Interview 8: Norbert Pachler, Douglas Allford and Elspeth Broady

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Norbert Pachler, Douglas Allford, Elspeth Broady - Editors of the Language Learning Journal

This is the eighth audio interview in a series that Routledge is conducting with the editors of some of its key Education journals.

The interview page has been split into sections which can be quickly accessed by selecting any of the links below:

• Introduction
• Norbert Pachler, Douglas Allford and Elspeth Broady answer the questions
• More about Norbert Pachler
• More about Douglas Allford
• More about Elspeth Broady

Introduction

These interviews are aimed at students, educational researchers, academics and visitors to the Education Arena website who are interested in particular journals and would like to find out more.

Each interview provides information about the editor in question and details about the creation of their journal and its purpose and scope within the wider sphere of educational research. Each editor is also asked to offer advice, hints and tips to prospective authors who may be hoping to submit papers to their journal.

This eighth interview is with Norbert Pachler, Douglas Allford and Elspeth Broady, editors of the Language Learning Journal (LLJ). The journal provides a forum for scholarly contributions on current aspects of foreign language and teaching. LLJ is an international, peer-reviewed journal that is intended for an international readership, including foreign language teachers, language teacher educators, researchers and policy makers.

Norbert Pachler, Douglas Allford and Elspeth Broady answer the questions

The interview took place at the Institute of Education, London January 28th, 2010.

We also provide a transcription of this interview to overcome accessibility problems if you have hearing difficulties (or for those of you who may just prefer to read the interview).

More about Norbert Pachler

Norbert is Reader in Education and Co-Director of the Centre for Excellence in Work-based Learning for Education Professionals at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Apart from the application of new technologies in teaching and learning his research interests include teacher education and development and all aspects of foreign language teaching and learning.

Norbert has been Co-Director of the Centre for Excellence in Work-based Learning for Education Professionals (www.wlecentre.ac.uk) since 2005. Through this WLE-work he aims to foster technology-enhanced approaches in work-based learning by facilitating innovation and developing new conceptual and theoretical approaches.

For a number of years Norbert worked for the Deanery at the Institute of Education, inter alia as Acting Dean for Initial and Continuing Professional Development. He also was Chair of Academic Board (2005-07) and has served on the Planning and Resource Committee, Senate and Council of the Institute.

In 2007 he founded the international, interdisciplinary London Mobile Learning Group (www.londonmobilelearning.net), which he convenes. The group comprises researchers in the fields of cultural studies, sociology, semiotics, pedagogy and educational technology.

His collection of links in the fields of digital technologies and foreign language teaching and learning can be found at delicious.com/servusuk.

More about Douglas Allford

Dr Douglas Allford has been Joint Editor of The Language Learning Journal since 1999 and before that he was Joint Editor of Languages Forum 1993-96.

Throughout his career he has been involved in various ways with the teaching and learning of Foreign Languages (FLs).

In the first phase he spent many years teaching German for economic, commercial and other applied purposes. Most of this teaching was at degree and postgraduate levels but he also taught adults ab initio. At this time he became interested in theories which aimed to explain the processes of FL learning, and he also started to explore the translation, summarising and paraphrasing of texts back and forth between languages, both as skills in themselves and also as pedagogical tools.

The culture, politics, economics and institutions of German-speaking countries were important elements of this work. For 15 years he was responsible for a course on which British students spent an intercalated year working for a large German firm in Frankfurt am Main. This led him to think about ways in which learning a foreign language relates to the target culture and how it may also produce radical changes in learners.

In parallel with this, Douglas also conducted research into key German and French literature texts (Goethe’s Faust and Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal), about which he also taught. His experience of teaching on FL courses with a strong bias towards practical applications and, on the other hand, of researching and teaching literary texts led him to examine rationales for FL education. How could literature-orientated FL study be justified in a climate dominated by outcomes and 'value for money'? How could FL courses for applied purposes avoid the dangers of narrow vocationalism?

From 1991 he taught on FL MA courses at the Institute of Education, University of London. In these he covered such topics as FLs for vocational and applied purposes; grammar; translation; autonomous language learning; literature in its own right and as a means of FL study; film, video and new technologies in FL learning. He has published work in all these areas.

Douglas also has a long-standing interest in Japan, its people, culture and language. This provides a basis for examining questions of linguistic and cultural relativism, and he has supervised students working on MA and PhD dissertations in these fields. In addition to what has already been mentioned, his current research and writing interests include discourse analysis and aspects of language and cognition.

At a time when, in terms of numbers, FL learning in the UK is in decline it is necessary to be realistic about the immediate outlook. Currently Foreign Languages are often promoted in terms of how they enhance career prospects. This is entirely valid, but Douglas regards it as essential to reject an impoverished, narrowly instrumentalist conception of FL learning. Instead, he advocates approaches which foster an understanding of the target language, its patterns and systems, and which encompass an appreciation of the culture and society in which the language is rooted.

More about Elspeth Broady

Elspeth cites key influences as the BBC's self-learn language courses, to which she was addicted from age 7, and her one-month TEFL course at International House, Hastings in the early 1980s, which got her hooked on language teaching.

She has been committed to innovative approaches to language teaching ever since. The BBC courses inspired her work as a textbook writer for the Open University and various publishers, and a teaching career in university departments anchored her engagement with research-informed practice and practice-informed research.

Key research interests developed at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, where she focused on language learning motivation, learner beliefs and learning strategies, as well as the practical application of video for student project work. She built on these at the School of Languages, University of Brighton, where she taught for eighteen years across a range of disciplines including French, English for Academic Purposes, Applied Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education, both for MFL and TESOL. Her interest in video developed to include a wider range of digital tools, and a particular focus on L2 writing in electronic environments, while work on learner autonomy led her to concentrate on the potential role of grammatical metacognition in L2 development.

As Head of the School of Languages at the University of Brighton, she was closely engaged with MFL policy in the UK, and its strategic challenges. Having left the University of Brighton in 2008, she now combines freelance work with voluntary roles within the Association for Language Learning, and regional projects under the ‘Routes into Languages’ and ‘Links into Languages’ initiatives.

Making bridges – between theory and practice in language learning and teaching, between EFL and MFL, between academic disciplines, between 'novices' and 'experts', between authors and readers – is what she feels underlies all her work.