“It Was Because I Could Speak English That I Got the Job”: Neoliberal Discourse in a Chinese English Textbook Series

Xiong, Tao; Yuan, Zhou-min

doi:10.1080/15348458.2017.1407655

Cited by 57 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…The educational system of Pakistan has played an important role in asserting the significance of this language by teaching it as a subject as well as using it as the medium of instruction at a higher studies level as well . There are many similar studies on the relationship between English language proficiency and the job market and each study emphasizes the importance of English language proficiency (Xiong & Yuan, 2018;Doan & Hamid, 2019). The importance of English was associated with increased connectivity due to globalization.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The English Language Proficiency as a Global Employment Skill: The Viewpoint of Pakistani Academia

Abbas

Rana

Bashir

et al. 2021

HSSR

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Purpose of the Study: The current research aims at exploring the need of effective English skill as a global employment skill and its various reasons, as there are various Pakistani institutes which are dedicated to The English language teaching and reinforce its relationship with employability. The importance of the study being conducted in Pakistan becomes more evident as English enjoys the status of the second language in the country. Methodology: Current study uses a mixed-method research design and employs both questionnaires and interviews as research instruments. The questionnaire was administrated on a sample of 392 university students while a sample of 13 informants from university faculty participated in an interview for data collection. Main Findings: The study concludes that the importance of English was associated with increased connectivity due to globalization. The study also concludes that the importance of English for finding jobs and making a career was well-established. To conclude, it can be said that English language proficiency is amongst the top global employment skills in the viewpoint of Pakistani academia. Application of this Study: The study implicates that the importance of English for employment across the globe and a successful career will further lead to the formulation of English Specific courses for different professional and occupational groups in Pakistan. The originality of the Study: There is a scarcity of empirical evidence in terms of the importance of English as an employment skill though English is considered very important as an elite language and a status symbol. The study proposes to fill in the gap by providing empirical evidence, therefore, the research is being conducted to assess the status of English and its importance for global employment skills.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The English Language Proficiency as a Global Employment Skill: The Viewpoint of Pakistani Academia

Abbas

Rana

Bashir

et al. 2021

HSSR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…It has also been reported that in non-English-speaking countries where the English education in mainstream schools is inadequate, the children who have more opportunities of learning English are those whose parents can afford the fee of EPT (Hamid, Khan, and Islam 2018). As English is increasingly regarded as a valuable linguistic capital, undergoing a process of commodification (Bourdieu 1991;Heller 2010), many people believe that the competence in English can be accumulated by making monetary investment (Xiong and Yuan 2018).…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parentocracy within meritocracy: parental perspective on lecture-style English private tutoring in Hong Kong

Yung

Zeng

2021

Language and Education

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The shift from meritocracy to parentocracy in contemporary societies has resulted in a situation where children's educational success increasingly depends on parents' wealth and wishes rather than children's ability and efforts. Better-off parents can afford extra learning activities to increase children's competitive edge. This phenomenon is fuelled by 'English fever' in many non-English-speaking contexts, driving parents to subscribe to English private tutoring (EPT), or shadow education, for children. This paper reports on the findings from a larger year-long study on lecture-style EPT involving Hong Kong secondary students and their parents, schoolteachers and tutors. With a focus on the parental perspective, it expands the notion of parentocracy to EPT with qualitative empirical evidence from 14 parents. The findings unveil parents' complex, ambivalent and contradictory attitudes toward EPT. These parents played a supporting rather than a dominant role in children's education at the senior secondary stage. Despite their aspirations for their children, they did not have high expectations on the returns from their 'investment' in EPT because they believed children's success ultimately depended on their own ability and efforts. This study reveals the subordinating role of parentocracy in a meritocratic curriculum where academic success is largely determined by results in high-stakes examinations.

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“…It is imperative that language learners develop language competence, which results in, or from, other forms of capital. Current research in the field of Chinese education (Xiong & Yuan, 2018), including that of South Korea (Song, 2018) and Pakistan (Islam, 2018), lacks enough evidence that English language teaching and learning supports the acquisition of different forms of capital. Particularly symbolic capital, which is believed to be developed by learners' integration of economic, cultural, and social capital.…”

Section: Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing Capital in Language Learning: A Mixed-Method Study on Vietnamese English Learners

2021

J Ethn Cult Stud

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English-as-a-Lingua-Franca’s acceleration serves an ultimate goal of preserving English language users’ cultural and linguistic identities. In Vietnam, English has emerged as the common language in the education sector, since it aims to equip learners with language proficiency and competence. Hence, it enables the acquisition of linguistic and cultural capital, which is fundamental to accentuate the future Vietnamese workforce’s personal commitment and competitive advantage in the globalized labor market. Therefore, this mixed-method study seeks to fill missing literature on how capital is acquired and developed through language learning in Vietnamese higher education, based on the interpretation of Bourdieu’s (1986) capital stances in social fields. Among 194 English learners from various cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, data suggested that (1) all forms of capital developed very differently and (2) symbolic capital was directly associated with other forms of capital. Implications are also presented at the conclusion of the article.

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“It Was Because I Could Speak English That I Got the Job”: Neoliberal Discourse in a Chinese English Textbook Series

Cited by 57 publications

References 47 publications

The English Language Proficiency as a Global Employment Skill: The Viewpoint of Pakistani Academia

The English Language Proficiency as a Global Employment Skill: The Viewpoint of Pakistani Academia

Parentocracy within meritocracy: parental perspective on lecture-style English private tutoring in Hong Kong

Developing Capital in Language Learning: A Mixed-Method Study on Vietnamese English Learners

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