Doing English-Only Instructions: A Multimodal Account of Bilingual Bangladeshi Classrooms

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The research reported here is part of a broader research project on bilingual Bangladeshi ESL schools. The study seeks to find out how a prescribed language policy that is operating at the school informs classroom instruction. To do so, it uses the distinction between medium of instruction and medium of interaction, introduced by Bonacina & Gafaranga (2011), to examine how participants to instructional exchanges orient their actions to the language policy as well as to locally emerging interactional challenges. Through multimodal conversation analysis the study shows how participants sustain, suppress or even overlook the medium of instruction in the service of doing instruction. These findings therefore contribute to the existing literature on language policy-in-practice and language alternation in bilingual classrooms.

Engelska Hemspråk : Språk i interaktion i modersmålsundervisning i Sverige

“…In line with findings from other studies of HL settings as well as other types of language classrooms (Amir, 2013;Creese et al, 2011;Huq, 2018;Li Wei & Wu, 2009;Musk, 2006Musk, , 2010Slotte-Lüttge, 2005), the present thesis has shown that a monolingual norm was in place in the data and that this norm was co-constructed in and through the interaction that took place in the classroom. However, in contrast to findings from foreign language classrooms, where the English-only rule was imposed from 'above' i.e.…”

“…However, in contrast to findings from foreign language classrooms, where the English-only rule was imposed from 'above' i.e. via the school's or teacher's explicit policy (Amir, 2013;Huq, 2018), in my data the norm was constructed in a somewhat more implicit manner. Paradoxically, it is precisely in the teacher's distinct and structured inclusion of Swedish lexical items that constructs Swedish as the dispreferred language.…”

“…As demonstrated in Bonacina and Gafaranga (2011)'s study of a French complementary school classroom (see chapter 2), the policyprescribed monolingual medium does not automatically correspond to what participants in interaction do; nor are deviations from the prescribed policy always oriented to as deviant. In other words, participants may choose to employ a bilingual medium (see chapter 4 for a discussion of this term) to carry out the task at hand (see also Huq, 2018). Slotte-Lüttge's (2005 study of 7 to 9-year-old students in a Swedish-speaking school in Finland shows how students and teacher jointly construct and maintain a monolingual classroom discourse.…”