Jiang, Anna Yuanqun; (2019) The Pedagogue as Translator: Native and Non-native Teachers in EFL Classrooms. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The focus of foreign language teaching has shifted from formal language structures (e.g. studying structures and text) to functional and communicative usage (e.g. analysing discourse in its social context). Amid this, fundamental questions of ‘What’, ‘Why’ and ‘How’ do we teach are still being debated but not properly addressed. Accordingly, 'proper pedagogy' remains elusive for external agencies and even practitioners. This study attempts to address it through its theoretical and empirical inquiries. The theoretical strand informs the latter and develops a ‘pedagogue-as-translator’ framework for reconceptualising language teaching via its philosophical lens, which views translation as an inter-discursive act of human interaction. The empirical strand is qualitative with ethnographic elements. It draws on data provided from classroom observations, interviews with four teachers in a Chinese university (two native English speakers, two non-native Chinese speakers) and interviews with these teachers' students. The investigation analyses the teachers' classroom stories – specifically, their pedagogical practices, their ideologies and beliefs behind their practices, and their students’ perceptions about how these practices support their meaning-making and learning. Both native and non-native teacher groups exhibit notable inter- and intra-group differences in all three areas. These difference centre around the place of content in language teaching (the ‘what’), hence this work proposing a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach; and the balance between developing critical thinking and language development (the ‘why’), the goal proposed being criticality integrating languaculture awareness (as a qualification that goes together with socialisation and subjectification); Furthermore, their communicative approach tend to more non-dialogic and authoritative (the ‘how’), which leads to ‘untranslatable’ moments for both teachers and students. Compassionate Pedagogy for profound and ‘truthful’ interactions is proposed, so that language teachers can address the ‘untranslatable’ and go beyond superficial or 'false' interactions, helping students work on their own ideas and facilitate students’ meaning construction and reconstruction. All these proposals together realise the pedagogue-as-translator framework.

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