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Teaching to, with, and Against the Test: Language Teaching and Teacher Identity Under Institutional Neoliberalization

  • Enmou Huang

    Enmou Huang is currently a lecturer in School of English Education at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China. He gained his Ph.D. in English language education at the University of Hong Kong. His current research focuses on language policy and language education, language assessment literacy, and assessment for learning in a blended learning context.

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Published/Copyright: December 10, 2019

Abstract

Neoliberalism has emerged as a keyword that captures some core features of global economic and educational reforms in recent years. This paper reports a linguistic ethnographic study of how a Chinese language teacher was engaged with neoliberal discourses on language education in and out of the classroom in a suburban public middle school in China, with an attempt to illuminate the complexity of language education in a neoliberal context. The analysis shows three general identity positions—as an opponent, a conformist, and a pragmatist—across the identification trajectory of the focal language teacher through the fieldwork period, in relation to neoliberal exam-oriented education and her various ways of engaging with exam discourses in her language classrooms. This inquiry argues for the perspective of unpredictability and complexity as an alternative that goes beyond the current “deterministic neoliberalism” in understanding the dynamics of neoliberalization in language education, language teaching, and teacher identity formation.

About the author

Enmou Huang

Enmou Huang is currently a lecturer in School of English Education at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China. He gained his Ph.D. in English language education at the University of Hong Kong. His current research focuses on language policy and language education, language assessment literacy, and assessment for learning in a blended learning context.

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Appendix: Symbols used in the transcripts

Ms. Chen: participant

CAPITAL LETTER loud talking

/ short pause (0.5 seconds)

// long pause (0.5-1.5 seconds)

[ ] turn overlapping with similarly marked turn

{ } explanation of nonverbal activity

↑ rising intonation

& latched utterances

*** non-understandable fragment

( ) original language spoken in Chinese (Putonghua)

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the support from the Key Research Project of Philosophy and Social Science of the Ministry of Education of China (MOE, Project No.: 15JZD048); the Chinese MOE Research Project of Humanities and Social Science (Project No.: 16JJD740006) conducted by the Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and the Research Project Guangdong Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science (Project No.: GD18WXZ18). He would also like to acknowledge the contribution of anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback on the drafts of this article and the editors of Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics for their diligent work.

Published Online: 2019-12-10
Published in Print: 2019-09-25

© 2019 FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy

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