A Process of Non-native-speaker Socialization

As was discussed in Chapter 2, earlier studies (Kobayashi, 2003; Morita, 2003

& 2007; Yang, 2010; Zappa-Hollman, 2007) have centered on how non-native learners approach the target form to be a rounded presenter in an academic community.

However, what differentiates the present study from earlier studies is that it does not hold any assumptions regarding what qualities students should fit in. That is, in earlier sociocultural studies referring to oral activities, most researchers have taken the position of examining and evaluating how their non-native participants fulfill the standards for an effective presentation set by English-native-speakers. Also, they have taken account of the non-native-speaker students’ process of socialization, i.e., how they socialize themselves to be a better presenter. However, students in this study did not have direct resources or opportunities for encounters with native speakers for them to undergo the process of socialization. Whereas ESL learners in earlier oral studies fit themselves into the target culture while they were situated in a native-speaker community, participants in the present study are all non-native-speakers, i.e., socialization occurring in this context is entirely amongst non-native speakers, including the instructor who is also a non-native speaker and a non-expert in the students’ medical field, and yet appeared to be the major resource for students to learn language and sociocultural knowledge. Taking a further step to look deeper into the data, it is surprising to learn that the instructor’s contribution is more than language facilitation. She, in fact, played an important role in conferencing at the affective level.

On the other hand, the other group of indirect participants, i.e., peers, plays their multiple roles as a presenter, an audience, and an evaluator to co-construct students’ realization of how to make an oral presentation. Further, drawing from the data discussed in previous sections, the student presenter’s modeling role seems to be even more influential and approachable than the one done by the instructor. The data show that through students’ engagement in the activity with other fellow students,

the oral activity in this context is a process that is constructed, co-constructed, shaped and re-shaped into its final form. For this reason, a significant question here is how students construct their realization of the oral activity. According to the findings in this case, the valued qualities of completing a good oral presentation are not pre-determined; instead, students develop their own realization of what the valued qualities that an academic presentation should have through the process of being involved in the socially-constructed activity with other indirect participants. That is, rather than adapting what is provided in the theory-based textbook and teacher’s lectures, it seems more significant to find that students themselves define and assign meaning of an effective AOP through their own engagement in co-constructing the activity with other participants. Such a finding adds to Duff’s second language socialization model that was discussed in Chapter 2.

6.1.1.2 Adding to the Concept of Socialization

According to Duff’s socialization model, socialization is a process that approximates a person’s understanding of the target community. In her studies (2003

&. 2007), ESL students reach diversion on the way to approach the target culture.

She found that ESL students have various pathways to reach the target form, but her participants never attained it. It then seems reasonable to believe that EFL learners who have considerably less language exposure than ESL students do would encounter more difficulties in reaching the target form. In this study, participants seem able to formulate a target model based on theory-based textbooks and the instructor’s lectures and modeling. In contrast to students in an ESL context, it seems that ESL students can formulate the target model from much more sources found in the academic community. For the group of EFL medical students, such type of community resources seemed scarce. In Duff’s discussion of second language socialization, limited learning resources experienced by EFL learners in this study has not been

found.

Since the participants have limited resources to rely on, the teacher then becomes the best model that the students could learn from in their context. However, it is interesting to find that students do not just rely on their teacher’s input. Rather, the students in this study learned greatly through observations from their peers (the instructor has her prominent role in conferencing though). Peers as a resource for learning in this academic presentation then becomes an important contribution of this study. More specifically, peers’ performance and reactions in the oral activity in fact led student presenters to formulate realization regarding the importance of engaging audiences and fulfilling the responsibility as an academic presenter. For example, Anita’s debating method influenced Jay’s realization of leading a discussion; Lisa’s strategy of using pictures to introduce vocabulary impressed fellow students, leading to emulation of the same method in several presentations; and Ben, who used his aunt’s case to provoke the audience’s interest and attention (rf. Chapter 5).

Through such a process, what student presenters have produced in their own performance is an outcome involving a process in which they observe, learn the effective strategies, emulate and finally incorporate the same method from peers in their own presentations. In other words, what their peers show them is a role model which according to participants is more attainable than the one demonstrated by their instructor (see Peter’s, Tony’s, and Nick’s interview data in Chapter 5). However, peer models that students consider effective is not validated, but recognized by the group of students. This perspective, therefore, is different from several other oral studies (Kobayashi, 2004; Morita, 2000; Yang, 2010; Zappa-Hollman, 2007) in terms of defining and explaining what a good oral presentation is because the group of medical students themselves assigned meaning and constructed an understanding of an oral practice is through their engagement in the class with peers. It appears that

there is no particular form to define a good oral presentation; rather, it depends on who the people in the community are, and what knowledge they hold and offer the class. That is, both the instructor and the students continuously negotiated a well-accepted pattern in completing an oral presentation in this community.

6.1.1.3 A Co-constructed Social Activity

As discussed in Chapter 5, due to the unique nature of a theme-based language class, the instructor is a language counselor and a mediator for learning academic speaking manners in conferencing, but she is not the resource of discipline-specific knowledge. Rather, fellow students who are medical majors could provide content knowledge when the discussion is related to the medical field. Therefore, one focal issue of this dissertation discusses the reconfigured expert (i.e., the instructor) and novice (i.e., students) relation in this theme-based class. Generally, the accepted belief in Taiwan is that students are not inclined to challenge the teacher’s authority;

however, the findings of this theme-based classroom seem to suggest that academic discourse socialization is not an overwhelmingly oppressive, unidirectional process of knowledge transmission from the expert to the novice (i.e., from the instructor to students), but rather a complex, locally situated process that involves dynamic negotiations of expertise. While earlier studies conducted by Duff (2003 &. 2007), Morita (2000), Kobayashi (2003) and Zappa-Hallman (2007) have aimed at investigating the challenges that ESL learners face in fulfilling the requirements set by professors and approach the target form recognized by English-native-speakers in an academic community, in the present study, due to its co-constructed nature, the target form seems not to be so clearly defined. Rather, the interpretation of oral presentations is assigned after all participants are involved in the activity. Through social collaboration, all participants co-build their realization of an oral presentation which was uniquely constructed using English as the medium to serve two purposes:

one is to learn oral presentation skills and the other is to discuss medical-related issues in English.

In particular, co-construction of the activity with peers allowed students to develop their mental image of what they regard is a good oral presentation, what the expectations of other people are, and what seems to be necessary to engage audiences.

The data shows that through engaging in the co-constructed activity, peers seem to drive each other to learn further. It seems that in the participants’ minds, presenting in a manner similar to their peers provides comfort and ease. Meanwhile, when students co-constructed the oral activity, the finding of the role of peers, who are novices as well, is a breakthrough for re-examining the typically considered expert-novice dichotomy in sociocultural theories. As such, an influence brought by peers is shown in multiple layers, and actually indirectly broadens the belief of knowledge transmission from the expert to the novice in sociocultural theories. That is, most sociocultural theories typically recognize the mono-direction from the expert to the novice for knowledge transmission. However, in this case, it was witnessed that learning proceeded through novice-novice interactions. Given that judging whether their realizations attained the target norm for academic oral presentations was not the focus in the present study, how well they have met the target form, as discussed in Morita (2000) or Zappa-Hallman (2007) across different disciplines, deserves further investigation in future studies. Nevertheless, regardless of judging if participants’ realizations were accurate or not, the present study seems to show that through engagement in the oral event with peers, students could also form conceptualizations of doing an oral presentation.

To integrate the discussions in Chapters 4 and 5, how the instructor and peers have helped student presenters co-construct their presentation can be shown in the following figure (Figure 6.1). In terms of the instructor, she provided assistance

through conferencing, while peers offered their contribution through demonstrating different types of strategies to present or lead a discussion. What was given by the instructor and peers, through various ways, shaped students’ feelings, understandings, thoughts, and realizations of doing an academic presentation. Finally, the student presenter selected and employed certain realizations in his own performance, and very possibly, how he acted in his presentation influenced other students’ realizations afterwards.

Figure 6.1 How the Instructor and Peers Help Students Construct an AOP

The instructor is not the only major resource for the group of students, according to the data. As for the key metaphorical concepts of experts and novices, through such a socially constructed interaction with each other, participants in the situated community share multiple perspectives, experiences, and expertise; and finally, the interaction unfolds and learning occurs. Some researchers (e.g., Casanave, 1992; Prior, 1998) have considered that such a disciplinary socialization is a two-way negotiation between caregivers and children (or “old-timers” vs. “new comers” in CoP theory). These theories view learning and socialization as a bidirectional process in which experts and novices influence each other, rather than a unidirectional transmission of knowledge or skills from the experienced to the novices (e.g., Lave & Wenger, 1989; Rogoff, 1990). But the findings in the present study

Before AOP

AOP

In-class After AOP

Production of the presenter’s

AOP

AOP brought by peers Peers’

demonstration The instructor:

through conferencing

appears to show another dimension for examining the influence among novices because, thus far, it seems reasonable to conclude that the peers’ force in the co-constructed activity could be one of the imperative influences to form participants’

conceptualizations of making an oral presentation.