use in intercultural communication could facilitate their adult learners to develop necessary competence to communicate in the multicultural and multilingual context of Australia. The findings display important issues that teachers need to be aware of and how to teach these issues in adult EALD classrooms. Overall, the study confirmed the usefulness of including these issues in adult EALD classrooms, and thus it calls for the systematic integration of these issues in adult EALD programs. Accordingly, it suggests implications for the training and re-training of English language teachers so that they can have awareness and knowledge to teach these issues in their classrooms.

Keywords:

• EALD
• intercultural pragmatics
• adult learners
• community education
• and Australia

Acknowledgements

This research is funded by University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (UEH).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Since 2021, AMEP conditions have changed (students can access unlimited hours of English classes until they reach vocational English)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chinh Duc Nguyen

Chinh Duc Nguyen is a lecturer and researcher of language education and teacher education. His scholarly interests include second language teacher education, identity in language teaching, sociocultural issues in language education, and social justice in education. He has publications in journals of education and language teaching, such as TESOL Quarterly, Language Teaching Research, System, Teachers and Teaching, and Educational Review.

Anh T. Ton-Nu

Anh Ton-Nu is currently a lecturer and researcher at the School of Foreign Languages, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She obtained her PhD degree in Linguistics at Macquarie University, Australia in early 2022. Her research interests include L2 pragmatics and intercultural pragmatics in second language teacher education, teacher professional development and textbook evaluation.