Dr. Qi Chen

Dr. Qi Chen

Conversation Analysis | Multimodality | Social Interaction | Language Policy | Internationalisation of Higher Education | Task-based Language Teaching | Teachers’ Beliefs

qi.chen@hznu.edu.cn; adachenqi@me.com

Publications

Spotlights on ‘practiced language policy’ in the internationalised university (book chapter)

Published in Meaningful Teaching Interaction at the Internationalised University: From Research to Impact, 2021

Universities in the UK are often adopting ‘internationalisation strategies’ to adapt to the continuous transnational movements of staff and students. As a result, multilingualism is now a key characteristic of higher education in the UK. However, UK universities being traditionally shaped by English monolingual discourses and English as a medium of instruction, little is known as to whether the ethnolinguistic diversity of staff and students is reflected in daily teaching and learning activities. This paper takes the case of two taught Masters programmes in a UK university where there is a high percentage of international students, especially from mainland China. As part of a larger project on the investigation of language policy in the multilingual university (Bonacina-Pugh, Barakos and Chen, 2020), this study aims to shed light on the ‘practiced’ language policy (Bonacina-Pugh, 2012, 2020) observed in a corpus of audio-recorded classroom interaction. Taking a Conversation Analytic approach with a focus on language choice acts and shifts of participation frameworks conducted by teacher and students in classroom interaction, our study reveals how languages other than English (e.g., Mandarin) were used and legitimised by a ‘practiced’ language policy developed at the local level of the classroom and supports students’ learning.

Recommended citation: Chen, Q and Bonacina-Pugh, F. (2021). "Spotlights on the ’practiced language policy’ in the international university. " in Dippold, D. and Heron, M. (eds) in Meaningful Teaching Interaction at the Internationalised University: From Research to Impact. Routledge.

Speakership, recipiency and the interactional space: Cases of “Next-speaker self-selects” in multiparty university student meetings

Published in Journal of Pragmatics, 2021

This paper addresses the pragmatics of meeting interactions by focusing on a locally managed turn-taking system in a recurring meeting activity that is yet to be examined, namely, roundtable update discussion. In these activities, a meeting chair appoints primary speakership to each participant to give an update on recent work, during which non-chair, non-primary co-participants may contribute ideas and raise questions. By examining a collection of four cases of one specific turn-taking practicev, namely, next speaker self- selection, this study illustrates: 1) how the static, seated interactional space affords a non-chair, non-primary participant various multimodal resources in pursuing and con- structing his/her self-selecting actions, and 2) how co-participants mobilise the multi- modal resources that are made available by the physical seating arrangements in the local ecologies of the activity, to carry out mutual monitoring and orientation in accordance with their emerging roles. Particularly, this study explores the systematicity of partici- pants’ mobilisation of multimodal resources by revealing the hierarchical order of gaze/ head movements, upper torso and gesture when deployed in side-by-side and face-to-face seating arrangements. Such an explication shed new lights on how visual access in- between incipient self-selecting speakers and current speakers is exploited as a publicly-available resource to contextualise the operation of turn-taking.

Recommended citation: Chen, Q. & Brandt, A. (2020). "Speakership, recipiency and the interactional space: Cases of “Next-speaker self-selects” in multiparty university student meetings" Journal of Pragmatics. 180, 54–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.04.012

Language policy in the internationalisation of Higher Education in Anglophone countries: The interplay between language policy as ‘text’, ‘discourse’ and ‘practice’

Published in Applied Linguistics Review, 2020

In order to better compete in an increasing neoliberalised education system, many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have developed an internationalisation strategy that aims at incorporating an intercultural and global dimension into curricula and learning environments for all. This internationalisation agenda raises important language policy issues that are often side-lined in the UK and other Anglophone countries where an English monolingual ethos prevails. Centrally, the question arises indeed as to whether internationalisation processes have an impact on HEIs’ language policies in Anglophone countries. This paper takes the case of a Russell Group University in the UK and focuses on two masters programmes that attract annually a ‘multilingual elite’ (Barakos and Selleck 2019). It examines the institution’s language policy adopted at the levels of ‘texts’, ‘discourses’ and ‘practices’ (Bonacina-Pugh 2012), using a critical discourse analysis of policy documents and a conversation analysis of classroom in- teractions. We argue that language policy is at the core of HEIs’ internationalisa- tion processes even in Anglophone countries and that, methodologically, the articulation of findings from critical discourse and conversational analyses rep- resents a step forward in the field of language policy.

Recommended citation: Bonacina-pugh, F., Barakos, E., & Chen, Q. (2020). "Language policy in the internationalisation of Higher Education in Anglophone countries : The interplay between language policy as ‘ text ’ , ‘ discourse ’ and ‘ practice ’." Applied Linguistics Review. ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2019-0148

Contextualization and authenticity in TBLT: Voices from Chinese classrooms

Published in Language Teaching Research, 2017

In view of ongoing debates about the future of task-based language teaching (TBLT) in contexts of English as a foreign language (EFL), we present a detailed case study of teacher beliefs and practices regarding TBLT conducted in a secondary school in mainland China with a long history of communicative and task-based teaching approaches. We used a mixed-methods approach to gather a broad range of triangulated data, combining individual interviews, material analysis and observations coded using a novel task-focused version of the scheme ‘Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching’ (COLT). Quantitative and qualitative findings revealed positive beliefs about TBLT principles in general, reflecting strong institutional support for communicative teaching. However, there was marked variability between beliefs and practices in using tasks, especially with beginner-level learners. Most teachers demonstrated an intrinsic lack of confidence in using tasks as more than a communicative ‘add-on’ to standard form-focused teaching. We argue that this demonstrates a need for building teacher autonomy, in implementing TBLT, even in supportive settings, to support successful authentic contextualizing TBLT principles in different EFL contexts.

Recommended citation: Chen, Q & Wright, C. (2017). "Contextualization and authenticity in TBLT: Voices from Chinese classrooms." Language Teaching Research. 21(4). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1362168816639985