许国璋高研院学术讲堂

第十一讲

Globalization of English and Changing Definitions of Proficiency

主讲人：Athelstan SureshCanagarajah

Edwin Erle Sparks Professor

Departments of Applied Linguistics and English

Pennsylvania State University

时间：2017年5月25日（周四）10:20-11:50

地点：西院综合楼501室

主办：北京外国语大学许国璋语言高等研究院

内容介绍：

Debates about testing international English have revolved around two important questions. They are: Whose norms should we adopt? How do we define proficiency in the English language? The answers to these questions have been dominated by positions belonging to two well-entrenched ideological camps that I would label the World Englishes (WE) perspective and the Standard English (SE) perspective. SE would argue that the norm for testing should center on one of the dominant varieties—standardized British or American English. WE proponents would contest the relevance of these exogenous norms for postcolonial communities with institutionalized varieties of their own, and would argue that correctness should take into account local norms. As for proficiency, SE proponents would measure it in terms of the “native speaker,” defined as the monolingual speaker from the homogeneous “inner circle” speech communities that have traditionally claimed ownership over the language. For WE proponents, proficiency means the ability to engage in meaningful social and institutional functions in multilingual communities according to local conventions. While scholars of both campus have been engaged in this debate, unknown to them the ground has been shifting under our feet. We find ourselves in a new geopolitical order with different communicative needs. What I call postmodern globalization rules the previous arguments irrelevant and calls for a more complex orientation that moves the discourse on proficiency to a totally different level.

In this presentation, I first introduce the changing social context and outline the new communicative needs people are faced with. Based on this context, I then describe the new orientation to norms and proficiency that should inform teaching and assessment. This means that we have to move away from the previous paradigms of teaching to creatively devise new practices that would address our emerging communicative needs.