What is English?

Abstract

This article considers the developing status of English in Norway, both as a language and as a school subject, making predictions about which ontological and epistemological perspectives will influence English language teaching (ELT) in Norway towards 2030. Status quo and predictions for English in Norway is approached from two angles; the development of presiding language beliefs in linguistic science and in ELT practices from the 16th century to the present, and the more recent and rapid development of English as the foremost global language of communication. The article shows how English language beliefs and the status of English are made visible in the national subject curriculum and in the English language practices among Norwegian adolescent learners. The discussion suggests that English is increasingly characterised by those who use it as a second or later language, including Norwegians who negotiate the meanings of English in the ELT classroom. The article predicts that a logical development for Norwegian ELT is increased influence from social constructionist perspectives, in combination with the existing focus on communicative competence. The study shows that global circumstances related to the status of English are reciprocally related to local language beliefs among educational authorities, teachers and students, and that these have major implications for English as a discipline in lower and higher education.

State of the art: English didactics in Norway

“…The theory of what is relevant for English teaching is often related to beliefs about what language is and, consequently, how languages are best learnt (Jaspers, 2010;Rindal, 2014;Simensen, 2018). Such beliefs are often developed in other academic disciplines such as linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychology and psycholinguistics (what Simensen, 1988, refers to as parent disciplines). Since such beliefs develop over time, so does the theory and research that informs English teaching practices, which makes it interesting to see how the thematic focus and perspectives have developed over the course of 30 years of doctoral research.…”

“…This triad of student, teacher, and student teacher illustrates three of the primary objects of inquiry in English didactics research. Nonetheless, some researchers (R. Lund, 2007;Simensen, 1988;Skulstad, 1997) have added a fourth object of inquiry -documents (i.e. national English curricula, textbooks, and corporate reports) -that were prominent in shaping the English didactics field in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.…”

“…Lund, 2003;Rindal, 2013;Røkenes, 2016;Stuvland, 2016) or as a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (Bøhn, 2016;Drew, 1997;R. Lund, 2007;Simensen, 1988;Wold, 2017). An additional few (16%) are framed as qualitative (Munden, 2010;Skulstad, 1997;Wiland, 2007), with fewest (10%) described as quantitative (Dahl, 2014;Hellekjaer, 2005).…”

“…Throughout the 30 years of doctoral research covered in this volume, encounters with texts in English have been highlighted across genres and contexts and with readers of all ages. One study examined the policies of graded readers in the 1980s (Simensen, 1988), another addressed students' reading proficiency (Hellekjaer, 2005), and two quite recent ones observed students and teachers in the English classroom; including their perspectives on reading comprehension instruction and strategy use (Brevik, 2015;Stuvland, 2016). Two additional studies related to culture and literature also dealt with reading to a considerable extent (Munden, 2010;Wiland, 2007).…”

A Design-Oriented Analysis of Multimodality in English as a Foreign Language

“…However, learning a language is also about gaining communicative competence and learning about cultures, history and texts. This is apparent in the way language studies are usually structured in three dimensions: linguistics, literature and culture (Brøgger, 1986;Kramsch, 1995;Rindal, 2014;Udir, 2013). Theoretically, this connection between language and culture can be underpinned by a basic understanding of language as functional, as we find it in social semiotics, where Halliday states: 'Every actual instance of linguistic interaction has meaning not only in particular but also in general, as an expression of the social system ' (1975, p. 80).…”