Confirmation of Candidature – PhD – Oral Presentation Feng Ru Chang

Exploring student/teacher interactions in Taiwanese Buxiban classrooms
Feng Ru Chang

Date Wednesday 20 April 2016
Time 2pm to 4pm
Room S506
Location Social Science Building 24 St Lucia Campus

Abstract
Under the influence of globalization, English has become a prominent language around the world and learning English has become a necessity in many countries. People in Taiwan are aware of its significance in terms of politics, economy, globalization, personal achievement, and education. This has led to the dramatic growth of buxibans (private cram schools) in Taiwan.
‘Native speakers fallacy’ always carries significant weight in people’s minds when it comes to English language learning, which further results in the privileged status of native speakers (NS) teachers and the misconception of the superiority of NS teachers. A lot of research has been conducted to explore the differences between NS and NNS (non-native speakers) teachers and a dichotomy with unequal relations of power is created to classify them into two groups. Research into student/teacher interactions has also been based on this dichotomy which ignores other factors affecting the interactions between students and their NS and NNS teachers. These factors, including space, time, subjectivity, the relations of power and so on, also play crucial roles in an analysis of interactional issues.
This study aims to disrupt the existing dichotomy and explore how NS and NNS teachers position themselves as English teachers and how their subjectivity influences their interaction with students in terms of concepts of subject positions, relations of power, space, language and discourse. This study will use poststructuralist lenses to examine these issues in a private buxiban in Tainan, Taiwan. The data will be collected through classroom observations and interviews. Multimodal discourse analysis will be adopted to analyze the data.
Panel: Dr. Obaid Hamid (Chair), Assoc Professor Amanda Keddie
Principal Advisor: Dr Eileen Honan
Associate Advisor/s: Professor Martin Mills